The city of Vienna recently commissioned a team of developers at Austria’s Graz University of Technology to develop a button-free pedestrian crossing system that uses artificial intelligence to get the job done. Rather than pushing a button and wondering if it actually matters while waiting to cross, the new method will employ cameras and image classification algorithms to determine when people need to cross the street. This will use a crossing light-mounted camera with a 26 by 16-foot area of view and use custom-developed algorithms to analyze pedestrian movement, path choice, and crossing intention. The AI will send its results to the existing traffic system to request a walking light change and it will permit walking as soon as possible.
Microsoft launched its subscription-based Xbox Game Pass in 2017, and the service has proven popular with avid console gamers. There has always been limited PC integration with Microsoft-developed titles, but the company’s new initiative goes a step further. The new will bring more than 100 games to PC on a subscription basis. On the Xbox console, those on the Game Pass subscription have access to a few dozen games, including some new releases like Mortal Kombat X and Forza Horizon 4. These games usually appear on Game Pass on the same day as they arrive at retail. It’s important to note that this isn’t a streaming system like Microsoft’s .
The PC market never stops changing, which means it’s never a bad time to shop for new deals on high-end gaming equipment. Today we head things off with a high-end 2K display from Dell that is also offered with a $50 gift card, which makes it more affordable to pick up some extra hardware to go along with it. Dell’s S2719DGF 27-inch gaming display has a native resolution of 2560×1440 and a fast 144Hz refresh rate. If you feel adventurous you can also overclock this display to increase its refresh rate further. Dell indicated that a refresh rate of 155Hz should be possible by doing this, but of course things are never certain when you start overclocking.
Computex buried us in a flurry of announcements from Intel and AMD earlier this week, but the two x86 manufacturers weren’t the only companies showing off new hardware improvements. ARM also announced new designs for its own products, including the Cortex-A77 and Mali-G77. The Cortex-A77, codenamed Deimos, is intended to continue delivering on ARM’s 20 percent annual performance target uplift. This is the second CPU developed as part of ARM’s Austin CPU family, and it’s an evolutionary improvement over the existing Cortex-A76. Unlike its predecessor, however, the Cortex-A77 isn’t arriving alongside a new node shrink or significant same-node performance improvement, and that limits its potential upside a bit.
The PCI-SIG has announced the completion of the PCIe 5.0 specification. In the history of PCI development, this may be the first time a new standard has been finished before the previous iteration had even launched in the consumer market. “New data-intensive applications are driving demand for unprecedented levels of performance,” said Al Yanes, PCI-SIG Chairman and President. “Completing the PCIe 5.0 specification in 18 months is a major achievement, and it is due to the commitment of our members who worked diligently to evolve PCIe technology to meet the performance needs of the industry. The PCIe architecture will continue to stand as the defacto standard for high performance I/O for the foreseeable future.
If you’re in the market for DDR4, it’s an excellent time to buy — and it’s probably going to stay that way for a few months. We’ve been charting the slide of RAM prices, and they’re only headed one direction: Down. In fact, this might be the best time to purchase high-speed DDR4 that I’ve ever seen. We’ll discuss the utility of that option, but before we do, let’s look at pricing. We’ve pulled data from as far back as 2018 and included RAM prices where we’ve tracked them since. Unfortunately I wasn’t as concerned with the stratospheric pricing on higher-end modules over a year ago, but you can still see exactly how large the decline has been.
One of the most interesting releases of the year isn’t a modern game at all — it’s a refreshed look at a 22 year-old title. Quake II probably isn’t a game a lot of modern players are even familiar with, which adds to some of the interest around the work Nvidia has done to refresh this decidedly ancient game with a massive facelift. According the RTX-enabled version of Quake II will play on a GeForce RTX graphics card “or other capable hardware,” which likely means this release is essentially an NV exclusive. It is, however, a smart idea to allow people to experience ray tracing on older GPUs.
One of the bits of information we’ve learned at Computex this year clears up the question of which CPUs and platforms will support which Ryzen products. Earlier this spring, we reported on a rumor that the A320 platform would not support third-generation Ryzen CPUs. This has now been confirmed by AMD. As an added twist, however, the X570 won’t be compatible with first-generation Ryzen CPUs — and that’s a little bit unusual. Here’s the support matrix for AMD CPUs and motherboards, as provided by AMD: If you own an X470 or B450 motherboard, you’re golden as far as support is concerned.
Hardly a day goes by without the promise of some new, world-changing, product in the alternative reality space (currently a mash-up of VR, AR, MR, and now sometimes called XR). It can be hard to keep the technologies straight, so we’ve put together a short guide to the major aspects of each of them, and their relative strengths and weaknesses. Virtual Reality (VR) The first of the “Rs” to become “the next big thing” Virtual Reality (VR) solutions are defined by their replacement of the reality around you with a virtual substitute. That currently means that VR devices are a helmet or goggles with their own display(s) that completely replace your view of the outside world.
