Intel has been working hard to gain acceptance of its depth-sensing RealSense camera for quite a few years now. It has demoed them in all sorts of devices, but most people only know about them if they have a laptop with one. With its new D435i model, Intel is trying to change that. This new version includes an integrated IMU that supports 6-degrees-of-freedom tracking. Intel is hoping that will make it more popular in a variety of embedded applications, including drones and robotics. It might also help get it designed into AR and VR headsets that rely on inside-out tracking rather than needing external beacons.
An interview with AMD’s Senior Vice President of Engineering, David Wang, in the Japanese publication 4Gamer states that AMD will bring its own ray tracing solution to market in-time, but that the company is focused on other priorities in the short-term. Ray tracing has been a hot technology discussion since Nvidia announced it was adding the capability to Turing, but AMD’s short-term response isn’t focused on introducing a consumer ray-tracing solution. Before we go further, I should note that I was at AMD’s New Horizons event and the only GPU under discussion was the 7nm Vega for AI and machine learning markets.
Starting late last year, Apple included a new custom security chip in its computers called the T2. Ostensibly, the T2 is a co-processor intended to keep your system secure by managing sensitive functions like encryption and secure boot. However, Apple also uses it to verify repairs made to systems. Right to repair advocates have been angrily complaining about this for months, and now Apple confirms the T2 may lock you out following an unauthorized hardware change. The is integrated with the logic board on all Macs from the late 2017 iMac Pro forward. So, that includes all those new computers Apple has rolled out in 2018.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket does not have a spotless record. In the last few years, SpaceX has lost one vehicle on the launchpad and another broke apart en route to the International Space Station (ISS). Yet, SpaceX is on a roll as it nears three dozen successful Falcon 9 launches in a row. The company is also cruising toward certification to ferry astronauts to the ISS. NASA has bestowed SpaceX’s Falcon 9 vehicle with its : Category 3. That means SpaceX can launch the agency’s most important missions. The Falcon 9 began its life as a typical expendable rocket, but SpaceX has worked toward improving reliability over the years.
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Modern aircraft are staggeringly complex. There’s a complex interconnected web of systems controlled by both the pilot and co-pilot and the onboard computers dedicated to keeping the airborne meat-filled-tube-with-wings-attached firmly in the air. When an aircraft is lost, it’s an international tragedy. Modern aircraft typically don’t fall out of the sky without warning, which is why the Lion Air 610 crash on October 29 that killed 189 people was such an unusual event. New information suggests the blame for that event in Indonesia rests squarely on Boeing’s shoulders. FAA officials and airline pilots are zeroing in on a new anti-stall system as being responsible for the crash, The Wall Street Journal .
Samsung has finally shown off its first foldable phone, but only for a few seconds. At the tail end of the Developer Conference, the company talked up its display innovation and , which it will sell in 2019. The presenter folded the phone twice and returned it to his pocket. That, allegedly, is going to cost you a pretty penny when the device launches next year. There’s nothing official from Samsung about what its foldable phone will cost, or even what it’s called. The rumor mill has long suggested that the foldable phone will be the “Galaxy F” when it comes out.
GPS technology is so ubiquitous now that it can be hard to remember a day when you couldn’t just take out your phone and find out exactly where you are in the world. However, that’s actually a very recent development and one that could be denied to us in the future. GPS relies on a network of satellites that could be damaged, blocked, or destroyed. You also can’t get a good GPS lock when you’re underground or around tall buildings. There may be an alternative, though. Imperial College London and engineering firm M Squared have developed a new “” that can provide precise locations without any external system.
When Intel launched the Core i9-9900K, we noted that while the CPU was easily the best-performing (and best-priced, in terms of price-per-core) Intel chip we’d ever tested, its price/performance ratio didn’t hold up very well compared to AMD’s eight-core Ryzen 7 2700X. When we checked prices back on October 26, we saw the Core i9-9900K listing at $580 and said that this might not actually have much impact on the CPU’s attractiveness to its target market. Because the Core i9-9900K was easily the fastest and most capable CPU Intel had previously launched, even besting the 10-core Core i9-7900X in some tests, the company had some room on price when addressing customers who work primarily within the Intel ecosystem.
