Mozilla Firefox 3.0 ( .1)

    So the new Firefox 3.0 has been out now for a few days and I just updated to 3.0.1. It fixes a few bugs encountered in the original 3.0 version.

( WHY the hell does Opera have to open the Help page on the same tab you are on!! It's the 3rd time i lose this article and i start rewriting it!)

   As you know Mozilla Firefox is one of the leading browsers out there coming close with Internet Explorer and as usually they have delivered a great product. The new release fixes tons of bugs, improves compatibility with 3rd party add-ons, has what I believe to be a very nice improved user interface, and greater performance than ever. The only thing I still don't really like about Firefox is how tabs seem to be somewhat of a secondary feature, but that's maybe because I'm so used to Opera.

   And speaking of other browsers, a few months ago I had anounced that the first batch of betas had been released almost simultaneously. I was refeering to the Firefox 3.0 , Opera 9.0 and IE 8 betas. Well after being released so close to one another, Opera took the lead and had their final release version some time ago. Since then they have reached version 9.51 fixing bugs along the way. Unfortunately the 9.x versions don't seem to be as good as promised. Mozilla came round and got out their 3.0 version which is great, and 3.0.1 latest that will probably be browser of the year. And while all of this is going on ..guess what the people at Microsoft are doing? Brandon LeBlanc from MS said that Beta 2 of IE 8 will be coming out shortly. And you simply know it's not going to be anywhere nearly as good as the other browsers. 

Yahoo ! Fun

I was looking around on the Yahoo Messenger blog and came across something that I found was really fun. Nothing related to business, but you should still check out THIS LINK. A few days ago Matt Harding went and danced around with the Yahoos in Sunnyvale mostly and they all had a lot of fun. Have a look.

Logix Hydra 100 by Lucid

        Well it's been two months ever since i've writen anything here. So yeah .. I'll just blame it on the holidays. I've been drunk a lot, and away a lot, most of the time combining the two. Anyway now I'm back and after being sick for one week I've decided beer is back on the menu, and so I've started writing again. ( weird thing isn't it? ) . Anyway I had writen the intro for an article about iTunes cause i've had to use it a lot lately and i hate it. But I stopped cause I was bored. So now I'm going to talk about the new Logix Hydra 100 chip from Lucid.       

          HYDRA 100 Series is the first SoC from Lucid that is designed to scale graphics performance using multiple off-the-shelf graphics processors. The solution is seamless to the application and GPU vendor to meet the needs of various visual computing markets. The HYDRA 100 system on chip is designed to manage and load-balance graphics tasks from the CPU to the display across multiple GPUs ensuring efficient scaling for maximum GPU performance.         

         So what does this mean? Well basically it means that you can take any two GPU's from the same vendor let's say for example a GeForce 9800GT and your older GeForce 8800GTS and run them on the same machine each rendering only parts of what you see thus better integrating and distributing their resources. Lucid promised near-linear performance which is very believable and most likely be achieved. But they also said it might be above-linear which made some poeple question them. But if you think about it it's quite possbile. Having 2 GPU's each set to render what it's best at ( for example one renders shadows and the other textures) will you get more FPS than by simply combining their rendering power as you would in SLI or Crossfire.          

         Another thing to mention is that besides any two ( or more) GPU's this chip also works with any chipset making it easily adaptable. So the question now is how soon will the major companies make use of it and what pricing will it have. It's expected to hit the wide-spread consumer market by Q2 of 2009.

This is a rendering using the Hydra chip. As you can see on one screen one GPU renders specific parts and on the other, the other GPU renders the rest.     

Cheers