Japanese firm develops world's first robot powered by fuel cells

TOKYO, June 30 (AFP) - A Japanese company on Thursday said it has developed a humanoid billed as the world's first robot powered by easy-to-replace, environmentally friendly fuel-cell batteries.

Speecys Corp, based in Tokyo and headed by former Sony robot engineer Tomoaki Kasuga, will on Friday begin selling the 50-centimeter (20-inch) tall, 4.2-kilogram (9.24-pound) robot carrying a built-in hydrogen cylinder.

Fuel cells produce electricity through a chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen, leaving water as the only by-product.

Fuel-cell batteries in cartridges can be easily replaced in contrast to conventional batteries that take hours to recharge.

"Fuel cells are a promising material as the source of energy for operating robots in the future," Speecys said in a statement.

"We believe that it is more suitable for (humanoid) robots to get fuel in cartridges as if they were having meals rather than to get batteries recharged," it said.

Speecys-FC is priced at 2.5 million yen (22,730 dollars) a unit, five times as pricy as a previous version run by conventional nickel metal hydride batteries.

The company aims to sell 10 units of Speecys-FC a year for research and display purposes.

ELSA Unveiled Gladiac 880GT Power Whale

ELSA has unveiled a special edition of their 8800GT card and they called itPower Whale. Indeed, the cooler looks like a whale and is the made by ZEROtherm.ELSA claimed a hefty 26oC lower in temperature over the Nvidia reference cooler.The card is clocked at 650MHz core and 1GHz for the memory. Availability by end of January.

Exclusive First official picture of MSI's N580GTX Lightning Xtreme Edition

MSI is getting ready to launch its insane version, sorry, Xtreme Edition version of the N580GTX Lightning and VR-Zone has scored the first official picture of the new graphics card. MSI has pulled out all the stops this time around and this should be one of the most powerful single GPU graphics cards out there.

MSI hasnt changed too much with regards to the physical appearance of the card, although the fan shroud is now black instead of gunmetal grey and the fans are blue. The box as announcing dust removal tech although the fan blades are actually the same as on the N580GTX Lighting, so were not quite sure what have changed. Apparently MSI has also added some new kind of smart thermal sensor which is meant to prevent the card from overheating when overclocked.

However, none of this makes it an Xtreme Edition card and the real selling point of the new card is that it comes with a massive 3GB of GDDR5 memory. Sadly we dont know the clock speeds of the new card, but wed expect them to be close to that of the non Xtreme Edition version. The card should launch sometime between now and Computex.

In related news weve also scored a picture of MSIs standard GTX 560 card, the N560GTX which has a slightly more basic cooler than the Twin Frozr II versions, as it only has two heatpipes rather than four. The card is still cooled by a pair of fans and should prove to be a bit more affordable than the Twin Frozr II editions.

Elpida Unveiled Fastest DRAM @ 4.8GHz

Elpida Memory, Inc. (Elpida) (Tokyo Stock Exchange Code 6665), Japan'sleading global supplier of Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) and Rambus Inc. (Nasdaq:RMBS), one of the world's premier technology licensing companies specializing inhigh-speed chip architectures, today introduced the industry's fastest DRAM, the512 Megabit (Mb), 4.8GHz XDR™ DRAM, based on Rambus' XDR memory architecture.This latest addition to the XDR DRAM family provides an industry-leading datatransfer rate of 9.6 Gigabytes per second (GB/s) with a single device, making itan ideal choice for high-performance, high-volume applications such ashigh-definition televisions (HDTV), gaming consoles, PCs, servers andworkstations.

"The industry's demand for memory bandwidth in next-generation products isgrowing rapidly as high-definition image data becomes more popular," saidYoshitaka Kinoshita, officer for the Digital Consumer Division of Elpida Memory,Inc. "Working with Rambus on XDR DRAM, we can provide the most cost-effective,high-bandwidth memory solution to our customers."

Elpida's 512Mb, 4.8GHz XDR DRAM (Part number: EDX5116ADSE-5E-E) device isorganized in 8-banks (x16/x8/x4 programmable), and with a 9.6GB/s data transferrate delivers six times the peak bandwidth of industry-standard DDR2-800 memorydevices. The 4.8GHz XDR device is manufactured using Elpida's 70 nm processtechnology and is available in a 104-ball FBGA package. To support bothhigh-speed and robust data transfer, XDR DRAM utilizes key enabling technologiesbuilt on patented Rambus innovations such as Differential Rambus Signaling Level(DRSL), which minimizes signal swing and noise; Octal Data Rate (ODR) technologywhich transfers eight bits of data on each clock cycle to achieve 4.8GHzoperation with just a 600MHz clock; and FlexPhase™ circuit technology forprecise on-chip data alignment with the clock. The 512Mb XDR DRAM device alsofeatures adaptive impedance matching, dynamic request scheduling and zerooverhead refresh.

"Elpida's 4.8GHz XDR DRAM is an excellent fit for consumer electronicsapplications requiring high bandwidth for 3-D graphics, high-definition imageprocessing, and advanced multimedia," said Sharon Holt, senior vice president ofworldwide sales, licensing and marketing at Rambus. "Elpida is well establishedas a leading XDR DRAM supplier and we are proud to work with them to advance theroadmap for XDR to 4.8GHz, achieving the world's fastest DRAM."

XDR DRAM is an integral part of the XDR memory architecture, working seamlesslywith the XDR Memory Controller (XMC), XDR IO controller interface cell (XIO),and the XDR Clock Generator (XCG) to enable unprecedented levels of memoryperformance while utilizing the fewest number of ICs. A single XDR DRAM deviceoperating in x16 mode achieves a data transfer rate of 9.6GB/s. In comparison,it requires six DDR2-800 x16 devices to achieve an equivalent data rate.

Proven in high-volume applications, Rambus XDR memory solutions are backed bycomprehensive engineering support services that range from chip design to systemintegration. XDR DRAM continues to provide an order of magnitude higherperformance than today's standard memories. For more information on the XDRmemory architecture, as well as the next-generation XDR2 DRAM withmicro-threading, please visit www.rambus.com/xdr.

Availability
Elpida's 512Mb 4.8GHz XDR DRAM devices (Part number: EDX5116ADSE-5E-E) will beavailable for sampling in December 2007. Volume production is expected to beginin April 2008. A datasheet is available upon request.

CUPP Computing shows off working setup at Computex

We wrote about Norwegian CUPP Computing a few days before Computex and we meet up with them at the last day of the show for a quick hands on with their new setup. Although we didnt actually get to fondle the PunkThis board, as it was hidden away in a perspex box, the company also had a fully working, tricked out Asus netbook that was used to demo the board.

The netbook is Asus Eee PC 1015PN and its the first solderless solution for the PunkThis board. This is by no means meant to be a retail ready solution though, instead its targeting developers that want to get their hands on a solution that makes it easy for them to develop for various ARM operating systems. The core of the PunkThis board is a TI DM3730 SoC which is a 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 based CPU. Its been paired up with 512MB of RAM and theres a micro SD card slot for storage memory and another micro SD card slot that acts as shared storage between the ARM and x86 platforms.

CUPP claims 20h worth of battery life using the PunkThis board over the Atom N550 CPU fitted in the Eee PC, although youd be “limited” to using either Ubuntu or Android 2.3 at the moment, but the platform is open, so any OS that supports the SoC will work. Other features include Wi-Fi, USB ToGo support, a USB host port, a programmable keyboard controller and audio I/O. The board interfaces with most of the external ports on the netbook as well.

However, CUPP is also working on a desktop enclosure for the PunkThis board which should arrive sometime in September. This will offer DVI pass-through connectivity, five USB 2.0 ports, audio I/O, an SD card slot and a headphone jack. This would once again be targeting developers, but it should work out as a more affordable solution than having to buy an entire netbook.

The PunkThis board should retail for less than US$200 and should start mass production sometime in July. This is just the start though, as CUPPs goal is to work with the large notebook manufacturers and get its solution built into notebooks as a standard feature. As such it would also cost a lot less than the PunkThis board, although this would of course depend on the ARM SoC used. In as much as CUPP is currently offering a total solution, the long term goal is to license the switching hardware that makes it possible to switch between the x86 and ARM platforms on the fly.

The company also has a lot of other ideas and even ended up getting some rather unusual requests during Computex for what some potential customers wanted to use it for. The long term goal for CUPP is somewhat more complex and might never happen, as it involves what the company refers to as CISS or CUPP Integrated Southbridge System. CISS would only be possible if Intel or AMD got on board, as it involves integrating a low power processor into the chipset of the x86 platform. However, the selling point here goes beyond just switching between two platforms, as CISS could also be set up to act as a firewall, a feature that is lacking on notebooks and a feature that could be very popular with large corporations. It will be interesting to see how things develop for CUPP and well be keeping a close eye on them and whatever partners they team up with.

Asus Announces New External Blu-ray Writer

ASUS continues its lead in high performance optical storage devices forhome/ high-end professional storage environments with the release of its SBW-06C1S-U Blu-ray writer.



The sleek and compact writer features a USB 2.0 interface, 8Mb of buffermemory, and supports burning speeds up to “6x for BD-R, 4x for BD-RDL, 2x for 2x for BD-RE (DL), 8x for DVD-R/+R/+RW, 6x for DVD-RW, 24xfor CD-R, and 16x for CD-RW”. Available in piano black finish, theSBW-06C1S-U is bundled with CyberLink's Power2Go 6.0 and PowerDVD 9software. It is covered by a two year warranty and can be purchased fromauthorized resellers and e-tailers at a MSRP of 167 Euros.

News via [Techconnect]

AMD teases Cape Verde HD 7700 with... Pills

In a most unique marketing stunt, AMD is sending out special pills to internet websites. Yes, you read that right, pills. They are no ordinary pills, however, they reveal several details about the upcoming AMD GPU along with a viral website for the same pills.

The "natural performance enhancement" pill is called "Verdetrol" which not only refers to Cape Verde but is also an obvious jab at NVIDIA. AMD sends in exactly 28 pills - as we know Cape Verde is a GCN based 28nm GPU.

HD 7770 is now all but confirmed as worlds first 1 GHz reference GPU. The "Never Settle" slogan for HD 7000 family continues, this time pushing "Never Settle for Average Performance". The viral website can be viewed at www.verdetrol.com, where a promotional video will be uploaded soon. HD 7700 series is rumoured to release in February with performance close to HD 6850.

Source: Legit Reviews