January 21, 2009 by
Jason
What, exactly, are supercomputers? The clue is in the name, really: they’re powerful computers capable of calculating many millions of floating operations per second (FLOPS) essentially, they’re very, very fast.
While any array of powerful computers, such as a modern-day web server which consists of several motherboards (the main circuit board of a computer) running in parallel can be considered a supercomputer, generally the term is reserved for machines that dedicate their entire hardware to one complex task at any given time.
Take the NEC Earth Simulator in Japan, for example, which was created specifically for modelling weather problems associated with global warming. Or the world’s fastest computer, BlueGene/L at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US, which simulates the behaviour of biomolecular structures and protein folding. It’s capable of 600 trillion FLOPS (tera-FLOPS or TFLOPS), whereas, the six-year-old Earth Simulator is only capable of 36TFLOPS. BlueGene/L won’t hold the top spot for long, though. Supercomputers twice as powerful will be online soon. Read More»
Posted in Computer, Hardware | No Comments »
Whenever you play computer games that utilizes 3D graphics, a decent frame rate of about 25-30 frames per second is a prerequisite to make the games run smoothly and be at all enjoyable. If you play on a desktop PC, you always have the option to put in a more powerful graphics card, but that’s not an option with laptop computers. Another problem with laptops – but one that can be avoided – is the lack of updated graphics card drivers. Using updated drivers can provide better performance in new games thanks to game-specific fixes and improvements.
The Problem with OEM Drivers
Although both of the leading graphics card manufacturers (ATI/AMD and Nvidia) provide generic driver updates regularly that are designed to work with all of the respective manufacturer’s chips – even the laptop versions – most OEMs (laptop manufacturers) do not allow these to be installed on your laptop, since they prefer to use proprietary solutions for all their driver updates. As a result, you may be forced to use drivers that are as old as your laptop if the OEM doesn’t update their drivers on a regular basis, which is unfortunately often the case. Read More»
Posted in Hardware | 1 Comment »
The Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD) is a huge collection of system diagnostic and recovery tools that are conveniently arranged on a single CD. These tools work on any Intel-compatible PC. Since the CD is bootable, it doesn’t matter what operating system(s) may be installed on the PC. Indeed, UBCD comes in handiest when the normal operating system refuses to boot.
You Name It: The current version of UBCD contains 121 tools, divided into 21 categories, as follows. Each tool runs in isolation, as if it were the only tool on the CD (just as if the tool were on its own floppy disk). A master menu program boots up first. It lets you choose the tool you want to run, and then it boots that tool. (To run another tool, simply reboot and go through the main menu again.) Read More»
Posted in Computer, Linux | 3 Comments »
Microsoft has started private testing of the next version of Office for the Macintosh, which is due out in the second half of the year. Office 2008 for Mac, as the product is known, helps bring the desktop suite back into compatibility with two key technologies.
First, the product is the first version of Office that runs natively on both Intel- and Power PC-based Macs. The new software also adds support for the XML file formats that Microsoft added to the Windows version of Office–Office 2007, which hit store shelves in January. Read More»
Posted in Mac, Office | No Comments »
Apple updated its Boot Camp software, which enables Intel-based Macs to reboot into a Windows operating system partition, to support Vista, Microsoft’s latest version of Windows. To use the new Boot Camp, Mac owners will have to buy “a bona fide full version of Microsoft Windows: XP Home or Professional with Service Pack 2, Windows Vista Home Basic, Home Premium, Business or Ultimate,” Apple said.
Users of Intel-based Mac computers can now have the best of both the Microsoft Free 30-Day Trial. Seamlessly Integrate UNIX & Linux systems with Active Directory. Latest News about Microsoft world and the Apple Latest News about Apple world. The latest update to Apple’s Boot Camp software, which enables Intel-based Macs to reboot into a Windows operating system Back up your business with HP’s ProLiant ML150 Server – just $1,299. partition, supports Vista, Microsoft’s latest version of Windows.
Boot Camp Version 1.2, available for download from Apple’s Web site as a public beta, includes support for 32-bit version of Microsoft’s new OS. “Boot Camp lets you install Windows without moving your Mac data, though you will need to bring your own copy to the table, as Apple does not sell or support Microsoft Windows,” Apple explained on its Web site.
Just Like a PC, Boot Camp will burn a CD with all the necessary Windows drivers “so you don’t have to scrounge around the Internet looking for them,” Apple said, adding that Boot Camp users can choose between running their Mac on Windows or Mac OS X by holding down the option key when starting the computer. “After starting up, your Mac runs Windows natively just like a PC,” the company said. “Simply restart to come back to Mac.”
Posted in Computer, Mac, Windows Vista, Windows XP | 1 Comment »
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