Charlie Foxtrot

Posts Tagged ‘Microsoft’

GPU Computing is the use of the massively parallel architecture of the graphics processing unit (GPU) as a computational engine that can be programmed with high level languages and APIs. Fact is, More and more processing is being moved from the CPU to the GPU.  We already have a great roster of applications that run on the NVIDIA CUDA architecture that consumers love. Video has been the killer application for the GPU, and a number of new video applications are able to tap into the computing power of the GPU.  Adobe has added support for GPU computing to their popular CS4 Suite, Flash 10.1 and their Mercury Playback Engine. Now Microsoft is adding Office 2010 to the list.

“Microsoft has published the hardware requirements for the upcoming Office 2010 Suite, and people noticed one surprising addition: A DirectX compatible Video Processor.  Over at the TechNet blog, Microsoft explains why:

If your computer has a GPU, it lets us perform graphics rendering tasks (like drawing charts in Excel, or transitions in PowerPoint) in the GPU instead of in the CPU, which parallelizes work and speeds up performance. This is particularly relevant for users of PowerPoint 2010, which will introduce some awesome new graphics and video integration features (more info at the PowerPoint team blog).”

CPUs are an important component of the PC. However, too often PCs ship with insufficient graphics processing power and the result is an unbalanced PC that can’t run the applications you want. For the best experience, you should buy a PC with the right balance of CPU/GPU horsepower.

Some thing aren’t built to last, but it might surprise you to find out Microsoft’s Xbox LIVE online gaming service turns out to be one of them.

On April 15, 2010, Microsoft plans to pull the plug on Xbox LIVE services for its original Xbox as well as online services for Xbox games playable on the Xbox 360. Microsoft’s Larry ‘Major Nelson’ Hryb broke the news on his blog and said the shutdown will commence with immediate discontinuation of auto-renewals for gamers still subscribed to the service through an original Xbox.

“While I can’t comment on the specifics, this change will allow us to continue evolving the LIVE service with new features and experiences that fully harness the power of Xbox 360 and the Xbox LIVE community,” wrote Hryb. “We did not make this decision lightly, but after careful consideration and review we realize that this decision will allow us unprecedented flexibility for future features.”

How does shutting down a naturally diminished branch of your online media service amount to “unprecedented” flexibility (i.e. “having no previous example”)? Will it finally embolden Microsoft to offer Xbox LIVE Gold service for free? Could it lead to a radical overhaul of the service, more elaborate than 2008’s glorified interface update? Any of those would arguably be “unprecedented.”

Matt Peckham, PC World || February 05, 2010 10:14 AM ET

A couple of interesting articles followed Robbie Bach’s announcement at CES that Project Natal, Microsoft’s controller-free Xbox 360 control system, will be shipping in time for the 2010 holiday season, writes blogger Peter Smith. First, Popular Science has a nice look at how Project Natal works, focusing mostly on the software and how ‘Microsoft engineers are teaching the Natal ‘brain’ what various parts of the human body look like so that Natal can tell your ascot from your elbow.’ Microsoft is staying mum on the hardware, although Smith notes that we know it involves an infrared camera. ‘If you don’t care about how the tech works but just want to know if it’ll be worth buying,’ writes Smith, ‘you might be interested in an interview with Robbie Bach in the Financial Post. In the interview Bach claims that 70%-80% of Xbox 360 developers are working on some kind of Natal-enabled gaming software, and he assures us that first-party studios are also hard at work.