So there are a few things that caught my eye over the past couple weeks. Thought some of you might find some of it interesting as well.

"We have realized the first prototype of a quantum network”, Stephan Ritter concludes. "We achieve reversible exchange of quantum information between the nodes. Furthermore, we can generate remote entanglement between the two nodes and keep it for about 100 microseconds, whereas the generation of the entanglement takes only about one microsecond. Entanglement of two systems separated by a large distance is a fascinating phenomenon in itself. However, it could also serve as a resource for the teleportation of quantum information. One day, this might not only make it possible to communicate quantum information over very large distances, but might enable an entire quantum internet."

Though still a long way of in the future. The end goal here is quantum communication, no more wires carrying electrons, fiber optics carrying beams of light, but photons at the atomic level using quantum entanglement to transmit data over very large distances, nearly instantly. One of the major benefit side effects of this form of communication, is that by its very nature, is next to impossible to hack, intercept, or steal without the "transmitter and receiver" to know it happened. The reason being that quantum information can not be cloned. So if you intercept it, you intercept it, it stops there, you can not clone it and send it on. So it will be known its been done. Though there is no known way to even intercept it since quantum entanglement is a state of being where two atoms react exactly the same relative to each other over vast distances with no perceivable connection between the two. So there is no "stream" of data to intercept. Fascinating as hell is you ask me.

"As CPU core count goes up, communications between the cores begin to hit significant bottlenecks. This is because these cores are still using the decades old data bus model of transferring data between each other, which prevents multiple simultaneous communications and is because it only works between two cores at a time. To get over this, researcher Li-Shiuan Peh at MIT is looking to use internet-style packet-switched networks right within the CPU itself. The idea is to replace the long wires of the traditional data bus with much shorter ones connecting one core to another and using a router on each core to arbitrate the data exchange between cores. This work is still very much in the research phase however, so don't expect any products based on this technology anytime soon. This approach isn't all that surprising when one considers that the PCI Express bus uses a network-style connection model."

Something to keep an eye on, this "bottleneck" has been well known for a long time. Not just as core counts go up, since this is already a bottleneck on 8+ core processors, but as the speeds on those cores go up. If those cores had a more efficient way of communication between themselves on the die, you would be able to get more data processed faster, even at lower physical core clock speeds. Pretty cool stuff.

People ripped on Crysis 2 because EA rushed Crytek to get the game out, and the game we got on PC was a direct console port, DX9, and lightyears behind the original Crysis on the PC. Later on, they finally got to release the the full DX11 and high resolution version for PC. Yet even then it did not truly show off the power of the engine running DX11.

This is a short video that shows what this engine can actually do, rendering in real time, as it would in a video game. Amazing if you ask me. THIS is why CryEngine 3 hold top spot next to Frostbite 2 as my favorite modern game engines.

This video really needs to be watched full screen and in HD. Amazing.

On the same topic, Crysis 3 has been announced for release early next year, and you can pre-order it already! Wow, that's fast.

Nvidia has officially killed the GTX 580 in favor of the next gen 600's that hit the market recently. The GTX 580 is still a beastly card, so if you are in the market for an upgrade, you might see these cards hit a price drop soon. Might be able to pick one up before they are gone.

That being said, just like AMD, Nvidia is having trouble meeting market demand for its 600 series cards due to TSMC's tight supply of 28nm chips. So they are looking into contracting other manufactures to help meet demand. Such as Samsung Electronics, Globalfoundries and United Microelectronics. Both Nvidia and AMD need to meet market demand, and this may be the only way to do so, at least until sometime around first quarter 2013 when TSMC will be increasing its 28nm production line capacity.

As most of you know, I paid $500 for my Radeon 7950. Well, now that the GTX 680 is on the market, and was priced under the 7970, AMD has lowered its reference design prices to reflect this. Though the AMD 7900's and GTX 680's perform very similar to one and other, the AMD cards were more expensive, so this was a very welcome change.

The reference MSRP for the 7970 is now as low as $479, a drop of $70 in many cases, putting it $20 behind the GTX 680. The reference MSRP for the 7950 is now $399, a drop of about $50 on average. The 7770 was dropped by $20 to $139. AMD has also announced that the upcoming and much anticipated 7870 will sell for $330.

MIPS is an application ARM processor architecture designer.

AMD comes from a decades old presence in the microprocessor industry, while Google is a satrap with smartphones, tablets, and other mobile computing devices thanks to its Android operating system. With Microsoft opening up to ARM architecture with Windows 8 RT, it is in Google's interests to hedge its bets on an alternative machine architecture to both x86 and ARM. The easiest way to that is buying out MIPS and funding development of powerful processors based on it. For AMD, it's a bid to stay competitive in the low-power processor market as Intel began making inroads to smartphone processor market.

Will be interesting to see how this turns out.

"Well it seems Ivy Bridge wont be the successor enthusiasts were hoping for on socket 1155. The new Ivy Bridge processors look to carry 95W TDPs instead of the originally expected 77W TDP Intel had been seeking. On top of this, the next blow to Ivy Bridge comes in the form of overclocking headroom, these CPUs tend to hit the wall at after 4.6-4.7 GHz due to temps getting so high it throttles down to protect itself from damage. The fact Sandy Bridge has an extra 200-300MHz over Ivy Bridge in terms of overclocking headroom and runs cooler at max clock has Ivy Bridge not looking so good. It seems the blame for these shortcomings is being placed on the 22nm Tri-gate transistors which have further increased transistor density in an already small die size, so much so in fact that heat can't be removed quick enough with air or water for high clock speeds. The speeds seen with liquid nitrogen have the chips looking stellar, but don't let that cloud your expectations, on air and water Ivy Bridge looks to be disappointing compared to what Sandy Bridge offered."

I know I am a realist, not an enthusiast, but I think people are being too nit-picky about processors these days. "Sandy Bridge has an extra 200-300MHz over Ivy Bridge in terms of overclocking headroom", that's not that much in my mind, and it will make little system performance difference. Sure, its fun to see what numbers you can hit, see how far you can push your system, but seriously?

Too many people think that OC and core speeds on their processors somehow relate to e-penis size. Too much misinformation out there on the benefits of core clock speeds vs architecture, hardware environments, and software designed to use them. More MHz does not always translate into noticeable system performance improvement.

Bah, guess this is just an old school tech head ranting. I apologize. haha