Hello and welcome to the Geeky Brummie Tech Round-Up!
Each week I’ll be deep diving into the world of technology. Bringing back some new pearls from Birmingham and beyond! If you want to send any local tech articles over, feel free to reach out to me at ryan@geekybrummie.com.
Hello All!
This week, we’ll have a look at some of the standouts of the Consumer Electronics Show (aka CES) 2022, and you could win a scholarship at Birmingham City University from Millennium Point
CES 2022 Highlights
BMW Unveils ‘colour’ changing car
Using the power of E-Ink (found in a myriad of Pebble watches, Amazon Kindles, and other e-readers across the globe). German car giants BMW have found a way to incorporate it into a ‘colour’ changing car.
I’m saying colour loosely, it’s goes from black to white with a few hues of grey in between, so not a full gamer RGB colour gamut just yet.
The system called ‘iX Flow’ has coated e-ink body panels which have transparent capsules which can be switched when an electrical current flows through it and knowing that coloured e-ink displays are a thing we might get a more fanciful version soon?
It’s certainly generated a lot of buzz so we’ll see if it moves from concept to reality… More info in the video from BMW below, and see it in action about 3 minutes in:
AMD Ryzen to the challenge of Alder Lake
Fan favourite CEO, Dr Lisa Su took to the stage at CES to unveil a few things happening in the world of AMD. The most notable of which is the new range of Zen 4 based Ryzen CPUs due in the second half of this year.
Intel have been catching up to AMD recently and the launch of the Alder Lake CPUs (read my tech round-up on that here) and move to BIG-little architecture, favoured by Windows 11, AMD have seen to be lagging behind.
That might all change with the new Ryzen 7000 (Raphael) processors. These are a brak aware from the venerable AM4 PGA (Pin Grid Array) socket, host of all prior Ryzen Generations, to the new AM5 LGA (Land Grid Array) socket. It will also usher in DR5 and PCIe 5.0 support catching up to Alder Lake, plus more cache per core and a host of other improvements.
More news on this in the future!
The full keynote is linked below, with more info on the new range of Laptop CPUs, APUs and the Radeon RX6500XT GPU.
Further reading
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-ryzen-7000-zen-4-16-core-8-core-cpus
PlayStation VR2
Sony also unveiled their new PlayStation VR2 aka PSVR2 headset at CES. which will debut alongside their new PSVR2 Sense Controllers.
There’s significant upgrades over the previous generation with a 4K HDR OLED display (2000 x 2040 pixels per eye), 110-degree field of view, 90Hz / 120Hz refresh rates and “new sensory features” including haptic feedback and built-in six-axis motion sensing (three-axis gyroscope, three-axis accelerometer), along with an proximity sensor.
The new controllers look very ‘Oculus’ inspired and are a complete world away from the personal massager design of the old move controllers.
This is already throwing up questions on backwards compatibility with previous PSVR titles, as they are using a completely different tracking system from the PS4 flavour of VR.
for more gaming news, don’t forget to check out Leigh’s Gaming Round-Up on Fridays!
Further reading
https://www.ign.com/articles/psvr2-vs-oculus-quest-2-valve-index-comparison-specs
https://www.t3.com/news/sony-psvr-2-vs-oculus-quest-2-which-has-better-specs
https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/will-psvr-2-be-backwards-compatible-it-better-be
Nvidia release more GPUs no one can buy
In a keynote leather clad CEO Jensen Wong couldn’t be bothered to host, Nvidia revealed two new GPUs at CES 2022 (taking up less than 30 seconds of their 48 minutes 30 seconds address).
3090Ti
The first of which is the new top of the consumer tree is the RTX 3090 Ti (or Tie as mentioned in their own vid). The new card will feature 24GB of G6X (i.e. really fast) RAM with lots and lots of T/flops for gaming grunt. No MSRP as of yet, but expect a 2 and at least 4 digits to feature in the pricing.
3050
At a more affordable, and probably actually acquirable, level is the RTX 3050. This card will start at £239, and on sale worldwide on January 27. It features 8GB of G6 RAM and 18RT cores for entry level (aka don’t bother) Ray Tracing. More importantly it’ll feature 3rd generation Tensor cores, allowing for DLSS supported games to use their magical AI upscaley-waley skills to enhance frame rates.
If you want to look at other peoples gaming trailers the full video is linked below:
Further Reading:
https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/nvidia-rtx-3090-ti-announcement/
https://www.nvidia.com/en-gb/geforce/news/geforce-rtx-3050-graphics-cards
https://gamerant.com/nvidia-geforce-rtx-3090-ti-early-specs-overview/
Fancy an undergraduate degree at Birmingham City University in STEM? Do you want to design bridges, produce the next wicked soundtrack, film or design the next best selling video game?
Then Millennium Point have the scholarship for you!
Millennium Point Trust is committed to growing STEM talent in the West Midlands and for the past few years have been funding a undergrad scholarship for students in the STEM field.
The winner will get undergraduate degree from BCU’s Faculty of Computing, Engineering and the Built Environment funded.
But it’s not just about the winning, if you’re a finalist you will be invited to participate in developmental workshops that will focus on supporting your personal development and professionalism in both interview and presentation skills, and provide networking access to some of Birmingham’s best and brightest in STEM.
Applications are open to those who live in the West Midlands of the United Kingdom, will be 18 by September 2022 and and looking to start an undergraduate degree.
For the full list of courses to apply visit the link below. Applications are open until 14th March 2022.
https://www.millenniumpoint.org.uk/trust/scholarship/
That’s it for this round of tech. And again If you want to send any local tech articles over, feel free to reach out to me at ryan@geekybrummie.com.
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