Java 1.5/5.0 introduced a new pacakge of concurrency utilities (based on Doug Lea’s Oswego package) that offer far more granular control over threads and their synchronization. java.sun.com have an interesting article that introduces these new features.
Playable version of Playstation 3 to be at E3 2005 in May
In a Sony financial conference, it was mentioned that a playable version of the Playstation 3 will be on show at the E3 conference in the US in May, this year. Can’t wait to see what this games on this machine will look like, powered by massively powerful hardware (in comparison with today’s consoles).
IBM Supercomputer sets new processing speed record
The Blue Gene/L is currently benchmarked at 135.3 trillion floating points per second. When completed, the computer is expected to have 64,000 IBM Power PC processors, and is expected to reach 360 teraflops.
Next-gen XBox may not be backwardly compatible
Rumours have it that the next-gen XBox, possibly going to be called XBox360, will not be backwardly compatible with the current XBox. This may indicate Microsoft is taking a departure from the current ‘cheap PC in a box’ game platform, maybe heading towards something more radical. If they’re keeping tabs on Sony’s upcoming PS3 then they had better pull something pretty stellar out from up their sleeve, since the hype surrounding Sony’s Playstation 3 is leading us to believe their new box is going to be a supercomputer for the masses…