In this mode, you get access to all the frets and all the strings, with a button based sensor in all the positions. (Figure 1) This allows both casual game players, and real guitar players to enjoy the game. The Pro mode of the game is based on playing the real cords as you would from the original music. As such, you need to use the whole neck and all the strings to produce the match on the game.

Mad Catz RockBanb Pro Guitar

For those experienced guitar players, they found the full neck buttons a bit different from the touch and feel of real strings as well as the thinner size of the neck, but they were able to get used to the design within minutes. Once they were used to the buttons, they found the response of the sensors very good, and the play along with the game a good challenge action.

For those wanting to learn the guitar, the Pro controller can be used to learn finger position for the songs that can be applied to a real guitar. There are a number of learning games coming out that support this training mode with replay and slow speed modes so you can learn to match the songs. The controller is well made, and the wireless connection had no issues being recognized by the Xbox system and worked over the full 15ft area around the console. The batteries for the system did not require changing during the full 8 hrs of the game testing that were done.

Mad Catz RockBand Midi Pro Controller Interface

One of the changes with Rock Band 3 was the addition of a keyboard as control item in the game, along with the bass, guitar, and drums. To supplement the pro line, Mad Catz has brought out a Midi interface that allows real keyboards and real electronic drums to be used with the game. Similarly to the Pro Guitar, the Midi Pro interface allows for the real music to be played. On keyboards that includes selection of the correct octave of the keyboard, as well use of sustains and other pedal effects being sent.

We tested the Midi Pro using several different keyboards and a Yamaha electric drum kit. The devices connected and were recognized without any issues by the game console. We tested the system with a 24 key keyboard and also a 68 key keyboard, and both worked properly. The electronic drums needed some adjustment on the modeling options to allow the cymbals to come up properly. Placement of the high hat vs crash vs ride cymbals in the kit to match the setup of the game in the electronic setup required a couple of iterations to find the one that matched. Once selected, the system worked well.

For those seeking to continue the experience of Rock Band to new music and new levels beyond expert, these accessories are must haves. They allow for a very clean transition towards real instruments and allow musicians to play the game where they may have not been thrilled with the minimum button action of the game in the original gamers version.

The new E5-4600 chip is the hart of their high socket count board designs which when configured as a system yields up to 4096 cores with 64TB of direct addressable single shared memory RAM. This pushes their big brain computing performance from 5.5TFlops on the existing system up to 11TFlops with the new chips.

The design, with up to 64 sockets on a single machine, utilize the CXSF file system for large shared memory. One of the advantages of the large CPU and core count, is almost unlimited I/O bandwidth as there are direct high speed channels from each core. The parallelized I/O access makes computation and storage more efficient for large scientific and data analytics computing. Initial systems orders have been placed and are being shipped to applications such as the Steven Hawking COSMOS project.

The E5-2400 systems are a 2 socket machine design. These are targeted for optimized power/performance balanced systems. These units, available in a 1RU and 2RU rack mountable unit, are targeted for control of storage systems. They have created a starter system that is targeted for the Hadoop space that includes a reference configuration for the storage devices. The E5-2400 system is particularly well suited to the application due to it memory architecture and regular expression processing capabilities that are key portions of the Hadoop environment.

The E5-4600 and E5-2400 systems are shipping in Q2' 2012 based on availability and rollout of the processors from Intel.

The Maximus solution, allows studios, post-production houses and advertising agencies to create content on a workstation, in very short periods of time, at the same or higher performance levels and shorter runtime than were previously possible only with supercomputers and large offsite render farms. The dual card solution can also be used for real time 3D logo and animations overlays.

Nvidia Quadro + Telsa Maximus Technology Solution

In addition to the Maximus solution, the generalized GPU support is now becomming pervasive in the content creation industry. The GPUs support Nvidia’s native CUDA language, as well as OpenGL and OpenCL programming languages. With this programming support, the GPU engines are in direct broadcast hardware systems, and software for all aspects of content creation- not just animation for backgrounds. A major function is the use in color correction for most of the video editing systems. A list of the current products that support enhanced GPU computing follows.

Nvidia GPU Applications NAB2012

The current generation Nvidia boards support a new memory/bus interface called GPUDirect. The GPUDirect for video technology is driving the adoption of GPUs in film, live broadcast, and video production. The improved low latency of the interface allows video I/O manufacturers who make their own proprietary hardware, along with companies making video switchers are taking advantage of the sub-frame, low latency transfers in their own SDKs and commercial solutions which utilize the GPU. For video editing, the use of GPUs, external to those inside the CPU cores, is becoming the standard. Embedded GPUs in the core processor blocks, are beneficial for completed video playback, but are not large enough and don’t have enough memory to support the compute needs of content creation. For that task, the standalone GPU card(s) still dominate.

At the show, Level 3 was showing live HD cameras taking a feed, sending it from Las Vegas to their NY offices, having the signal transcoded and sent back via IP to be playable on an Ipad and other portable devices. Their demo, including the live transcode only required a 40sec loop delay between the live capture and the playback on public internet. Their solutions can include full media and playout services including graphics and logo insertion as well as live ad insertion.

The service is provided on a high bandwidth basis with thier own HD fiber network, and it can support simultaneous SD-SDI, SH-SDI, DVB-ASI, MPEG2/4, and JPEG2000 formats. Their Content Delivery Network (CDN) is now fully integrated to thier video transport network and can manage both fulltime and scheduled video feeds which are to be encoded and ingested for internet delivery. This scalable and highly reliable, due to system redundancy, combines traditional and online content distribution into a single system. These systems can also be integrated into the satellite and teleport services provided by Level 3 in addition to their fiber solutions.

The main observation was that, unlike projections from a few years back, the applications on the cloud are mostly new and written for the cloud rather than being migrated from existing code. This trend is consistant with the fact that most cloud users, especially those of private clouds, are internal employees rather than external users on out-of network devices. As a result of these two trends, Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) were mostly creating application that are high availability in the clouds which requires them to be platform independent while addressing security, function, business continuity and a scalable architecture. Scalability is a new requirement for applications as the number of users and machines can increase both quickly and dramatically when migrated from a private cloud to ta public cloud.

To address these issues, Chris opined three (3) best practice concepts:
(1) Architect for Rapid Growth
(2) Leverage you Platform as a Strategic Asset
(3) Take Advantage of a Hybrid Deployment Model
These three concepts allow for creation of a SaaS model. An overriding constraints that encompasses the 3 concepts is security. It needs to be a basis of the platform and inherent in the application and its execution, it cannot be added after the fact and be as effective. This security issue persists for private, public and hybrid clouds.

Currently 9 out of 10 SaaS providers use Oracle products in their solutions. These solutions form the core of the platform and support standards based cores such as Java, SQL, and secure query and execution modules. These can be performance optimized using Oracle hardware such as the ExaStack, ExaLogic and ExaStore devices which scale linearly by adding the pre-configured machines. These solutions are applicable for public/private/hybrid clouds and address the needs of SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS providers and their partner the ISVs. Information on ISVs and applications available can be found atthe Oracle Partner Network

Today, most data is unstructured. Users need to take that unstructured information and use it to improve business outcomes. Information is the new oil, only when it is used is it valuable. As a result, the new systems for handling those data need to be learning systems that can adapt the changes in data quality.

This new era of computing is a result of the ongoing evolution of data processing. The first systems were just for tabulation, to help the US census. The next systems that came were programmable computers that operated on algorithms. Now we are in an era where computer systems can actually learn on their own to address some of the bigger problems.

A learning system will change the user emphasis from search to discovery. For example, today a Google search is deterministic, but is not context aware. Content that is probabilistically determined can consider the context of the query and provide a more focused response. Search looks for records, while discovery finds sources of engagement.

IBM attempts a grand challenge technology demonstration about once a decade. In'06, some engineers noticed that Ken Jennings was accumulating a long string of victories on Jeopardy. They thought is would be interesting to make a computer system that could challenge the best trivia experts in the show.

After some years of development, they became a contestant on Jeopardy and trounced the two human participants. The challenges for the computer are in working in natural language input, creating search parameters, applying probabilities to the responses, and selecting the best answer, all within the 3 seconds allowed for a buzz-in and before the human contestants.

Now, the technology is being applied to less trivial areas. The first commercial application for the technology was in health care last August. The second was in financial services, announced in March. Other applications areas are in the works.

The drivers for the development are that data volumes are growing exponentially. Over 90 percent of all data in existence has been generated in the past 2 years. Of that data, 80 percent is unstructured, and only about 20 percent of all data available is useable in the enterprise.

The Watson technology provides a analytic solution for the data volume. Watson is comprised of a system of systems, and has integrated 41 subsystems. These systems are designed to understand natural language, generate and evaluate hypotheses, and learn and adapt to changing requirements.

The system understands people. In the context of health care, medical practitioners have to deal with the data explosion. Every five years, the data needed to practice doubles. One in five diagnoses is inaccurate or incorrect, leading to 1.5M errors in the US every year. 81 percent of all doctors spend less than 5 hours a month reading the latest journals.

The medical application uses a technique called differential diagnosis to help the doctor determine possible and most likely health issues. It then gathers additional data on the patient and iterates its diagnosis. The system can then suggest follow up queries and suggest the most relevant tests for the various conditions.

At Wellpoint, the nation's largest insurer, they are using Watson to evaluate preauthorization for treatments. The system evaluates the requested tests and uses some efficacy measurements to approve or disapprove those tests. They loaded 25K cased into the system for learning, including outcomes data and are about to put the systems online for the doctors.

The system is stateful - meaning that it remembers previous information—iterative, and capable of massive data ingest. The next trial will be at Memorial-Sloan Kettering cancer institute. They have 20M patient records and will help to build out an app for cancer testing and treatment.

In the financial services area, they are working with Citibank to develop a consumer-facing app to provide guidance to investors. Citi has lots of information on various investment vehicles and have found that most investors are overwhelmed. By putting the content into a useable context, they can offer focused offerings to their consumer and institutional investors. This repackaging of information enables the investors to make more informed decisions about risk-reward and helps the user be less passive about their money.

Watson is comprised of a number of platforms. The main functions are data, analytic, and Watson engine. IBM is in the process of releasing an API for the Watson engine to facilitate new apps. The system will be offered as a hybrid cloud service

IBM is planning to become the content curator and in the process create more training sources. The cloud structure permits the capabilities of the various engines to be available to many users. The cloud permits flexible consumption, dynamic capacity, hybrid delivery, and a short time to value.

The new computer system will increase usability through its natural-language input systems. It is helping business get ready for the massive data management tasks that are upon us now and growing to unimaginable sizes. The inclusion of smart analytics allows users to align-anticipate-and act upon all the data in their environment, while the learning capabilities ensure that the datasets have the greatest utility.

Already there is high awareness within the IT community, and had a high adoption among the trendsetters. The early adopters are looking for big functions to drive their businesses to the next level, and the later adopters are looking for cost savings. Neither will get all of what they are looking for, but both groups will benefit.

Next year, half of all IT departments will have on-premise clouds. By '14, 63 percent will have hybrid cloud operations. By '16, a majority of users will be on the cloud, and the cloud will be a hybrid public-private blend. The on-premise portion will drop to about 13 percent of all operations, and three quarters of all investments for IT will be for cloud and hybrid capabilities.

This trend will drive more users to consider prepackaged solutions for their cloud services. The prepackaged solutions will cost less to implement, since everything is already integrated. The value to the user is to mostly eliminate the staffing for integration purposes, a function that currently consumes 60 percent of the IT staff efforts.

The functions that are moving to the cloud include CRM, HR functions, and other generic business SaaS applications. E-commerce and collaborative commerce are low on the list now, but are increasing faster than any other category and will be in the top cloud functions by '15.

These movements will drive the industry to a new type of multiple platforms covering the areas of cloud, mobile, social, analytics, and integration (CMSA). The integration part is the key to extracting the greatest value from the other functions. This change in IT will trend towards a headcount reduction and a major change in systems.

The architecture will change from client-server to the new boundary-free cluster of functions and will intersect the mobile and internal communications structures. It will also change the roles and functions of the IT groups from systems integration and user support to application and device curator. The changing roles will allow the IT group to innovate, rather than just maintain.

The new model will need different data sources and new ways to look at those data. Analytics will be in all areas of the cloud, but advances in technology are required to address the orders of magnitude increases in data volume and types. The convergence of the multiple functions into the cloud may provide some savings, but the true value will be in driving business performance.

Most of the TB transcievers today are made with SiGe technology to address the 10Gb/s data rate per lane on the cables. These however are power constrained and have some noise and SI issues as they require higher power to operate over CMOS and require quite complex assembly and test for the molded cables. The Intersil solution uses 40nm CMOS technology to implement the SERDES and signal recovery to make the active cable system.

The chip is designed to address the BOM cost issues of the cable by lowering the power of the chip, a reduced die size (vs traditional 90nm SiGe), cable assembly through low heat dissipation molding, and reduced cost of test. The reduced cost of test comes from the integration of a full micro-controller into the chip. The micro-controller supports several algorithms for cable management including equalization, return loss, and a full PRBS generator with embedded eye diagram analysis. This allows for full, at speed, functional test to be performed on the assembled cable without any special test equipment.

These tests are needed as the TB interface is designed to address 10Gb/s traffic per lane. As video systems move to full 4K/2K images at 30fps, you need to drive the full bandwidth of 10Gb/s over both lanes for a total bandwidth of 20Gb/s. This is the peak performance limits of the 5GHz copper wire or optical repeater system. To insure that the data rates are maintained, the test generator and detector has a library of known fault waveforms and can detect and report them if they occur durring runtime. These faults tables and dynamic correction/equalization methods help the cables keep a low BER.

The transceiver chip is supported by an active power management chip. This chip not only supports the peak operating mode and regulates the power for the SERDES, but it also manages the quick turnon-turnoff for sleep, standby and pwoer down modes of the cable. A typical cable needs 4 chips - a pair of the transceiver and power management at each end. Intersil is targeting a similar chipset for the host side in the near future, also utilizing advance node CMOS technology.

Several key changes in the processor lineup are the inclusion of the graphics cores into the main processors and sharing the on-die caches. The GPUs that are included are either the HD2500 or HD4200 graphics cores which support OpenGL, DirectX11 and OpenCL1.1 for enhanced multimedia performance. The new cores, even with the GPU and integrated peripherals controllers (USB 30, PCIe Gen 3. Thunderbolt, SATA III [5Gbps]) utilize 50% less power and 37% increased performance over prior cores. As such, the new chips have been designed into 570 new OEM system being released, and 100 ultrabook designs. These new systems include desktops, laptops and the new fast growing media centric platform the All-In-One (AIO) PC.

These new systems are targeted at gaming and game development, audio & video content creation, and audio & video playback. To enhance these features, the new cores support 3 simultaneous displays that can be connected via HDMI, Display Port or traditional DVI or VGA depending on the connectors designated by the OEM designs. The media editing is improved using the Intel Quick Sync Video V2.0 which provides faster transcoding of HD video and over 23x the performance on video encode and transcode over chips from just 3 years ago.

The designs and the processor have a new NV cache system that helps enable the instant on and fast boot features. Start from a cold boot are reduced by a factor of 5 or more over previous chips with the same Windows 7 OS. They have also improved the BIOS and startup sequence with the Intel Smart Connect which brings a rapid connect to email and to social networking sites.

Targeting the media applications, they have chosen to incorporate a hardware H.264 CODEC into the design along with the GPUs. Additional blocks include a real random number generator and AES security block which allows for higher security connections on the chip. The chips have an integrated WiDi support for video output and a LP Bluetooth connection for peripherals. The Panther Point chipsets that support the new cores, include wireless support up through MIMO applications.

These chips are available in systems starting in May 2012, and will appear in mobile form in Ultrabooks as low as $699 by the end of the year.