This post is dedicated to
Arzu Kotan, who insisted that I should write more and made me convinced. This one is the first of many to come.
2013 was full of new hardware. To me, it was dominated by hardware news and not software. Which is strange, ‘cause end user seems to be interested in the software not the hardware. And yet all the major buzzes were mostly hardware. Let’s take a look at what I was most interested in 2013 in seven bullets.
7.
Windows 8.1 and DirectX 11.2 arrived, even they are software they are somehow hardware related. Not that they changed our lives, certainly they’re welcomed graciously,
AMD and
NVidia played their last cards on their current generation hardware for the DX 11.2. Intel also played its card and released
Haswell Micro-architecture. Of course it is not game-worthy. But at least -with a correct cpu- now we can have barely playable modern games at low resolution. Before Haswell, Intel HD xxxx was a joke. I'd appreciate low power gaming. Also now Haswell is a competitor at OpenCL game. I'd say it is losing horribly but at least competitor now.
6.
Oculus Rift is still a no go. This brings us to wearables… 2013 brought them to our doorstep, however 2014 and 15 will be the decisive years for the technology. Because of that I am expecting a leap on battery-duration/issue of gadget oriented life.
5. Dawn of the Linux gaming era; I still don’t think it is ever going to dominate the market, the direction with the
Steam powered boxes/machines sounds right to me nonetheless. Some of them have pretty bumped up monstrous specs. Many of them are simply beasts. 2014 will be a very expensive year for gaming community, so many things to buy, continues on…
4. a)
Nokia’s Windows Phone lineup got matured into something spectacular. Especially Lumia 1020 is practically a super slim professional camera that you can use
Windows on. Icon (leaked in 2013) will be even more.
4. b) Nokia and
Android rumors took place in the darkest corners of blogosphere. I never thought it will become a reality. As far as I know and concern every OEM tinkers with possibilities, but I assumed this, even it was true, will be a rumor or a dirty experiment. As of my writing, $#!7 just got real. That’s a shock for me. I really did not expect this.
3.
Intel’s Galileo; my hobby time is mostly consist of drinking, gaming, tinkering hardware. Although I like hardware projects, I am mostly uninterested in arduino. I do not have a specific reason but I really never touched arduino as of yet. On the other hand that X86 based arduino SoC is very appealing. If I’d have my hands on one of them, I have already 1 or 2 projects in my mind. 2014 will tell.
2. Many new SoCs has been released or announced. So far I’m very interested and excited about
Tegra K1. It has 192 CUDA cores; which is very, very impressive. If utilized correctly, that can be a game-changer. Personally as an original
Surface RT user, I would like to see it in Surface 3; I would immediately consider an early update as I am pretty happy with my Surface RT anyway.
1.
X-Box One; clearly my choice of best hardware. Microsoft’s newest addition to the gaming community’s arsenal held much of the anticipation. Alongside with the new
Halo title (possibly “Halo 5”), dedicated cloud gaming, exclusive music and video content and etc. it was the best thing ever happened in 2013 for me.
That's it for this post, thanks for reading.
