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NASA's Kepler space telescope has discovered new habitable planets, but don't pack up your house just yet. Plus, we take a first look at Fujitsu's FingerLink touch-based projection scanner, and Project Unity lets you play up to 18 classic video consoles in one box. … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Not only was this the coolest thing I saw at CES, but it's possibly the coolest thing I've seen ever. As someone who has always been interested in the idea of VR headsets, and always heartbreakingly let down by the reality of VR headsets, I admit I took a rare (for me) CES meeting on a lark. I had heard something about their successful Kickstarter, but honestly, I figured it would just be more of the same.

I was wrong. Not sure I've ever been more wrong. Even in this hand-built prototype stage, the Rift is amazing.… Read more

At its silicon core, the fourth-generation iPad is hardly an incremental upgrade, according to chip analysts.

The new iPad's A6X chip packs a brand-new graphics engine that boasts a serious step up in horsepower from the third-generation iPad's A5X.

"Nothing's incremental about this. The A6X is one massive processing machine," Jim Morrison, a product manager at Chipworks, which does reverse engineering and patent-infringement analysis of semiconductors and electronic systems, told CNET.

Chipworks posted an analysis of the A6X's circuit layout today.

Apple's newest chip is a full 30 percent larger than the A6 … Read more

They say an image is worth a thousand words, but there are situations when a single image just isn't enough. VR Photo helps you by taking multiple photos and combining them into one image that you can view from multiple perspectives.

In the past, if you wanted to share an object with a client or on your website, you had to shoot multiple pictures with the iPhone (or iPod Touch) from each side and then present them one by one. However, VR Photo now does the exact same thing, but better. It guides its users on how to take … Read more

Zoom lenses sell cameras these days, so it's no surprise that manufacturers are doing everything they can to get longer lenses into increasingly smaller bodies.

A 3x or 5x zoom lens used to be the standard for ultracompact cameras -- those measuring 1 inch thick or slimmer -- but in 2012, you can easily find a skinny point-and-shoot with a 10x optical zoom.

The frontrunner here is the sub-$250 Sony Cyber-shot DSC-WX150 thanks to its excellent features, fast autofocus, and the quality of its pictures and video (though its color accuracy could be better). Most of the category consists of sub-$200 cameras, though, so there are several options if you're just looking for a simple pocket camera with a long lens.… Read more

The new iPad isn't waltzing into a competitive vacuum. That wow-worthy display notwithstanding, Apple still has to go head-to-head on performance.

Chip-review site Anandtech confirmed with Apple that sitting right next to the A5X's quad-core GPU (graphics processing unit) is a dual-core CPU (central processing unit).

Apple had nothing to say about the CPU (which typically garners the most attention) when it announced the new iPad, because the CPU really hasn't changed from the iPad 2.

The upshot is that Apple is pitting the A5X's quad-core GPU against a quad-core Nvidia CPU.

So, how does it … Read more

Apple has just elevated the graphics chip to superstar status. Why focus on the graphics?

Apple announced today at the iPad event in San Francisco that the new iPad has a quad-core graphics processing unit (GPU). (So much for the central processing unit, or CPU, which typically garners all of the attention.)

So far, chip review site Anandtech offers the best educated guess about the graphics engine. Anandtech cites graphics chip technology from Imagination (PowerVR SGX543MP4) and CPU tech from ARM (Cortex A9).

"Our guess? Dual-core Cortex A9 [CPU] plus a PowerVR SGX543MP4 [GPU], an upgrade over the 543MP2 … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Texas Instruments is offering one of the most revealing demos of Windows 8 on ARM yet at CES.

That's not saying a lot, though, as demos of Microsoft's next operating system on ARM processors have been extremely restrictive, if nonexistent to date in public (Nvidia's untouchable, relatively static CES demo is behind closed glass). But TI pushed the boundaries a bit in a demo for CNET at CES.

The demo tapped TI's freshly minted OMAP4470 ARM processor, according to Bill Crean, an OMAP product marketing manager.

Needless to say, I was not permitted to take … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Texas Instruments is showing its latest and greatest ARM processor inside a Windows 8 tablet at CES this week.

TI's OMAP4470, the latest version of its dual-core chip now inside Android tablets, will be shown running on a pre-release version of a Windows 8 tablet, the chipmaker said today.

"The OMAP4470 processor's...powerful multitasking capabilities prove the ideal match for Windows 8 key features including a fast & fluid touch-first user interface," TI said in a statement.

TI ARM chips are being used today in high-profile Android tablets such Motorola's XyBoard and Toshiba's ultra-skinny Excite X10. The 4470 is a performance upgrade of the 4460.

"The company calls it the OMAP 4470, but it is more than just a faster speed grade of the OMAP 4460; the new design includes significant graphics and memory improvements as well," mobile chip analyst Linley Gwennap wrote in a blog last year. … Read more