8 core processors

Got a mail from TigerDirect promoting the first 8 core CPUs: the AMD FX-8120 and FX-8150. They have a very competitive price, $219.99 USD for the first, $259.99 the second, which seems good, given the frequency, cache and cores. On the other side, Inte can offer only 4 cores plus hyperthreading for the same price. The lesser brother, with 6 CPUs, sales for just $189.99. Of course, Intel still has the perfomance crown (by a narrow margin in some cases), despite the number of cores.

Goodbye Ritchie

His pointer has been cast to void *;
His process has terminated with exit code 0

That final longjmp() without knowing if setjmp() was called,
/* for Dennis Ritchie */  
#include 
main() { printf("GOODBYE WORLD"); }

The father of C and Unix has passed away. Black day for programmers.

ogldev: Basic tessellation

A basic tessellation tutorial  is available at ogldev. Dont know what tessellation is? Dont worry, the post explains in a very simple way what is it and how it is done in our video card. Dont miss it, it has illustrations.

Good bye Jobs

The surprise hit me this morning and I couldnt believe it for a few seconds. Then the certainty came to me. Even when I dont share the Apple philosophy, I have to admit (and admire)  the role played by Jobs in the development of the modern technology. Perhaps without Mac we wouldnt have had Windows. Perhaps without iPhone we wouldnt have had Android. How could have been the world without Steve Jobs?
One of our generation geniuses is gone, and regrettably too soon. I hope that in his place, the life, destiny, random, God or whatever, have brought to life another genius who will change in the future the forthcoming generations.

New indie licenes for Unigine

Together with an update to its engine, Unigine Corp has announced new licenses targeting the indie segment. The three models are Indie SDK Starter, costing $1299 (with Windows only support), a full multi-platform Indie SDK (Widnows, Linux and Mac OS X) for $2995, or an Indie SDK for all PC platforms plus mobile targets for $3995.
The prices are not specially low or attractive, considering that you can get UDK for zero initial cost, and that you must hand over $3000 to get the main Unigine advantage: Linux support. So, lets wait to see how this move results.
Update: Now the Starter SDK supports Linux too.

WebGL lessons

Want to get into WebGL? Here you have 16 lessons (even in japanese), covering the basics. Enjoy!