NVIDIA Kepler GPU hard launch expected by April

VR Zone heard from its sources that NVIDIA plans to launch its Kepler GPU in late March or April. It will be a hard launch with enough units for the "first wave" of consumers.

The company originally scheduled GeForce Kepler for the launch in the first quarter (i.e. fiscal fourth quarter 2012), Quadro Kepler was scheduled for the second quarter (i.e. fiscal first quarter 2013) and Tesla Kepler was scheduled for the third quarter (second fiscal quarter 2013).

However, the new plan calls for launching the GeForce Kepler when the company is able to insure hard availability and have all of its partners covered.

NVIDIA Kepler GPU hard launch expected by April - More news at DV Hardware

Intel Sandy Bridge-E to get C2 stepping after launch

VR Zone reports Intel's Sandy Bridge-E will get a C2 stepping likely sometime near the very end of the year. This new stepping will fix some issues with VT-d.

We knew that Intel's Sandy Bridge-E chips were big and complicated to make, but what we didn't expect was that Intel was going to continuously keep running into problems. The current C1 stepping is apparently having problems with VT-d, not a major issue for most consumers' maybe, but it's a huge problem when it comes to Xeon chips and as such Intel is working on the C2 stepping to fix this "errata".

The only good news here for Intel, if you look at that way, is that its current Extreme Edition CPU's don't support VT-d, neither does the Sandy Bridge K-SKU CPU's, so as far as the consumer platform is concerned it looks like there won't be any further delays, but the initial batch should be C1 stepping rather than C2. The C1 stepping should be in production by now, or by the latest by next week, although we don't know when Intel will kick off production of the C2 stepping, but it's very possible it won't be until next year as qualification samples of the C2 stepping isn't expected until the very end of the year.

Intel Sandy Bridge-E to get C2 stepping after launch - More news at DV Hardware

Unreal Engine 4 could launch in 2014

Neowin writes the next Unreal Engine may still be a couple of years away:

In a new interview at IGN, Epic Games' main programmer Tim Sweeney admits, "I spend about 60 percent of my time every day doing research work that's aimed at our next generation engine and the next generation of consoles." However he added, "This is technology that won't see the light of day until probably around 2014, but focusing on that horizon enables me to do some really cool things that just aren't practical today, but soon will be."

Sweeney said that for Unreal Engine 4, the biggest issue will be to optimize the engine to work on many more CPU cores than what's currently available today. He states, "... the big challenge will be redesigning our engine and our workload so that we scale more of these different computer tasks between CPU cores seamlessly in real-time and dynamically so that you're always getting the maximum computing power out with the engine, regardless of what sort of work you're doing." He adds that for the next 10 years he is looking to see games that have true movie quality graphics which in his opinion means, " ... no flicker in the visuals, no popping artifacts, no bulky character outlines on the screen at all."

Unreal Engine 4 could launch in 2014 - More news at DV Hardware