Osaka University researchers create flexible cloud-based computing system

Why it matters to you

Cloud computing is not a new concept, but this project demonstrates that there are still major advances to be made in the field.

A group of researchers working at Osaka University in Japan have created the world’s first system capable of delivering flexible computation via cloud computing. The team created a piece of management software that allows the user to customize various aspects of the set-up to suit the task at hand.

Traditionally, when high-performance computation is carried out in the cloud, a server with a fixed configuration would be used. The drawback to this kind of system is that the initial build can be expensive, and much of its computational muscle might not be utilized in ordinary usage.

By contrast, the project that’s been carried out at Osaka University allows the user to tailor various aspects of the system to their needs. The number of servers that are in use and the network connection can be controlled in this way, but the system is also capable of making adjustments to hardware components.

More: Stanford researchers use a compound in fertilizer to create inexpensive battery

Users can tweak the GPUs being used as part of the computation, or they can tweak the solid state drives being used to store data, according to a report from Phys. This functionality allows for a flexible cloud computing solution that can efficiently carry out all manner of different tasks.

Cloud computing can be implemented to help research projects crunch numbers when they don’t have capable enough hardware on-site. This kind of flexible system could potentially help researchers all over the world have better access to the computational power they need to carry out their work.

It’s hoped that this project, which was led by visiting professor Takashi Yoshikawa, will continue to be developed, and will eventually be widely used. The system was previously shown at the Supercomputing 16 conference which was held in Salt Lake City, Utah, in November 2016.

Close to the Metal ep 32: Tonight’s the Night for New GPUs

In what’s becoming a regular tradition, both GPU manufacturers are gearing up to release the mid-season update to the latest generations — or so we think. For Nvidia, an ominous countdown will expire on the evening of February 28th, 2017, which is likely to mean the GTX 1080 Ti. AMD, meanwhile, has suggested new cards powered by the Vega GPUs will pop up for the first time in public at GDC, directly opposite the GeForce announcement.

Details on both are scarce, but we can definitely draw some conclusions based on their predecessors. We’ve seen solid 4K performance out of the GTX 1080, so the 1080 Ti is more likely a solution for the slow trickle of higher-refresh 4K displays, and for people who like to shatter benchmarks. There’s already a Pascal-based Titan X, which sits at a wallet-demolishing $1,000, so the GTX 1080 Ti is likely to fit right in between that and the $550-600 price point for the GTX 1080.

AMD’s new Vega cards, on the other hand, are more likely to follow in the footsteps of the Radeon Fury cards, with a focus on advanced features. We don’t know a lot, but we can certainly expect High Bandwidth Memory, hopefully in a new and improved form, will come back to offer unparalleled memory access. The Fury cards were priced at $650 at launch, although that price came down quickly. It doesn’t give us much of a clue into Vega pricing, but with the RX 480 8GB sitting around $240, we could easily see a $500+ price tag for Radeon’s premium offering.

Either way, we’ll know more tonight. In the meantime, we’ll be discussing the rumors, speculation, and implications of new GPUs, whether they show up or not.

Close to the Metal is a podcast from Digital Trends that focuses on the geekier side of life. It tackles the topics PC enthusiasts argue over in language everyone can understand. Please subscribe, share, and send your questions to podcast@digitaltrends.com. We broadcast the show live on YouTube every Tuesday at 1pm EST/10am PST.

Hands-on with Samsung’s new Gear VR Controller: So much better than a touch pad

Adding a controller to the Gear VR was a necessary addition to keep up with the times.

Samsung is adding a much-needed improvement to its Gear VR with the introduction of a new wireless touch and gesture Gear VR Controller developed in partnership with Oculus. The Controller will be included with the Gear VR headset as soon as it is launched, but will also be available as a separate purchase for those who already have a headset.

Samsung has to figure out how to gracefully store this thing with the headset.

Even though the Controller is small, its curved design is more ergonomic than the Daydream View’s included controller and has a trigger on the front for selection and casual gaming. Aside from that it has the standard arrangement of a volume rocker, home and back buttons, with clear textural and size differences so they’re easy to remember when you’re immersed in your headset. The back cover pops off to let you replace two AAA batteries, which Samsung is claiming dozens of hours of use from.

The circular touch area is larger than the Daydream View’s controller as well, with plenty of room to move around and also a multidirectional click pad underneath. My hand instantly took to the curves of the Controller, and I really liked the inclusion of the trigger in terms of the possibilities for casual games that don’t necessarily require a full two-handed gaming controller. As soon as the Controller is available it will instantly alleviate the issues of trying to hold your hand up to the touch pad on the Gear VR headset (which is still included even on the latest version).

Oculus is aiming to have 70 Controller-ready apps and games available at launch.

The early pre-production version of the Gear VR Controller I was able to use didn’t have any sort of mechanism for storage with or inside of the Gear VR headset, but Samsung said that it’s in the works. Of course the Daydream View has this all thought out from the start with storage for its controller inside the visor, and Samsung would be smart to find a simple solution like that as well.

Samsung isn’t yet revealing pricing for either the combination headset or standalone Controller, but there’s a good chance we’ll hear more near the end of March. The early announcement of the Controller is primarily for the benefit of Gear VR app and game developers, who will want ample time to get everything working for a seamless experience. Oculus says that it wants to have at least 70 titles available that properly integrate with the Controller when it launches.

Samsung Gear VR

• Gear VR review
• The Best games for Samsung Gear VR
• Inside Samsung’s Gear VR web browser
• Gear VR vs. Google Cardboard

Amazon

Android Wear 2.0 updates will start rolling out in March, according to Fossil

Android Wear 2.0 is only a couple of weeks away.

While it’s true you could get your hands on the latest and greatest from Android Wear if you were willing to drop some money on a shiny new LG Watch Sport or Style, those still happy with their existing watch had some waiting to do. It has been clear for a while that a lot of Android Wear watches would be updated, but what wasn’t entirely clear was how long that wait would be.

Fortunately, a friendly reply from Fossil on Twitter has offered something resembling a timeline and an explanation.

One of the big features in Android Wear 2.0 is Google Assistant on your wrist, and when conducting the initial review of the OS it wasn’t entirely clear how this would work if your phone didn’t already have Assistant. Google has built Wear 2.0 to run apps natively on the watch, but step on in enabling Google Assistant on your wrist is granting access to that feature from your phone.

Now that Google has announced Assistant will be rolling out to anything running Android 6.0 or higher in the form of a Google Search update, the delay in shipping Android Wear 2.0 to the most popular Android Wear watches starts to make sense.

@dancraft98 The update is expected to be released in mid March to all of our devices.

— Fossil (@Fossil) February 27, 2017

When can you expect Android Wear 2.0 on your watch? According to Fossil, updates for its entire lineup are going to begin in the middle of March. While Fossil is the only manufacturer to have confirmed so far, remember that Google has a great deal more control over Android in watch form than it does other forms of Android pushed out to phones. There’s little opportunity for watch manufacturers to add extra features, and almost every watch is using the same internal hardware, so it’s safe to assume the other watches will either be updating at roughly the same time or in rapid succession.

Android Wear

• Everything you need to know about Android Wear 2.0
• LG Watch Sport review
• LG Watch Style review
• These watches will get Android Wear 2.0
• Discuss Android Wear in the forums!

Watch our LG G6 review video!

The LG G6 is upon us, bringing an extra-tall 18:9 display, a classy new metal and glass design and an impressive dual camera setup with wide-angle capabilities. We’ve been using the G6 in Barcelona for the past several days, and we’ve condensed our thoughts on the phone into seven minutes of video goodness covering every aspect of the phone. LG’s best-looking phone yet is also its most capable, with speedy software, water resistance and the promise of greater reliability.

Only time will tell whether the G6 will be able to compete with coming flagships like the Galaxy S8. But for the here and now, it’s an excellent device.

• Android Central on YouTube
• Read our LG G6 initial review
• Watch LG engineers tear down a G6
• Alex and Andrew on the G6 from Korea!

Oppo’s 5x optical zoom camera is like a periscope inside your phone

ZOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

We live in a glorious age of dual-camera smartphones. Huawei uses a color sensor plus a monochrome sensor to enhance detail and contrast. LG has a standard angle camera plus an ultra-wide-angle one. Apple uses a pair of cameras to offer a 2x optical zoom.

Oppo is jumping into the dual camera age with their own take at MWC 2017: a two-sensor system that combines a standard angle camera with a telephoto zoom, but taking it all the way to 3x optical zoom with a system that uses a prism in a periscope arrangement. At first that might seem similar to the original ASUS ZenFone Zoom, and in a way it is, but for moving between the two zoom settings (and beyond), Oppo’s opted for digitally melding information from the two sensors instead of ASUS’s mechanical zoom that actually moved lenses inside the phone.

Turning the telephoto camera sensor so that it’s pointing across the back of the phone and through a prism to see out gave Oppo more space to construct their lenses. This arrangement both reduces the intrinsic engineering challenges and cost challenges of having to miniaturize components and use expensive high-index lenses.

The downside is in size — the periscope arrangement takes up precious horizontal space to array its lenses and is 5.7mm thick. It’s small, yes, but space in smartphones is becoming increasingly precious. Oppo’s demonstration device (not a production bit of hardware by any means) sported an enormous top bezel to give the camera module space.

While the camera module itself is capable of 3x optical zoom, Oppo’s touting this as a “lossless” 5x camera. They’re doing some fancy image merging trickery, using data from both cameras to add detail to an otherwise digitally zoomed image. It’s not that different from what Huawei is doing with the P10, where data from the dual cameras is combined to improve detail and contrast. While we can’t yet verify the claims of “lossless” digital zoom, my brief time with the camera was encouraging. Oppo’s demo devices actually zoomed to 10x digital with a surprising amount of detail and steadiness. And, yes, the demo software here is a blatant knock-off of Apple’s camera app; hopefully the production hardware will come with different software.

Oppo’s being tight-lipped about when we should expect their first phone using this tech, but we wouldn’t be surprised if it comes later this year with a big focus on photography.

All the phones we saw at Mobile World Congress 2017

There’s a long list of new phones to be excited about.

Mobile World Congress has always been a fantastic place to get an early look at many different phones that aren’t quite here to buy yet. Every year is a little different, but the general theme is the same. Our team on the ground has run from meeting to meeting in search of all the great new phones to share with you, and this year that list is pretty great.

Take a look at all of the phones we’ve spent time with so far!

BlackBerry KEYone

BlackBerry is dead. Long live BlackBerry Mobile! The new brand has made a big splash by focusing on the things that everyone remembers BlackBerry phones being great at, while remaining modern and interesting. This is the phone we saw back at CES codenamed Mercury, and now we have a lot more information and some real time to get to know the new KEYone.

Check out our hands-on with the BlackBerry Mobile KEYone!

LG G6

As the big brand on campus this year, and after such a problematic launch last year, LG’s G lineup badly needed a hit. The new G6 has kicked the modular habit, ditched its Friends, and is really just focusing on itself right now. It’s the first phone from LG in a long time to rock glass on both sides, and rocks an unusually tall display to pack in more information and look pretty slick in the process.

Read our LG G6 initial review!

Sony Xperia XZ Premium and XZs

There are no other phones out there right now that look quite like a Sony phone. The Xperia lineup has always had a unique thinness and style to it, but the new XZ Premium and XZs continue the trend of mirrored finishes, anodized aluminum and ridiculously high resolution displays. They are both exciting phones, but U.S. buyers will continue to be disappointed by the lack of a fingerprint sensor.

Take a look at our hands-on with Sony’s new Xperia phones

Moto G5 + Moto G5 Plus

Lenovo is keeping its promises and the Moto brand remains alive and well. On top of a look at some [great Moto Mods](http://www.androidcentral.com/motorola-launching-alexa-powered-speaker-moto-mod-amazon in development and in funding stages, we also got an extended look at the new Moto G5. The budget Moto phones have always been great for pushing the envelope on quality for the price, and this new version continues to uphold that standard. It’s an early breakaway for the top spot for best budget phone this year, and it’s only February!

Our Moto G5 hands-on lives right here!

Alcatel A5

You can always count on Alcatel to bust out something quirky that no other company would dare do. Last year, that thing was making the box to its phone a VR headset. This year, Alcatel is taking modularity to the budget space with replaceable backs that offer all sorts of new features. It’s not clear just how useful some of these replaceable backs are just yet, but the phone still manages to look great no matter what is connected to it.

This Alcatel A5 looks like it is on fire

Nokia 3, 5, and 6

That’s right, we get a new BlackBerry and new Nokia phones this year. And they run Android! Neither of the three phones have particularly clever names, but the numbers are easy enough to remember. The Nokia 3 is a 5-inch low-end phone, the Nokia 5 is a 5.2-inch budget phone, and the 5.5-inch Nokia 6 looks like a decent mid-range experience. See, not confusing at all!

Check out the Nokia 3, 5, and 6 hands-on all together

Huawei P10 and P10+

Last, but in no way least, the Huawei P10 showed up and was shown off as a great mid-range experience while the P10+ is clearly built for people who want everything in a phone. The Kirin 960 internals are exciting, but Huawei is grabbing everyone’s attention with a huge array of color options for the body. This phone comes in many different variants, and will not be headed to the U.S. at all, so take a moment and be thoroughly jealous at how spoiled for choice everyone else is with this phone.

Read more for details on the Huawei P10 and P10+

The best storage options for Gear VR

When it comes to storage, you have a few options.

Your phone only comes with a finite amount of space to hold all of your information from photos to contacts. So, you might find that you quickly start to fill it up as you download all of those awesome new VR games for your Gear VR. When that starts to happen, or if it’s already happened, you might be trying to figure out how to get more storage out of your phone.

Well, we’ve got all the details for you below.

Read more at VR Heads

Xbox Games Pass gives you access to over 100 Xbox One games for £7.99 a month

Microsoft has launched a subscription service that gives you access to more than 100 games to play on your Xbox One for just £7.99 a month. And unlike PlayStation Now, it isn’t a cloud service so you don’t have to rely on your own broadband speeds to play.

Well, not to stream anyway, because you’ll still need to download the games. However, when downloaded, you have complete access to a game as long as you continue to pay the monthly fee.

Xbox One and Xbox 360 games will be part of the line-up, the latter through backwards compatibility, and considering 2K, Capcom, Warner Bros and Microsoft’s own studio are among the publishers and developers signed up, there are plenty of top titles to choose from.

• How Xbox One backwards compatibility works: The Xbox 360 games list and more

These include Halo 5: Guardians, Mad Max, Lego Batman, Gears of War: Ultimate Edition and Fable III. Many more will be announced before launch.

The service will be available to general Xbox One users from spring, with Xbox Live Gold members given priority at the beginning.

Those signed up to the Xbox Insider Program will be able to trial the service from today. They will have access to around 20 games to test Xbox Game Pass before a wider release.

You can find out more about Xbox Game Pass here.

You won’t be able to play every single Nintendo Switch game on the TV

The Nintendo Switch’s biggest feature is the ability to seamlessly switch between TV and tablet modes. You can start playing a game at home, and then if you need to go out and continue gaming, simply take the Switch tablet out of its dock and you’re on your way.

• Nintendo Switch: Release date, price, specs and everything you need to know
• Nintendo Switch preview: Return of the King?

However, it turns out that not all games being released for the new console will be able to be played on the TV anyway, as they require touch input for controls.

The first such game to be announced is Voez, a Japanese, rhythm-based indie game originally developed for iOS and Android devices. Developer Flyhigh Works has confirmed that it can’t be used with button controls, such as those on the Nintendo’s Joycon controller, instead it relies solely on touch input.

It’s the first game to be confirmed for the Switch that can only be played in one way, but it seems Nintendo doesn’t mind that. It could therefore mean more games developers will produce games that can only be played in one gaming mode instead of programming them to work in either format, and could even pave the way for some of our favourite smartphone games to make the transition to Switch as well.

• All the Nintendo Switch games: Launch titles and every game for 2017 revealed
• This is what the Nintendo Switch is like out of the box

The Nintendo Switch will launch in the UK on Friday 3 March, so keep your eyes locked to Pocket-lint for our full, in-depth review this coming Thursday 2 March.