I attended my first San Diego Comic-Con in 1988. Back then, it was a show about…comics! Mostly, at least. Today, it’s a show about comics, movies, TV, toys, science fiction, videogames, and a bunch of other topics…and it’s hard to walk for more than a few yards across the insanely crowded exhibition floor without bumping into someone dressed as Bart Simpson, Darth Vader, a Smurf, Poison Ivy, or (most often) the Joker.

There’s also some tech here–especially tech relating to drawing, painting, and animating. At the booth of graphics software maker Smith Micro,  I chatted with cartooning legend Dave Gibbons, who’s best known as the co-creator of Watchmen. He knows pencils and brushes as well as any cartoonist alive, but he uses Smith’s Manga Studio package–which, despite the name, is for drawing comics of all sorts.

For the first time, he recently did a story using only digital tools–from the first sketches to the final art–for Dark Horse Comics. It’s called “Treatment.”

I asked Gibbons whether digital comics creation went slower or faster than old-fashioned drawing. For “Treatment,” he said, it went more slowly at first–but he picked up the pace as he went along, in part because he was able to automate drudgery such as drawing perfectly curved helmets.

I also wondered what he thought of the iPad. He has one and loves it–and thinks that it’s particularly exciting as a new way to read comics. (“Treatment” will be available as an e-comic.) He’s also dabbling with doing art on an iPad using SketchBook Pro and Brushes, but it’s just experimental, since there’s no way to use a pressure-sensitive stylus with an iPad. (He uses a Wacom Cintiq tablet display for his published work.)

I’ll report back here on anything else here at Comic-Con that feels like Technologizer fodder–but in the meantime, I’ll be tweeting highlights of my trip at my mostly-about-comics Twitter feed, @harry_go_round.

Windows 7 battery problem? Nope.

Droid gets Android 2.1 update.

Redact that tweet, Journal editor.

iPhone gets memory card adapter.

What’s Shigeru Miyamoto working on?

Nexus one feature: phone support!

Nexus One double-life battery.

Publishers score e-book pricing victories.
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Got nominations for other companies you'd like answers from? Let me know--I'm lining up subjects for future installments.]

Fernando Garcia asks:

I have always asked the following question. Why is it that AMD will not step up advertising? A good 70% of the consumer public,still does not know what AMD is. I used to work for Best Buy and on the average day, one out of eight persons I would speak to knew what AMD was. Whenever I asked a customer  about processors automatically they would say Intel.

Pat answers:

Simply taking out more advertising does not guarantee a product’s success. I think the best way to answer that is AMD chooses to focus differently. We first focus on making our customers and their channel partners successful by investing in them, not leveraging off their brandsby sandwiching them between AMD logos. We want to invest in our customers’ success. For those people who are specifically focused on the “processor,” we have very high awareness and market directly to end user groups. These include but are not limited to enthusiasts, gamers, DIYers, Fortune 1000 and government decision makers, etc.

Ron Harris asks:

Does or will AMD offer a chipset for the competition’s Core i7 processors?

Pat answers:

We offer ATI Radeon HD GPUs for the Core i7 but not chipsets.

Justin Abrantes asks:

Why did AMD decided to manufacture quad cores under the name of Athlon? The same way with dual-core Phenoms–will that be more confusing for non-AMD users?

Pat answers:

We did this to simplify, not confuse. AMD Phenom processors generally have more features than AMD Athlon processors. So generally, Phenom>Athlon. X2, X3, and X4 just indicate the CPU core count.

Bill Pytlovany asks:

What’s the status of the new GlobalFoundries’ chip fab plant planned to be built in upstate (Malta) NY?

Pat answers:

I have an inquiry into GF folks, but in the meantime here are the most recent details. Our understanding is that GP plans to break ground this summer on a new 4.2B plant in Malta, NY, with production scheduled for 2012.  It’s too early to specify exactly what products will be manufactured there but we understand it will be a mix of AMD and non-AMD products.  Of course, since AMD and GF are separate companies, we recommend you contact GF directly for further information.

Toby Hudon asks:

Where’s the 4770X2? Any chance of a sub-9″ board for one to fit in those cramped HTPC cases?

Pat answers:

A dual ASIC board utilizing the ATI Radeon HD 4770 chip is a great concept idea. This would be up to our partners to bring to market. I would suggest a single GPU solution for an HTPC to help minimize heat and power and maximize performance per watt.

Toby also asks:

Where’s OpenCL? Nvidia has some kind of super secret beta developer club you can try and beg your way into, but AMD is silent even though they were showing demos on CPUs and Havok on GPUs at shows already. When can we get a compiler and libraries?

Pat answers:

AMD has been and continues to be a leader in adopting and supporting open standards, OpenCL is a very important open standard that we are heavily invested in and expect to have more details available publically shortly

Cliff Forster asks:

AMD has recently reported a gain in market share. To what would you mostly attribute this positive upswing? Social Media strategy paying off? Perhaps the Intel EU press was very damaging to big blue? Recognition of the true dollar for dollar value position in a weak economy? Specific innovations that have improved AMD’s product offering? If you had to pick something specific that is propelling the increase in share, what would you say it is, and how do you continue to ride this positive trend?

Pat answers:

We are in a quiet period and cannot specifically comment on market share, unfortunately. But we can restate that we believe AMD platforms offer maximum value at every price point.

JustCallMeBen asks:

What’s going to happen to Hybrid-CrossFireX? As a gamer caring about the environment (AND my energy bill), I would very much like to use a high-end card like the HD4890 in combination with an Intrgrated Graphics Processor. This way the discrete chip is only used for games while the IGP does the typical desktop usage, thus saving power. Regrettably Hybrid-CrossFireX is currently only available for a limited number of HD3xxx chips. Are there plans to renew the technology?

Pat answers:

AMD has led the market with innovative features like ATI Hybrid CrossFireX technology. Again, we’re in quiet period and can’t comment on specific plans, but innovating platform level features remains an AMD priority.

Mark Davis asks:

In the last 2 years I believe Intel has adopted a ‘Tick-Tock’ engineering schedule, in one time frame putting out a new product, then in another a refresh and then back to a new product. What kind of engineering schedule does AMD follow? And are we most likely to see a new micro-architecture for Bulldozer?

Pat answers:

AMD and Intel have similar engineering schedules; it’s natural given the competitive environment. AMD is near fully ramped on 45nm process, roughly around the same time as Intel got fully ramped. So it is a misconception to think Intel is years ahead of AMD in terms of manufacturing technologies. Our technology partner GlobalFoundries has indicated that it will shortly breaking ground on a state-of-the-art 20nm fab facility in New York State. When this facility is finished some time in 2012, it is expected to be the most technologically advanced manufacturing facility in the world.

Mark also asks:

Why does it seem like ATI’s game developer relations are so lackluster compared to Nvidia’s? For example on most game boxes I see n Nvidia The Way It’s Meant to Be Played ad versus an AMD ad. Are there any plans to change this?

Pat answers:

Let’s avoid confusing Developer Relations with marketing. TWIMTBP is a marketing/co-marketing program that negotiates game asset usage and NV logo placement; AMD has a program like this as well but it has not as big a focus for AMD as TWIMTBP seems to be for Nvidia. Check out Battleforge for example. As for Dev Relations, this is an engineering relationship between the dev and our engineers to optimize new games to help achieve the best customer experience. We are highly invested in this program with a very wide breadth of game and application developers.

Stilgar asks:

I would like to know what processors AMD is working on that are not targeted at desktops/laptops? Do they have a response for the Atom? What about cell phone CPUs/GPUs?

Pat answers:

We are constantly analyzing new potential markets. For example, along with our technology partner HP, AMD helped create the “Ultrathin” mobile market with the introduction of the HP Pavilion dv2. We have no plans to specifically target the mobile phone market. Our roadmaps target server, notebook and desktop platforms are available in myriad form factors. And of course, the top two selling game consoles in the world are powered by AMD graphics processors, so the console market is important to AMD.

Wayne Smith asks:

Recently I had to replace my processor (Athlon dual core 64 5200+) which was rated at 2.6-GHhz with 1024MB L2 cache. The replacement processor (same 5200+) is rated at 2.7-GHz with 512 L2 Cache. Is there any difference in performance between the two processors?

Pat answers:

The AMD Athlon X2 5200 processor comes with 2MB total cache (1MB per core) or 1MB total cache (512KB per core). There is no meaningful performance difference.

George asks:

I am a longtime AMD fan and I have not bought a computer if it did not have an AMD CPU in it. Of course now I build my own still using AMD and I just was thinking that when you went from single core to dual-core and also again from 32-bit to 64-bit, that the experts thought that the performance might nearly double but that was never the case. It seems to me that you come out with CPUs that have the bare minimum number of pins to support the technology while Intel seems to be a hundred or more pin counts ahead of you. With that said, how does the pin count affect the efficiency of the CPU? And have you considered significantly adding the number of pins, since you did not when you converted from single core to multi-core?

Pat answers:

Pincount is related to the system architecture the processor supports. With AMD processors, the evolution from single channel memory support with Socket 754 to dual channel 939 support was the major pincount increment, Subsequently, the migration from DDR to DDR2 and now DDR3 are associated with changes in pin assignments as our processors feature an integrated memory controller. These are the main drivers of changes in pin count and socket configuration over time. Pin count does not have a direct bearing on CPU frequency, but AMD continues to refine our socket and our architecture to deliver optimal performance.

]]> http://technologizer.com/2009/07/07/your-questions-amds-answers/feed/ 2 patrickmoorhead Technologizer;s Q&A http://technologizer.com/2009/05/28/big-hairs-a-no-go-in-video-games/ http://technologizer.com/2009/05/28/big-hairs-a-no-go-in-video-games/#comments Fri, 29 May 2009 00:30:46 +0000 Jared Newman http://technologizer.com/?p=12458 ]]> Ever notice how your favorite video game characters wear close-cropped ‘dos, shave their heads, tie their locks back in a ponytail or just wear head dressings? They may be doing it for style, but they’re also conveniently hiding the difficulties of rendering lifelike video game hair.

This isn’t a new revelation, but the issue came to light again this week when Fight! Magazine learned about the exclusion of big hair in an Ultimate Fighting Championship video game. Fighter Clay “The Carpenter” Guida’s hairdo is so massive that the developers of THQ’s UFC Undisputed 2009 had to exclude him due to clipping and collision detection issues. Reportedly, THQ even offered Guida money to cut his hair, and he refused.

Earlier this week, I wrote about photorealism in games, and how one developer thinks video games could accurately depict thousands of facial bones in 10 to 15 years. But what about the tens of thousands of hair strands that adorn human heads? Apparently, gaming is pretty far off from nailing the art of beautiful, flowing locks.

For fun, here are a few other facts about video game hair:

• Mario, famously, sports a cap because designer Shigeru Miyamoto didn’t like creating hairstyles and wanted to save his programmers the trouble of animating the hair during jumps.
• Electronic Arts’ chief visual officer, Glenn Entis, said in 2005 that hair and facial expressions would be a focus of graphics in the HD gaming era, calling hair “such a communicator of style” and referring to past efforts as “laughable.”
• Even the latest graphical advances simulate less than a couple hundred strands of hair. A real human could shed that amount in a day.

]]> http://technologizer.com/2009/05/28/big-hairs-a-no-go-in-video-games/feed/ 2 Jared Newman ufc-guida http://technologizer.com/2009/05/26/who-needs-photorealism-in-games-anyway/ http://technologizer.com/2009/05/26/who-needs-photorealism-in-games-anyway/#comments Tue, 26 May 2009 19:16:57 +0000 Jared Newman http://technologizer.com/?p=12263 ]]> Just in case the haunting wastelands of Killzone 2 and Gears of War 2 aren’t realistic enough for you, one game engine programmer suspects that true photorealism in video games is 10 to 15 years away.

I say, who cares?

To understand why, read the rest of Unreal Engine programmer Tim Sweeney’s comments to Gamasutra: “But there’s another problem in graphics that’s not as easily solvable,” he said. “It’s anything that requires simulating human intelligence or behavior: animation, character movement, interaction with characters, and conversations with characters. They’re really cheesy in games now.”

To put it another way, we may someday have video game people that look a lot like the real thing in pictures, but making them seem lifelike in practice is another story entirely.

That’s why video games are better off experimenting with other methods of representation besides mimicking reality. (Sports games should get a pass, however, because they are inherently in pursuit of realism. Plus, they tend to avoid issues of interaction and conversation that other games must deal with.)

When I think of the most powerful examples of human emotion in video games, they’re almost always abstract. The pixelated characters in Daniel Benmergui’s Storyteller are excellent examples: The eyes struck a deeper chord with me than any attempt at bone modeling.

Another method is cel-shading, as in the cartoon style seen in games like Team Fortress 2 and No More Heroes. Just like pixelation, cel-shading symbolizes human gestures without dipping into the uncanny valley (that is, the negative response that occurs when a human facsimile looks too much, but not exactly, like the real thing).

I’m certainly not the first one to make this argument, but it’s worth repeating if game developers plan to chase photorealism. I fear that the mountain is so steep to climb, we may have to endure a lot of freaky fake people before getting to the good stuff. As Sweeney suggests, the real problems may take a lot longer than a decade to solve, and10 years is already a long time.

]]> http://technologizer.com/2009/05/26/who-needs-photorealism-in-games-anyway/feed/ 3 Jared Newman uncanny_valley http://technologizer.com/2009/03/04/nvidia-might-get-into-the-x86-business/ http://technologizer.com/2009/03/04/nvidia-might-get-into-the-x86-business/#comments Thu, 05 Mar 2009 03:36:15 +0000 Harry McCracken http://technologizer.com/?p=8811 ]]> It’s more than a rumor but less than a fact: Nvidia is apparently considering branching out from its core business of making graphics processors to make system-on-a-chip products that combine a CPU and a GPU on a single chip at some point in the next few years, putting it in the most direct competition imaginable with Intel. The theory–and it certainly sounds plausible–is that SoC designs that pack both a powerful CPU and a powerful GPU will come to dominate the market, leaving a graphics specialist such as Nvidia in a tight spot.

Plenty of companies have tried to compete with Intel over the years; nearly all of them have failed, leaving only AMD and VIA (the latter of which specializes in basic chips for basic devices) still in the game. As a consumer, I love competition, so I hope Nvidia goes for it. Anything that gives Intel reason to be paranoid should help Moore’s Law work its magic of more potent technology at better prices. And if any tech outfit has the combination of ambition, tech chops, and craziness to dive in at this point, it’s probably Nvidia.

]]> http://technologizer.com/2009/03/04/nvidia-might-get-into-the-x86-business/feed/ 1 Harry McCracken Nvidia Logo http://technologizer.com/2009/01/19/what-computer-graphics-were-in-1984/ http://technologizer.com/2009/01/19/what-computer-graphics-were-in-1984/#comments Tue, 20 Jan 2009 07:50:59 +0000 Harry McCracken http://technologizer.com/?p=7030 ]]> It’s not multi-touch. Hey, it’s not even single touch by modern standards. But the Atari Touch Tablet that Vintage Computing and Gaming‘s Benj Edwards recently bought was still in its original, unopened packaging. And so Benj took the opportunity to do a new unboxing of a really old gadget–and we’re delighted to publish it here.

View Atari Touch Tablet unboxing slideshow

]]> http://technologizer.com/2009/01/19/what-computer-graphics-were-in-1984/feed/ 3 Harry McCracken Atari Tablet Unboxing http://technologizer.com/2009/01/19/ataris-1984-touch-tablet-a-retro-unboxing/ http://technologizer.com/2009/01/19/ataris-1984-touch-tablet-a-retro-unboxing/#comments Tue, 20 Jan 2009 07:40:34 +0000 Benj Edwards http://technologizer.com/?p=6889 ]]>

The next time you use your shiny new Wacom tablet and Adobe Photoshop CS4, think back to a time before time–a time before blends, morphs, heal brushes, and 10-megapixel images.  A time like 1984, which, for computer graphics, was darker than the Dark Ages. It was a time when you could buy an $89.95 Atari CX77 Touch Tablet for your Atari 8-bit home computer.  Luckily, I bought mine for considerably less last year, although it was still in new, unopened condition.  Safely sequestered in the official Vintage Computing and Gaming computer lab, I recently began the task of unpacking the antique peripheral and documenting the process.  Here’s an account of the experience.

]]> http://technologizer.com/2009/01/19/ataris-1984-touch-tablet-a-retro-unboxing/feed/ 106 benjedwards Atari Touch Tablet