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Microsoft is Out with the Perfect Xbox Specifications : Here’s a look at Your Dream Console

Leave a Comment / Tech News / By Athulya

On Monday, Microsoft brought out the big guns and came out with the full specification list for its new Xbox Series X, and gamers couldn’t be more excited. The new model boasts of near-perfect specs and is expected to be on every gamer’s Christmas wish list. So, what’s so special about the Series X and why is the gaming fraternity going crazy over it? Here’s a look at everything you need to know about the Microsoft Xbox Series X which promises to bring be a next-gen gaming console.

Mind-Blowing Specifications

The Xbox Series X will run on an AMD Zen 2 RDNA custom processor, which will be four times faster than the processor used in Xbox One.
The new processor also offers 12 teraflops worth of GPU, which is twice that of the Xbox One X.
The 12 teraflops GPU means the Xbox Series X will go far beyond the capabilities of mid-range AMD or Nvidia cards, making it a new gold standard.
The Xbox Series X supports Variable rate shading which allows users to prioritize effects as per their needs and requirements. It also makes it possible to focus individual effects on just one game character or object, and renders that perfectly, without affecting the image quality of the rest of the screen.
Xbox X will also have the DirectX Raytracing feature which will be on show for the first time ever, with this console. This feature will allow the console to create life-like images, realistic acoustics, real-time reflections, and even real-life lighting within the game.
To wring the latency, the new Xbox comes with next-gen storage using SSD which promises faster load times than ever before.
Furthermore, the Quick Resume option will allow players to access several games without delay from their suspended states.
Also, to improve latency the device supports the Dynamic input option which results in minimising latency between Controller and console communication.
The console also fully supports HDMI 2.1, meaning it has options such as Low Latency, Refresh rate variation and even Tearing prevention while gaming.
Xbox Series X can go as high as 120 frames/sec, meaning the games will appear to be more real than ever before.
Furthermore, Microsoft is heavily committed to its earlier games and hence will extend compatibility to Xbox One, 360 and original games with backward compatibility.
The Series X, will, therefore, run all prior games faster, steadier and with better resolution than ever before.
Also, the new Series will support videos in 8K, making it a great investment to have for the future, wherein 8K video support TVs become more popular.

Furthermore, Microsoft has said that further updates and specifications will be released in the coming months, with the Game Developers Conference in March being a key focal point. Also, the E3 convention in June might give Microsoft another opportunity to unveil more specs and features of the Xbox Series X. This convention might give us details regarding pricing, availability and even new launches. One of the most highly anticipated new launches for the Series X will be Halo Infinite. With these specs in place, Microsoft’s dream of creating the world’s most powerful console might just come true with the Xbox Series X.

Microsoft Vs Sony

The one area where Microsoft has a clear edge over Sony is with regards to backward compatibility of games. Whereas the PS4 has made several of the older PS games obsolete, Microsoft continues to make it possible for its users to access and enjoy its older titles. The two key interest areas where Microsoft seems to be the clear winner are computability and also delivery. Smart Delivery is a new feature that has come into play which makes it possible for you to reuse the games on various devices. For instance, if you buy a game for a particular device, Microsoft allows you access to the right game version for various Xbox types. Therefore, once you buy an Xbox, whichever one it may be, Microsoft has your back and will help you enjoy the gaming experience for years to come. This auto-updation of games is a feature loved by games as it allows them to enjoy games across platforms with ease, and unnecessary expense.

Furthermore, recent developments prove that Microsoft is interested in entering the cloud-based gaming industry, and the Xbox Series X might be a step in that direction. Their strategy seems to be to consolidate gaming across various platforms from PC to cloud, with mobile, Xbox and other consoles adding into the picture. However, Sony has stayed quiet with regards to its flagship new model PS5 and has released no announcements regarding the same. This announcement from Microsoft now has made it clear that it is now Sony’s turn to try to outdo the other with their announcement. Sony will, therefore, now be under pressure to release appropriate specs within a specified time interval. The relative quietness from their end indicates that something huge is in the making, and this sure seems to be an exciting time for gamers all around the world.

Sanjay Mehrotra: Never-Ending Journey For A Better Digital World of SanDisk Founder

Leave a Comment / Founder, Inspiration, Product, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By Jayshri

There are many persons who believe in innovations. Although, very few of them are responsible to make that happen. But the persons, who dare to transfer those inventions from lab to daily use, make the world a better place. So, they set their name in the list of influencing entrepreneurs. Sanjay Mehrotra is one of them, who not only believes in innovation but also devoted himself to deliver a better one. He is the co-founder and former CEO of SanDisk that replaces hard disk drives with flash memory in the 19th century.

At present, he is the CEO of Micron Technology, which is one of the leading memory storage devices manufacturers. It has been never easy to climb the ladder of success. Yet, it is inspiring to know the untold journey of Sanjay Mehrotra.

Early life

He was born on 27th June 1958 in Kanpur, India. Sanjay spent his childhood days in the same city. Thereafter, the Mehrotra family shifted to Delhi due to his father’s work. He went to Delhi school for primary education. Also, at Sardar Patel Vidyalaya he completed secondary schooling.

UG course at the University of California

When the students were dreaming of post-graduation in foreign. At that time, Sanjay’s father inspired him for UG in a foreign country. BITS Pilani was well known for collaboration with international Universities. So, he took admission for UG program, in the hope of future chance to go abroad. He completed two years of Electrical engineering in Bits Pilani, and then the day came.

He grabbed the opportunity to study the remaining UG course at the University of California, Berkeley. Reaching there was not a cakewalk. At first, his visa got denied three times. But his father’s support and his ambitions do not let him stop. They had to request multiple times and countless meetings to the Indian US embassy. Finally, he got the passport and flight landed at the destination.

Earlier achievements

He applied for a master’s degree, at the same University as a UG program. During his master’s program, he worked on Integrated circuits. But his interest was more towards designing. Hence, he could not stop himself from discovering non-volatile memory design.

Sanjay named more than 70 patents. Also, he presented research papers on the Flash memory system and non-volatile memory design.

He joined Intel Corporation as a Non-Volatile design engineer in 1980. It was the opportunity to explore his area of interest in non-volatile memory design more.

What happens when one Indian, one Chinese, and one person from Israel meet? No idea. Well, when these three persons met, they founded SanDisk; that too in one different country.

Boom of SanDisk

In 1988, Sanjay Mehrotra, Eli Harari, and Jack Yuan started a small company in Silicon Valley. Initially, they wanted to replace hard disk drives with their flash solid-state drives (SSD). To achieve this, they designed the first flash-based SSD mounted in a 2.5inch hard drive for IBM. Though it was of only 20MB capacity, it was a great move to install the technology which was at the experimental state at that time.

The first product of SanDisk traded out for $1000. After that, they changed their products according to market needs. SanDisk boomed the digital industry with its first mega-market sale of open standard digital films.

The Journey Continues

In the year 2011, Sanjay Mehrotra acquired the position as CEO. Under his policies, the company gained most of the electronics market. In fact, in 2012 SanDisk was the third-highest among other consumer electronics companies.

In recent years, SanDisk working on SSD for cloud computing. Also, they produce more than 2 million USB flash drivers per day. In 2017, Sanjay Mehrotra assigned as the new Chief executive officer of Micron Inc. Also, he is the onboard member of SanDisk.

Fastly: How This Company with The Right Values is Growing at The Speed of Light

Leave a Comment / start-up, Story, Tech Story / By Athulya

Data is everywhere now thanks to the Internet Age. According to studies, the amount of total data collected doubles, every two years. Everything from our Internet history to our calendar schedule forms a part of digital data that is important. Research shows that by 2020, we will be producing 1.7 MB worth of data every second! So where does all this data go? Due to Hardware constraints, all computers and mobile phones come with a stipulated storage limit. Also, external hard drives we purchase also have stringent limits on how much space they have. So how do we store the massive amounts of data we create?

Why We Need Cloud Computing

We all want to retain those videos from our first college performance, and also need quick access to our work documents. How can we come up with a system that is secure and at the same time, large enough to store everything? Well, cloud computing has helped most people deal with their storage woes by providing huge amounts of space! Not only do you get to keep your precious memories, but you also get to do so without cluttering up your home.

All your information is locked away in a vault in the sky, so you can loop up baby pictures, and schedule appointments on the go. This time around, we are going to look at one of the fastest-growing cloud computing service providers in the world!

What is Fastly Inc

Fastly Inc.’s highly efficient edge cloud platform allows users access to an extremely fast content delivery network that helps them keep all their memories. Furthermore, the company also provides security services, video streaming, and load balancing. Headquartered at San Francisco, this American juggernaut has offices in New York, London, Portland, Tokyo, and Denver.

Founding Fastly

Artur Bergman founded Fastly in 2011 because he felt the need for a fast and efficient cloud computing service. Prior to founding Fastly, Bergman worked as the VTO of Wikia. Three years into its founding, Google paired up with them to offer users CDN services. This served as a huge boost to the company, which then grew at unprecedented rates.

So much so, that in 2017, the company launched its own edge cloud platform that supported a ton of new features. The same year, they acquired a Texas-based content delivery network named CDN Sumo. The company helps users extend and expand their existing cloud infrastructure using their network. Furthermore, the service also includes several features such as load balancing, image optimization, and video streaming.

Software Structure

The company’s software works on Varnish, which is an open-source HTTP accelerator. Since they use an open-source product, Bergman has also made it a point to give back to the open-source community. The company supports several non-profit projects such as Hackage, Drupal and DonorsChoose.org. Varnish became the platform for Fastly because it allowed them to reverse proxy and is highly customizable. The software designers always kept performance in mind and then scaled their applications using Varnish. The particular version of Varnish used by them is optimized for large applications, due to the presence of caches.

Giving Back to The Community

Bergman attributes his desire to give back to his raising in a feminist environment such as Sweden. Due to their smaller power distance culture; being inclusive was a way of life rather than a magnanimity. Bergman also believes that diverse teams improve the workspace environment leading to higher productivity. The more diverse the leadership, the easier it becomes to find and encourage diverse talents. This, in turn, makes it possible to create and design diverse products that change the world.

Company Values

Furthermore, Fastly takes both employee and customer satisfaction quite seriously. Since the company works on projects that help people, employees feel great about their work. More people are happy, meaning they genuinely want to look after their users, which makes for great customer engagement and satisfaction. Over 90 employees at Fastly, which constitutes 25% of their workforce, have been there for more than four years.

This proves without a doubt, how important the company views its internal policies and values. The company’s executive team has an almost equal number of men and women. Furthermore, more than 50 percent of their engineers fall into trans, people of color and LGBTQ communities.

Resounding Success

Fastly recently added another $75 million via Series D funding, making the total money hit $130 million! After the financing round, the company named ex-VP of Netsuite, Dan Miller, their CFO. Furthermore, the company recruited ex- Apple privacy strategist, and Mozilla’s security chief to their already impressive employee roster. The company is growing at over 300% year after years, with a team that has grown to over 450 employees now. While the company pushed 40 TB a day in 2012, the data limit per day now stands at 5 PT!

The company already has several high-profile customers such as Twitter, The Guardian, Pinterest, and Wayfair. The company also helped Stripe improve their checkout time by 80%, leading to even more popularity and goodwill within the industry. The company keeps growing from strength to strength having made $144 million in 2018, with revenue growing at 37.8%! Around the world, over 3 billion people see content that served via Fastly, and this is 75% of the world’s internet users. Sure enough, there might come a day, wherein every internet user receives content through a Fastly platform!

Microsoft Launches the Personal Vault for its Worldwide Users

Leave a Comment / News, Product, Tech News / By Yashica Vashishtha

Having enough data storage is the biggest issue today. Dropbox, Google Drive and Microsoft’s OneDrive, being the biggest player in the field, try to provide better services to its users. Recently, Microsoft added extra security to its OneDrive with a new feature called OneDrive Personal Vault. The feature, on its release, was only available for some selective markets, but from today onwards, the company has made it available to its worldwide users.

The Personal Vault feature enhances the security of the user’s account by allowing them to enable various security functions to their accounts. These security functions include two-step authentication that can be through fingerprints, facial recognition, a pin sent to one’s email address, to mobile number through SMS, or even through Microsoft Authenticator.

Though the feature has been opened for the public worldwide, it will be first available in countries like Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. And, it is earlier than the date that was scheduled for its worldwide release. So the users from the other countries do not have to worry as the feature will reach them as soon as the year ends.

The feature is available for every user, but won’t provide the full-fledged experience to all of them, as some of the users are not the paid ones. There are limitations for free users. The ones who have subscribed for the free version of Microsoft OneDrive, do have access to the Vault, but they can only put only three files in it. Whereas, the ones who are Office 365 users, they do not have to worry about the number of files, as they can put as many files in the Personal Vault as they want to, based on the storage limit they have paid for.

Other than the secure storage, the new Vault can also scan the documents which get extra security. The Vault also gets automatically locked if it remains inactive for some time. So, the user needs to login to it again to use it. The Vault also restricts the accidental sharing of the files. If you are using the Vault on a Windows 10 PC, the files in the Vault get automatically synced to the BitLocker encrypted drive on the PC.

Microsoft along with the Personal Vault also introduced the new storage options for One Drive. That means that the Office 365 users now can expand their 1TB storage in 200GB increments, starting at $1.99 a month per 200GB. The company also revealed features like the dark mode for OneDrive on iOS, and the PC Folder backup, which will make OneDrive to backup your Windows 10 PC’s folders to the cloud.

Michael Serbinis : A Significant Entrepreneur who Founded Kobo

Leave a Comment / Founder, Product, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By Annasha

There always doesn’t have to be a reason for reading. Reading has always been valuable as it only adds up to your knowledge. That is why the community of book lovers is expanding with every passing second. But, we do know that everyone can’t afford the highly expensive original editions of classic novels every time. So for such a crisis, the e-books become the true guardian angels in our life.

Kobo Inc. is a Canada-based platform that is famous for selling e-books and electronics. The company serves customers at a global level and has attracted more than 10 million readers by now. Its founder Michael Serbinis, who is an engineer, entrepreneur and an angel investor, is even more famous for founding more than just one company.

Where Michael Serbinis belongs?

Born on 28th October 1973, Michael Serbinis belongs to the land of maple syrup, i.e., Canada. His keen interest in science made him win gold at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, for which he designed a high-temperature superconductor propulsion system. So, his first big achievement happened when he was in high school, that led to big opportunities for working with NASA and Intel.

Michael Serbinis founder Kobo — Image Source: alejandrocremades.com

In 1996, Serbinis graduated from Queen’s University with a bachelor’s degree in Engineering Physics, followed by graduating from the University of Toronto with a master’s degree in Industrial Engineering. While he was a student, he entered into the Ontario Engineering Competition, and his creation of motor, that ran on an advanced software coding, helped him fetch a summer job at Microsoft. He also conducted thorough research on neural networks and artificial intelligence.

The Journey in the Late 90s

Serbinis’s journey into the entrepreneurial world started while associating the Musk brothers. He received a call from the Musk brothers, who were his university classmates to help them build a business. And thus, Serbinis was one of the first ten employees of Zip2, the company that was established by Elon and Kimball Musk.

Since Serbinis was already a very efficient programmer, at the age of twenty-four, he built a cloud-based document storage service called DocSpace. After a couple of years, it was sold to a San-Francisco based company for $530 million.

In 2000, Michael Serbinis joined Critical Path as CTO and EVP Marketing. It was then one of the largest companies which ran one-third of the world’s emails through their software. After he moved back to Canada, Serbinis joined Indigo as CIO and EVP Online, and this is the point at the juncture, where Kobo spun out to become an independent business.

Founding Kobo

At first, a global e-reading platform called Shortcovers was released in February 2009, under the main company Indigo. But, once they gained board approval and funding, they cut out from Indigo and established as an independent company. In late 2009, the company was rebranded as Kobo, an e-reading platform for worldwide customers. This was just the beginning for Serbinis to do great things in his homeland.

The Success

Kobo received a very good response from all over the world, shortly after its release. Kobo, today, attracts over 18 million users from more than 190 countries. It has over more than 3 million magazines, eBooks, and even, newspapers. Thus, creating the largest e-readers catalogue in the history of the e-reading platform.

In January 2012, Kobo came under the acquisition of a Japanese e-commerce company called Rakuten for $315 million. The catalogue of Kobo has e-books on 77 different languages, helping readers connect to their native land.

After Kobo

Since it was only the beginning, Serbinis founded 3 Angels Capital in 2014, to invest in a disrupted market and create a better world. Serbinis has always been a determined and optimistic man for sure. He mostly invests in areas, like the internet of things, digital content, digital health, etc.

Michael Serbinis is also the board director of MaRS Discovery District, an innovation hub in Toronto. He serves as a board director in another institute called Vector Institute, a non-profit research institution in Toronto.

In November 2014, Serbinis founded League Inc., an online platform that connects worldwide users to provide health benefits and much more.

After developing so much on his homeland and contributing to science, Serbinis still lives in Toronto with his family.

Unity Technologies Co-founder, David Helgason, Teaches Us ‘Never Give Up’

Leave a Comment / Founder, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By Yashica Vashishtha

In the past fifty years, the video game industry has evolved tremendously, and an infinite number of video game developers are currently contributing to the very field in their own way. David Helgason is one such developer, who along with Nicholas Francis and Joachim Ante, created a gaming engine that is used by half of the active game developers in the world, under the name of their company Unity Technologies. Unity Technologies is one of the biggest video game software development companies which are responsible for the development of most popular video games running today.

Early Life

David Helgason was born and brought up in Iceland. After spending the first ten years of his life in Iceland, he moved to Denmark with his mother. He was a little kid when his mother brought him a computer. As soon he got his hands on the computer, he grew an interest in learning more about it. Once after breaking the computer, he tried to fix it and got some video games to play on it. He even started learning programming languages, so that he could build games on the computer.

He spent a whole 22 years in Denmark, and from education to his first job, he did all there. Though he never got a degree from the university, as he dropped out of university at least four times, and studied different subjects every single time, including psychology, physics, computer science, Arabic, and middle eastern studies.

Unity Technologies founders — Image Source: globenewswire.com

Founding Unity Technologies & Initial Struggling Years

Helgason was never sure of what he wanted to do in future, except becoming a scholar. But studies did not interest him, and after dropping out for four times from the university, he finally thought of starting a software development company.

In the year 2000, he started Over the Edge Entertainment (later rebranded as Unity Technologies) with his friends Nicholas Francis and Joachim Ante, inside a basement. To pay the rent and the taxes, all three were working part-time in restaurants and coffees shops.

The three friends had started the business but without a business plan. So they had nothing to do better than sticking along. So for a long time, they were doing some consulting projects and other non-technical jobs to support their company. The three finally launched their first game, GooBall, in 2005, and the bizarre thing about the game was that it only supported Mac. This way, the first project of the company failed badly.

The Rise of Unity Technologies

But this failure brought the three into the light, and they started working on another project. This time, they added support for Windows PCs and Web browsers. They also shifted their focus from developing games to developing a gaming engine. They aimed at creating a gaming engine that could ease out the process of development of 2D and 3D interactive content.

In 2006, the co-inventors participated in the Apple Design Awards and were the runner-up for Best Use of Mac OS X Graphics. In the next year, with the release of the iPhone, the company started working on adding the support for the iPhone in the engine. In 2008, they released the new version of the engine that supported iPhone games, becoming the first gaming engine to do so. This made the engine popular among the people. The company started developing support for mobile games and began to grow at a faster rate.

In 2008, Cartoon Network used the Unity engine to create FusionFall. FusionFall is an MMORPG for kids and has been played by 8 million people. In the following years, other big names like Electronic Arts, Microsoft and Ubisoft, also used the same engine for their projects.

In 2010, the company launched the Unity Asset Store, and in 2012, Unity Technologies acquired the animation company Mecanim. The next year, the company recorded 1 million registered developers, the 50 per cent of the total game developers of the world. Facebook also added Unity engine to its platform, in 2013,

The Fundraiser

By 2016, Unity Technologies had earned more than 5.5 million registered users. The same year the company raised a $181 million round of funding making the company valued at approximately $1.5 billion, and in another round of funding in the next year, the company raised $400 million that valued the company at $2.8 billion. In 2018, with $145 million raised in another funding valued the company at $3 billion.

In the year 2017, the company released the Unity 2017 version and partnered with Google to develop augmented reality tools for Android devices and apps on ARCore. The two companies also joined their hands to offer online game development on Google Cloud. Unity Technologies also started working with DeepMind, an Alphabet subsidiary, to develop a virtual world artificial intelligence.

Unity Technologies Expansion

Today, the Unity engine is also used in various other fields other than game development, including film, television and automotive. Since its inception, the company has acquired much other game development and media companies, including Digital Monarch Media (2018), Vivox (2019), Applifier (2014) and Multiplay (2017).

As of 2018, the company has hired more than 2000 employees and has established its offices in various parts of North America, Europe and Asia. John Riccitiello replaced Helgason as the CEO of the company in 2014. Since then, Helgason has been working as a member of the board of the company and has moved to Copenhagen. He has also spoken as a motivational speaker at many events, such as TechBBQ, Copenhagen Tech Festival, Techfestival.se, Tech Open Air Berlin, Slush, etc.

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