Tech
The tech powering Canada’s biggest online casinos
|
Technology is a key catalyst for change in many industries. It makes the experience for customers more exciting, more streamlined and more widely available – and the online casino sector is just one of the industries that has evolved markedly due to technological innovation.
In this article, we will discuss the technological improvements that are powering some of Canada’s most popular online casinos and the games they offer to players, including the tech that makes the games better, faster and more appealing to new customers.
Browser wars
They say that competition helps drive innovation forward and that’s certainly the case in the world of the internet browser. For many years, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer ruled the roost as most users’ browser of choice, but competition from Firefox during the early 2000s ensured there was no room for complacency.
The arrival of search giant Google on the scene in 2008, however, was perhaps the most significant game-changer. Their new Chrome browser promised greater stability – with fewer crashes – and much more processing power.
This increased processing power was a huge positive for online casino developers, whose imaginations had previously been limited by platform capabilities. Today, for example, many of the services and games offered by Netent casino rely heavily on fast processing right out of the tab, without the necessity for plug-in downloads. This has allowed companies to be more ambitious and the amount of competition in the field means they have to find new ways to stand out. One way of achieving this is by offering welcome bonuses such as free spins and matched deposits for new customers.
Pocket power
One of the biggest technological changes impacting Canada’s biggest online casinos was the introduction of the smartphone. The launch of the iPhone is 2007 represented a major step-change for the industry and opened new, exciting doors for operators.
Today’s smartphone is powerful enough to process even the most complex online casino games, while the increased battery life of smartphones means players don’t have to cut their experience short or grab for a charger at a crucial moment.
Casual casino games, like bingo and slots, have also enjoyed a boost in popularity as more people choose to access their favorite platforms from mobile. Perhaps unlike an intense poker showdown, these kinds of games lend themselves perfectly to being enjoyed on the go.
High def
The modern casino game features spectacular graphics and colorful themes, and the dazzling, high-definition displays available on mobile and desktop mean they can provide an immersive experience.
Modern 4K gaming monitors bring online casino games to life and once again allow developers to really push the envelope when it comes to design. Large, high-end displays are available on mobile too, meaning players on the go can enjoy a premium experience in the palm of their hand.
It is perhaps in this department where the changes are most noticeable from the origins in the industry more than 20 years ago. The primitive card games of the past have been replaced by smooth, colorful experiences worthy of any high-end games console.
Tech
PlayStation 5 Pro rumored to beef up GPU and ray tracing, bring AI acceleration
|
The PlayStation 5 launched in late 2020, though it feels like it arrived later due to supply issues. A Pro model will reportedly arrive four years later with a much improved GPU, AI acceleration and other enhancements.
The GPU will be the biggest upgrade on the PS5 Pro. Rumors claim up to 45% higher rasterization performance and 33.5 TFLOPs of compute power. Future SDK versions will support resolutions up to 8K and higher frame rates with 4K @ 120fps and 8K @ 60fps being possible.
Ray tracing performance is set to include 2-3 times, even 4 times on some occasions. This is thanks to a massive increase from 18 BVH4 work groups to 30 BVH8. The so-called “Bounding Volume Hierarchies” help speed up ray intersection calculations (i.e. does this ray of light hit this object or not?). We will skip the technical details, but the digit after BVH means that each individual work group will be able to do more work.
The Pro will also feature the PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution upscaling and antialiasing technology (PSSR for short). This will be especially helpful for ray tracing, which sees computation demands explode as resolution goes up.
The PlayStation 5 Pro will also bring a custom machine learning architecture. An AI Accelerator will offer up to 300 TOPS of 8-bit and 67 TFLOPS of 16-bit floating point computation. This might be the most interesting part as modern generative models can create realistic textures and speech, write out text based on a prompt and so on – what can developers do with this?
The console will also come with a modest boost to the CPU, which will have a “High CPU Frequency Mode” that goes up to 3.85GHz (from 3.5GHz), a 10% increase. By the sound of it, the PS5 Pro is very close to thermal limits, so this mode will drop GPU frequency by 1.5% (resulting in 1% performance loss).
The Pro model will have faster RAM that does 18 gigatransfers per second, a 28% increase from 448GB/s to 576GB/s. This is needed to feed the beefier GPU.
The audio subsystem will also get a boost with 35% more performance that can be spent on higher quality sound effects.
The PlayStation 5 Pro is expected to have 1TB onboard storage and a detachable Blu-ray drive similar to the slim models. Sony might release the Pro model in Fall 2024, but there has been no official acknowledgment of the console.
Tech
Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 is for lower-tier high-end phones – MobileSyrup
Qualcomm has a new Snapdragon 8-series chip aimed at devices that aren’t quite flagships but are not quite mid-range either.
The new chip offers manufacturers more options but also further contributes the Qualcomm’s increasingly weird and confusing product lineup. The new 8s Gen 3 is like the opposite of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8+ chips, which typically offer a little more than the company’s annual flagship product.
The 8s Gen 3 matches most of what Qualcomm’s current Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 flagship offers, but with just a little less. For example, the chips have a similar GPU, but the 8s Gen 3’s version has one less performance core and runs at a lower frequency. Additionally, the 8s Gen 3 uses the previous generation Snapdraogn X70 5G modem with Wi-Fi 7 support, compared to the X75 modem in the 8 Gen 3.
Since AI capabilities were one of the major highlights of the 8 Gen 3, the 8s Gen 3, unsurprisingly, also sports similar (but not quite as good) AI chops. The 8s Gen 3 can support generative AI on-device and is capable of running large language models (LLMs) of up to 10 billion parameters. That includes LLMs like Llama 2 and Gemini Nano.
While that’s all well and good, it’ll be interesting to see how manufacturers use the 8s Gen 3, and how consumers respond to the new chip. Flagships will likely keep going for the flagship Qualcomm chips, like the 8 Gen 3 or inevitable 8+ Gen 3, whenever it arrives. But Qualcomm also offers the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3, just a hair below the new 8s Gen 3. Will the 8s Gen3 offer enough to make it a worthwhile choice over the 7 Gen 3? If you’re already looking at the 8s Gen 3, does it make sense to just go for the 8 Gen 3? Only time will tell.
Qualcomm expects the 8s Gen 3 to land in devices from Honor, iQOO, Realme, Redmi and Xiaomi in the coming months, though notably, none of those brands sell phones in Canada.
Header image credit: Qualcomm
Source: Qualcomm Via: The Verge
Tech
Google partnership 'missing piece' in Apple AI strategy – analysts – Proactive Investors USA
News of Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL, ETR:APC) and Google’s discussions over the rollout of the latter’s Gemini AI chatbot on iPhones sent shares higher and prompted positive feedback from analysts on Monday.
Apple climbed 1.4% on the reports that it would license Gemini to power new features in its latest iPhone software, while Google owner Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) jumped 4.6%.
As per Wedbush, such an agreement is the “missing piece” in Apple’s artificial intelligence strategy, due to materialise with the release of IOS 18 software for its products this year.
Such plans could involve the introduction of an AI App Store, as per Wedbush, alongside the incorporation of new features into the iPhone 16, expected in September.
These may well be among features unveiled by Apple at its Worldwide Developers Conference in June, such as homegrown large language models.
“This is a major win for Google to get onto the Apple ecosystem and have access to the golden installed base of Cupertino,” analysts said in a note.
Indeed, some 2 billion-plus Apple devices are said to currently be in circulation globally, with Wedbush also highlighting a likely “major license fee” attached to the deal.
“For Apple, this will give them the foundation and technology blueprint to double down on AI features currently being developed,” the bank continued.
This should help “make sure that iPhone 16 will be a potential game changer iPhone release around AI functionality”.
Though details of the deal, reported by Bloomberg, are slim, Wedbush said more could be expected before June’s conference, while reiterating an ‘outperform’ rating for Apple.
-
Science17 hours ago
SpaceX shares awesome rocket imagery from Starship flight
-
Science18 hours ago
Physicist Claims Universe Has No Dark Matter And Is 27 Billion Years Old
-
Media18 hours ago
Supreme Court to debate whether White House crosses First Amendment line on social media disinformation
-
Art18 hours ago
Toshiko Takaezu’s Posthumous Appeal
-
News21 hours ago
An Assignment: The New Norm for Job Applicants. Why?
-
Tech16 hours ago
Apple in talks to let Google’s Gemini power iPhone AI features, Bloomberg News says
-
Health18 hours ago
Researchers develop tool to predict likelihood of premature menopause in childhood cancer survivors
-
Tech20 hours ago
Pros and Cons of Hiring IT Services for Your Business