Full HD is so old hat these days that the Z4 Tablet’s next upgrade shouldn’t come as a shock. Where the Z2 Tablet had a 1080p screen, the new model has a high-DPI panel with a resolution of 2,560 x 1,600, delivering a pixel density of 299ppi.I’m still not convinced of the need for such high resolutions on small screens, especially since they can have an impact on power usage and performance, but I can’t criticise the quality of the Z4 Tablet’s display.It uses IPS technology, so viewing angles are exceptional, and first impressions are of a bright and colourful image that’s bristling with detail. The figures stack up impressively well, too. Testing with a colorimeter reveals a maximum brightness of 464cd/m2, a contrast ratio of 963:1 and good colour accuracy, with only a slight purple tinge to blues blotting the Xperia Z4 Tablet’s copybook.

It’s accompanied by a pair of front-facing speakers that are laudably clear. Although a little down on low-end body compared with the iPad Air 2, their position – embedded in the screen surround and forward-facing – means you’re less likely to obscure them with your hands.With so many pixels to work with, you’d expect the internals to have been beefed up too, and so it has proved. Sony has opted for one of Qualcomm’s top-end Snapdragon 810 SoCs, featuring an Adreno 430 GPU, and accompanied by 3GB of RAM and 32GB of eMMC storage.The former is an 64-bit octa-core part, and as with all such processors we’ve seen so far, it comprises a pair of quad-core CPUs. The more powerful of these (based on the ARM Cortex-A57) runs at 2GHz and deals with demanding tasks, while the less powerful 1.5GHz Cortex-A53 part deals with day-to-day jobs, thus saving power and – hopefully – battery life.

In terms of the way this tablet feels to use, the Xperia Tablet Z4 is peerless. It feels ultra-responsive, doesn’t slow down while multitasking, and plays demanding games extremely smoothly. And benchmark figures back this up, with the Z4 Tablet delivering a result of 37fps in the GFXBench T-Rex HD test at native resolution, and Geekbench scores of 1,261 and 4,226 in the single- and multi-core tests respectively. The Z4 Tablet can't quite match the Nexus 9 or iPad Air 2 for raw performance, as you can see from the table below, but it isn't far behind, and for multitasking it's a whisker ahead.Crucially, and perhaps more importantly, battery life is superb. I set a 720p movie to loop using the stock video player, and with the screen set to a standard brightness of 120cd/m2 the Sony Xperia Z4 Tablet lasted 12hrs 40mins on a single charge.

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That’s some way short of the Z2 Tablet’s astonishing 14hrs 38mins, but given the more demanding nature of the screen and internal hardware, I think Sony has done a great job. What’s more, by using Sony’s smart backlight control, it’s possible to eke out even more life from the Z4 Tablet’s 6,000mAh battery.Sony’s Android launcher continues to be one of the least intrusive around, and that continues on the Z4. This time it incorporates Android 5.0.2, and adds a number of handy features of its own.The best of the lot has to be the Chrome OS-like shortcut bar that appears in the bottom-left corner of the screen whenever the keyboard is connected. Just like Chrome OS, this toolbar adds shortcuts that launch key apps – Chrome, Gmail, Google Now, Drive, YouTube and Calendar – and even includes a Start menu in the bottom-left corner of the screen.The Start menu provides access to recently used apps via a vertically scrolling list, allows you to add and edit the shortcut menu to its right, and also hosts shortcut buttons for Sony’s pop-up apps, which comprise a calculator, screen grabber, countdown timer and browser. These may be subtle additions, but they make an awful lot of sense for keyboard users.

Sony Xperia Z4 Tablet: Rear of tablet
One area where the Xperia Z4 Tablet really stands out, though, is connectivity. It comes with 802.11ac Wi-Fi as standard, with support for MIMO, Bluetooth 4.1, NFC and MHL output for wired connection to a monitor, plus that all-important microSD slot for expanding on the Z4’s 32GB storage and an infrared transmitter. There's also a 4G version of the tablet for those who can't be bothered with the faff of tethering.For pictures and video, there’s an 8.1-megapixel rear-facing camera and 5.1-megapixel front-facing unit. Image quality from the rear camera isn’t brilliant – noise and compression artefacts spoil shots taken even in good light – but it’s just about good enough that you won’t feel too disappointed if you don’t have your phone to hand when you need to take a quick snap.The front-facing camera isn’t bad, either, but here the limited keyboard hinge adjustability causes problems: with the tablet slotted into its keyboard dock, you have to lean back to get your whole face into shot, or drop your seat to a comically low level.

With the inclusion of the Bluetooth keyboard, it seems that Sony is positioning the Xperia Z4 Tablet as a business and productivity device. It’s certainly light enough to take on the best Ultrabooks at their own game, and theoretically there are apps and services available that could help it do so.However, the reality is that the hardware – in particular the keyboard – fails to convince. It’s plasticky, cheap-feeling and far too cramped for fast typing. The wobbly hinge mount and lack of vertical adjustment provide even more cause for complaint.That wouldn’t be a problem had Sony made the Xperia Z4 Tablet available on its own at a lower price, because alone it represents a formidable competitor to the iPad Air 2, especially for those who favour Android over iOS. As it is, though, you can’t buy one without the other, a restriction that ensures the price pushes up to a rather hefty £500.

The aim of the partnership is to take a step towards computers that can work on the exascale level – that’s the ability for a system to perform a billion billion calculations every second, or one exaflop. The current fastest systems in the world can perform between ten and 33 million billion calculations per second, or 10 to 33 petaflops."Put into context, if exascale computing is the equivalent of an automobile reaching 1,000mph, today’s fastest systems are running within a range between ten and 33 miles per hour,” IBM said in a statement.The collaboration is planned to initially run for 18 months, and is predicted to end up with computers at speeds of more than 100 petaflops. That marks a sizeable leap from today’s fastest systems and a big step towards exascale computing.

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Looking forward to getting a 100-petaflop system in your iPhone? You might be waiting for some time. IBM and GENCI say the focus of the collaboration is on complex scientific applications for the new ultra-fast systems, which will use computing technology from IBM’s OpenPOWER ecosystem.GENCI is owned by a mixture of bodies, including the French state, the Commissariat à l’énergie atomique and the French National Centre for Scientific Research. Access to the OpenPOWER ecosystem will allow GENCI to tap into a wide network of high-performance computing innovations based on IBM’s POWER processor technology. As an example, IBM says this will include the connection of Nvidia GPUs accelerators to POWER processors through high-speed Nvidia NVLink interconnects.IBM seems confident that this partnership with a leading French computer agency will end up in the next stage of evolution for supercomputers: "We fully expect our collaborative efforts will produce innovations capable of moving the supercomputing industry that much closer to exascale," said Michel Teyssedre, CTO of IBM France.http://www.batteries-pc.com/hp.html

If we do reach an exascale level of computing, the repercussions could extend much further than faster phones and laptops. One exaflop is thought to be the processing speed of the human brain at neural level, which means exascale computers could help power simulations of the human brain, such as through the Human Brain Project. The ThinkPad X1 Carbon means business. Offering enterprise-grade features that Apple’s "Pro”-branded laptops lack, and a defiantly business-first design, this is a laptop designed to relish life in and out of the office.The first coup is connectivity. With an integrated 4G adapter included in every model across the range, this is one business portable which won't leave you scouting for a Wi-Fi hotspot or faffing with smartphone tethering.Then there’s the fingerprint reader, now tucked to the right of the keyboard rather than on the palm rest as on previous Carbons.

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