ARM processor becomes more and more popular during year 2012. Power and Integration—ARM Making More Inroads into More Designs. It’s about power—low power; almost no power. A huge and burgeoning market is opening for devices that are handheld and mobile, have rich graphics, deliver 32-bit multicore compute power, include Wi-Fi, web and often 4G connectivity, and that can last up to ten hours on a battery charge.The most obvious among these are smartphones and tablets, but there is also an increasing number of industrial and military devices that fall into this category.
The rivalry between ARM and Intel in this arena is predictably intense because try as it will, Intel has not been able to bring the power consumption of its Atom CPUs down to the level of ARM-based designs (Atom typically in 1-4 watt range and a single ARM Cortex-A9 core in the 250 mW range). ARM’s East unimpressed with Medfield, design wins article tells that Warren East, CEO of processor technology licensor ARM Holdings plc (Cambridge, England), is unimpressed by the announcements made by chip giant Intel about the low-power Medfield system-chip and its design wins. On the other hand Android will run better on our chips, says Intel. Look out what happens in this competition.
Windows-on-ARM Spells End of Wintel article tells that Brokerage house Nomura Equity Research forecasts that the emerging partnership between Microsoft and ARM will likely end the Windows-Intel duopoly. The long-term consequences for the world’s largest chip maker will likely be an exit from the tablet market as ARM makes inroads in notebook computers. As ARM is surely going to keep pointing out to everyone, they don’t have to beat Intel’s raw performance to make a big splash in this market, because for these kinds of devices, speed isn’t everything, and their promised power consumption advantage will surely be a major selling point.
Windows 8 Release Expected in 2012 article says that Windows 8 will be with us in 2012, according to Microsoft roadmaps. Microsoft still hinting at October Windows 8 release date. It will be seen what are the ramifications of Windows 8, which is supposed to run on either the x86 or ARM architectures. Windows on ARM will not be terribly successful says analyst but it is left to be seen is he right. ARM-based chip vendors that Microsoft is working with (TI, Nvidia, Qualcomm) are now focused on mobile devices (smartphones, tablets, etc.) because this is where the biggest perceived advantages of ARM-based chips lie, and do not seem to be actively working on PC designs.
Engineering Windows 8 for mobile networks is going on. Windows 8 Mobile Broadband Enhancements Detailed article tells that using mobile broadband in Windows 8 will no longer require specific drivers and third-party software. This is thanks to the new Mobile Broadband Interface Model (MBIM) standard, which hardware makers are reportedly already beginning to adopt, and a generic driver in Windows 8 that can interface with any chip supporting that standard. Windows will automatically detect which carrier it’s associated with and download any available mobile broadband app from the Windows store. MBIM 1.0 is a USB-based protocol for host and device connectivity for desktops, laptops, tablets and mobile devices. The specification supports multiple generations of GSM and CDMA-based 3G and 4G packet data services including the recent LTE technology.
Consumerization of IT is a hot trend that continues at year 2012. Uh-oh, PC: Half of computing device sales are mobile. Mobile App Usage Further Dominates Web, Spurred by Facebook article tells that the era of mobile computing, catalyzed by Apple and Google, is driving among the largest shifts in consumer behavior over the last forty years. Impressively, its rate of adoption is outpacing both the PC revolution of the 1980s and the Internet Boom of the 1990s. By the end of 2012, Flurry estimates that the cumulative number of iOS and Android devices activated will surge past 1 billion, making the rate of iOS and Android smart device adoption more than four times faster than that of personal computers (over 800 million PCs were sold between 1981 and 2000). Smartphones and tablets come with broadband connectivity out-of-the-box. Bring-your-own-device becoming accepted business practice.
Mobile UIs: It’s developers vs. users article tells that increased emphasis on distinctive smartphone UIs means even more headaches for cross-platform mobile developers. Whose UI will be a winner? Native apps trump the mobile Web.The increased emphasis on specialized mobile user interface guidelines casts new light on the debate over Web apps versus native development, too.
The Cloud is Not Just for Techies Anymore tells that cloud computing achieves mainstream status. So we demand more from it. That’s because our needs and expectations for a mainstream technology and an experimental technology differ. Once we depend on a technology to run our businesses, we demand minute-by-minute reliability and performance.
Cloud security is no oxymoron article is estimated that in 2013 over $148 billion will be spent on cloud computing. Companies large and small are using the cloud to conduct business and store critical information. The cloud is now mainstream. The paradigm of cloud computing requires cloud consumers to extend their trust boundaries outside their current network and infrastructure to encompass a cloud provider. There are three primary areas of cloud security that relate to almost any cloud implementation: authentication, encryption, and network access control. If you are dealing with those issues and software design, read Rugged Software Manifesto and Rugged Software Development presentation.
Enterprise IT’s power shift threatens server-huggers article tells that as more developers take on the task of building, deploying, and running applications on infrastructure outsourced to Amazon and others, traditional roles of system administration and IT operations will morph considerably or evaporate.
Explosion in “Big Data” Causing Data Center Crunch article tells that global business has been caught off-guard by the recent explosion in data volumes and is trying to cope with short-term fixes such as buying in data centre capacity. Oracle also found that the number of businesses looking to build new data centres within the next two years has risen. Data centre capacity and data volumes should be expected to go up – this drives data centre capacity building. Data centre capacity and data volumes should be expected to go up – this drives data centre capacity building. Most players active on “Big Data” field seems to plan to use Apache Hadoop framework for the distributed processing of large data sets across clusters of computers. At least EMC, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Informatica, HP, Dell and Cloudera are using Hadoop.
Cloud storage has been very popular topic lately to handle large amount of data storage. The benefits have been told very much, but now we can also see risks of that to realize. Did the Feds Just Kill the Cloud Storage Model? article claims that Megaupload Type Shutdowns and Patriot Act are killing interest to Cloud Storage. Many innocent Megaupload users have had their data taken away from them. The MegaUpload seizure shows how personal files hosted on remote servers operated by a third party can easily be caught up in a government raid targeted at digital pirates. In the wake of Megaupload crackdown, fear forces similar sites to shutter sharing services?. If you use any of these cloud storage sites to store or distribute your own non-infringing files, you are wise to have backups elsewhere, because they may be next on the DOJ’s copyright hit list.
Did the Feds Just Kill the Cloud Storage Model? article tells that worries have been steadily growing among European IT leaders that the USA Patriot Act would give the U.S. government unfettered access to their data if stored on the cloud servers of American providers. Escaping the grasp of the Patriot Act may be more difficult than the marketing suggests. “You have to fence yourself off and make sure that neither you or your cloud service provider has any operations in the United States”, “otherwise you’re vulnerable to U.S. jurisdiction.” And the cloud computing model is built on the argument data can and should reside anywhere around the world, freely passing between borders.
Data centers to cut LAN cord? article mentions that 60GHz wireless links are tested in data centers to ease east-west traffic jams. According to a recent article in The New York Times, data center and networking techies are playing around with 60GHz wireless networking for short-haul links to give rack-to-rack communications some extra bandwidth for when the east-west traffic goes a bit wild. The University of Washington and Microsoft Research published a paper at the Association of Computing Machinery’s SIGCOMM 2011 conference late last year about their tests of 60GHz wireless links in the data center. Their research used prototype links that bear some resemblance to the point-to-point, high bandwidth technology known as WiGig (Wireless Gigabit), which among other things is being proposed as a means to support wireless links between Blu-ray DVD players and TVs, replacing HDMI cables (Wilocity Demonstrates 60 GHz WiGig (Draft 802.11ad) Chipset at CES). 60 GHz band is suitable for indoor, high-bandwidth use in information technology.. There are still many places for physical wires. The wired connections used in a data center are highly reliable, so “why introduce variability in a mission-critical situation?”
820 Comments
BluNRay says:
Hey Epanorama,
On a similar note,, what are three technologies used in display devices …. this is for a computer technology class
Nice One!
tomi says:
The main display technologies nowdays (for flat displays) are:
- LCD
- OLED
- Plasma
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft touts Windows 8 sensor support
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2141382/microsoft-touts-windows-sensor-support
Microsoft has outlined the way Windows 8 will use sensors to enable users to have greater physical input to PC and tablet devices.
Microsoft is betting that its upcoming Windows 8 operating system will end up on tablets and that means taking input from a multitude of sensors. With typical Microsoft marketing hyperbole, the firm labeled this as ‘sensor fusion’ where a number of sensors are correlated to create what Microsoft calls “a 9-axis sensor fusion”.
Microsoft’s Windows 8 will support accelerometers, gyrometers, magnetometers, a compass, an inclinometer and a device orientation sensor.
Windows 8 will provide a comparable level of support for sensors as the current generation of other smartphone and tablet operating systems
Source: The Inquirer (http://s.tt/15ohK)
Supporting sensors in Windows 8
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/01/24/supporting-sensors-in-windows-8.aspx
Recent advances in sensor technology are catalysts for the acceleration and evolution of user experiences on PCs. The ability to react to changes in ambient light, motion, human proximity, and location are becoming common and essential elements of the computing experience.
The first thing we explored about sensors was how Windows 8 should use them at the system level, to adapt the PC to the environment while preserving battery life
Tomi Engdahl says:
Windows 8:
You have two arguments here.
1) No CTO will ever use the first release of an innovative product because it will have bugs in it
2) Because of all the new consumer-oriented features in Windows 8, W8 will automatically sync all of the sensitive info that a company has onto Microsoft’s public servers.
and to answer…
1) OK, but that doesn’t matter much in terms of Windows 8. Let them stand by until it becomes extremely stable, thats OK. But then again, Microsoft gives away it’s beta builds for free, so they are getting a lot of feedback for months, if not years, before the product is released. Still, I could care less if they wait until W9 to upgrade…all you’re proving here is that Windows 8 is an extremely large change to Windows 7.
2) It’s naive to think that Microsoft would release a business version of an operating system without allowing (through group policy, most likely) the option to deactivate autosyncing features.
Source: Comment at http://ceklog.kindel.com/2011/12/26/windows-phone-is-superior-why-hasnt-it-taken-off/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Foreign Data Unsafe From US Patriot Act, Says American Law Firm
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/01/26/0432230/foreign-data-unsafe-from-us-patriot-act-says-american-law-firm
“A prestigious law firm warns non-U.S. businesses their data is unsafe from costly and invasive raids by American law enforcement even if they host their data in their own countries. The wide interpretation of the USA Patriot Act ensures U.S. cops can legally demand data from almost anyone, anywhere for any reason and countries and their citizens are largely powerless to resist. The advice has resonance with the arrest this week of Kim ‘Dotcom’ on alleged copyright violations in the U.S.”
What will you do when the US comes for you?
http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/cloud/what-will-you-do-when-the-us-comes-for-you-20120125-1qhc1.html
Hosting your cloud onshore may not protect you when American cops come knocking.
Australian organisations destined for the cloud now have the dilemma of dealing with warrantless demands from US law enforcement as part of their due diligence, a partner at a top international law firm said.
Connie Carnabuci, a Hong Kong-based partner in global No.2 law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, said recent cases such as the Megaupload.com arrests this week and the overreach of US anti-terrorism legislation since 2001 laid bare Australians’ data.
“What we’re seeing is the legislation is being used quite liberally and connections to terrorism is quite remote and may be speculative,” she said.
“The American economy is still in the doldrums and is an economy where there’s a very strong imperative to position one’s self in a protectionist way.”
The Australian Defence Signals Directorate strongly encourages agencies to “choose either a locally-owned vendor or a foreign-owned vendor that is located in Australia and stores, processes and manages sensitive data only within Australia”.
Cloud Computing Security Considerations
Cyber Security Operations Centre Initial Guidance, April 2011
http://www.dsd.gov.au/infosec/cloud/cloud01.htm
Computer Refurbished says:
Computer Refurbished…
[...]Computer technologies for 2012 « Tomi Engdahl’s ePanorama blog[...]…
Tomi Engdahl says:
MegaUpload Users Plan to Sue the FBI over Lost Files
http://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-users-plan-to-sue-the-fbi-over-lost-files-120126/
However, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people used the site to share research data, work documents, personal video collections.
As of today, these people are still unsure whether they will ever get their personal belongings back.
In a response, Pirate Parties worldwide have started to make a list of all the people affected by the raids, and they are planning to file an official complaint against the US authorities.
“The widespread damage caused by the sudden closure of Megaupload is unjustified and completely disproportionate to the aim intended,” they announce.
The Pirate Parties are the first to make an inventory of the damage, but not the last.
john bulera says:
Coolthread, helped with my research!! God blessfor that.
Tomi Engdahl says:
5 low-profile startups that could change the face of big data
http://gigaom.com/cloud/5-low-profile-startups-that-could-change-the-face-of-big-data/
Big data is hot, but infrastructure-level platforms such as Hadoop, which focus on storage and processing, still need help to take them into the mainstream. They need a killer app or two that will let companies analyze, visualize and act on all that data
Tomi Engdahl says:
Does this case show how fragile cloud storage model can be when you select a wrong service provider?
MegaUpload data could be erased Thursday, says report
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57368037-93/megaupload-data-could-be-erased-thursday-says-report/?part=rss&subj=latest-news&tag=title
Data from MegaUpload could be erased as early as this Thursday, a report says–a disturbing prospect for those who might have used the recently shut down cyberlocker for legitimate purposes such as backing up business files.
MegaUpload’s assets have been seized by the government, and its bank accounts have been frozen, Hence, MegaUpload can no longer pay companies like Carpathia and Cogent for their services, the AP reports.
Carpathia Hosting and Cogent Communications Group–companies MegaUpload hired to store data–may begin deleting that data come Thursday.
The government said law enforcement officials had copied some data from servers but hadn’t physically taken the servers–and that now that the original search warrants have been executed, the remaining data cannot be legally accessed.
MegaUpload lawyer’s statements regarding the case:
Millions of people have their work and personal files on MegaUpload and depend on MegaUpload to provide service for them to make money to feed their family. One or two people in government decide the faith and livelihood of millions of families. This is immoral, unethical, and downright barbaric.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Multi-Language, Multi-Framework, what about Multi-Cloud?
http://blog.cloudfoundry.com/post/13481010615/multi-language-multi-framework-what-about-multi-cloud
Previously, developers had to put a lot of energy into preserving choice across operating systems and minimizing hard dependencies on specific operating systems. In the cloud era, there is a similar challenge to preserve choice across clouds and minimize dependencies on specific clouds.
Tomi Engdahl says:
ARM tips ‘gods and giants’ roadmap
http://www.edn.com/article/520736-ARM_tips_gods_and_giants_roadmap.php?cid=EDNToday_20120131
Processor and related IP licensor ARM Holdings plc has disclosed the names, but little else, on the roadmap of cores it is working on in 2012 and revealed a gods and giants theme. The roadmap includes high-performance processors, a low-power microcontroller, and graphics cores.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Any Data – Big Insights
http://en.community.dell.com/dell-blogs/direct2dell/b/direct2dell/archive/2012/01/31/any-data-_2d00_-big-results.aspx
Over the last year, many industry analysts have tried to define Big Data. Some of the common dimensions that have been used to define Big Data are the 3 V’s, Volume, Velocity and Variety. (Volume = multiple terabytes or over a petabyte; variety = numbers, audio, video, text, streams, weblogs, social media etc.; velocity = the speed with which it is collected). Although the 3 V’s do a good job as parameters for Big Data there are other things at play that need to be captured to understand the true nature of Big Data. In short, to describe the data landscape more holistically, we need to step beyond the 3 V’s.
Tomi Engdahl says:
EXCLUSIVE: WikiLeaks to move servers offshore, sources say
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/01/31/exclusive-wikileaks-to-move-servers-offshore-sources-say/
Julian Assange’s investors are in the process of purchasing a boat to move WikiLeaks’ servers offshore in an attempt to evade prosecution from U.S. law enforcement, FoxNews.com has learned
“Then they can keep running WikiLeaks and nobody can touch them,” one source told FoxNews.com. “If you get a certain distance away from any land, then you’re dealing with maritime law … They can’t prosecute him under maritime law. He’s safe. He’s not an idiot, he’s actually very smart.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
EFF will help Megaupload users reclaim data
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2142669/eff-help-megaupload-users-reclaim
“The government has finished its investigation of Megaupload’s servers and claims that the companies that own those servers – Carpathia and Cogent – are free to delete their contents. Luckily, those companies aren’t following the government’s example of shooting first and asking later.”
It added that Carpathia had made the web site where Megaupload customers can contact the EFF.
“Megaupload had many lawful customers, yet those people were given no notice that they might lose access to their data and no clear path to getting their property back. Setting aside the legal case against Megaupload, the government should try to avoid this kind of collateral damage, not create it,” said the EFF.
Tomi Engdahl says:
EFF helps MegaUpload users claw legit stuff back from Feds
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/01/eff_to_help_legit_megauploaders/
The EFF has stepped in to condemn the move and has offered to help MegaUpload server hosts Carpathia Hosting to restore legitimate content to its owners through a new website – megaretrieval.com. The EFF hopes to use the site to collect information about the “multitude of innocent users who stored legitimate, non-infringing files on the cloud-storage service [and] were left with no means to access their data”.
EFF can’t promise that the data will be retrieved, though
Tomi Engdahl says:
Windows 8 may have an edge over Android on tablets, ARM CEO says
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-57369165-64/windows-8-may-have-an-edge-over-android-on-tablets-arm-ceo-says/
In the wake of a solid earnings report, ARM’s CEO Warren East said Microsoft may have some potential advantages over Android in the tablet market.
Responding to an analyst’s question about why consumers would buy Windows 8 tablets when Android tablet sales have been “disappointing,” East cited Microsoft’s brand recognition among consumers.
“Consumers are familiar with Microsoft and very familiar with Windows and they’re less familiar with an Android environment. Microsoft has an awareness advantage with consumers that the Android folks didn’t have,” he said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Seagate: Shortage of disk drives to continue through 2012
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9223872/Seagate_Shortage_of_disk_drives_to_continue_through_2012
Seagate Technology said Tuesday that supply of hard disk drives (HDDs) this year will continue to fall short of demand, leading large customers to look to long-term agreements to ensure supply after devastating floods in Thailand.
Shortage of drives by the end of this year is likely to be about 150 million units, it said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Windows 8 ARM devices to have a non-Metro desktop experience with app restrictions?
http://www.theverge.com/microsoft/2012/2/1/2763980/windows-8-arm-desktop-app-restriction-certificates
ARM tablets running Windows 8 are designed to be Microsoft’s alternative to Apple’s iPad, and the company is keen to ensure applications do not affect the battery life.
Back in December, a rumor emerged that Microsoft could be ditching the traditional Windows desktop for Windows 8 ARM tablets, signaling a move towards the Metro style user interface as the sole ARM strategy. Microsoft has consistently refused to comment on its plans for Windows 8 ARM, and has been reluctant to let vendors show off tablets running on ARM chipsets.
Microsoft is said to be contemplating a restricted desktop for Windows 8 ARM involving trusted certificates for ARM desktop applications.
A Windows 8 beta, labeled as a “Consumer Preview,” is due in the coming weeks, and one source has revealed Microsoft is building escrow copies of the software
Tomi Engdahl says:
http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/arm+hyokkaa+intelin+tontille+64bittisilla+suorittimilla/a769060?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-02022012&
ARM, Intel’s attack plot 64-bit processors
The first 64-bit processors based on ARMv8 architecture, which was announced last October. The mass production of 64-bit access by the year 2014, after which they can expect to manifest himself in new equipment.
64-bit processors on the license has already been sold for four chip manufacturers, including Nvidia and AppliedMicro Circuits
Ubuntu operating system is already ARMv8-functional version of the architecture and Red Hat support is planned.
Tomi Engdahl says:
ARM posts bumper profits as the firm looks to new markets
Developing countries and servers are key
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2143049/arm-posts-bumper-profits-firm-looks-markets
ARM has bucked the trend of lacklustre financials at semiconductor firms by posting a 42 per cent increase in profits for the fourth quarter of 2011.
ARM’s various chip designs power the vast majority of mobile phones and are found at the heart of many embedded systems
“These numbers indicate the exponential phase is slowing, but growth rates remain healthy. There is still a lot of room left for growth in smartphones – especially in less developed markets.
Source: The Inquirer (http://s.tt/15uQC)
ARM posts bumper profits, Texas Instruments and ST Microelectronics falter
Licensing is the name of the game
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2119763/arm-posts-bumper-profits-texas-instruments-st-microelectronics-falter
ARM reported 44 per cent growth in third quarter profits despite seeing “below seasonal growth” in the chip industry.
Warren East, CEO of ARM said the company enjoyed a 50 per cent increase in shipping chips that end up in non-mobile devices, such as televisions and networking applications.
While ARM posted bumper profits, a couple of its licensees didn’t fare so well. Texas Instruments (TI) and ST Microelectronics, which supply chips to numerous smartphone makers, both missed their sales estimates.
Source: The Inquirer (http://s.tt/14h9W)
Tomi Engdahl says:
Kodak’s travails provide multiple lessons
Markets and technologies that once looked as though they would last forever sometimes do not.
http://www.edn.com/article/520715-Kodak_s_travails_provide_multiple_lessons.php?cid=NL_UBM+Electronics
The lesson is that disruptive technologies truly are so, and most companies can’t—or shouldn’t—make that transition. In the electronics world, for example, only a few vendors of vacuum tubes made it into the transistor world, and only a few of the transistor companies made it into ICs. Such is change.
Not that long ago, the commentary-and-pundit class was worried—and fearful—that, as we entered the 21st century, IBM and its PCs running on Intel CPUs with Microsoft Windows operating systems would dominate. So where are we now, smart folks? IBM is out of the PC business, and both Intel and Microsoft, though still major players, face tough competition in both CPUs and operating systems for new smartphones, tablets, and embedded products
Tomi Engdahl says:
AMD to go ‘ambidextrous,’ grow another ARM?
http://techreport.com/discussions.x/22412
at AMD’s Financial Analyst Day, a procession of top AMD executives—from new CEO Rory Read to new CTO Mark Papermaster and new Sr. VP and GM Lisa Su—has used a metaphor about being “ambidextrous” when it comes to architectures, meaning CPU core instruction set architectures. The somewhat oblique yet obvious implication: that AMD’s future products will eventually include chips with ARM CPU cores for markets where it makes sense.
AMD Says It’s ‘Ambidextrous,’ Hints It May Offer ARM Chips
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/02/02/1954238/amd-says-its-ambidextrous-hints-it-may-offer-arm-chips
One executive went even further: ‘She said AMD will not be “religious” about architectures and touted AMD’s “flexibility” as one of its key strategic advantages for the future.’ The roadmaps the execs showed focused on x86 offerings, but it seems AMD is overtly setting the stage for a collaboration with ARM
COMMENTS:
It’s a tough question. The Intel Atom has an edge on ARM, but it’s not a big one, and while a high-performance ARM chip costs below $20, the Atom is significantly more. On the other hand, right now there are no ARM implementations that are really competitive on the PC front, and probably won’t be until ARMv8 (64-bit) chips, or at least until Cortex-A15. A15 chips will probably come out in late 2012 and be a bit faster than the Atom, but a long way from Sandy Bridge and the other current Intel designs.
Its also worth noting that ARM has never been about performance until the semi-recent smart phone (mobile computing) surge. And even today, performance takes a backseat to power consumption. And it is here where ARM has always led the way. ARM vs Intel, ARM provides better price, better consumption, and very competative performance, albeit second place. But given the market to whch ARM is primarily focused on, ARM easily scores the win; in spite of Intels best efforts.
For those doing more traditional embedded development, Intel’s offers are likely front runners. For those participating in the mobile computer segment, ARM, by far, is the very clear winner.
The price tag is directly comparable, because ARM doesn’t make processors, they sell licenses to designs. The only relevant metric is really performance at a given power point.
The closest competitor is Intel’s Atom chips. At comparable power points, the current ARM chips seem to substantially outperform Atom chips, and the ARM chips scale far lower than Intel’s do. It becomes a bit murkier at higher power levels, since until recently nobody was really making ARM chips that high, but we’ll see a lot more competition in this field in the future with the ARM Cortex A15, which is intended to be a lot more scalable. The current design is planned to go from 1.0GHz single-core, up to 2.5GHz eight-core, depending on what the integrator wants.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The IT certs that no longer pay extra — and the new skills that do
http://www.infoworld.com/d/the-industry-standard/the-it-certs-no-longer-pay-extra-and-the-new-skills-do-185555
Overall employment in tech is improving, but the certs you could once count on for a job or extra pay are losing their special value
businesses no longer value what are increasingly considered standard skills, and instead are putting their money both into a new set of emerging specialties and into hybrid technology/business roles.
Because those hybrid jobs are scattered across different departments and lines of business, counting them is much more difficult than it was when nearly all IT jobs were found in the IT department.
“Pure-play [tech] jobs are on the decline,” concurs Bill Reynolds, a partner at Foote.
The trend towards broader skill sets is not new. Historically, an IT pro might have been successful if he or she was certified in a specific application from a specific vendor, such as Microsoft, Cisco, or Novell. But as technology became less proprietary, people needed to certify in areas that encompassed more than one vendor, such as security.
Now comes the next leap,
So which skills are becoming more valuable, gaining the pay premiums IT pros seek? Certified skills that jumped by 15 percent or more included EC-Council certified security analyst, certified wireless network administrator, CompTIA Server+, and HP accredited platform specialist.
On Dice.com, the fastest growing skill sets included those related to Java, iPhone, Android, cloud, e-commerce, and mobile applications, although Oracle database and the combined category of C, C++, and C# software development accounted for the lion’s share of actual listings by skill.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 DNA splice is on – report
Apple-flavoured future features leaked
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/03/windows_phone_8_features_leaked/
Windows 8 and Microsoft’s next major phone operating system will merge, if reports are correct.
Windows Phone 8, codenamed Apollo, will reuse code from Windows 8, due this year – specifically the kernel, network stacks, security and multi media. That means Windows Phone 8 will ditch the current Windows Phone 7.5 core that uses Windows Embedded Compact.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Understanding AMD’s Roadmap & New Direction
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5503/understanding-amds-roadmap-new-direction
The name of the game for AMD in 2012 is execution. Far too often at previous AMD events we’d see a roadmap with no indication of whether or not AMD would actually stick to it.
As a much smaller company than Intel, AMD had an almost impossible task competing in the x86 space, but AMD should have also been far more agile than it was given its size. AMD’s restructuring is supposed to fix these agility and execution problems
As far as the roadmap goes, AMD already laid out what it hopes to accomplish by 2013. The best way to summarize AMD’s next two years is: APUs and servers.
The big transition will happen next year, as AMD moves its entire APU stack from 32nm SOI to a bulk 28nm process at Global Foundries.
AMD: The Flexibility is in the Fabric
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5505/amd-the-flexibility-is-in-the-fabric
A theme of the new AMD is modularity. We’ve of course heard this before as it has always been a goal of AMD’s to bring to market more modular, configurable designs, however this time the rhetoric is a lot more serious. In our earlier coverage we talked about future AMD SoCs allowing for a combination of AMD x86 CPU, GPU and 3rd party IP blocks
With the fabric created, AMD can also change the way it does chip design. Today APU designs are seen from start to finish.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why the feds smashed Megaupload
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/why-the-feds-smashed-megaupload.ars
Going after Megaupload, one of the most popular sites in the world and one that uses a surprising amount of corporate bandwidth, might seem a strange choice.
For years, the site has claimed to take down unauthorized content when notified by rightsholders.
But the government asserts that Megaupload merely wanted the veneer of legitimacy, while its employees knew full well that the site’s main use was to distribute infringing content. Indeed, the government points to numerous internal e-mails and chat logs from employees showing that they were aware of copyrighted material on the site and even shared it with each other. Because of this, the government says that the site does not qualify for a “safe harbor” of the kind that protected YouTube from Viacom’s $1 billion lawsuit.
Megaupload employees apparently knew how the site was being used. When making payments through its “uploader rewards” program, employees sometimes looked through the material in those accounts first. “10+ Full popular DVD rips (split files), a few small porn movies, some software with keygenerators (warez),” said one of these notes. (The DMCA does not provide a “safe harbor” to sites who have actual knowledge of infringing material and do nothing about it.)
Explainer: How can the US seize a “Hong Kong site” like Megaupload?
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/explainer-how-can-the-us-seize-a-hong-kong-site-like-megaupload.ars
The Megaupload takedown, and the arrest of its key employees, might seem to vindicate late 1990s worries about the Internet and jurisdiction. Does putting a site on the ‘Net, though it might be hosted anywhere in the world, subject you simultaneously to the laws of every country on earth? Why would Megaupload, based in Hong Kong, be subject to US copyright laws and to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act?
“Because events on the Net occur everywhere but nowhere in particular,” wrote law professors David Johnson and David Post in a 1996 Stanford Law Review article, “no physical jurisdiction has a more compelling claim than any other to subject these events exclusively to its laws.” The flip side was that every jurisdiction might make a claim—after all, Internet publishing is “borderless,” right?
Megaupload purposely did business in the US and with US residents, and it targeted its sites (in part) toward the US. You generally can’t gain the benefits of doing business in a jurisdiction without complying with its laws, and being subject to its enforcement efforts (assuming that the jurisdiction can physically gets its hands on you)
Megaupload wasn’t just some Hong Kong enterprise that “happened” to be used by US residents. The site had leased more than 1,000 servers in North America alone; 525 were at Carpathia Hosting and were located in Virginia.
The money was mainly routed through US-based PayPal
By sending the money to a US address, the indictment suggests that Megaupload had actual knowledge that it was doing business in the US and exposing itself to US jurisdiction. Megaupload also received money from US users through PayPal.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Windows 8 Start button removed by Microsoft in ‘Consumer Preview’
http://www.theverge.com/microsoft/2012/2/5/2768471/windows-8-start-button-removed-consumer-preview
Microsoft has taken the bold step of removing the traditional Windows Start button from its Windows 8 “Consumer Preview.” The Start button and menu were introduced with Windows 95 over 15 years ago, and it appears Microsoft will scrap both of them once Windows 8 is released later this year.
Tomi Engdahl says:
AMD Eyes ARM Alliance in War on Intel
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/02/papermaster/
Could the low-power chip design that’s used in your iPhone someday show up inside the chips built by Intel rival Advanced Micro Devices?
Definitely maybe. Or as AMD’s brand new Chief Technology Officer Mark Papermaster put it to us: “The answer is not no.”
Of course, the answer is not yes either.
And as the CTO of a company that has the unenviable job of taking on Intel, Papermaster’s apparent openness to ARM makes sense.
The latest battlefield: servers. ARM has already lined up a handful of server-chip makers, including HP-friendly startup Calxeda, who are trying to push their designs into the server space.
If AMD did decide to produce an ARM chip, that probably wouldn’t show up in servers before 2014, says Krewell, an analyst with The Linley Group.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Calxeda Stretches ARM into the Clouds
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2011/11/calxedas-arm-for-the-cloud/
On Tuesday, Austin-based startup Calxeda launched its EnergyCore ARM system-on-chip (SoC) for cloud servers. At first glance, Calxeda’s looks like something you’d find inside a smartphone, but the product is essentially a complete server on a chip, minus the mass storage and memory.
The company puts four of these EnergyCore SoCs onto a single daughterboard, called an EnergyCard, which is a reference design that also hosts four DIMM slots and four SATA ports. A systems integrator would plug multiple daughterboards into a single mainboard to build a rack-mountable unit, and then those units could be linked via Ethernet into a system that can scale out to form a single system that’s home to some 4096 EnergyCore processors (or a little over 1,000 four-processor EnergyCards).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Shrunken Servers Aim for a Greener Internet
http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/39607/page2/
ARM-based chips are promising but not yet available in versions capable of the more powerful 64-bit computing tasks that data centers require, points out Jean Bozman, an analyst with IDC. SeaMicro’s approach, which combines Intel’s proven 64-bit server chip with a stripped-down, more efficient design, could gain a foothold first. “This is already shipping to customers,” she points out.
Tomi Engdahl says:
HP Paid Intel $690 Million To Keep Itanium On Life Support
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/02/hp-itanium/
Itanium was supposed to be a superchip that united the high-end server business, but it turned out that Intel’s boring old X86 chips — now sold as Xeon — were good enough to get the job done.
How much does it cost to keep Intel from dumping a chip that hardly anyone is buying? Well, if you’re Hewlett Packard, that would be about $88 million per year.
That’s what came out on Monday, after a Santa Clara County Court judge ordered court documents unsealed in HP and Oracle’s angry dispute centering on Oracle’s decision stop supporting the processor that runs HP’s high-end servers.
n 2008, HP agreed to pay Intel $440 million dollars over five yearsThen in 2010, the two companies signed another $250 million deal that would keep Itanium on life support through 2017.
Tomi Engdahl says:
AMD sets out its plans for 2013, hints at a possible ARM future
http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/02/amd-sets-out-its-plans-for-2013-hints-at-a-possible-arm-future.ars
Tomi Engdahl says:
MYSTERY as QLogic hurls InfiniBand from train
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/06/qlogic_exits_ib/
Storage networking and InfiniBand supplier is giving up on InfiniBand and selling that business line to Intel for $125 million.
QLogic is in a seemingly permanent duel with Emulex, from which it was spun-out in 1994, for dominance in the Fibre Channel host bus adapter (HBA) market and also the so far un-dynamic Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) market which is based on Converged Network Adapters (CNAs), the combination of the Fibre Channel protocol stack and Ethernet interface card.
QLogic has had a line of InfiniBand products for some time and was a third player alongside the two leading players; Mellanox and Voltaire.
The Fibre Channel HBA market is thought to be steady but not growing because FCoE will transfer storage networking from it to Ethernet over time.
Intel has a software FCoE product but Q thinks that hardware offload is the way to go for FCoE and isn’t worried about the Intel product.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple intern’s thesis leaks secret project to port Mac OS X to ARM processors
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/12/02/07/apple_intern_thesis_leaks_secret_project_to_port_mac_os_x_to_arm_processors.html
An academic paper written by a former Apple intern who now serves as a Core OS engineer at the company has revealed that it was working on a secret experiment to port Mac OS X Snow Leopard to the ARM architecture.
According to the paper, Schaap worked with the group to get Darwin, the “lower half” of Apple’s Mac OS X operating system, to boot onto an ARM processor from Marvell. During the course of the project, he achieved his goal of “booting into a multi-user prompt,” though some issues still remained due to a “poor implementation on the debug hardware.”
It is, however, highly possible that Apple’s explorations into porting Mac OS X to the ARM architecture were not meant to ever ship in an actual product. The company has been known to place new engineers on decoy projects in order to determine their trustworthiness.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Inside the mind of EMC: Is storage just a launchpad?
I wanna be a data centre contender …
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/07/emc_datacentre_innovator/
Going forward EMC wants to be the most disruptive data centre infrastructure company in our industry. While today storage is our centre and our heritage, we’ve just shipped a new storage offering with VFCache and announced another with Thunder, increasingly virtualisation, security, management and analytics will complement that foundation to give us a broad data centre footprint.
Strategists and chief technology officers (CTO) will be concerned that this will mark a seismic shift in the data centre and that the era of the stand-alone storage supplier is coming to an end. The stand-alone storage suppliers have got to get deep into the converged stack platform business or face the same fate as mammoths and sabre tooth tigers.
Less paranoid CTOs and strategists will say: “Nonsense. Data centres are not like a car fleet. Enterprise customers will always go for best-of-breed because of the total cost of ownership advantages, performance and manageability advantages, etc.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel jumps on WiFi Direct advertising bandwagon
Adverts on ad-hoc network
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2144227/intel-jumps-wifi-direct-advertising-bandwagon
Intel that will see the chipmaker include Artivision’s in-video advertising technology in its software development kit (SDK) for WiFi Direct. The wireless standard allows supporting devices to create ad-hoc networks between them
So far Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus is the only Android smartphone to support this technology
Intel showed off its Medfield processor at CES and while the firm is practically nowhere in the smartphone and tablet market, it has a boat load of intellectual property, a marketing budget larger than the GDPs of some third-world nations and one of the best developer relations programmes going. And both Apple and Google know that advertising is what developers rely on to pay the bills, so this could be a shrewd move by Intel to control it in the WiFi Direct standard before others.
Tomi Engdahl says:
DIY Mobile Apps Win Honeywell to Disney
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-07/do-it-yourself-mobile-applications-gain-honeywell-to-disney-embrace-tech.html
Dongyan Wang, an executive at data- storage provider NetApp Inc. (NTAP), did what peers at some other businesses deem unthinkable: He let the company’s 10,000 employees start making their own mobile applications for work.
Do-it-yourself mobile software can be unreliable or leave a company vulnerable to malware. Wang bet that employee-generated applications would result in a productivity boost and cost reduction that outweighed those risks.
One year later, the effort has resulted in 20 apps, including an employee directory and another that helps provide customer service, Bloomberg Businessweek.com reported today. The apps cost an average of $35,000 to $50,000 to build, compared with hundreds of thousands of dollars or more for programs made with help from conventional business-software makers
A growing number of workers, even those without technical expertise, are building mobile apps for use on the job, a democratization of technology creation spurred by the boom in portable devices, such as Apple Inc. iPads and the smartphones featuring Google Inc.’s Android. That can create tension with information technology managers concerned about network security.
The DIY app trend is fueling demand for services provided by such companies as Taptera, Mobile Roadie and Socialize Inc.’s AppMakr, which can make it easier and cheaper to build mobile apps.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Telcos Would Be Testing an Apple iTV Prototype
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/02/apple-itv-telecoms/
One day, Apple is purportedly sourcing parts suppliers for it rumored HDTV project. The next day, actual HDTV prototypes are in the hands of research labs in Canada. Such is the hurried development cycle of a product that currently lives only in rumorspace.
According to the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail, telecom companies Rogers and Bell Canada have in their labs an early prototype of Apple’s rumored television set.
“Rumors that Apple’s television is in the hands of telcos suggest that they’ve decided to follow the Microsoft model, rather than creating the ‘Apple subscription experience,’” Forrester analyst James McQuivey said.
“They’re looking for a partner. They’re looking for someone with wireless and broadband capabilities,” The Globe and Mail source said of Apple. Jefferies analyst Peter Misek suggested that in the U.S., the TV would likely arrive on AT&T and Verizon.
“This business model makes the most sense for Apple,” IHS analyst Jordan Selburn told Wired, saying the approach would let Apple completely integrate content from the operator, as well as iTunes.
Tomi Engdahl says:
File Sharing in the Post MegaUpload Era
http://blog.deepfield.net/2012/02/07/file-sharing-in-the-post-megaupload-era/
On January 18, 2012 global file sharing traffic collapsed. In a series of coordinate raids, US and New Zealand authorities seized thousands of MegaUpload servers and arrested its founder
As the largest file sharing service on the Internet, MegaUpload downloads represented 30-40% of all file sharing. In the space of an hour, Internet traffic globally plummeted by an astounding 2-3%.
The web sites for copyright protected and legal file sharing look nearly identical with similar graphics, sales messaging, and perhaps ironically (or cynically), DMCA policies and warnings against illegal file sharing. The only exception was MegaUpload which made little effort to disguise its true business focus (in retrospect, possibly a mistake).
In fact, though there are hundreds of file sharing sites, an extremely small number of colo-location providers (six of them) provide infrastructure to these sites that generate more than 80% of all Internet file sharing traffic. Like other niche industries, file sharing has evolved with a specialized ecosystem / cyber supply chain.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Study: U.S. gaming population has nearly tripled in three years
http://venturebeat.com/2012/02/08/study-u-s-gaming-population-has-nearly-tripled-in-three-years/
Online and mobile gaming are transforming the industry, the study says, changing it from one focused essentially on packaged goods sold at retail to one that provides services to consumers.
“Instead of ending support of customers after they buy individual game titles, game companies now focus on building gamer communities and developing ongoing relationships with their customers,” said Parks Associates research analyst and study author Pietro Macchiarella. “The positive effect of this approach is that game monetization can be extended beyond the point of sale. Unlike traditional offline games, the online world allows the industry to earn revenue even when people play the same game repeatedly.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Windows 8 Consumer Preview due February 29: why it’s not called beta
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/windows-8-consumer-preview-due-february-29-why-its-not-called-beta/4496
Summary: The Windows 8 Consumer Preview will be available for download on February 29. Why isn’t it called a beta? Blame Google. And Apple. And Microsoft. Especially Microsoft.
On February 29, Microsoft will hold a special, invitation-only event in Barcelona. Presumably, at the same time they will flip a switch that gives the general public access to a major milestone in the Windows 8 development process.
First Windows 8 ‘Consumer Preview’ preinstalled apps revealed
http://www.theverge.com/microsoft/2012/2/8/2784252/windows-8-consumer-preview-applications
20
inShare
Microsoft’s Windows 8 “Consumer Preview” is nearing release and the company is putting the finishing touches on the preinstalled application list.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mali graphics to lead in smart TVs, says ARM’s East
http://www.edn.com/article/520754-Mali_graphics_to_lead_in_smart_TVs_says_ARM_s_East.php
Mali graphics technology from IP licensor ARM Holdings plc shipped in tens of millions of partners’ chips in 2011, and will do even better in 2012, particularly in digital televisions, according to CEO Warren East.
East expects ARM to beat its rival graphics IP licensor Imagination Technologies Group plc in digital television in 2012 to achieve 70 percent market share of those televisions with embedded graphics capability.
“Mali graphics is now generating royalty. We said 2011 was going to be the year of tens of millions of units of Mali graphics. It was indeed a year of tens of millions of units of Mali graphics. We’re going to see that trend continue in 2012, particularly with the digital TVs,” East said to financial analysts assembled to discuss ARM’s 4Q11 financial results on Tuesday (Jan 31).
Tomi Engdahl says:
http://www.cio.com/article/699603/India_Builds_a_Mega_Data_Center
India Builds a Mega Data Center
IBM has designed and helped to build a 900,000-square-foot data center in India that it says is the largest in that country in terms of size and power. It’s also among the largest in the world.
http://www.cio.com/slideshow/detail/24520/10-Essential-Data-Center-Appliances#slide1
10 Essential Data Center Appliances
WAN optimizers and application accelerators are vital pieces of the data center.
In fortified data center, NYSE runs ‘gated’ trading cloud
NYSE’s ‘community cloud’ is aimed at financial services firms
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9219668/In_fortified_data_center_NYSE_runs_gated_trading_cloud
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ethernet standards for hyper-scale cloud networking
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/09/ethernet_hyper_scale_networks/
A hyper-scale Ethernet network will be global in scale and embrace tens of thousands of cables and switches, millions of ports, and trillions, perhaps quadrillions, of packets of data flowing across the network a year, possibly even more.
The Ethernet that will be used in such a network has not been developed yet, but it is going in that direction and it will be based on standards and speeds that are coming into use now
Currently we are seeing 10Gbit/s Ethernet links and ports being used for high data throughput end-points of Ethernet fabrics. The inter-switch links, the fabric trunk lines, are moving to 40Gbit/s with backbones, network spines, beginning to feature 100Gbit/s Ethernet.
in an attempt to layer Fibre Channel storage networking on Ethernet, the IEEE is developing Data Centre Ethernet (DCE) to stop packet-loss and provide predictable packet delivery latency.
Where standardisation efforts seem to be failing is in coping with the limitations of Ethernet’s Spanning Tree protocol.
TRILL (Transparent Interconnect of Lots of Links) is an IETF standard aiming to get over this, with, for example, Brocade and Cisco supporting it. It provides for multiple path use in Ethernet, and so doesn’t waste bandwidth.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Building Windows for the ARM processor architecture
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/02/09/building-windows-for-the-arm-processor-architecture.aspx
One of the notable aspects of Microsoft Windows has been the flexibility the architecture has shown through shifts in technology and expansion of customer usage over time. What started out as an operating system for one person working solo with productivity software is now the foundation of a wide array of hardware and software technologies, a spectrum of connected Windows products, and an incredibly flexible approach to computing. With Windows 8, we have reimagined Windows from the chipset to the experience—and bringing this reimagined Windows to the ARM® processor architecture is a significant part of this innovation.
This post is about the technical foundation of what we call, for the purposes of this post, Windows on ARM, or WOA. WOA is a new member of the Windows family, much like Windows Server, Windows Embedded, or Windows Phone. As with those products, WOA builds on the foundation of Windows, has a very high degree of commonality and very significant shared code with Windows 8
Using WOA “out of the box” will feel just like using Windows 8 on x86/64. You will sign in the same way. You will start and launch apps the same way. You will use the new Windows Store the same way. You will have access to the intrinsic capabilities of Windows, from the new Start screen and Metro style apps and Internet Explorer, to peripherals, and if you wish, the Windows desktop with tools like Windows File Explorer and desktop Internet Explorer.
WOA PCs are still under development and our collective goal is for PC makers to ship them the same time as PCs designed for Windows 8 on x86/64. These PCs will be built on unique and innovative hardware platforms provided by NVIDIA, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments, with a common Windows on ARM OS foundation—all running the same Windows OS binaries
Metro style apps in the Windows Store can support both WOA and Windows 8 on x86/64. Developers wishing to target WOA do so by writing applications for the WinRT (Windows APIs for building Metro style apps) using the new Visual Studio 11 tools in a variety of languages, including C#/VB/XAML and Jscript/ HTML5.
WOA does not support running, emulating, or porting existing x86/64 desktop apps.
Enabling Windows to run super well on the ARM architecture is a significant engineering task.
ARM SoCs for WOA have DirectX capable GPUs (DX) for accelerated graphics in Internet Explorer 10, in the user interface of Windows, and in Metro style apps. Taking advantage of a DX capable GPU is essential for delivering a responsive user experience.
WOA PCs use hardware support for offloading specific work from the main processor to integrated hardware subsystems. This improves performance and battery life.
As we mentioned, a portion of Windows is generally built with code that can be made to work on ARM in a technically straightforward manner. These subsystems include the Windows desktop and applets and supporting APIs, though we needed to significantly re-architect all of them for better resource and power utilization.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The dark side of the cloud
http://www.cloudpro.co.uk/cloud-essentials/cloud-security/2791/dark-side-cloud?page=0,0
As cloud-borne threats grow, anti-malware companies look to the cloud for solutions.
“If you’re sharing information via the cloud it is bound to be a vector for infection,” claimed Leon Ward, a field marketing manager at Sourcefire – the anti-malware company responsible for study.
“Cybercriminals use exactly the same tools as legitimate businesses, and are becoming more proficient,” added Michael de Crespigny, CEO of the Information Security Forum (ISF). And with allegations rife that hackers based in China, Russia and elsewhere are state-sponsored, he reminded us “Government espionage units have the same access to those tools” as well.
“Nobody can stop 100 per cent of threats, it is just not possible,” he said.
“90 per cent of malware comes through spam – that’s anything that requires a click on any vector,” he claimed. “Anything else is a technical problem.”
“Maybe instead of talking about 100 per cent protection, we should accept that eventually something will break, and talk about how to make things harder for the attacker and minimise the risk.”
“Internet technologies were designed for an ideal world and a trusted environment,” he said. “You have to design things for the real world – for example Windows 8 will allow security checks during application installation, which adds mitigation opportunities.”
“Internet technologies were designed for an ideal world and a trusted environment,” he said. “You have to design things for the real world – for example Windows 8 will allow security checks during application installation, which adds mitigation opportunities.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Windows Start Button Is Dead! Long Live the Windows Start Button!
http://techland.time.com/2012/02/10/the-windows-start-button-is-dead-long-live-the-windows-start-button/
Is Microsoft eliminating the Start button–a user-interface element that’s practically synonymous with Windows itself–from Windows 8? Last week, that was the scuttlebutt. This week, Windows superblogger Paul Thurrott says that “Windows 8 is NOT dropping the Start button.” But it turns out that both of these conflicting ideas are true.
If you stubbornly believe that the Start button is by definition an on-screen button, then yes, it’s going away. You will, however, be able to hover your mouse button near where the Start button would have been to access the features it would have offered if it was there.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Micron believes DRAM prices have bottomed out
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2145742/micron-believes-dram-prices-bottomed
MEMORY MAKER Micron believes DRAM prices have finally bottomed out after a prolonged recession in memory prices.
Now the firm’s president Mark Adams told analysts, “I don’t think DRAM goes down from here… it’s starting to feel like a stable market.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Age of Big Data
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/sunday-review/big-datas-impact-in-the-world.html
GOOD with numbers? Fascinated by data? The sound you hear is opportunity knocking.
What is Big Data? A meme and a marketing term, for sure, but also shorthand for advancing trends in technology that open the door to a new approach to understanding the world and making decisions. There is a lot more data, all the time, growing at 50 percent a year, or more than doubling every two years, estimates IDC, a technology research firm. It’s not just more streams of data, but entirely new ones. For example, there are now countless digital sensors worldwide in industrial equipment, automobiles, electrical meters and shipping crates. They can measure and communicate location, movement, vibration, temperature, humidity, even chemical changes in the air.
Link these communicating sensors to computing intelligence and you see the rise of what is called the Internet of Things or the Industrial Internet. Improved access to information is also fueling the Big Data trend.
Data is not only becoming more available but also more understandable to computers. Most of the Big Data surge is data in the wild — unruly stuff like words, images and video on the Web and those streams of sensor data. It is called unstructured data and is not typically grist for traditional databases.
The wealth of new data, in turn, accelerates advances in computing — a virtuous circle of Big Data.
Global Pulse, a new initiative by the United Nations, wants to leverage Big Data for global development.
Big Data is already transforming the study of how social networks function.
Data is in the driver’s seat. It’s there, it’s useful and it’s valuable, even hip.
Tomi Engdahl says:
NASA unplugs last mainframe
IBM mainframes no longer a NASA workhorse
http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/nasa-unplugs-last-mainframe
It’s somewhat hard to imagine that NASA doesn’t need the computing power of an IBM mainframe any more but NASA CIO posted on her blog today at the end of the month, the Big Iron will be no more at the space agency.
Marshall Space Flight Center powered down NASA’s last mainframe, the IBM Z9 Mainframe
Even though NASA has shut down its last one, there is still a requirement for mainframe capability in many other organizations.