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
Tomi Engdahl says:
Windows 7 passes XP, Mac OS X passes Vista
Lift a pint to salute XP, forget Vista
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/03/netapplications_stats/
Two aging Windows operating systems slipped a ranking each in the market share race this August, with Windows 7 overtaking Windows XP as the world’s most popular desktop operating system, and Apple’s OS X overtaking the late, lamented Windows Vista.
Seeing as how it took Apple seven years worth of operating systems to edge past Microsoft’s embarrassing flameout (released in January 2007), it doesn’t appear that Redmond’s desktop hegemony is due to come a-tumblin’ down anytime soon.
Windows XP has been passed by Windows 7.
Seeing as how Windows XP arrived on the scene over a decade ago, we have to tip our hat to that venerable operating system in honor of its long and useful – and, of course, continuing – lifespan.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IBM Debuts Most Powerful Cloud Server For Enterprises
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/378127/20120828/ibm-mainframe-cloud-z-zenterprise-ec-12.htm
International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM), the No. 2 computer maker, introduced its most powerful server for enterprises, the zEnterprise EC 12 mainframe, which it said cost as much as $1 billion to develop. The unit is intended for enterprises that can manage their own systems but also shift data processing to the cloud.
the new machine deploys internal technology dubbed Flash Express, which uses flash technology to keep services humming in times when transaction volumes are very high.
The zEnterprise EC 12, which will be shipped Sept. 19, will cost at least $250,000 and perhaps far more for enterprise customers, the IBM executive said.
In the first half, IBM’s revenue from mainframes fell about 17 percent
This zEnterprise EC 12 mainframe uses six core 5,5 GHz processor that could be the most powerful commercially manufactured processor according to http://www.tietoviikko.fi/cio/keskuskoneko+kuollut+ibmlta+kuusiytiminen+55+gigahertsin+mylly/a834730?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-04092012&
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel Embraces Oil Immersion Cooling For Servers
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/09/04/2249222/intel-embraces-oil-immersion-cooling-for-servers
“Intel has just concluded a year-long test in which it immersed servers in an oil bath, and has affirmed that the technology is highly efficient and safe for servers. The chipmaker is now working on reference designs, heat sinks and boards that are optimized for immersion cooling.”
Intel Embraces Submerging Servers in Oil
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2012/09/04/intel-explores-mineral-oil-cooling/
Will the appetite for ever-more powerful computing clusters push users to new cooling technologies, like submerging servers in liquid coolant? If so, Intel will be ready. The chipmaker is optimizing its technology for servers immersed in oil, an approach that may soon see broader adoption in the high performance computing (HPC) sector.
“We continue to explore server designs, and we’re evaluating how (immersion cooling) can change the way data centers are designed and operated,” said Mike Patterson, senior power and thermal architect at Intel. ”It’s obviously quite a change in mindset.”
Eliminates Need for Chillers, Raised Floor
Austin-based Green Revolution says its liquid-filled enclosures can cool high-density server installations for a fraction of the cost of air cooling in traditional data centers. The company says its approach can produce large savings on infrastructure, allowing users to operate servers without a raised floor, computer room air conditioning (CRAC) units or chillers. Green Revolution’s CarnotJet cooling racks are filled with 250 gallons of dielectric fluid, with servers inserted vertically into slots in the enclosure. Fluid temperature is maintained by a pump with a heat exchanger using a standard water loop.
Intel’s interest in alternative cooling designs is driven by growth projections for the high-performance computing sector, which is shaping up as an increasingly important segment of its business. Intel sees 20 percent annual growth for the technical computing market from 2011-2016, and is positioning its Phi line of Many Integrated Core (MIC) offerings as the engine to push new standards in performance.
More power usually means more cooling. That’s why Intel is preparing for immersion cooling.
Mineral oil has been used in immersion cooling because it is not hazardous and transfers heat almost as well as water, but doesn’t conduct an electric charge. Some mineral oil-style coolants can be messy to maintain.
“I think it will catch on,”
Intel Gives Oil-Based Cooling Thumbs Up
http://slashdot.org/topic/datacenter/intel-gives-oil-based-cooling-thumbs-up/
Intel finds dunking a server in a bath of nonconductive oil may be an ideal cooling solution.
Chillers? Dinosaurs of the server-cooling world. Water misting? Tired. Last week, Intel gave its seal of approval to dunking a server full of electronic components in a bath of dielectric oil, lowering the PUE to an eye-catching 1.02.
GigaOM reported last week that, after a year’s immersion in the oil bath, all the hardware involved in the test—microprocessors, I/O chips, connectors, hard drives, and server housing—withstood the oil just fine.
Mike Patterson, senior power and thermal architect at Intel, told the site that Intel submitted the servers to an independent testing lab to discover whether any of the components had been adversely affected: “[They] came back with a thumbs up that a year in the oil bath had no ill effects on anything they can see.”
Of course, this “new” way of cooling a server isn’t exactly novel. As GR Cooling notes, some transformers and power substations use liquid cooling to reduce heat. Dunking heat-generating microprocessors and graphics cards inside an oil bath has served as an alternative cooling solution for PC overclockers for many years. And early Cray supercomputers, including the 1985 Cray-2, the fastest supercomputer in the world at the time, pumped a liquid called Fluorinert over the circuit boards to cool them.
GR Cooling states that the oil can cool a server efficiently at 104 degrees F (40 degrees C) as opposed to air, which must be chilled to about 75 degrees F (24 degrees C) to be effective.
“In fact, our system is so powerful that we can install 100kW or more of compute in each 42U rack,” the company claims.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel teaches Xeon Phi x86 coprocessor snappy new tricks
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/05/intel_xeon_phi_coprocessor/
It took fifteen years for Intel to shrink the computing power of the teraflops-busting ASCI Red massively parallel Pentium II supercomputer (ASCI Red ate up 104 cabinets to break through 1 teraflops of double-precision floating point performance) down to something that fits inside of a PCI-Express coprocessor card – and the Xeon Phi coprocessor is only the first step in a long journey with coprocessor sidekicks riding posse with CPUs in pursuit of exascale computing.
Back in June, Knights Corner was branded as the “Xeon Phi”, making it clear that Phi was a Xeon coprocessor even if it does not bear a lot of resemblance to the Xeon processors at the heart of the vast majority of the world’s servers.
What Intel has said is that the Xeon Phi will have at least 50 cores and at least 8GB of GDDR5 graphics memory to feed those cores.
The Xeon Phi design almost certainly has 64 cores on the die – Intel has admitted as much with prior benchmarks and statements – but as is the case with any multicore GPU, it’s devilishly difficult to get yields on a new process such that all cores in a complex chip are working properly.
The Knights family of coprocessor chips might be salvaged from the dead remains of the “Larrabee” x86-based GPU project, but it packs features that Intel has cooked up specifically to make it a coprocessor for x86-based workstations and departmental servers running technical workloads, as well as in parallel supercomputer clusters that need better bang for the buck – and for the watt – than a Xeon or Opteron processor can bring all by itself.
Chrysos says that on the Xeon Phi chip, the x86-specific logic takes up less than 2 per cent of the core and L2 real estate.
The vector processing unit on the Xeon Phi core is a completely new design
That VPU is capable of processing eight 64-bit double-precision floating point operations, or sixteen 32-bit single-precision operations in a clock cycle.
What Chrysos could not talk about at Hot Chips was the feeds, speeds, SKUs, and pricing of the Xeon Phi chips
We estimate the Xeon Phi’s clock speed at somewhere between 1.2GHz and 1.6GHz
Tomi Engdahl says:
Oh no, sysadmins! VMware touts data centre that runs ITSELF
Storage bods, your time is up
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/05/vmware_datacentre_strategy/
Now that vCloud Suite 5.1 has arrived, VMware is pushing a new term: the software-defined data centre (SDD). It’s easy at first to dismiss this as merely another marketing buzzword, meaningless PR babble like “cloud” or “synergy”. If you poke your head behind the curtain, you’ll find there’s good reason for this newest bit of jargon.
When the majority of our industry’s professionals think of the word “virtualization” the very first vendor to mind is VMware.
VMware owns “virtualization”, it doesn’t own “cloud”, and clouds (public, private and hybrid) are the future.
The traditional way of thinking about things is very tied to the hardware. If I provisioned a VM then I had to decide which server would host it, which LUN on which SAN would be best for storage, configure networking, firewall, IDS and so forth. At best, I could create the VM in a pool that allowed me to roughly categorize my VMs by workload, department or so forth. Depending on how I organized things, chargeback could be a mess and I’d still have to keep a watchful eye on everything.
Lighting up a virtual machine has never really been much of a time saver: we can image a physical system in about the same period of time, especially now that the market is flooded with competitors to Symantec’s Ghost.
Go with the flow, the OpenFlow
With vCloud Suite, VMware has taken a cue from software-defined networking projects such as OpenFlow. Network and security configs, storage – and eventually more – now all live with the virtual machine’s config. More to the point, the configs travel with the VM when it moves from host to host, or data centre to data centre. Everything is based on classes and tiers; VMs can belong to various classes which define the tiers of storage, details of networking, security and so forth.
Network, security and storage administration is now only required during the design phase of a data centre lifecycle. Securing and segmenting can be applied to entire classes and tiers; the virtualization admins can take it from there.
his whole SDD thing has been thought through enough to not require redoing your entire infrastructure every time you change something. SDD makes true multitenant environments feasible.
SDD is a marketing move.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Oracle to Keep Porting Software to Itanium After Ruling in HP Lawsuit
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/261889/oracle_to_keep_porting_software_to_itanium_after_ruling_in_hp_lawsuit.html
Oracle announced in March 2011 that it would stop developing new versions of its software for Itanium, an Intel processor architecture used primarily in HP-UX servers. HP sued Oracle for breach of contract later that year
Oracle said on Tuesday it will continue porting its database and other software to Hewlett-Packard’s Itanium server platform after a California judge ruled that it was obligated to do so
Last month, Judge James Kleinberg of the Superior Court of California, County of Santa Clara, ruled that the September 2010 agreement is a contract and requires Oracle to keep porting its software to Itanium until HP stops selling the platform.
Tomi says:
AMD64 Surpasses i386 As Debian’s Most Popular Architecture
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/12/09/05/1230201/amd64-surpasses-i386-as-debians-most-popular-architecture
“X86_64 version of Debian has now surpassed all of the other supported architectures by a narrow margin.”
AMD64 Now Debian’s Most Popular Architecture
http://www.thepowerbase.com/2012/09/amd64-now-debians-most-popular-architecture/
“combined with the non-existence of 32-bit processors over the last few years, I am certifiably shocked that this hasn’t been the reality since at least 2009. ”
Thanks so much to Debian for not only fully supporting the most widely used architecture out there, but for also continuing support for the by-gone ones.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tape makers strap on skis, glide down slope to oblivion
$169m sales in a quarter – are you taking the piste?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/06/tape_market_chart/
We can see that LTO format tapes are taking an increased proportion of the overall market. The reasons for this is that the openness of the LTO format standard (HP, IBM and Quantum support it) is preferred by customers over proprietary formats, such as DLT.
Below the LTO sector the DDS/DAT formats have prevailed over competing ones, such as QIC and Sony’s AIT.
The tape market in general is declining because disk-to-disk backup is faster than tape, particularly in restoration, and deduplication makes drives affordable enough even though they are more expensive generally than tape. The time taken to restore from backups is more important than cash saved by not using disk.
we can expect the tape market to decline further.
Tomi says:
Aalto University researchers have revealed how playing video games especially against another person may set the brain’s reward center activity to gather pace.
Aalto University researchers’ results show how computer games to produce pleasant experiences in the brain and how the events of the game will change when playing against another person.
“Games immerse, in part, because of it, that success in producing the brain strong pleasant experiences in the same way as, say, eating or sex.”
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/tietokonepelit+vaikuttavat+aivoissa+kuin+seksi/a835517?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-05092012&
Tomi Engdahl says:
Titans of tech: Why I’ll never trust ‘em
World is what it is, but I yam what I yam
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/07/who_can_you_trust_in_tech/
The critical question is: “In whom do you have faith?”
As soon as you move from implementation to decision making, you have a choice: accept the advice of other analysts, or do the leg work of analytics yourself. I opt for both;
Apple built an empire on spin, secrecy and hype. Apple is a consumer electronics company, not an IT company.
Microsoft is everywhere: from the hypervisor to the cloud, the thin client to the desktop, the server to the phone. You can’t throw a rock in most businesses without hitting something it has a hand in
Microsoft is certainly not alone in its importance: “Oracle doesn’t have customers, it has hostages.”
Cisco is another name worth mentioning. What they do is unquestionably important; and yet numerous companies are doing great business on the strength of “We do what Cisco does, but we don’t behave like Cisco.”
Millions of dollars are spent to convince me to buy products when what is actually required is a marketing-free, warts-and-all discussion about those products from the people who built them. New features and Ballmer dancing on stage in an ill-fitting suit is cool and all, but what I really need is a discussion about bugs, removed features and the user experience. I need this discussion to occur free from the sensationalism of breaking headlines and the watchful eyes of PR. Instead, I have been repeatedly told to simply “have faith”.
If you’re a large enough company, you can afford to adopt the attitude that “nobody ever got fired for buying IBM/Cisco/Microsoft/Oracle/VMware/etc.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel has long road to catch up in handset processor segment, says ARM vice president
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20120906PD225.html
According to Taiwan-based handset supply chain makers, Intel’s Atom Z2460 processor is superior to ARM-based equivalents in performance but significantly inferior in power service life and management. Compared with ARM-architecture processors consuming less than 1W, Intel processors have high power consumption, the sources said.
As to the launch of Windows RT, Hurley said that Windows RT will bring opportunities for vendors looking to in PC and other market segments with ARM-based products.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel slashes third quarter sales forecast despite Windows 8 launch
Windows 8 fails even before it hits the shelves
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2203946/intel-slashes-third-quarter-sales-forecast-despite-windows-8-launch
CHIPMAKER Intel has revised down its earnings forecast for the third quarter to $13.2bn.
With Microsoft releasing Windows 8 to system builders this Autumn it was expected that the third quarter would be a very profitable one for Intel, as demand for its chips would increase as computer OEMs would build desktop and laptop PCs prior to the release of Windows 8. However Intel’s comments suggest the opposite, with the firm claiming that supply chain inventory has been reduced, and lower than expected demand for PCs from enterprise and emerging markets has led it to revise down its earnings forecast.
Tomi Engdahl says:
As Wintel Dominance Wanes, the Microsoft/Intel Alliance Frays
http://www.isuppli.com/memory-and-storage/news/pages/as-wintel-dominance-wanes-the-microsoft-intel-alliance-frays.aspx
After a generation of setting the pace and calling the shots in the computer market, the Microsoft Corp./Intel Corp. cartel known as Wintel now finds itself playing catch-up in the new era of smartphones and media tablets, spurring a widening rift in the historic alliance.
Despite a flurry of activities to adjust to the changed realities of the technology industry, Wintel is expected to suffer a declining share of the “new” computer market, a category consisting not just of PCs but also of the much faster-growing smartphone and media tablet segments.
Intel’s share of microprocessors will fall to 29 percent, down from 41 percent. At the same time, the total size of the market will double from 2011 to 2016, almost entirely due to the strong growth of the smartphone and media tablet segments
“With smartphones and tablets performing tasks previously exclusive to PCs, the computer market has expanded to include other platforms. As a result, Wintel finds itself in the unfamiliar position of dancing to someone else’s tune”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Haswell at IDF 2012: 10W is the New 17W
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6248/haswell-at-idf-2012-10w-is-the-new-17w
Earlier this week Intel let a little bit of information leak about Haswell, which is expected to be one of the main focal points of next week’s Intel Developer Forum. Haswell is a very important architecture for Intel, as it aims lower on the TDP spectrum in order to head off any potential threat from ARM moving up the chain. Haswell still remains very separate from the Atom line of processors
The main piece of news Intel supplied was the TDP target for Haswell ULV (Ultra Low Voltage) parts is now 10W, down from 17W in Sandy and Ivy Bridge.
Intel also claims that future Haswell revisions may push even lower down the TDP chain
Although Haswell’s design is compete and testing is ahead of schedule, I wouldn’t expect to see parts in the market until Q2 2013.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel’s Pentium and Core i3 Desktop Ivy Bridge CPUs Arrive
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6249/intels-pentium-and-core-i3-desktop-ivy-bridge-cpus-arrive
Let’s quickly run over the chips, their features, and how they stack up compared to existing offerings.
Availability of all of the CPUs is somewhat limited right now, with only Newegg stocking the majority of the chips
Tomi Engdahl says:
Windows 8 to grab iPad market share wrested back from Android
http://www.reghardware.com/2012/09/10/canalys_windows_8_to_grab_ipad_market_share/
market watcher Canalys: Windows 8 will dent Apple’s dominance of the tablet market, but it’s biggest impact will be to hold Android’s growth back.
So says market watcher Canalys, which reckons some 207m tablets will ship in 2016, around half of them iPads of one size or another. In that year, tablets will account for almost a third of all personal computer shipments.
it’ll be Microsoft taking share from Apple, not Google
Tomi Engdahl says:
HP revises restructuring figures; now cutting 29,000 jobs
http://www.zdnet.com/hp-revises-restructuring-figures-now-cutting-29000-jobs-7000003973/
Summary: Computer maker HP will cut 29,000 jobs — an increase on its first estimate — as the firm continues to cut back on costs as it falls down the PC building market share rankings.
tomi says:
Apple as the Last Hope for Growth in Business PCs
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/10/apple-as-the-last-hope-for-growth-in-business-pcs/
Forrester Research estimates that government and business purchases of computers will grow a meager 1.7 percent, to $146.6 billion, in 2012 from the year before.
That growth, along with a 9 percent increase in business spending on Macs to $6.7 billion, will help offset what Forrester expects to be a dismal year for PCs and tablets that run Windows.
One of Forrester’s assumptions is that the coming introduction of Windows 8, the new Microsoft operating system, will not be the defibrillator for the market that many people in the PC industry are hoping it will be.
“I think it will have a positive impact, but it just won’t be a great positive impact,” he said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IDC Forecasts Worldwide IT Spending to Grow 6% in 2012, Despite Economic Uncertainty
http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS23681912
FRAMINGHAM, MA, September 10, 2012 – IDC announced the availability of new research, Worldwide Black Book Query Tool, Version 2, 2012 (Document # 236347), that shows Worldwide IT spending remains on course to grow 6% this year in constant currency, only slightly down on last year’s pace of 7% growth, in spite of continuing macroeconomic uncertainty. Strong performance in software, storage, enterprise network and mobile device markets has offset weaker trends in PCs, servers, peripherals and telecom provider equipment.
However, the strength of the US dollar in the first half of 2012 means that IT spending in dollar terms is on course for growth of just 4% this year
“In spite of economic uncertainty, which continues to inhibit enterprise investment in some tech segments, the continuing demand for tablets, smartphones, storage capacity and network -performance improvements actually outperformed expectations in the first half of the year,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel Lowers Third-Quarter Revenue Outlook
http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2012/09/07/intel-lowers-third-quarter-revenue-outlook
Intel Corporation today announced that third-quarter revenue is expected to be below the company’s previous outlook as a result of weaker than expected demand in a challenging macroeconomic environment. The company now expects third-quarter revenue to be $13.2 billion, plus or minus $300 million, compared to the previous expectation of $13.8 billion to $14.8 billion.
Relative to the prior forecast, the company is seeing customers reducing inventory in the supply chain versus the normal growth in third-quarter inventory; softness in the enterprise PC market segment; and slowing emerging market demand. The data center business is meeting expectations.
Words such as “anticipates,” “expects,” “intends,” “plans,” “believes,” “seeks,” “estimates,” “may,” “will,” “should” and their variations identify forward-looking statements.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Laugh all you want at ‘the cloud’ – it’ll be worth ‘$100bn by 2016′
Public-facing services to coin it, predicts IDC
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2012/09/11/idc_public_cloud_forecast/
Some $100bn will be slurped up by public IT cloud services by 2016, according to the crystal-ball gazers at IDC.
Spending is set to peak at $40bn this year but is forecast to expand more than 26 per cent on a compound annual growth basis over the next four years – five times faster than the total industry average.
The public cloud specifically is predicted to account for 16 per cent of global IT revenues in five categories: applications, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), platform-as-a-service, servers and basic storage.
DC reckons cloud services will generate 41 per cent of all growth in the five segments by the end of the forecast period in 2016. “Quite simply, vendor failure in cloud services will mean stagnation,” said Gens.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Windows 8? Nah: Win Phone 8 should give Apple the fear
Tiled phone, not PC, could put Redmond on top
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/11/windows_8_phone_can_win_by_not_losing/
Open … and Shut Windows Phone 8 might spell the beginning of a climb to relevance for a desktop vendor breaking out its latest PC operating system at almost the same time.
Why will Windows Phone 8 mean more than Windows 8? Not because Windows Phone 8 is groundbreaking. And not because its user experience compels adoption.
its biggest selling point is that it’s not iOS and not Android.
Intel’s recent earnings call suggests that, if anything, the PC market is going to stutter in the wake of the Windows 8 launch. It’s simply not a compelling upgrade for consumers, and poses serious user experience challenges for enterprise IT departments.
Microsoft will likely maintain its desktop market share, which still hovers at 92 per cent according to NetMarketshare data.
The bigger issue is how much of that market is being cannibalised by the growing tablet and smartphone markets.
And in the smartphone market, Microsoft actually stands a chance.
No, the real Windows Phone 8 advantage is actually that it’s not iOS or Android. A few months ago, this would have been its undoing. Apple dominates mobile profits while Android dominates market share.
Microsoft already has HTC and Samsung announcing WP8 phones, and Nokia, of course, is all in on WP8. Nokia is getting good reviews of its Windows-Phone-8-based Lumia 920, which isn’t enough to declare victory, but it is enough to suggest that Windows Phone 8 increasingly seems like the safe bet against Apple while Android’s legal status is muddied by Apple.
It’s an ugly way to win, but I suspect Microsoft won’t mind. Winning ugly is still winning.
Tomi Engdahl says:
DCIM: Where the physical and virtual can meet
http://www.cablinginstall.com/index/display/article-display.articles.cabling-installation-maintenance.volume-20.issue-9.features.dcim-where-the-physical-and-virtual-can-meet.html
A single data center infrastructure management platform enables a holistic approach to managing physical and virtual assets.
Technological developments demand that data center managers plan for future growth. This includes the physical layer as much as everything else. As Forrester recommended in its “Market Overview: Data Center Infrastructure Management Solutions” (April 2012), “The ability to understand the impact of future workloads and infrastructure changes on potential capacity requirements is extremely valuable for many organizations.”
Increasingly over the last few years more IT managers have been turning to data center infrastructure management (DCIM) solutions in an effort to address these needs. DCIM provides a consolidated infrastructure repository (configuration management database, or CMDB) and consolidates information from various equipment and appliances in the data center, such as sensors, power consumption, cooling and others.
Forrester defines DCIM as “the convergence of previous generations of purely facilities-oriented power management, physical asset management, network management and financial management and planning solutions for data centers.” Or simply, it is a “comprehensive approach to managing the physical aspects of the data center.”
As Forrester explains, “To effectively propose an optimal set of allocations, the software needs to understand the behavior of the system at a granular level, the potential workloads and the details of the power and cooling environment.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Is a Computer Science Degree Worth Getting Anymore?
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/12/09/12/0048209/is-a-computer-science-degree-worth-getting-anymore
“Self-taught technologists are almost always better hires than those with a bachelor’s degree in computer science”
“I explained that of the people who earned a computer science degree, most don’t know any theory and can’t code. Instead, they succeed at putting things on their resume that match keywords.”
Is a computer science degree worth the paper it’s printed on?
http://www.infoworld.com/d/application-development/computer-science-degree-worth-the-paper-its-printed-201957
Self-taught technologists are almost always better hires than those with a BSCS and a huge student loan
But is teaching yourself to code sound advice given today’s grinding economy? If you believe the headhunters, the national unemployment rate for the technology sector is 5 percent. If you recall, 5 percent unemployment is supposedly “full employment,” where everyone who wants a job has one.
Moreover, most of us in the industry believe the supply of talented programmers will forever be constrained
Plus, companies don’t consider it their responsibility to provide training or mentoring.
Plus, companies don’t consider it their responsibility to provide training or mentoring. In fairness, that’s because the scarcity of talent has created a mercenary culture: “Now that my employer paid me to learn a new skill, let me check to see if there’s an ad for it on Dice or Craigslist with a higher rate of pay.”
There’s nothing wrong with education, just with most conventional educational institutions — which today are getting a run for their money from nimbler organizations.
I value computer science theory a great deal
But unfortunately, most grads don’t seem to be getting their money’s worth from the trusty old BSCS. On the other hand, I’ve met a lot of great folks who’ve made major strides with little more than a hungry mind and an Internet connection.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel pushing Atom processors to server market
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20120910PD210.html
Intel has been aggressively seeking new applications for its low-power Atom series processors to help fill the gap created by declining netbook sales, and has recently set its sights on the low-power-consumption server market, according to sources from the server industry.
Hewlett-Packard (HP) previously announced plans to launch server products using Atom processors, and Quanta QCT, a subsidiary of Quanta Computer, also recently announced it twill launch an Atom-based micro-server product at the end of 2012.
Tomi Engdahl says:
In-house IT: poor value for money claims new survey
http://www.cloudpro.co.uk/cloud-essentials/private-cloud/4565/house-it-poor-value-money-claims-new-survey
CIOs increasingly think that on-premise IT systems are a waste of resources and cloud is the future
According to a new survey from Savvis, three out of five IT and business managers believe owning and operating in-house data centres will drive computing costs upwards and waste resources.
In addition, more than half of all CIOs believe they have wasted money on IT purchases, indeed a whopping 66 percent of US respondents have a purchase they regret making.
The dissatisfaction with in-house IT is leading to an increased take-up in cloud according to the research, which was carried out by Vanson Bourne.
Eighty five percent of companies are now using some form of cloud service.
Most organisations are moving to private cloud – 42 percent, compared to 22 percent of public cloud users.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel to etch 22nm Xeons and Atoms in 2013
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/12/intel_server_processors_2013/
At the conference, Intel revealed that the dual-core “Centerton” server processor for microservers will be called the Atom S-Series, and reiterated that it will ship in the fourth quarter.
The Atom S-Series is a system-on-chip design that includes everything but the main memory and network interconnect on the die that you need in a baby system. It will have 64-bit processing and memory addressing, VT-x virtualization support, HyperThreading, and error correction and scrubbing on main memory – as all server processors should have. The Atom S-Series will be certified to run server variants of Linux and Windows, all in a 6 watt power budget and implemented in a 22-nanometer process.
Next year, look for the “Haswell” Xeon E3s to come out on 22-nanometer processes, offering more performance and less power draw and heat dissipation than the current four-core 45 watt and two-core 17 watt Ivy Bridge Xeon E5 parts.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel Confirms Freefall of Server Giants HP, Dell, and IBM
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/09/29853/
In 2008, says Intel bigwig Diane Bryant, three familiar names bought far more server chips than any other company on earth. That year, she remembers, HP, Dell, and IBM accounted for 75 percent of the revenue Intel raked in from the sale of processors destined for the beefy computer servers that drive the internet and so much of the software used inside the world’s businesses.
But just four years later, Bryant says, the landscape has completely changed. Today, she explains, eight server makers account for 75 percent of Intel’s server chip revenues, and at least one of those eight doesn’t even sell servers. It only makes servers for itself. “Google is something like number five on that list,”
That’s right, Google is likely the world’s fifth largest server maker.
Over a decade ago, Google started designing its own machines
As Bryant points out, other companies are now buying machines directly from “original design manufacturers,” or ODMs, in Asia, working to cut costs in much the same way. This includes Facebook, and according to a former employee of one large ODM, it includes Amazon as well.
In short, some of the biggest server buyers are cutting out the big-name middlemen. Those ODMs are some of the same companies that manufacture machines on behalf of the HPs and the Dells.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft’s Windows RT signals shift to mobile computing, says Qualcomm
Operating system marks beginning of the end for the PC era
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2204660/microsofts-windows-rt-signals-shift-to-mobile-computing-says-qualcomm
BERLIN: SOFTWARE FIRM Microsoft’s upcoming Windows RT operaing system signals a shift to mobile computing and marks the beginning of the end for the PC era, according to chip maker Qualcomm.
Qualcomm’s COO Steve Mollenkopf claims that in the future, all devices will run using mobile operating systems. He cited the upcoming Microsoft Windows RT operating system as support for his claim.
“In Windows RT we’re seeing a blend of the smartphone world with the PC world… a move from legacy computing to mobile computing,” said Mollenkopf.
“We imagine that in the future all of our devices will be connected together. Our phone will be a remote for life, controlling everything we do,” said Mollenkopf.
Tomi Engdahl says:
PCI and USB are tipped to show up in mobile phones
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2204800/pci-and-usb-are-tipped-to-show-up-in-mobile-phones
PERIPHERAL COMPONENT INTERCONNECT (PCI) Express and USB will soon start showing up in mobile phones, as devices underlying technologies become more standardised.
The purpose of bringing PCI Express to these small devices is to capitalise on the well-known standards developed by the PC desktop, notebook and server technology markets.
“By using the same technology we want to make it easier and cheaper to develop new products,” Universal Serial Bus Implementer’s Forum (USB-IF) serial communications working group chair Ramin Neshati told The INQUIRER.
Both the PCI-SIG and the USB-IF are taking advantage of the Mobile Industry Processor Interface (MIPI) physical layer used in mobile devices, but the upper layers of the protocol stacks conform to PCI and USB
Tomi Engdahl says:
Technology
Estonia brings in coding classes for its youngest schoolkids
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-09/05/estonia-kid-coding
Public schools in Estonia will soon have a curriculum for teaching web and mobile application development to students as early as their first year of school.
According to an article published by UbuntuLife, the program begins this month with training for primary-school teachers. This will be followed by pilot programs. Eventually, the curriculum will be available to all public schools, with educational materials for all age levels.
Estonia has a burgeoning tech industry thanks in part to the success of Skype, which was developed in Estonia in 2003. Other Estonian tech companies include Erply and Fortumo.
Educators have long sought to teach younger kids to program using tools like Scratch, but the code-literacy movement has been picking up steam in the past year. For example, the Mozilla Foundation has been sponsoring events dedicated to teaching web development to youth called Summer Code Party, as well as “Hack Jams” organized by youth.
To this end, Mozilla has developed Hackasaurus, a collection of tools that help kids learn how websites are composed and designed by letting them “remix” elements of any site.
And of course there’s Lauren Ipsum, a children’s book that introduces programming concepts through stories rather than code.
Computer programming will soon reach all Estonian schoolchildren
http://ubuntulife.net/computer-programming-for-all-estonian-schoolchildren/
Estonian Tiger Leap Foundation in September 2012 launched a program called “ProgeTiiger”, in the framework of which Estonian students in grades 1 to 12 will be introduced computer programming and creating web and mobile applications.
“The interest of students towards using modern technologies has grown year after year. With the “ProgeTiiger” program we create prerequisites for students to develop from consumers of software to developers of software,” said Tiger Leap Foundation training sphere manager Ave Lauringson.
Estonian Tiger Leap Foundation decided to start this project because they saw how many companies struggle to find decent programmers. This new program is expected to bring Estonia in front of the rest of the Eastern Europe in terms of IT development and growth.
ProgeTiiger Takes Computer Programming To Estonian Schoolchildren
http://www.arcticstartup.com/2012/09/05/progetiiger-takes-computer-programming-to-estonian-schoolchildren
The program is supported by local IT companies, who stand to gain from having a well educated workforce to draw from 12 years from now. The programming courses will be taught in classrooms by regular teachers, so the course work has been made very simple to understand and teach.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Amazon Opens Marketplace for … Virtual Computers
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/09/amazon-cloud-marketplace/
Amazon has a split personality.
On the one hand, it’s an online retailer and marketplace where you can buy stuff like books, DVDs, games, and gardening tools. On the other, it’s a massive “cloud” service where you can rent virtual servers and storage and other tools for building and hosting your own online software applications.
That may seem like an odd mix. But it works out quite well for the company. Each personality dominates its particular market, and the two have a conveniently symbiotic relationship.
Now, as if to highlight this split personality, Amazon has unveiled a new service that combines its two halves in a new way. On Wednesday, the company introduced an online marketplace where you can buy and sell virtual servers. It’s called the Amazon EC2 Reserved Instance Marketplace.
f you’ve bought some virtual servers on Amazon’s EC2 service that you don’t need, you can offload them. And if you need extra servers, you can buy them on the cheap.
“I often tell people that cloud computing is equal parts technology and business model,” reads a blog post from Amazon man Jeff Barr. “If you have excess capacity, you can list it on the marketplace and sell it to someone who needs additional capacity.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel backs ‘overhyped’ HTML5 for cross-platform app dev
Resistance is futile
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/13/intel_backs_overhyped_html5/
IDF 2012 HTML5 is overhyped, slow, and insecure, says Intel senior VP of software and services Renée James – but Chipzilla thinks it’s the future of software development anyway.
James said there really is no other technology available that offers developers as many opportunities across as many different platforms and operating systems as HTML5 does.
“HTML5 is designed to be a cross-platform technology,” James said, “and while I know there are a lot of differing opinions, we all agree it’s been very overhyped, and like most technologies early on it had some troubles.”
Nonetheless, she said, HTML5 is the only modern development platform that can enable what Intel calls “transparent computing,” which James said is about allowing user experiences to seamlessly traverse architecture and operating system boundaries.
HTML5 makes transparent computing possible
actual HTML5 standards compliance varied widely between devices, especially when it comes to emerging categories like Smart TVs.
“Transparent computing seems pretty far away from where we stand today,” James said in closing, “but we have always believed that the future of computing is what we make it.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
TACC “Stampede” to Go Live in January
http://slashdot.org/topic/datacenter/tacc-stampede-to-go-live-in-january/
The fastest Intel-based supercomputer yet should begin operation on January 7, powered by a mixture of Xeon and Xeon Phi chips.
The Texas Advanced Computing Center plans to go live on January 7 with “Stampede,” a ten-petaflop supercomputer predicted to be the most powerful Intel supercomputer in the world once it launches.
Stampede should also be among the top five supercomputers in the TOP500 list when it goes live, Jay Boisseau, TACC’s director, said at the Intel Developer Forum Sept. 11.
Interestingly, the thousands of Xeon compute nodes should generate just 2 teraflops worth of performance, with the remaining 8 generated by the Xeon Phi chips, which provide highly parallelized computational power for specialized workloads.
All components—compute nodes, visualization nodes, large shared memory nodes, and file system—will be integrated with an FDR 56 Gb/s InfiniBand network for extreme scalability, which will be supplied by Mellanox.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IDF: Intel bets big on HTML5 for Android apps
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2205092/idf-intel-bets-big-on-html5-for-android-apps
SAN FRANCISCO: INTEL IS BETTING on HTML5 being the language that will help it take advantage of apps designed to run on smartphones and tablets.
As James admitted that HTML5 is “overhyped”, she talked up Intel’s River Trail multithreading optimisation for Javascript on Mozilla’s Firefox web browser, but it was clear that the firm is hoping that HTML5 apps will provide an operating system agnostic application development environment.
James said Intel that will be releasing HTML5 development tools over the next two quarters, but didn’t detail what work Intel has done to optimise HTML5 performance on x86 chips.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IDC: Public IT Cloud Services Spending to Touch $100 Billion in 2016
http://www.cio.com/article/715945/IDC_Public_IT_Cloud_Services_Spending_to_Touch_100_Billion_in_2016
Worldwide spending on public IT cloud services is expected to touch the $100 billion mark in 2016, as companies accelerate their shift to the cloud services model for IT consumption, according to research firm IDC.
Public IT cloud services are defined by IDC as those offerings designed for, and commercially offered to, a largely unrestricted marketplace of potential users.
“The IT industry is in the midst of an important transformative period as companies invest in the technologies that will drive growth and innovation over the next two to three decades,” said Frank Gens, senior vice president and chief analyst at IDC.
In 2012, IDC expects global public IT services spending to amount to more than $40 billion, with public IT cloud services said to see a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26.4% over the period from 2012–2016 – five times that of the IT industry overall.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel: optical Thunderbolt to strike in Q4
http://www.reghardware.com/2012/09/12/idf_2012_cheaper_and_longer_thunderbolt_cables_coming_in_q4/
Cheaper and longer Thunderbolt wires will be coming later this year, Intel has forecast. The extra length will arrive on the back of optical cables.
Thunderbolt cables on the market today use metal wiring, but only run to 3m in length. Updating IDF visitors on the evolution of the peripheral connectivity technology, Intel staffers today said Thunderbolt buffs will be able to buy optical cables reaching 10m or even 20m in Q4.
Thunderbolt ports built into modern Macs, notebooks from Acer, Asus and Lenovo, and a variety of motherboards from Intel, Asus, Gigabyte and MSI, lack optical links so the first optical cables will feature integrated optical transceivers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple’s new A6 iPhone 5 appears to be first ARM Cortex A15 phone
http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/09/12/apples_new_a6_iphone_5_appears_to_be_first_arm_cortex_a15_phone
While Apple hasn’t revealed much technical detail of the specifications behind iPhone 5 and its components, its new A6 processor is reportedly using next generation ARM Cortex A15 cores, making it the first to market with the technology.
According to a report by Anand Lal Shimpi of Anandtech, the performance gains Apple reported for the new A6 chip and other factors means that “it looks like Apple has integrated two ARM Cortex A15 cores on Samsung’s 32nm LP HK+MG process.”
The site added, “This is a huge deal because it means Apple beat both TI and Samsung on bringing A15s to market.”
The Cortex-A15 is the next major jump for the ARM architecture, which calls the core “the highest-performance licensable processor the industry has ever seen.”
In addition to Samsung’s Exynos 5, TI’s OMAP 5 series and Nvidia’s Tegra 4 also use ARM Cortex-A15 cores. Broadcom and LG have also announced plans to license ARM’s Cortex A15 cores. Qualcomm’s S4 Snapdragon also implements a “Krait” architecture similar to the Cortex-A15.
Tomi says:
Ubuntu NVIDIA Graphics Driver: Windows Competitive, But Only With KDE
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/09/13/166203/ubuntu-nvidia-graphics-driver-windows-competitive-but-only-with-kde
“The NVIDIA Linux driver across multiple GeForce graphics cards can compete with Microsoft Windows 7 on Ubuntu, but only when using the KDE desktop and not the default Unity/Compiz.”
“Ubuntu’s Unity desktop is now noticeably slower than GNOME/KDE/Xfce/LXDE with multiple GPUs/drivers.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
WD Builds High-Capacity, Helium-Filled HDDs
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/09/13/2113244/wd-builds-high-capacity-helium-filled-hdds
“Western Digital subsidiary HGST today announced that after 10 years of development it is preparing to release 3.5-in data center-class HDDs that are hermetically sealed with helium inside. The helium reduces drag and wind turbulence created by the spinning platters, all but eliminating track misregistration that has become a major issue to increasing drive density in recent years.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel predicts ubiquitous, almost-zero-energy computing by 2020
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/136043-intel-predicts-ubiquitous-almost-zero-energy-computing-by-2020
This year, the company has discussed the shrinking energy cost of computation as well as a point when it believes the energy required for “meaningful compute” will approach zero and become ubiquitous by the year 2020. The company didn’t precisely define “meaningful compute,”
The idea that we could push the energy cost of computing down to nearly immeasurable levels is exciting. It’s the type of innovation that’s needed to drive products like Google Glass or VR headsets like the Oculus Rift. Unfortunately, Intel’s slide neatly sidesteps the greatest problems facing such innovations — the cost of computing already accounts for less than half the total energy expenditure of a smartphone or other handheld device.
Intel’s decision to present on the zero cost future of computing is disappointing because it flies in the face of everything the company has said in the past year and ignores the previously-acknowledged difficulty of scaling all the various components that go into a modern smartphone. The idea that 2020 will bring magical improvements or suddenly sweep neural interfaces to the forefront of technology is, in a word, folly.
This doesn’t mean technology won’t advance, but it suggests a more deliberate, incremental pace as opposed to an upcoming revolution. Smartphones of 2018-2020 may be superior to top-end devices of the present day in much the same way that modern computers are more powerful than desktops from the 2006 era.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Glass and the Future of Technology
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/13/google-glass-and-the-future-of-technology/
New gadgets — I mean whole new gadget categories — don’t come along very often. The iPhone was one recent example. You could argue that the iPad was another. But if there’s anything at all as different and bold on the horizon, surely it’s Google Glass.
This idea got a lot of people excited when Nick Bilton of The New York Times broke the story of the glasses in February. Google first demonstrated it April in a video.
Now, Google emphasized — and so do I — that Google Glass is still at a very, very early stage. Lots of factors still haven’t been finalized, including what Glass will do, what the interface will look like, how it will work, and so on. Google doesn’t want to get the public excited about some feature that may not materialize in the final version. (At the moment, Google is planning to offer the prototypes to developers next year — for $1,500 — in anticipation of selling Glass to the public in, perhaps, 2014.)
Google has said that eventually, Glass will have a cellular radio, so it can get online; at this point, it hooks up wirelessly with your phone for an online connection.
The biggest triumph — and to me, the biggest surprise — is that the tiny screen is completely invisible when you’re talking or driving or reading. You just forget about it completely.
The hardware breakthrough, in other words, is there.
But the potential is already amazing.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Who’s afraid of Windows 8? Trio leads Microsoft migration pack
Internet Explorer a hurdle for most, says consultant
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/13/camwood_windows_browser_migrations/
Windows 8 isn’t ideal for many big businesses and government users. In fact, the majority of operations running tens of thousands of PCs are only now replacing Windows XP with Windows 7 at any meaningful scale – despite Microsoft’s claims to the contrary. But a few brave businesses are planning on jumping into touch and swipe with Windows 8 in the next 12 months.
Microsoft claims 50 per cent of enterprise PCs are running Windows 7, but browser migration specialist Browsium has disputed these numbers. It reckons just 20 per cent of large companies are running Windows 7 – and that 80 per cent of those with 10,000 PCs or more are still on Windows XP.
The problem is the migration of apps that rely on the browser.
These apps can be something like SAP or Oracle financials – complex software that is used across multiple departments – or pieces of software that have been built in-house and need the original install files. The in-house apps can typically run to hundreds of thousands of users in very large companies.
“The major blocker to Windows 7 is IE6 and IE7,” Gemmel says.
And Microsoft is not helping: its official advice is to re-write the apps – but that costs time and money.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Outsourcing coding work to countries where coding work is cheaper might not be always economically feasible:
The employment of the programming will be more expensive in India than in Finland, where the expenses are calculated the actual costs, says Friday appeared 3T-Journal . The magazine has got hold of the secret report, which was based on the Finnish technology companies within the material.
According to the survey the work done in India is actually 35 per cent more expensive than equivalent employment in Finland.
Reason: low productivity and errors
In Finland, the productivity is 4.5 times more than in India.
Source: http://www.itviikko.fi/ihmiset-ja-ura/2012/09/14/3t-intialainen-koodaus-kalliimpaa-kuin-suomalainen/201237789/7?rss=8
Tomi Engdahl says:
Itanium does not die – a new model coming
Chip manufacturer Intel said Tuesday that the company will launch the next version of Itanium processor (code-named Poulson) later this year.
Itanium is used in Linux and Unix servers (mainly manufactured by HP) that requiring a high level of fault tolerance.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/itanium+ei+kuole++uusi+malli+tulossa/a838468?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-14092012&
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel to take felon-foiling tech to phones, slates
Lock up your datas
http://www.reghardware.com/2012/09/13/idf_2012_intel_to_bring_anti_theft_technology_to_tablets_and_phones/
IDF 2012 Intel has confirmed that it will bring its Anti-theft Technology (AT), currently being pitched at Ultrabooks, to Atom-based smartphones and tablets.
The timeframe for bringing AT to such devices is unclear, but it is definitely on the company’s roadmap
Intel is mandating the tech at Ultrabooks
AT utilises pre-Bios hardware to contact Intel-trusted third-party servers and determine whether the Ultrabook it is fitted to has been lost or stolen. Periodic checks when the machine boots or when it comes out of deep sleep verify it is the hands of its owner.
Intel has a bright sticker to warn
Tomi Engdahl says:
MOBILE CHIP MAKER Qualcomm showed off its Vuforia augmented reality technology at its IQ 2012 event.
Vuforia is an openly available tool developed by Qualcomm to help developers create augmented reality (AR) services on smart devices.
Source: The Inquirer (http://s.tt/1nlL5)
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel Says Clover Trail Atom CPU Won’t Work With Linux
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/12/09/14/1236219/intel-says-clover-trail-atom-cpu-wont-work-with-linux
“However Intel said Clover Trail ‘is a Windows 8 chip’ and that ‘the chip cannot run Linux.’ While Intel’s claim that Clover Trail won’t run Linux is not quite true — after all, it is an x86 instruction set, so there is no major reason why the Linux kernel and userland will not run”
They can choose to support or not support whatever they want. They just can’t actively use their current monopoly position to harm competition in another market (operating systems).
Tomi Engdahl says:
IDF: Intel says Clover Trail will not work with Linux
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2205462/idf-intel-says-clover-trail-will-not-work-with-linux
CHIPMAKER Intel has confirmed that it will not provide support for Linux on its Clover Trail Atom chip.
As Intel is pushing Clover Trail into tablets, a category of devices that is dominated by Linux based Android and the Unix BSD based IOS, the firm said it will not support Linux on Clover Trail.
Given that Intel said Clover Trail takes a lot of technology from its Medfield Atom processor, which runs Android on a number of middling smartphones, it seems that Chipzilla is putting up an artificial barrier to try to help Microsoft and its upcoming Windows 8 operating system.
Intel’s decision to support only Windows 8 on Clover Trail might work for laptops but seems very risky for tablets