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?”
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Tomi Engdahl says:
IDF: Intel is looking at ARM’s Big Little architecture
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2205764/idf-intel-is-looking-at-arms-big-little-architecture
CHIPMAKER Intel is interested in following ARM’s “Big Little” design, though operating system support is needed.
As Intel tries to make its way in the smartphone and tablet markets with Medfield and its upcoming Clover Trail processors, the firm is looking at ARM’s Big Little paradigm for its low power processors.
At IDF, Intel CTO Justin Rattner said the firm is interested in putting different cores on a single die.
Judging from Rattner’s comments, Intel’s push into multiple types of cores on a single SoC has more to do with operating system support than silicon level issues.
Several of Intel’s high-ranking executives told The INQUIRER at IDF that the Xeon Phi compute architecture will eventually end up as an on-die coprocessor in the future. Rattner’s comments also strongly suggest that Xeon Phi will end up on-die, and that the company might eventually mix variants of both Atom and Core architectures on a single die.
Tomi Engdahl says:
With the wave of a hand, Intel wants to do away with passwords
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/13/us-intel-passwords-idUSBRE88C1A120120913
Passwords for online banking, social networks and email could be replaced with the wave of a hand if prototype technology developed by Intel makes it to tablets and laptops.
“The problem with passwords — we use too many of them, their rules are complex, and they differ for different websites,” Sridhar Iyengar, director of security research at Intel Labs, said at the annual Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco on Thursday. “There is a way out of it, and biometrics is an option.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Firmware maker says it could enable dual-boot Windows RT, Android devices
http://www.pcworld.com/article/262306/firmware_maker_says_it_could_enable_dualboot_windows_rt_android_devices.html#tk.rss_news
Tablets and PCs could come with a dual-boot capability to load either Microsoft’s upcoming Windows RT or Android, but device makers will need to be interested in building such devices in order for it to make its way to the public, firmware company Insyde Software said on Thursday.
The company can provide the firmware and tools based on standard UEFI boot specifications for the dual-boot Windows RT and Android devices, and the company has seen interest from some device and chip makers,
Tomi Engdahl says:
The iPhone 5′s A6 SoC: Not A15 or A9, a Custom Apple Core Instead
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6292/iphone-5-a6-not-a15-custom-core
Given Apple’s reliance on fully licensed ARM cores in the past, the expected performance gains and unpublishable information that started all of this I concluded Apple’s A6 SoC likely featured two ARM Cortex A15 cores.
It turns out I was wrong. But pleasantly surprised.
The A6 is the first Apple SoC to use its own ARMv7 based processor design. The CPU core(s) aren’t based on a vanilla A9 or A15 design from ARM IP, but instead are something of Apple’s own creation.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Study urges CIOs to choose open source first
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/315490,study-urges-cios-to-choose-open-source-first.aspx
CIOs looking to replace legacy systems should consider open source options over proprietary software or public cloud services, according to a study by prominent British IT academic, Professor Jim Norton.
Norton’s study, to be released today and commissioned by travel industry processing giant Amadeus, assessed the role of open source software in critical transaction systems.
Airlines and railways in particular have sweated outdated mid-range and mainframe systems for several decades. Inevitably, CIOs at these organisations will need to choose between upgrades, outsourcing or adoption of cloud services.
In most cases, Norton argues that re-engineering internal IT using open source software is the more sensible outcome.
Open source is also preferred by the next generation of tech talent, he argues.
“The skilled, motivated staff that grew up with the internet don’t want to work with closed, old fashioned systems,” he said.
“If you don’t provide them with tools for Drupal, for Hadoop, for jQuery, they aren’t happy bunnies.”
“Replacing proprietary systems with open source isn’t straightforward and isn’t easy.”
Norton has previously advised the UK Government that the reliability and security of open systems were “at least as good as proprietary systems”.
Professor Norton said that while public cloud computing services have come a long way, business processes to support a shift to these services have not. Interoperability barely exists, nor does the ability to audit the security of hosted services.
“In many respects, the public cloud is an immature business. Business processes will eventually catch up with the technology, but they are not there yet.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
It’s Official: The Era of the Personal Computer Is Over
http://allthingsd.com/20120915/its-official-the-era-of-the-personal-computer-is-over/
As a signpost on the road to the so-called Post-PC Era we’ve been hearing about for so many years, this one is pretty hard to argue with: As of this year, personal computers no longer consume the majority of the world’s memory chip supply.
Word of this tipping point came quietly in the form of a press release from the market research firm IHS (the same group formerly known as iSuppli). The moment came during the second quarter of 2012.
During that period, PCs accounted for the consumption of 49 percent of DRAM produced around the world
PCs have consumed the majority of memory chips since sometime in the 1980s.
And given their rates of growth, IHS expects phones and tablets combined to consume about 27 percent of the world’s memory by 2013, while by that time PCs will consume less than 43 percent, making the decline, in the firm’s estimation, irreversible.
Last year, PC makers shipped about 353 million machines, an increase of about one-half of one percent, and it wouldn’t surprise anyone to see the industry finish the year with a slight decline in shipments year-over-year.
So perhaps now the academic debates about where the Post-PC Era begins can come to a close.
Tomi says:
IT biz bosses are ‘BIGGEST job cutters’ in the US
And these are just the redundancies we know about
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/17/challenger_gray_job_cuts/
Not only does automation help companies reduce their payrolls, the relentless competition among IT and telecom equipment and service suppliers – and the drive to ever-higher profit levels – is causing them to shed workers instead of adding them.
So says the headhunters and employment analysts at consultancy biz Challenger, Gray and Christmas. In its most recent report,
The most disturbing statistic for those of us in the IT racket is how the job cuts seem to be hitting the computer industry a bit hard. Last year, the industry had 11,297 job cuts, but this year, thanks in large part to Hewlett-Packard and its 27,000 job cuts (just last week jacked up by 2,000 more and not yet in the Challenger numbers), the computer biz has announced 37,670 layoffs this year so far.
Layoffs at electronics firms is also up, with 6,539 cuts so far this year
These are just the announced jobs cuts
Tomi Engdahl says:
H-P Tries On a Sleeker Look
Taking a Cue From Apple, CEO Whitman Makes Better Design Central to Turnaround
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443589304577637652500054674.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
When Meg Whitman took over as chief executive of Hewlett-Packard Co. a year ago, she got a company-issued laptop.
“They gave me a brick,” she said, referring to the device’s weight and chunky appearance.
That’s an assessment of H-P’s products that Ms. Whitman is working to change, starting with a new line of personal computers due out in time for the holidays.
As part of her plan, Ms. Whitman is counting on better-looking PCs, hoping her company might one day rival Apple Inc. as the industry’s standard bearer for sleek design.
“The whole market has moved to something that is more beautiful.”
H-P and other makers of traditional PCs also are counting on new Intel Corp. chips and the new Microsoft Windows 8 operating system, which is touch-sensitive and can run on tablets, to revive the market.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IHS: Tablet Display Shipments To Grow 56% In 2012, Smaller Tablets Gaining Share
http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/17/ihs-tablet-display-shipments-to-grow-56-in-2012-smaller-tablets-gaining-share/
Apple’s iPad is the primary driver responsible for a 56 percent annual bump in shipments in the tablet display market, according to a new report from supply chain research firm IHS. Total shipments are expected to hit 126.6 million units, up from 82.1 million last year, with larger devices including Apple’s iPad driving the bulk of those shipments.
But the 7-inch market is growing quickly, and will account for a much larger percentage of the tablet industry in 2012 than it did in 2011. 9.x-inch displays will account for the majority with 59 percent, but 7.x-inch displays are projected to grow in shipment volume from 20.8 to 40.1 million units between last year and 2012.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hardware Is Dead — At Least Most Expensive Hardware Is
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/09/17/2128214/hardware-is-dead-at-least-most-expensive-hardware-is
“In this article, Jay Goldberg, a financial analyst who travels to Shenzhen several times a year, analyses the potential consequences of the very low cost of hardware he found there on the consumer electronic industry worldwide. He wrote this piece of text after he found a very nice $45 Android 4 tablet. Are we so close to given-away tablets?”
Hardware is dead
http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/15/hardware-is-dead/
I walked into the middle of the scrum to a random stall. I pointed to one of the devices on display and asked, “How much for this one?” 300 kuai.
If this were a movie, the lights would have dimmed and all the activity in the room frozen. 300 renminbi is US $ 45. And that was the initial offer price given to a bewildered foreigner in China, no haggling. I felt a literal shock.
I bought the device and did some more research. This was a 7-inch tablet, Wi-Fi only with all the attributes of a good tablet.
I later found out that these devices are now all over the supply chain in Shenzhen. At volume, say 20,000 units, you can get them for $35 apiece.
At these levels there is almost no profit margin left in the hardware business.
A $45 tablet is cheap enough to be an impulse purchase at the check-out line in Best Buy. A $45 price puts tablets within reach of a whole hos
This trend is not entirely surprising
I think this leads to an important conclusion: No one can make money selling hardware anymore. The only way to make money with hardware is to sell something else and get consumers to pay for the whole device and experience.
Obviously, Apple sells more than just hardware. It sells iOS. It sells the Apple Brand.
I expect to see more retailers step in. Toys ‘R Us entered the market this week with its tablet for kids.
At $45 retail, we will probably start to see tablets become giveaways.
In the PC world 10 years ago we encountered similar trends. It was very hard to make money selling hardware, so HP and Dell ended up making most of their money selling pre-loads for AOL and other online services, or through marketing funds from their suppliers.
Offsetting the declines I expect from the hardware OEMs (or branded manufacturers), there is some good news for component suppliers. Companies with innovative features in silicon or very tight cost structures will benefit.
a device that looks a lot like my A-Pad was on sale at Fry’s Electronics for $79. No brand listed. The process has already begun.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tablets priced US$199-400 are expected to drop in price to US$150-200 in order to help non-Apple tablet makers stay competitive when Apple releases its reported 7.85-inch iPad, according to industry sources.
If major tablet makers were to drop product prices they would most likely not incur losses as many makers make a substantial amount of profits from 3G plans with telecommunication providers
Source: http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20120917PD213.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Motorola outs Razr phone with Intel Inside
http://www.reghardware.com/2012/09/18/motorola_outs_razr_i/
Motorola Mobility has introduced its first Intel-based smartphone: the Razr i.
In addition to the 2GHz Intel Atom Z2460 – based on the chip giant’s single-core Medfield design; 2GHz is a peak, if-the-phone’s-cold-enough burst speed
Inside sits a 2000mAh battery, good, the Google subsidiary claimed, for 20 hours’ runtime.
The i will run Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IBM Chief: Supercomputing to SMEs Will Be Huge Cloud Market in the Future
http://www.cio.com/article/716366/IBM_Chief_Supercomputing_to_SMEs_Will_Be_Huge_Cloud_Market_in_the_Future
Tikiri Wanduragala, a senior systems consultant at IBM, has said that the next big thing to happen in the cloud computing market will be the availability of supercomputing applications to small and medium sized businesses.
Wanduragala told Computerworld UK that he believes this will change the process of manufacturing for mid-sized companies.
“One of the biggest things in the future of cloud computing will be the ability to get supercomputing to mid-sized businesses. For example, fluid dynamics was only in the realm of the aerospace industry and big car companies,” he said.
“Making this available to SMEs will completely change the process of manufacturing. An SME won’t have to build prototypes to see if they work, they can just model it,” said Wanduragala.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel: Clover Trail Atom chips ‘cannot run Linux’
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/136276-intel-clover-trail-atom-chips-cannot-run-linux
At the Intel Developer Forum last week, the Santa Clara company said that its upcoming Clover Trail Atom processor — the dual-core version of Medfield that will debut with cheap Windows 8 laptops and tablets in October — “cannot run Linux.”
Clover Trail is the successor to Intel’s Medfield platform and is designed for low power mobile devices. It is a 32nm dual-core chip with Saltwell CPU cores and a PowerVR SGX 544MP2 GPU licensed from Imagination Technologies. In theory, Clover Trail is an x86 chip and thus it will run any compliant code thrown at it. Technically, there is no reason that a user can not wipe out Windows 8 and install a Linux distribution on the tablet.
Unfortunately, the OS needs to communicate with the processor to initiate most of the power saving features. In addition, this Atom chip will utilize a PowerVR GPU as well, which exacerbates the support issue because Intel cannot provide open source drivers, and past Atom chips with PowerVR graphics have had notoriously spotty support.
While Intel stated that Clover Trail “cannot run Linux,” a better way to put it would have been to say that users should not run Linux.
There will undoubtedly be some die-hard Linux developers who will step up and provide some measure of support for Clover Trail chips, so fans will be able to get the OS running on tablets if they really want to.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Green data centre market to reach £28bn by 2016
http://news.techworld.com/data-centre/3381772/green-data-centre-market-reach-28bn-by-2016/
Rising costs and increasing demand are forcing the data centre industry to undergo major changes
Green data centres may have gone out of fashion as a topic of conversation, but rising energy costs, increasing demand for computing power, environmental concerns, and economic pressures are continuing to drive the market.
The data centre industry currently consumes around 1.5 percent of the world’s energy. The result is that the industry is undergoing major changes as it struggles to keep energy demand in check while maintaining growth.
A new report by Pike Research predicts that the worldwide market for green data centres will grow from $17.1 billion (£10.5bn) in 2012 to $45.4 billion (£28bn) by 2016, at a compound annual growth rate of nearly 28 percent.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Maybe With Help From Google and Adobe, Microsoft Can Kill Windows XP
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/09/19/0424217/maybe-with-help-from-google-and-adobe-microsoft-can-kill-windows-xp
“Google announced last Friday that, in accordance to its policy of supporting a current browser and the immediate predecessor, its Google Apps productivity suite would drop support for Internet Explorer 8 once Windows 8 ships. Neither IE9 nor IE10 are available on XP.”
“next version of Photoshop CS would support only Windows 7 and 8″
” This is a much-needed boost for Microsoft, which anxiously wants to put XP out to pasture after 11 years. Despite efforts to get rid of the old OS, XP still holds 43% of the market”
“consumers are adopting Windows 7 at a much faster rate than businesses.”
“if XP really can be found in only 12% of households but 43% of businesses (or something close to that), then it really is time for the enterprise to stop dragging its tail.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Indian programmers are paid on a third of the Finnish.
When calculating the total cost of the work (productivity, errors, etc..), the work done in India is more expensive.
Short-billed outsourcing eats into the credibility of software firms, when delivered to customers systems require ongoing support, patching and upgrading.
What’s the point here is, when outsourcing does not bring much-needed savings?
“India, the employee understands himself to resign” when not needed
Source: http://www.3t.fi/artikkeli/blogit/jukka_nortio/hyvastit_suomi_koodille
Tomi Engdahl says:
Data Scientist: The Sexiest Job of the 21st Century
http://hbr.org/2012/10/data-scientist-the-sexiest-job-of-the-21st-century
Goldman is a good example of a new key player in organizations: the “data scientist.” It’s a high-ranking professional with the training and curiosity to make discoveries in the world of big data. The title has been around for only a few years.
But thousands of data scientists are already working at both start-ups and well-established companies. Their sudden appearance on the business scene reflects the fact that companies are now wrestling with information that comes in varieties and volumes never encountered before. If your organization stores multiple petabytes of data, if the information most critical to your business resides in forms other than rows and columns of numbers, or if answering your biggest question would involve a “mashup” of several analytical efforts, you’ve got a big data opportunity.
Much of the current enthusiasm for big data focuses on technologies that make taming it possible, including Hadoop (the most widely used framework for distributed file system processing) and related open-source tools, cloud computing, and data visualization. While those are important breakthroughs, at least as important are the people with the skill set (and the mind-set) to put them to good use. On this front, demand has raced ahead of supply. Indeed, the shortage of data scientists is becoming a serious constraint in some sectors.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Don’t abandon HTML5 just because Mark Zuckerberg hates it
http://www.citeworld.com/development/20652/mark-zuckerberg-hates-html5-but-you-dont-have-to?source=ctwincpt_cite_zuck
Mark Zuckerberg had harsh words for HTML5 today on stage at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, saying that Facebook’s big HTML5 bet was “one of the biggest strategic mistakes we made.”
But just because it’s not right for a high-profile commercial app, that doesn’t mean corporate developers should ignore it and go all native.
Zuckerberg said that Facebook bet on HTML5 about 20 months ago
“It just wasn’t ready,” Zuckerberg admitted today. The resulting apps were slow and unreliable, while other mobile apps were offering a much better experience. Eventually the company realized that “good enough is not good enough. We have to get to the highest quality level, and only way we’ll get there is to do native.”
So HTML5 was a bad choice for Facebook. Does that mean it’s a bad idea for enterprise mobile apps as well?
Not necessarily.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft, HP skirted taxes via offshore units: U.S. Senate panel
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/20/us-usa-taxes-offshore-idUSBRE88J0VY20120920
Microsoft Corp and Hewlett-Packard Co pushed back against claims by a U.S. Senate panel on Thursday that they used offshore units and loopholes to shield billions of dollars in profits from U.S. taxes.
“The tax practices and gimmicks range from egregious to dubious validity,” Democratic Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the panel, said at a news conference.
U.S. companies have at least $1.5 trillion in profits sitting offshore. Most say they are keeping them there to avoid U.S. tax.
“The high-tech industry is probably the No. 1 user of these offshore entities to transfer intellectual property,” Levin said.
Big companies have lobbied for a tax holiday to let them bring offshore profits into the United States at a reduced tax rate, arguing that the profits are trapped offshore.
Tomi Engdahl says:
W3C Announces Plan To Deliver HTML 5 by 2014
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/09/21/0345212/w3c-announces-plan-to-deliver-html-5-by-201
The World Wide Web Consortium has proposed “a new plan that would see the HTML 5 spec positioned as a Recommendation—which in W3C’s lingo represents a complete, finished standard—by the end of 2014. The group plans a follow-up, HTML 5.1, for the end of 2016.” Instead of working toward one-specification-to-rule-them-all in 2022, features that are stable and implemented in multiple browsers now will be finalized as HTML 5.0 by 2014 with unstable features moved into HTML 5.1 (developed in parallel).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cloud Will Save U.S. Government Billions, But Security Concerns Persist
http://www.cio.com/article/716551/Cloud_Will_Save_U.S._Government_Billions_But_Security_Concerns_Persist?page=1&taxonomyId=3024
New study finds that government agencies can net substantial savings by moving mission-critical applications to the cloud, but security remains a top concern.
In a new survey of federal IT managers, MeriTalk, an online community dedicated to government technology, charted the progress of agencies that have been shifting “mission-critical” applications to the cloud.
Respondents flagged security as a chief area of concern in migrating to the cloud, with 73 percent indicating that issues such as data vulnerabilities and threat vectors are a primary barrier in shifting mission-critical apps to the cloud.
Following on the “cloud-first” policy the Obama administration promulgated in 2010, the General Services Administration has recently been soliciting feedback from industry and government members for a program that would enlist cloud brokers to assist federal agencies with the transition of their systems and applications to private-sector providers.
the government could save $16.6 billion
But the government’s drive to the cloud, with all of its promised cost and efficiency benefits, has been slowed by significant obstacles.
“Transitioning legacy, mission-critical applications to the cloud is not a forklift exercise — in many cases it’s more like an organ transplant,” MeriTalk founder Steve O’Keeffe said in a statement, noting the respondents’ preference of a private cloud over the public and hybrid alternatives. “With the complexity and security concerns, it’s not surprising many agencies want a private room.”
tomi says:
Thank you very much on your feedback on site design.
Tomi says:
Poor Android tablet sales led Intel to deny Linux support to Clover Trail
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/opinion/2207369/poor-android-tablet-sales-led-intel-to-deny-linux-support-to-clover-trail
LAST WEEK Intel dropped what seemed to be a bombshell by saying that its upcoming Clover Trail Atom chip will not support Linux. Since then a little more information has surfaced that goes some way to justify the firm’s decision to ignore what is arguably the most important operating system on mobile devices.
Since Intel’s Clover Trail admission something odd happened. Intel sent over a statement saying, “There is no fundamental barrier to supporting Linux on Clover Trail since it utilizes Intel architecture cores and those same cores (Penwell) on Medfield support Android today (for tablets and phones),” something that we had already reported in the original article.
Intel’s statement hinted at the real reason why it isn’t supporting Linux on Clover Trail. The firm said, “We are focusing our current efforts for this Clover Trail product on Windows 8 because that’s where we think the biggest market opportunity is for us in tablets right now. If something changes and we see customer interest or further market opportunity on a Linux-based OS for tablets we have the ability to bring products to market in future.”
Intel’s decision not to support Linux on Clover Trail is not a master plan concocted with Microsoft to undermine Linux. After all, AMD has made exactly the same decision with Hondo. Rather, it’s a recognition of Android’s inability to get a serious foothold in the tablet market despite having innovative designs. At the end of the day, chip vendors’ decisions to support Linux – whether in the server, desktop or mobile market – are based on the hope of making money.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Poor Android tablet sales led Intel to deny Linux support to Clover Trail
Column It’s all about market share
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/opinion/2207369/poor-android-tablet-sales-led-intel-to-deny-linux-support-to-clover-trail
“We are focusing our current efforts for this Clover Trail product on Windows 8 because that’s where we think the biggest market opportunity is for us in tablets right now. If something changes and we see customer interest or further market opportunity on a Linux-based OS for tablets we have the ability to bring products to market in future.”
To understand Intel’s decision not to support Linux on Clover Trail, one has to look at the market Clover Trail is being aimed at.
Intel is pitching Clover Trail to the low-end ultrabook market and in particular the tablet market. An Intel source told me “the tablet market is actually the Ipad market” and said that Android tablets “are not gaining any traction”. These comments are not new and are crystallised in analyst reports. The truth is that Apple’s Ipad is the device that consumers are buying, regardless of innovative designs such as Asus’ Transformer range or cut-price units such as the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire.
According to the source, Intel could support Linux on its tablet chip, where Linux effectively means Android. However I was told, “Intel is fed up ploughing money into optimising Android and not getting anything back.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel to Offer Three Atom “Centerton” Processors for Servers.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20120920225625_Intel_to_Offer_Three_Atom_Centerton_Processors_for_Servers.html
Intel Corp. plans to offer three flavours of Atom S1200-series “Centerton” central processing units (CPUs) for micro-servers later this year with power consumption ranging from 6.1W to 8.5W. The chips and machines on their base will be available in the fourth quarter of the year and will be Intel’s first attempt to enter the market of ultra low-voltage micro-servers, which will be gaining popularity in the coming years.
Intel Atom “Centerton” microprocessors have two 64-bit “Saltwell” x86 cores with Hyper-Threading technology
The Atom “Centerton” microprocessors for servers will be available separately and in “Double Cove” micro modules, which will employ two chips, memory, SATA/USB/Ethernet controllers, and will simplify development of ultra-dense servers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Specifications of “Centerton” Atom processors
http://www.cpu-world.com/news_2012/2012091901_Specifications_of_Centerton_Atom_processors.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Seagate: Our tech will be BETTER than WD’s helium-filled hardness
Spinning disks and squabbling sisters
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/24/seagate_analysts_day/
Seagate and WD are the squabbling sisters of the hard disk drive business, both determined to be number one.
We’ve had WD showing off the flash-disk mutants on its road map to the investment analysts, boasting of its upcoming helium-filled drives – where did they come from? – and 5mm ultra-thin drives. Now Seagate has followed suit and said it will get there first, wherever it is.
Areal density growth is not keeping up and current perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) is not going to be able to make up the difference. How will the HDD industry cope? Shingled magnetic recording (SMR) is a way of increasing areal density by overlapping tracks on a drive, and Luczo said that SMR drives are being sampled now with shipments expected to start before the end of the year.
SMR is a short-term filler. The real PMR replacement, heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR), will come in 2014 or later, Luczo said.
Luczo is convinced that cloud computing and increased use of data consumption-oriented tablet and other consumer internet-connected devices will fuel demand for disk drive shipments into the cloud. Rakers writes: “Seagate notes that by 2020 … over 60 per cent of the petabytes shipped will be into cloud environments (versus ~25 per cent currently).”
WD talked about its hybrid disk drive strategy, that’s disk drives with small flash caches to serve hot data fast to the host computer, not as fast overall as a pure SSD but plenty faster than a straight hard drive and cheaper than an SSD.
Luczo said that, by 2017 over 85 per cent of Seagate’s HDD production will be of hybrid drives, covering both consumer and enterprise products. Cold boot times are just 2 secs slower than an SSD, making hybrid HDDs a good fit for the tablet and Ultrabook notebook market.
Luczo said Seagate would ship desktop PC hybrid drives before the end of the year. Enterprise hybrids would be coming soon as well.
The two mainstream disk drive rivals are set on competing strongly to bring their technology goodies to our attention, with each striving to be top dog.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel’s new Clover Trail chip will support Android & Linux
http://www.zdnet.com/intels-new-clover-trail-chip-will-support-android-and-linux-7000004451/
Summary: There have been rumors that Intel’s new Atom CPU, Clover Trail, would only support Windows 8, but not Android or Linux. We now know that the chip will support these open-source operating systems as well.
In short, while Intel was making Windows 8 support its first priority for Clover Trail, the company had also been working to make Android and Linux work with its key power management features
In short, “Clover Trail’s target is a future Windows 8 Tablet. … If you expect the Windows tablet to do as well as the Windows 8 smartphones recently released by Nokia and others, you probably aren’t far from wrong. Clover Trail, built with partner Microsoft, might be Intel’s biggest loser since Itanium, built with partner HP.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Teardown: Inside the Apple iPhone 5
http://www.edn.com/design/consumer/4396870/Teardown–Inside-the-Apple-iPhone-5?cid=EDNToday
Apple’s A6 SOC: Its likely custom ARM core seems quite speedy
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/brians-brain/4396944/Apple-s-A6-SOC–Its-likely-custom-ARM-core-seems-quite-speedy?cid=EDNToday
Apple’s A6 SOC: an intriguing development history
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/brians-brain/4396946/Apple-s-A6-SOC–an-intriguing-development-history?cid=EDNToday
Apple A6 Die Revealed: 3-core GPU, < 100mm^2
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6323/apple-a6-die-revealed-3core-gpu-100mm2
Tomi Engdahl says:
AMD Sets the FX “Vishera” Launch Date.
High-End AMD Piledriver Sets Landing Date
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20120921231354_AMD_Sets_the_FX_Vishera_Launch_Date.html
Advanced Micro Devices plans to formally unveil its next-generation AMD FX-series central processing units in October, sources told X-bit labs. The chip is expected to improve AMD’s positions on performance microprocessor market and will provide an upgrade point to owners of ill-fated FX “Bulldozer” family.
AMD plans to formally unwrap its long-awaited performance chip code-named Vishera on the 23th of October , according to a source.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel Confirms Medfield x86 Chips Don’t Support LTE Yet — But Says It Won’t Be Long Coming
http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/23/intel-confirms-medfield-x86-chips-dont-support-lte-yet-but-says-it-wont-be-long-coming/
Intel’s second bite at the smartphone market has been more akin to a gentle nibbling around the edges. At the end of last year the chipmaker teased a smartphone reference design running its Medfield x86 Atom SoC. Nine months later Intel chips have found their way inside six real world smartphones, yet none apparently destined for the U.S.
The likely explanation is there’s no support for LTE in Intel’s current Medfield chips. And with 4G such a dominant force in the U.S. you need to command a brand as massive as Apple to get away with flogging LTE-less phones (the iPhone 5 being Cupertino’s only 4G phone).
The lack of LTE support in Medfield chips was confirmed to TechCrunch by Sumeet Syal, Intel’s Director of Product Marketing
He also confirmed 4G support is in the pipeline, noting that Intel will be “shipping some LTE products later this year and ramping into 2013″ – so that particular barrier to U.S. entry may soon be removed.
Syal said Intel is also readying a dual-core Atom Medfield chip. Its current Medfield chip architecture is single core, although the SoC includes a technique to boost multitasking called hyper threading which — Intel claims — allows it to out-perform some rival multicore chips.
App compatibility is another area where Intel is having to play catch up. Despite working closely with Google to optimize its chip architecture for Android, not all Android apps are compatible with Intel’s SoCs — including, in a recently flagged example, Google’s own Chrome for Android browser.
Syal said the “majority” of Android apps are compatible with Medfield chips but refused to specify an exact percentage — although Intel has previously claimed 95 per cent of apps are compatible (which was a correction of a previous Intel statement pegging Android app compatibility at just 70 per cent of apps).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nvidia Develops High-Performance ARM-Based “Boulder” Microprocessor – Report.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20120921010327_Nvidia_Develops_High_Performance_ARM_Based_Boulder_Microprocessor_Report.html
Nvidia Corp. is reportedly working on an ultra high-performance system-on-chip based on ARM architecture, which would challenge AMD Opteron and Intel Xeon microprocessors in the server space. The chip is called project Boulder and it is designed by Nvidia’s graphics processing unit team.
It is not a secret that Nvidia is already working on project Denver, an Nvidia high-performance central processing unit (CPU) running the ARM instruction set, which will be fully integrated on the same chip as an Nvidia graphics processing unit (GPU). The first implementation of project Denver is code-named Maxwell graphics processor.
Denver and Maxwell fit perfectly into Nvidia’s Echelon extreme-scale computing project.
Nvidia’s Denver/Maxwell will allow running an operating system directly on GPU (or CPU-on-GPU) chip sometimes in 2014.
Boulder, which is also due in 2014
Tomi Engdahl says:
Lonely gamer creates avatar girlfriend, takes her out on date
http://www2.electronicproducts.com/Lonely_gamer_creates_avatar_girlfriend_takes_her_out_on_date-article-fajb_lonely_gamer_virtual_girlfriend_jul2012-html.aspx
Impressive technology put to creepy use
Tomi Engdahl says:
Toshiba’s First Hybrid Drives Are Now Shipping
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Hybrid-Drive-NAND-Flash-MQ01ABDH-SLC-Cache,17880.html
Toshiba said on Tuesday that it has shipped its very first line of 2.5-inch hybrid drives, the MQ01ABDH series. These combine the best of both worlds: the speed and reliability of NAND flash and the cheap storage capacity of hard disks.
Tomi Engdahl says:
System update – Embedded Linux, hardware/software upward mobility, Design East wrap-up
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/systems-interface/4396882/System-update—Embedded-Linux–hardware-software-upward-mobility–Design-East-wrap-up
According to the 2012 Embedded study presented this week at Design East, interest in embedded Linux remains strong and even edges out in-house RTOSs for current projects when considering both open-source and commercial Linux distributions.
Another interesting point suggested in this year’s study is a veritable explosion in new development using the Linux-based Android OS: 34% of study participants said they’re considering using Android within the next 12 months – up from a current usage of 17%.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Contract Manufacturers Make About Nine Out of 10 Media Tablets in 2012
http://www2.electronicproducts.com/Contract_Manufacturers_Make_About_Nine_Out_of_10_Media_Tablets_in_2012-article-news02_21_sep2012-html.aspx
Although your new media tablet may sport the logo of a familiar brand name like Apple or Amazon, there’s a 90 percent chance the device was actually made by a company with a much less famous moniker, such as Hon Hai or Quanta.
That’s because the vast majority of tablets—including the iPad and Kindle Fire—actually are made by contract or outsourced manufacturers based in Asia, according to an IHS iSuppli Global Manufacturing & Design Report from information and analytics provider.
Outsourced manufacturers in 2011 were responsible for 87.5 percent of tablet production, compared to 12.5 percent that were made in-house. The percentage of outsourced tablets this year is expected to increase to 89.2 percent,
“The high percentage of outsourced manufacturing of tablets reflects the choice among tablet brands and original equipment manufacturers—even ones as big as Apple—to refrain from in-house production,”
“Tablet brands use outsourcing for many reasons, including faster time to market; the leveraging of capabilities, especially for firmware development and hardware integration; and asset flexibility that translates into reduced corporate expenditures and lower headcount.”
The biggest contract manufacturer of tablets is Apple partner Hon Hai, of Taiwan, also known as Foxconn. Hon Hai accounted for 62 percent of tablet shipments last year.
close relationship with Apple.
Hon Hai is an EMS provider, a type of outsourced manufacturer that generally does not participate in designing product but simply offers manufacturing and supply chain management services.
With the emergence of Android—and soon, Windows-based tablets—ODMs will have a better chance of breaking Hon Hai’s near-impregnable hold on the market.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel launches ARM battery life Windows 8 Atom chip
http://www.reghardware.com/2012/09/27/intel_launches_windows_8_atom_chip/
Intel has formally launched Clover Trail, its upcoming Atom system-on-a-chip for Windows 8 tablets.
Officially branded the Atom Z2760, Clover Trail contains a dual-core x86 CPU capable of running at up to 1.8GHz in burst mode – maximise the clock frequency as far as the chip’s temperature will allow – and equipped with HyperThreading so the tablet operating system thinks it’s running on a four-core processor.
The 32nm SoC also contains a 533MHz Intel graphics core plus 30fps 1080p capable video encoding and decoding engines.
The chip giant claimed the Z2760 will enable gadgets as “thin as 8.5mm and as light as 680g”. The technology also provides long battery life: over ten hours on-panel HD video playback – as opposed to HDMI – and over three weeks of standby time, Intel claimed, though that depends on the battery it’s hooked up to. In the case of Intel’s test, the basis for the above claim, it used a 30Wh cell.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ultrabooks to finally out-ship notebooks after 20% price slash
UK IT buyers prefer skinny models, if slightly cheaper
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2012/09/27/context_ultrabooks/
Ultrabooks are forecast to overtake notebook shipments by mid 2012 after swingeing price cuts appear to be finally reeling in some UK punters, particularly in the enterprise.
Context said in January 13.3 inch Ultrabooks made up 5 per cent of the notebook market but in August they had snaffled 27 per cent market share. In the same time frame notebook sales declined 12 per cent.
“By the middle of next year 13.3 inch Ultrabooks will overtake [same sized] notebooks,” Senthuran Premakumar, enterprise analyst at Context told The Channel.
Late last year Gartner claimed the Ultrabook category would not lift off until prices fell by around a quarter.
Tomi Engdahl says:
A new invention: the data is maintained, at least 100 million years
Japanese Hitachi has developed a glass-based media. It is resistant to high temperatures and water, and store the information of hundreds of millions of years.
Hitachi’s new invention that may enter the market as early as 2015.
The technique utilizes sustainable fused silica, which is engraved digital laser marking. The information is read using an optical microscope.
Hitachi has managed to store 40 megabytes to one inch. Density is higher than CD audio, which lags 35 megabits per inch. Data is written to four floors of the laser using different focal points.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/uusi+keksinto+data+sailyy+ainakin+100+miljoonaa+vuotta/a842905?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-28092012&
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft: Lack of tech workers approaching ‘genuine crisis’
http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/258985-microsoft-lack-of-tech-workers-approaching-genuine-crisis
Microsoft unveiled a lobbying push on Thursday to produce more applicants with the skills to fill technology and engineering jobs.
The proposal would boost visas for high-skilled foreign workers and invest millions of dollars in federal funding for education.
Brad Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel and executive vice president, said at a press briefing that the lack of qualified job applicants is “approaching the dimensions of a genuine crisis” for tech companies.
“We fear jobs will start to migrate to other countries,” Smith said, adding that other countries are putting a higher priority than the United States on preparing students for high-skill jobs.
“The skill gap is one of the biggest problems Microsoft faces,” Smith said. He added that he went to both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions last month to discuss the issue with lawmakers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tablet and laptop sales neck and neck
Era of the notebook over?
http://www.reghardware.com/2012/09/28/brits_bought_as_many_tablets_as_laptops_in_august/
Brits bought as many tablets as laptops in August, market watcher GfK said today.
Good news for tablet proponents, that, but not for the folk making and selling computer kit. They make less money selling slabs than notebooks.
So while notebooks accounted for 33.6 per cent of IT sales revenue in August 2012, down from 34.5 per cent in August 2011, only 19.5 per cent of the same total came from tablet sales, GfK’s numbers show.
Desktop sales fell from 14.5 per cent of total revenue to 13.9 per cent. Packaged software sales’ share of revenues dropped from 13.8 per cent to 9.4 per cent, on the back of those declining desktop and laptop sales.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hard Drive Shipments Rebound to Record Level in 2012
September 27, 2012
http://www.isuppli.com/Memory-and-Storage/News/Pages/Hard-Drive-Shipments-Rebound-to-Record-Level-in-2012.aspx
A year after the Thailand flooding disaster partially derailed production, the global hard disk drive (HDD) industry has fully recovered, with shipments to the computer market expected to hit a record level this year, driven by the enterprise market as well as the arrival of the Windows 8 operating system.
HDD shipments in 2012 for the overall computer market, including PCs, are forecast to reach 524.0 million units, up 4.3 percent from 502.5 million units last year, according to an IHS iSuppli Storage Space Market Brief from information and analytics provider IHS (NYSE: IHS).
The 2012 number will be the highest shipment figure on record in the HDD books at year-end—but the achievement will not stand for long. In fact, HDD shipments are projected to climb continually, the stellar results of each year bested by the next in predictable but welcome fashion until at least 2016. By then, HDD shipments will hit 575.1 million units, as shown in the figure below.
In contrast to the glowing performance of HDDs for the PC space, annual HDD consumer-related shipments will decline this year from 2011 levels.
“HDD shipments for computers will overcome a sluggish third quarter to reach record levels in 2012,” said Fang Zhang, analyst for storage systems at IHS
Another major growth driver for the HDD industry will be the new Windows 8 operating system to be launched in October.
Tomi Engdahl says:
CIOs Should Get to Know Their Chief Legal Officers
http://www.cio.com/article/717430/CIOs_Should_Get_to_Know_Their_Chief_Legal_Officers?taxonomyId=3168
CIOs and chief legal officers need to communicate early and often to build a deeper relationship. Discussion topics include data privacy, e-discovery and policies for mobile devices.
Corporate CIOs and chief legal officers (CLOs) have a lot to talk about: data privacy, e-discovery and policies for employee mobile devices, to name a few topics. But a recent Gartner survey of 70 CLOs found that over half (51 percent) of them said they have conversations with CIOs no more than once a month.
The Gartner report recommends that CIOs and CLOs have regular, frequent and in-depth meetings so they can build a better relationship and understand each other’s requirements, capabilities and outstanding issues. Of the CLOs who talk to their CIOs more than once a month, large majorities said they had changed their legal strategies or corporate policies after the conversation.
The study found that the polled CLOs consider CIOs to be important strategic partners. “Risk management is an increasingly important concern for CLOs, and they recognize that it requires significant input from IT,” the Gartner report says.
Tomi Engdahl says:
European ICT industry has lost its position as badly for the Americans and Asian competitors. A management consulting firm AT Kearney report that the world’s one hundred largest IT companies, only 15 are European. Of these, none has a market leading position.
European share of the global IT market for almost a quarter, but the large domestic market have not been able to generate the leading companies.
The one problem is the lack of risk capital.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/euroopan+ityritykset+pudonneet+kakkoskastiin/a842716?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-01102012&
Tomi Engdahl says:
Analysts slash Ultrabook sales estimate by over 50%
Global ‘meh’ over overpriced laptops
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/10/01/isuppli_slashes_ultrabook_estimates/
Analyst house IHS iSuppli has slashed its forecast for Ultrabook sales by more than half for this year, and the outlook for 2013 could hardly be described as rosy, as well.
Earlier in the year, iSuppli predicted that 22 million of the svelte laptops would ship by the end of 2012, but it’s now cut that forecast to 10.3 million.
“So far, the PC industry has failed to create the kind of buzz and excitement among consumers that is required to propel ultrabooks into the mainstream,” said Craig Stice, senior principal analyst for compute platforms at IHS in an emailed statement.
“This is especially a problem amid all the hype surrounding media tablets and smartphones,” he writes. “When combined with other factors, including prohibitively high pricing, this means that ultrabook sales will not meet expectations in 2012.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
AMD says OpenJDK work is needed for Opteron APUs
Bets on J2EE for server chip sales
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2213727/amd-says-openjdk-work-is-needed-for-opteron-apus
CHIP DESIGNER AMD said its collaboration with Oracle to bring improved GPGPU support in OpenJDK is a preparatory step prior to the launch of an Opteron accelerated processor unit (APU).
AMD has bet the farm on its APUs, the concept of mating a CPU with a GPGPU on the same die, and it has seen favourable uptake in the consumer market since Llano launched over a year ago but has yet to launch an Opteron APU. Now the firm has admitted that its collaboration with Oracle on improving GPGPU support in OpenJDK is one of many steps it needs to take prior to the launch of an Opteron APU.
Lewis added, “It would make sense that we would start working on the ecosystem in preparation for that server APU type of timeframe and so this would be one of many steps.”
AMD has said an Opteron APU is in the pipeline
Tomi Engdahl says:
Java was originally designed for embedded systems and it seems that Oracle is still actively pushing Java for those applications:
Oracle Packages Java for Embedded Systems Design
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1394&doc_id=251396&cid=NL_Newsletters+-+DN+Daily
In an attempt to capitalize on the huge opportunity in the embedded systems market, and the dominance of the Java programming platform, Oracle has unwrapped a new set of offerings facilitating the design of applications across a wide range of embedded systems. These systems include network appliances, healthcare devices, home gateways and routers, and large multifunction printers.
The company unveiled a pair of offerings as part of its embedded systems push: Oracle Java Embedded Suite 7.0, which aims to speed development of embedded systems; and Oracle Java Micro Edition (ME) Embedded 3.2, a run-time version geared for microcontrollers with less than a megabyte of memory, and as little as 130K bytes of RAM and 350K bytes of ROM.
Citing stats such as 1 billion Java downloads annually, and the fact that more than 3 billion devices are powered by Java technology, Oracle officials said the market is ripe for more powerful development tools built on the programming language, and optimized for the design of embedded systems applications. Especially, they claim, in light of the growing interest in creating machine-to-machine applications (M2M), or what’s being called the “Internet of Things.”
Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 is designed and optimized to meet the unique requirements of small, embedded, low-power devices like microcontrollers, sensors, and other resource-constrained hardware without screens or user interfaces. With support for on-the-fly application downloads and updates, remote operation in challenging environments, and the ability to add new capabilities without impacting existing functions, Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 brings a commercial implementation of the programming language for small-footprint devices based on the ARM architecture, including Cortex-M and Cortex-A.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Simon Cowell plans X Factor for Tech
The hunt for the Susan Boyle of code is on
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/10/02/simon_cowell_to_find_next_zuckerberg/
Reality TV impresario Simon Cowell has teamed with Black Eyed Peas rapper Will.i.am to produce and new reality TV format based on the “X Factor” template, but this time the aim is to find technology innovators. Referred to as “X Factor for Tech” by Will.i.am, in The Sun the ambition is to find the next Mark Zuckerberg.
“That isn’t innovation when there’s some guy there looking over your shoulder asking how you make money, sometimes you just want to design. Imagine if YouTube, Google or Twitter had asked first how you make money. What I like about startups is that it is a tool first to be adopted, the monetization comes later,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cisco fluffs up freebie Nexus virtual switch
Big price cut, but the one with goodies still ain’t free
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/10/01/cisco_nexus_1000v_freemium/
Cisco is poised to begin beta testing of the latest version of its Nexus 1000V virtual switches, including a new Essential Edition which it will offer for the low, low price of nothing at all.
The reasoning behind this pricing policy is simplicity itself: if you are trying to take on VMware in the market for virtual switches, as Cisco Systems most certainly is so it can extend its dominant position in the physical switch world into the virty world, that job got a whole lot more complicated the moment VMware coughed up $1.26bn like a hernia check on a mooseto acquire Nicira, the maker of the Open vSwitch virtual switch.
How can you charge for a virtual switch when the other guy is giving it away?
The answer, as Cisco knows full well, is that you can’t. Eventually, any virtual device, be it a hypervisor or a virtual switch, will commoditize and you have to think of it as a kind of loss leader for other features that you can make money on.
while the company is not about to open source its virtual switch (you can stop choking and laughing now at that prospect), it has shifted to a “freemium” distribution model.
There’s now an Essential Edition that costs nothing and includes VLAN and VxLAN features as well as the plug-ions for vCenter and vCloud Director from VMware.
The Advanced Edition adds Cisco’s TrustSec security extensions and its Virtual Security Gateway (VSG), a virtual firewall…
(costs $695 per processor)