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:
ARM, security firms form joint venture for mobile
http://www.edn.com/article/521379-ARM_security_firms_form_joint_venture_for_mobile.php?cid=EDNToday_20120403
ARM, Gemalto and Giesecke & Devrient have announced the creation of a joint venture (JV) chartered with delivering secure environments in which to run services such as financial payments on mobile equipment including tablet computers, smart-TVs, games consoles and smartphones.
“The new venture will combine the security operations from three leading organizations,”
The three companies are investing in a joint venture to accelerate adoption of a common security standard based on ARM’s TrustZone security technology, which is included in every ARM Cortex-A family processor. All three companies will contribute assets to the new venture, including patents, software, people, cash and capital equipment.
The JV will develop a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) for smart connected devices based on TrustZone. This common, secure environment for software execution will utilize advanced hardware security coupled with industry standard software interfaces, such as those from the GlobalPlatform industry association. This secure environment will be offered to silicon, software, and equipment partners.
“The integration of the hardware, software and services necessary for system-wide security has been slow,” said Warren East, CEO of ARM, in a statement. “This will be of significant step in terms of improved consumer trust in secure transactions on connected devices,” East added.
Tomi Engdahl says:
AMD Embedded G-Series Platform
http://www.amd.com/us/products/embedded/processors/Pages/g-series.aspx
The world’s first combination of low-power CPU and advanced GPU integrated into a single embedded device
The AMD Embedded G-Series platform is the world’s first integrated circuit to combine a low-power CPU and a discrete-level GPU into a single embedded Accelerated Processing Unit (APU
Based on a brand new power-optimized core, the AMD Embedded G-Series platform delivers new levels of performance in a compact BGA package that is ideal for low power designs in embedded applications such as Digital Signage, x86 Set-Top-Box (xSTB), IP-TV, Thin Client, Information Kiosk, Point-of-Sale, and Casino Gaming, media servers and industrial control systems.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Flash drives are becoming worse
“The solid-state disks will be broken. Their storage capacity is increased, and the quality has decreased, so that the price has been regarded as reasonable, “said Ibas data recovery services manager Øyvind Nyland.
Data recovery engineer Hans Rønning, says that traditional hard drives the company has managed to save 80 or even 90 percent of the data, but the ssd discs share is much lower. “Flash drives are still relatively new to us, but we heal this all the time,” said Rønning.
Rønning says that before the SSDs lasted up to 10 000 times the writing, the current number is about one to 1000.
Source:
http://www.tietokone.fi/uutiset/flash_levyt_ovat_entista_huonompia
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel to push StudyBook tablet PC for emerging markets
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20120402PD218.html
Intel is set to push a tablet PC product codenamed StudyBook to target emerging markets and will adopt the same sales model as its Classmate PC, according to sources from PC players. The StudyBook tablet PC will feature a 10-inch panel with Intel’s Medfield platform and adopt dual-operating systems and will target the emerging markets such as China and Brazil, the sources noted.
Tomi Engdahl says:
If the PC market provides a model for the start of the core wars, it also provides a model for their conclusion. Except for serious gamers, most PC buyers today have lost interest in the number and speed of the CPUs in their systems. Why should they care? Even a low-end Sandy Bridge or Llano processor yields plenty of CPU performance for most mainstream PC applications. That’s why Intel’s latest PC innovations focus on power reduction (Ivy Bridge and Haswell) and system design (ultrabooks), not higher performance.
Performance is still important in mobile devices because they lag far behind current PCs, but mobile processors will ultimately reach the “good enough” stage of performance. And when that happens, the current debate about numbers of cores will be as outdated as worrying about the number of channels on your cable TV
Source:
Processor Watch newsletter article
End of the Core Wars By Linley Gwennap
http://www.linleygroup.com/index.php
Tomi Engdahl says:
Today’s computing landscape
http://www2.electronicproducts.com/Today_s_computing_landscape-article-FAJH_Agilent_Apr2112-html.aspx
Ten years ago or even five years ago the personal computer industry was the driver of technical innovation. Desktops and laptops up-deployed technology to servers, and down-deployed technology into embedded and consumer products.
Today, technical innovation is driven by mobile and cloud computing. This innovation is feeding a worldwide industry that meets the demand for billions of mobile devices and the computing cloud that supports them.
Innovation in size, power requirements, memory, battery life, and flexibility are the answer to the world’s thirst for small mobile devices that can do everything the desktop and laptop used to do, and even more. Add the huge increase in bandwidth now available via Wi-Fi and 3G/4G networks that is driving innovation in servers to enable the cloud.
Servers that enable the cloud must keep pace with the demands of billions of smart device transactions in the hands of billions of consumers worldwide. In December 2011, IHS iSuppli had this to say about cloud computing:
“The cloud computing market is heading into the stratosphere as companies seek to offer services designed to serve tablets, smartphones and other mobile devices. …projected to surge to $110 billion in 2015, up from $23 billion in 2010.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Be prepared for problems if you use the cloud
Cloud services are becoming more common at high speed, so the users of services, so be prepared for problems, advises News International.
Although the News International has benefited from the use of a cloud, the company has also faced problems. They have 200 servers at Amazon in the cloud service.
“Disk Errors occur once a month. We need to back up a cloud in the virtual machine”
“You can not just take a virtual machine and put it into a cloud service. One must assume that all that can go wrong, “McDonald said.
“We are very pleased with the Amazon cloud services in general”
Source:
http://www.tietoviikko.fi/cio/varaudu+ongelmiin+jos+kaytat+pilvea/a797712?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-05042012&
heat map says:
Basic and simple: Google Analytics are complicated and WebsiteHeatmaps isn’t. I’m additional of the visual human being and dislike math. Should you sense precisely the same get http://websiteheatmaps.wordpress.com. Notify them Barry despatched you.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Manufacturer-specific unix is aging and degradation, but does not die. The PC-based x86 based Xeon and AMD Opteron processors are efficient and cheap.
There are three intense proprietary UNIX systems: IBM AIX, HP-UX and Oracle Solaris.
IBM AIX runs on IBM Power processor. HP-UX requires Intel Itanium. Solaris can run Oracle’s own Sparc chip, but also for x86 processors.
Unix solution acquires a customer who is willing to pay the greatest possible reliability.
In addition, database licenses, processor-specific pricing has started to affect the sale of Unix systems. Database license pricing based on number of processor cores can make heavy Unix-iron more economical than large number of x86 cores.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/unix+vanhenee+muttei+kuole/a785423?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-10042012&
Tomi Engdahl says:
Upgrade Today: Two-Year Countdown to End of Support for Windows XP and Office 2003
http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/business/archive/2012/04/09/upgrade-today-two-year-countdown-to-end-of-support-for-windows-xp-and-office-2003.aspx
Back in October we celebrated the anniversaries of Windows XP and Office 2003 and took the opportunity to remind everyone that on April 8, 2014, we will officially end support for these versions of Windows and Office.
Windows XP and Office 2003 were great software releases for their time, but the technology environment has shifted.
Now you may be asking yourself – should I wait to upgrade until the next versions of Windows and Office are available? We don’t recommend waiting. Not only is it important for companies to complete deployment before support runs out, but they should also be aware that by upgrading to Windows 7 and Office 2010 today they can gain substantial results today while laying the foundation for future versions of these products. And with over 525 million Windows 7 licenses sold since its release, many customers are already taking advantage of everything Windows 7 has to offer.
Tomi Engdahl says:
CIOs Plan to Increase Cloud Spending
An exclusive survey finds that many CIOs say cloud services are a plus for business continuity and speedy deployment. But they still worry about security.
http://www.cio.com/article/702623/CIOs_Plan_to_Increase_Cloud_Spending
Six out of 10 U.S. companies already have at least one application in the cloud, and 71 percent expect to increase spending on cloud services in the next 12 months, according to a recent IDG Enterprise survey of 554 IT professionals, including 357 heads of IT.
Most respondents (64 percent) agreed with the statement that cloud computing will mean higher costs in the short term, but will save money in the long term.
In fact, 84 percent of the survey respondents cited business continuity as the top business driver for their cloud investments.
“The comfort of having completely redundant servers is very, very attractive,”
In the survey, respondents said other top business reasons for moving IT to cloud services include speed of deployment, gaining the flexibility to react to market conditions, and improving customer support.
But putting data in the cloud also carries risks: 70 percent of the respondents said security concerns are the top barrier to their adoption of cloud computing.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Toshiba to demo vid streaming without any work by the CPU
Mighty card ‘can replace two dedicated servers’
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/10/toshiba_npengine/
Toshiba’s NPEngine hardware directly streams video from SSDs to IP networks without using host server CPU cycles or memory.
Tosh claims the dedicated hardware delivers up to 64,000 x 40Gbit/sec video streams – way more than the 20,000 or so an average 2U server is said to be able to stream. The Toshiba hardware, a server card, can replace at least two video-streaming servers and enable its host server to do other work.
NPEngine is compliant with HTTP adaptive bit rate streaming and no changes need be made for HTTP streaming apps.
Toshiba plans to demo the NPEngine fitted into a server at the NAB event in Las Vegas
This use of dedicated hardware flies in the face of general IT assumptions that commodity hardware wins out over specialised processing hardware such as FPGAs and ASICs.
Puppy says:
Positive aspects of an On the web Organization Administration Diploma On the web
Tomi Engdahl says:
Chips as mini Internets
The data-routing techniques that undergird the Internet could increase the efficiency of multicore chips while lowering their power requirements.
http://www.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/chips-as-mini-internets-0410.html
Today, a typical chip might have six or eight cores, all communicating with each other over a single bundle of wires, called a bus. With a bus, however, only one pair of cores can talk at a time, which would be a serious limitation in chips with hundreds or even thousands of cores, which many electrical engineers envision as the future of computing.
Li-Shiuan Peh, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, wants cores to communicate the same way computers hooked to the Internet do: by bundling the information they transmit into “packets.” Each core would have its own router, which could send a packet down any of several paths, depending on the condition of the network as a whole.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Android is lagging behind for years to come iPad
118 900 000. So many flat-screen computers sold this year, if the research institute Gartner recent estimate is true.
Apple’s market share for table computers is 61.4 per cent, meaning almost 73 million iPad.
Android share this year, flat-screen computer sales is 31.9 percent. Android-board computers are sold nearly 38 million units.
Although the tablets suitable for Windows 8 has not even come on the market, Gartner estimates that nearly 5 million Windows-board computers will be sold. That would mean about four per cent market share.
According to Gartner, flat design PC sales does not change much over the coming years. The iPad will remain a favorite, but Android is catching up the neck up.
Next year estimates: nearly one hundred million iPads, 62 million Android devices
In 2016 the corresponding figures are 169.7 million IPad, 137.7 Android tablets and 43.7 million Windows flat-screen computers.
Source:
http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/android+laahaa+ipadin+perassa+viela+vuosia/a798558?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-11042012&
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel Working With 10 Vendors to Release Windows 8 Tablets by Year-end
http://www.pcworld.com/article/253565/intel_working_with_10_vendors_to_release_windows_8_tablets_by_yearend.html
Intel is working with 10 undisclosed Chinese and global vendors to design Windows 8 tablets using the company’s chips, a senior company executive said Wednesday.
“You’ll probably see many Intel-based tablets by the end of this year,” Intel China chairman Sean Maloney said while speaking at the Intel Developer Forum in Beijing.
Maloney made his comments as Intel has been working to expand its chip business into smartphones and tablets. The company’s newest Atom processor, the Z2460 and also code-named “Medfield”, is built for smartphones and tablets, and promises to give high computing performance while also offering long battery life.
The Medfield chip will be used in Chinese PC maker Lenovo’s K800 handset, the first smartphone to use an Intel processor.
Intel is also developing another mobile chip, code-named Clover Trail, which is designed for tablets and is scheduled to arrive this year. The chip features a 1.8 GHz processor, according to a slide shown during Maloney’s speech.
“Our strategy in China now is to win with smartphones and tablets. We are making progress on it!”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cloud Foundry aiming to be ‘the Linux of the cloud’
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/12/cloud_foundry_linux/
Steve Herrod, CTO of VMware, has high ambitions for the company’s app development platform Cloud Foundry, saying he wants it to be the Linux of the cloud.
“We really are aspiring for this to be the Linux of the cloud,” he said. While VMware is continuing to add to the Cloud Foundry code base, he reported that the majority of code for the platform was contributed by third parties.
VMware was adding a major part of the code base with BOSH components that enabled large scale deployment of the system over multiple cloud vendors. The new code would take Cloud Foundry into the large scale deployment field he promised, without tying the code to a particular vendor.
“This is not a collection of shell scripts or pile of Perl,” said Mark Lucovsky, VP of engineering at VMware. “It’s built for large scale clusters using hundreds of VMs and useful for small multi-node and tier clusters.”
While VMware was still contributing code, it had been outpaced by third parties developing their own forks, he said
http://www.cloudfoundry.com/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Computer software engineers have the best job in the world
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2167207/software-engineers-job-world
COMPUTER SOFTWARE ENGINEERS have the best job in the world, according to job search portal Careercast.
The job seeker web site’s annual Jobs Rated Report compared 200 different careers in the US, ranking them in order from best to worst jobs and found that software engineer was unsurpassed for a second year in a row.
“I absolutely agree that Software Engineers have the best job. I love my job and most of the people who are drawn to this field are passionate about it.”
The top five rated jobs after software engineer were actuary, human resources manager, dental hygienist and financial planner. Computer systems analyst also made it into the top 10, polled in ninth position.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel sneaks out a PCI based SSD
theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2167341/intel-sneaks-pci-ssd
THERE IT WAS on the show floor at IDF here in Beijing, Intel’s first PCI Express based SSD.
The 800GB SSD can do sequential reads at up to 2Gbit/s, thus far surpassing the maximum speed of SATA, which helps explain the new PCI Express interface.
The SSD is made up of modules each containing 200GB.
The Intel SSD 910 series is of course aimed at the datacentre and uses 24nm MLC flash chips from IMFT, the joint venture between Intel and Micron.
We would expect to see write speeds of about 1Gbit/s and IOPS in the region of 75,000, but so far Intel has not released any product briefs
What is most interesting about Intel’s new SSD is the fact that it uses MLC flash chips
Now, you might ask, what happened to SATA? Don’t worry, these firms are working on the next generation I/O specification and – surprise, surprise – it will use PCI Express as the transport layer.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Research firm Gartner preliminary data says that 89 million PCs was delivered in the first quarter of 2012. This is 1.9 percent more than last year’s comparable period.
Previously, Gartner predicted that the supply will fall by 1.2 per cent.
Deliveries increased by better than expected, especially in Europe, the Middle East and Africa region
HP increased its share of the global market leader and was responsible for 17.2 per cent to PC shipments
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/gartner+pctoimitusten+maara+sittenkin+kasvuun+tammimaaliskuussa/a799121?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-12042012&
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel: super-dense notebook, desktop displays common by 2013
Intel braces for very high resolution computers
Intel’s Developer Forum in Beijing has seen the company make predictions as to the long-term future of computer displays. A presentation caught by Liliputing saw “Rich Displays” with very high resolutions likely becoming mainstream from 2013 onwards. These wouldn’t just exist in smartphones or tablets, Intel said, but would extend even from the smallest ultrabooks through to at least smaller all-in-one desktops.
These would include 11-inch ultrabooks at 2560×1440 through to 21-inch desktops with 3840×2160 screens. Intel also expected “halo” 15-inch notebooks with the same 3840×2160 output, which would create a Retina Display-like effect. The pixels may still be harder to detect on any of these traditional computers as the viewing distances, between 16 inches to 30 inches, didn’t require as much density as on a phone or tablet.
The estimate came as part of an overall advice guide to display builders and the PC designers they were involved with. Intel also wanted high color ranges and wide viewing angles, better power efficiency, and thinner overall screens. Ultrabooks on Windows 8 would often want touchscreens, the chip maker added.
Rumors have swirled that Apple may be the first to have a very dense display on a traditional computer.
Read more: http://www.electronista.com/articles/12/04/12/intel.braces.for.very.high.resolution.computers/#ixzz1ru9LOMal
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel wants to standardize ultrabook battery cell design
http://liliputing.com/2012/04/intel-wants-to-standardize-ultrabook-battery-cell-design.html
One of the obstacles to building affordable thin and light computers is the fact that most laptop batteries are big and bulky. While there are compact batteries for tablets and some ultraportable notebooks such as the MacBook Air and the current crop of ultrabooks, these batteries don’t come in standard sizes.
Intel wants to change that by adopting standards for thinner batteries.
Instead of building custom parts for a laptop, PC makers would be able to just grab some off-the-shelf models. Intel says they wouldn’t just be cheaper, but also potentially better.
Since PC makers would be able to chose from a variety of batteries built by a range of battery makers, there’d be more reason for battery manufacturers to make their products competitive in price and performance.
Intel is proposing 60mm x 80mm as a standard size for ultrabook batteries.
The company also suggests using cells that have a diameter of 16mm. That’s a little thinner than the 18mm cells typically used in notebooks.
It’s too early to tell whether equipment makers will adopt Intel’s suggested standards.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Analysts start Intel Ivy Bridge CPU teardown
http://www.edn.com/article/521476-Analysts_start_Intel_Ivy_Bridge_CPU_teardown.php?cid=EDNToday_20120412
UBM TechInsights started a teardown analysis of an Intel Ivy Bridge processor. The Ivy Bridge chips are the first to use Intel’s 22-nm process technology with 3-D transistors and have yet to be officially launched.
Some Web reports speculate Intel may formally launch Ivy Bridge chips as early as April 29. Other reports have said the launch could be delayed until July.
An Intel spokesman said the official launch of the chip will be “very soon.” He added that “we have been in production of the chip since late last year,” likely meaning in sample quantities for most of that time.
Ivy Bridge processor marked as a 3.3-GHz Core i5-3550
It has a die size of 170 mm2, down from 208 mm2 for the current Sandy Bridge i7 2600K CPU.
In its initial tests, UBM TechInsights found gate pitches of 90-nm in the embedded SRAM array in the processor. It also found logic regions with gate lengths of 22 nm.
Tomi Engdahl says:
New IPad Vs. Android Tablets: is it Game Over?
http://www.cio.com/article/702334/New_IPad_Vs._Android_Tablets_is_it_Game_Over_
The new iPad streaks to the head of the pack, largely on the strength of improvements to its display. But this doesn’t mean that everyone else should abandon the race; it just means that they’re going to have to work harder to overcome the iPad’s lead
But on two other tests, the new iPad was the clear winner, leaving the iPad 2 and the three Android tablets in the dust. Interestingly, these three Android tablets represent a cross-section of hardware and operating system versions, so it’s difficult to isolate why the Android tablets failed to keep up with the iPad’s performance on these tests. The Toshiba Excite 10 LE uses Texas Instruments’ OMAP 4430, and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 4G LTE uses Nvidia’s Tegra 2; we tested both with Android 3.x Honeycomb. The Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime, meanwhile, runs Nvidia’s Tegra 3 and Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.
The Android and Windows Tablet Future
It’s easy to think, given the effusive praise that critics are lavishing on the new iPad, that the game is over and that the non-Apple contenders should pack up and go home.
Think again.
What the new iPad really means is that the competition must redouble its efforts to challenge the market leader.
Google and the tablet makers that use Android have a major challenge ahead. Google needs to get serious about addressing the issue of ecosystem fragmentation and the complexities of developing for its Android OS across different hardware. And hardware makers need to double-down on efforts to not only release tablets, but to do something that replicates the “it just works” appeal of Apple’s iPad.
Meanwhile, with the coming onslaught of Windows 8 tablets, Microsoft has a huge opportunity to swoop in and achieve what Google hasn’t in the past year. Or does it? Already, the company’s introduction of the Windows on ARM variable–meaning that Windows 8 tablets using ARM processors won’t support current Windows software–creates an early fork that may invite consumer confusion. Nevertheless, the clean, fresh Metro interface of Windows 8 could be a big win, if Microsoft can get its software ecosystem cranked up to eleven and if hardware makers can come up with distinctive designs that compete with Apple’s offerings.
No one knows how successfully Apple’s rivals will respond to the challenge posed by the new iPad. But it’s going to be fun to watch non-Apple tablets and operating systems as they come to grips with this powerhouse tablet.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The most important memory technology is 25 years old: Toshiba introduced the Nand flash in 1987
Fujio Masuoka invented the NAND-NOR-type flash memory in the early 1980′s for Toshiba. Flash-memory concept was introduced in micro-electronics, IEDM Conference in 1984. Nand technology was introduced at the same conference in 1987.
Source: http://www.3t.fi/artikkeli/uutiset/teknologia/tarkein_muisti_tayttaa_25_vuotta
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft forms new subsidiary for open source, standards
http://www.geekwire.com/2012/microsoft-forms-subsidiary-opensource-work/
Microsoft is taking the unusual step of forming a new subsidiary that will work with open-source projects, open-standards groups and interoperability initiatives.
The subsidiary, called Microsoft Open Technologies Inc., is being announced today. It will be formed from company’s Interoperability Strategy team, and led by Microsoft executive Jean Paoli as the subsidiary’s president.
About 50 to 75 people will be part of the subsidiary to start.
It’s a surprise twist in Microsoft’s relationship with the open-source world.
“We believe that the subsidiary will provide a new way of engaging with open-source communities in a more clearly defined manner,” he said, adding that the effort is about ”bridging Microsoft and non-Microsoft technologies.”
Tomi says:
Why Your IT Spending Is About to Hit the Wall
http://wallstreetandtech.com/it-infrastructure/232900225
The increasing demand for computing power is beginning to exceed the computing efficiencies created by Moore’s Law, and financial services firms are about to feel the pain of rising IT costs more than ever before.
Between 2006 and 2010, demand for processing cycles (MIPS, servers and the like) has slowly approached an 18 erpcent annual growth rate in the big banks. Storage, by the way, has hit 45 percent per year — the advent of Big Data is here — and although the unit cost of storage is still dropping, storage cost pools around the financial industry are expanding out of control. The growth phenomenon is now exacerbated by market conditions, and Moore’s Law just isn’t enough.
In their efforts to protect revenue, grow new revenue sources, enter emerging markets, become more global, increase automation to lower operating expense, and even support new channels (social networking) and devices (Bring Your Own Device), financial services companies are now experiencing core platform growth rates exceeding 20 percent a year. It feels sort of like a perfect storm: big data, demand, and falling/uncertain revenue all have converged to drive a new era and behaviors in technology economic dynamics
“Rubin’s Law” is now apparent: The geometric growth rate of computing demand — technology intensity in the context of business and our personal lives — will drive computing costs past the point at which Moore’s Law will keep the costs manageable.
Put another way, computing demand is doubling every five years, and Moore’s Law won’t save you — companies can no longer “surf” Moore’s Law. Therefore, discontinuous/disruptive technology and innovative approaches are critical to the new economics we’re are about to encounter.
IT spending will definitely show up on the corporate radar. With such a precipitous revenue decrease, firms that have been accustomed to IT spending in the range of 8 percent to 12 percent of revenue will see this ratio move up into the mid-teens or higher.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ubuntu 12.04 will provide APIs to bridge Openstack and Amazon Web Services
Canonical will release an application programmable interface (API) to bridge the gap between Openstack based clouds and those that run on Amazon Web Services.
Canonical’s upcoming Ubuntu 12.04 long term support release is expected at the end of this month and the firm has pre-announced its Any Web Service Over Me (AWSOME) proxy service that consists of APIs to spin up instances on Amazon Web Servers and Openstack clouds.
Shuttleworth said the decision to issue a set of common APIs that work with both Openstack and Amazon Web Services was a “pragmatic reality in order to accelerate the the adoption of Openstack”. He continued, “It’s useful to allow people to setup Openstack clouds and talk to those clouds through the same APIs they currently talking to Amazon [Web Services].”
Shuttleworth continued by saying AWSOME would provide basic capabilities on Amazon’s Web Services, effectively making it a stop-gap measure as firms move over to Openstack based clouds.
Linux vendors such as Red Hat and Canonical are putting significant effort into the Openstack cloud initiative because it expects to gain significant traction during 2012, with vendors riding on the coattails of its success to sell support and subscriptions. Canonical’s AWSOME APIs will make their debut with Ubuntu 12.04 as an option during installation.
Source: The Inquirer (http://s.tt/19gMI)
Tomi Engdahl says:
HP Offers Its View of Cloud’s Future
http://www.cio.com/article/704021/HP_Offers_Its_View_of_Cloud_s_Future
Hewlett-Packard sees the cloud computing’s Big Bang, which started with the launch of Google Apps and Amazon EC2, coming to en end and a new future about to begin.
Instead of an expanding universe of hundreds of diffuse clouds, the world’s economy will one day settle with 10 to 20 global cloud providers that can be counted on to be interoperable and meet certain quality of service levels.
HP expects to be one of the major cloud providers in this future. Below that level will be industry focused and geographically distributed clouds.
Business users of the next-generation global services will want hybrid cloud models that allow them to operate in complete concert with their backend systems, said Biri Singh, senior vice president and general manager for HP Cloud Services.
The users of these services will want access via the cloud to systems as complex as business analytics and as simple as an app development widget, he said.
The incentives to contribute to a cloud marketplace that HP plans to build will be a little different than Apple’s app store model, Singh said. When a developer puts a widget in the cloud that can help build a better Ruby application, he or she could get paid for each API call, said Singh.
“We think just standing up virtual machines is so 2009,” said Singh. Developers will want tools and services from the cloud. “They need a marketplace,” he said.
“We’re investing our time not in trying to nail the one technology stack that will own it all, but in planning for a heterogeneous environment,” said Singh.
HP’s unveiling Tuesday of a public cloud infrastructure-as-a-service offering that’s due next month is just part of broader set of cloud offerings.
The HP cloud will be different from Amazon’s offering, say analysts. Amazon relies on an eco-system of third party support to offer everything from infrastructure support to services.
Where Amazon only takes responsibility for providing base cloud services, HP will have the ability to maintain an OS or monitor a network for users, said Staten.
Charles King, an analyst at Pund-IT, said a shift to operating expense models has been long debated, and it could and has been effective in good times. But as soon as the economy hits a rough spot, users tend to pull back on the operating expense goals.
Tomi Engdahl says:
HP ships hack-friendly all-in-one
http://www.reghardware.com/2012/04/16/hp_ships_z1_all_in_one_easy_to_open_workstation/
HP has begun shipping its easy-to-upgrade all-in-one desktop PC, the Z1, worldwide, the computer giant said today.
The 27in, 2560 x 1440, one-billion colour screen machine packs a clamshell casing that allows hardware hackers the crack the Z1 open to add and replace its inner workings.
The 27in, 2560 x 1440, one-billion colour screen machine packs a clamshell casing that allows hardware hackers the crack the Z1 open to add and replace its inner workings.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Diverse and Exploding Digital Universe
http://www.emc.com/collateral/analyst-reports/diverse-exploding-digital-universe.pdf
An Updated Forecast of Worldwide Information Growth Through 2011
This white paper, sponsored by EMC, is an update of IDC’s inaugural forecast of the digital universe published in March
2007.i In this year’s update we calibrate the size (bigger) and growth (faster) of the digital universe again, but we also explore
some areas we only touched on last time. As before, we also seek to understand the implications for business, government,
and society.
Fast-growing corners of the digital universe include those
related to digital TV, surveillance cameras, Internet access in
emerging countries, sensor-based applications, datacenters
supporting “cloud computing,” and social networks.
The diversity of the digital universe can be seen in the
variability of file sizes, from 6 gigabyte movies on DVD to
128-bit signals from RFID tags
Of that portion of the digital universe created by individuals,
less than half can be accounted for by user activities —
pictures taken, phone calls made, emails sent — while the
rest constitutes a digital “shadow” — surveillance photos,
Web search histories, financial transaction journals, mailing
lists, and so on.
The enterprise share of the digital universe is widely skewed
by industry, having little relationship to GDP or IT spending.
The finance industry, for instance, accounts for almost 20%
of worldwide IT spending but only 6% of the digital universe.
Meanwhile, media, entertainment, and communications
industries will account for 10 times their share of the digital
universe in 2011 as their share of worldwide gross economic
output.
The IDC research shows that the digital universe —
information that is either created, captured, or replicated in
digital form — was 281 exabytesiii in 2007. In 2011, the
amount of digital information produced in the year should
equal nearly 1,800 exabytes, or 10 times that produced in 2006
Tomi Engdahl says:
How far can you shift the shape of cloud software?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/16/saas_customisation/
The €1.08m CAST project, funded by an EC program called Eurostars, was created to develop a framework for making cloud-hosted software customisable.
The academic and commercial partners behind the programme are tackling a problem that is becoming increasingly important for companies toying with the idea of SaaS: how much can you tweak it?
Customisation has always been a critical issue for business users.
Fifteen years ago, we were discussing whether companies implementing ERP and CRM solutions should embark on major coding and customisation to bend the software to their will or adapt their business processes to fit more lightweight, standardised software. These days, that discussion has shifted to the cloud.
“Our project was about a new development and deployment model, and a new way of looking at customisation for on-demand business applications,” he says.
“It was about how to create a governance solution that prevents such a platform from spinning out of control.“
“Today, more things can be done through a user interface, and that is what has changed,” he says. “The vendors have made their software more flexible and configurable.”
The line between configuration and customisation, according to Cousins, is what you cross when you get into writing code. “It’s when you are creating something that is unique enough that the vendor can’t upgrade the base product around it,” he says.
SaaS offerings such as these sit at the junction between SaaS and platform as a service (PaaS). The difference is that with PaaS you can write code yourself.
The options to customise heavily are available to SaaS customers, then, but do you really want to go there? Much depends on how much you have to spend and what you want to change.
“The sweet spot is in the 500 to 2000 employee range, because the larger ones will have their own systems in place, and the small ones become too expensive to sell to.”
With many small businesses just wanting to simplify their IT and get away from complex investments, customisation is therefore unlikely to play a big part. Configuration will be the main game in town.
Apps can be customised in three different ways, says Kourtesis: using configuration-only, configuration and client-side coding, or by the addition of server-side logic.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Rackspace eats own OpenStack heavenly dog food
Betas cloudy database, block storage, virtual networks
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/16/rackspace_openstack_cloud_stuff/
Rackspace Hosting, one of the contenders in the fight to take on Amazon’s eponymous Web Services division as the dominant public cloud, is finally confident enough in the OpenStack wares to start its internal rollout of the software underpinning its Cloud Servers, Cloud Files, and other services.
By doing so, Rackspace is beating Hewlett-Packard to market with the first big public cloud based on the “Essex” release of OpenStack which was released a week-and-a-half ago. Rackspace is one of the two founders of the OpenStack cloud fabric project along with NASA.
HP is planning to put the Essex code out as the underpinnings of its HP Cloud Services as a public beta beginning May 10, and has had compute and storage clouds in a private beta test since last September. HP has not made any commitments as to when its OpenStack-based public cloud will go into production.
Rackspace is a bit more familiar with the OpenStack code, and while the company’s top brass has been careful about getting ahead of itself in making promise
Interrante says that Rackspace has been testing the Essex release in beta for the past six months, and that the shift to OpenStack will not be particularly noticeable to customers when it happens, except that it can spin up servers anywhere from two to four times faster, is more reliable, and has a much more capable set of APIs from which to monitor and manage servers.
Customers will not be forced to take OpenStack if they sign up for Cloud Servers in May, but by July or so OpenStack will be the default compute cloud at Rackspace and customers will be moved over from the homegrown code to Nova in the ensuing months
The software-based virtual network service, which will eventually become an option on the Cloud Server service, is based on the extensions to Open vSwitch virtual switch that have been created by Nicira. It also draws from various OpenStack components, including the Glance image service, the Melange IP address management service, and the Quantum network-as-a-service, er, service.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google to bundle MIPS support with Android
http://www.edn.com/article/521521-Google_to_bundle_MIPS_support_with_Android.php
Google is expected to boost its support in Android for cores from MIPS Technologies, giving the company a badly needed boost in the hot smartphone and tablet sector.
The Android native developers’ kit is expected to start bundling a GNU compiler for MIPS within weeks. Google is expected to bundle full support for the MIPS application binary interface in all Android code and libraries, starting with a future Android release in the next several months.
“Google has started to take notice of the volume shipments of MIPS-based Android tablets,” said Amit Rohatgi, principal mobile architect at MIPS, speaking at the Linley Tech Mobile Conference here.
About 1.8 million MIPS-based Android tablets have shipped to date, Rohatgi said. They are mainly low cost systems from China OEMs powered by SoCs from MIPS licensees such as Ingenic Semiconductor.
Philips recently became the first global brand company to ship an Android tablet using the Ingenic SoC. Like many of the China branded systems, it sports a seven-inch screen.
In terms of software support, as much as 85% of Android apps run on the OS’s Dalvik virtual machine interpreter. But as many as 80,000 of the half a billion apps in the Android online store run natively, targeting the ARM architecture.
The good news for China mobile chip designers is licenses for the MIPS cores cost “a fraction” of the reported $5 million it costs to license an ARM Cortex A9.
The Ingenic SoC is a 1.2 GHz device that competes favorably with the Cortex A8.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IBM turns in profits bump despite server slump
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/17/ibm_q1_2012_numbers/
IT bellwhether IBM missed Wall Street’s revenue projections for Q1 by a smidgen but beat expectations for bottom line growth.
The quarter is a carbon copy, more or less, of the final quarter of 2011, with all the same issues affecting certain IBM product lines – mainframes were down, Power and x86 servers were flat, software had a nice bump, and the 40 emerging markets grew 10 per cent (as gauged in constant currency in their local markets) while the major markets were, as a group, flat at constant currency.
Loughridge said that in-box mainframe upgrades, where customers activate latent engines on installed machines, as well as specialty processor engine sales, which are used to accelerate Java, DB2, and XML workloads or to run Linux, were the big revenue generators on IBM’s big iron in this year’s first quarter. And, because it is not particularly expensive to turn on this latent capacity, the profitability of the System z business was up compared to a year ago.
Add in retail store systems – a business that IBM has just sold to Toshiba for $850m and OEM chip sales to game console and other electronics makers, and the Systems and Technology Group posted revenues of $3.75bn, down 6.7 per cent
IBM is expected to launch new servers – probably new Power7+ servers and System mainframes – in the second half of the year and will see a bounce in sales for hardware; the new PureSystems cloudy machines launched last week are also expected to kick in some contribution to revenues and profits in the second half of the year, too.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison: I don’t know if Java is free
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57415324-94/oracle-ceo-larry-ellison-i-dont-know-if-java-is-free/
In court testimony today, Ellison can’t declare whether Java is free. It’s a complicated topic that won’t be easy for a jury to figure out.
Asked by Google’s lead attorney, Robert Van Nest, if the Java language is free, Ellison was slow to respond. Judge William Alsup pushed Ellison to answer with a yes or no. As ZDNet reporter Rachel King observed in the courtroom, Ellison resisted and huffed, “I don’t know.”
Java is free, but it also has a set of licenses that are required for specific use cases.
Google’s defense is that the 15 million lines of code in its Android smartphone software contains only the parts of Java that are freely available and not restricted by licensing or copyright.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel says 25% of shipments will be on 22-nm in Q2
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4371234/Intel-22-nm-is-one-quarter-of-production
Intel’s 22-nm manufacturing process technology with FinFET transistors will be responsible for 25 percent of Intel’s IC shipments in the second quarter of 2012, according to Stacy Smith, Intel chief financial officer
ntel is hitting hitting high volume as the company manufactures Ivy Bridge processors for desktop and notebook computers and this is despite the fact that Intel has yet to formally launch the Ivy Bridge processor. Ivy Bridge is a shrink of the previous Sandy Bridge processor from a 32-nm process to the 22-nm process.
Intel has been manufacturing ICs on the 22-nm process for several quarters, according to one source and is reported to have started manufacturing Ivy Bridge “in volume” in the third quarter of 2011.
Paul Ottelini, CEO of Intel, said that Intel now has three wafer fabs ramping the 22-nm manufacturing process in the second quarter of 2012 and a fourth wafer fab is due to ramp production in the second half of 2012.
Tomi Engdahl says:
MIPS said to be up for sale
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4370934/MIPS-up-for-sale-says-report
Processor and related intellectual property licensor MIPS Technologies Inc., a pioneer of the reduced instruction set computing (RISC) style of architecture, is looking for a buyer, according to a Bloomberg report that referenced unnamed sources.
MIPS (Sunnyvale, Calif.), which rivaled fellow processor IP licensor ARM Holdings plc (Cambridge, England) at one time but has struggled over recent years, has hired Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to identify and negotiate with potential acquirers of the company, the report said.
MIPS, which originally stood for Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipeline Stages, was founded by computer scientist John Hennessey of Stanford University and enjoyed success in the 1990s licensing 32-bit and 64-bit cores to developers of computers and set-top boxes and its architecture has also enjoyed success in networking applications.
The company has built up a long list of licensors – including Broadcom, Cavium, Cisco Systems, LSI, Microchip and Toshiba – but has not enjoyed much success in the mobile phone and mobile computing markets of the last decade.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft aims to make iPad an underdog with Windows 8
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57415697-75/microsoft-aims-to-make-ipad-an-underdog-with-windows-8/
Supposedly, Redmond intends to push iPad market share below 50 percent, according to the often-wrong Digitimes. The same report says Microsoft expects 32 Windows 8-based tablets this year.
Microsoft reportedly hopes to push Apple’s worldwide iPad market share under 50 percent by the middle of 2013 with Windows 8-based tablets, Digitimes reports today, citing unnamed sources.
Apple has been the dominant force in the tablet market over the last couple of years. Even though it faces a host of Android-based devices, including the popular Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and Amazon Kindle Fire, Apple owns about 62 percent of the tablet space, according to a February report from TrendForce. A subsequent report from iSuppli said Apple should hold about 61 percent of the tablet space by the end of the year.
“We believe competitors (Android and Windows) will have trouble matching the price-performance specs of the current iPad product lineup and [Apple] should continue to dominate the category,” Whitmore told investors in March. “Windows 8 is receiving mixed reviews and Android (is) in disarray.”
Apple, of course, isn’t invincible. In late 2010, the company owned 87 percent of the tablet market, according to research firm IDC. That’s a good indication of how even middling competition can dilute its market share, even if those rivals can’t match the iPad’s sales. Whether Windows 8 can do the same, though, is far from clear.
Tomi Engdahl says:
BYOD is a ticking time bomb for B2B resellers
Own kit boom means ‘significant disruption’
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2012/04/19/byot_hardware_resellers/
The Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend among organisations will mean a £2bn sales boon for UK service providers within five years but will “significantly disrupt” the B2B hardware channel, says the analyst firm TechMarketView.
Senior management within firms and younger employees, particularly those under 30, expect to use their own smartphones, fondleslabs and laptops in the workplace.
This poses a threat or opportunity depending on your perspective, according to Phil Codling, research director at TMV, who says BYOD will deliver “significant disruption to the supply chain in desktop and mobile hardware procurement”.
The impact will be felt most as the market matures from being ‘incremental’ to ‘substitutional’, replacing the model of centrally provisioned company kit.
Clearly, retailers, especially internet-based supplier, stand to gain from BYOD; but business PC and phone channels will experience significant revenue losses, Codling says.
Manufacturers will also lose out due to the overall reduction in devices for work and personal use.
On the flip side, the move to BYOD is an unstoppable force, he says, and clients will need help to overcome the challenges it presents.
Cost and vulnerability auditing, user class analysis and impact modelling are strong starting points for services providers.
Suppliers must ensure they become involved in the BYOD journey from the outset, to take advantage of the ensuing security and management issues organisations will ultimately face.
“Support needs will often get more complex and challenging due to the arrival of devices and operating systems that the employer’s support processes and IT skills base were not designed for,” he said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Permission to Procrastinate: Wait to Get a New Laptop
http://allthingsd.com/20120417/permission-to-procrastinate-wait-to-get-a-new-laptop/
If you’re thinking of buying a new laptop this spring, my advice is to think again. Unless your laptop is on its last legs and you have to move quickly, there are compelling reasons to wait until at least the summer, and probably the fall, to buy a new machine, especially if you are looking for a Windows PC, but even if you are in the market for a Mac.
People always worry that buying tech products today carries a risk of obsolescence. Most of the time, that fear is overblown. But this spring really is a bad time to buy a new laptop, because genuinely big changes are due in the coming months.
On the PC side, Microsoft is set to introduce Windows 8, the most radical new version of Windows in years, probably in the fall. PC makers will be introducing new laptop designs to take advantage of it. While Windows 8 will work with a mouse or touch pad and a keyboard, it will be heavily oriented toward tablet-type touch-screen navigation.
If you buy a traditional Windows 7 laptop now, Microsoft says it will very likely be upgradable to Windows 8, but you won’t find the new styles of laptops on store shelves now.
On the Mac side, Apple also is bringing out a new operating system, this summer. Called Mountain Lion
There is another factor that calls for waiting. Intel, whose processors are used by most Windows PC makers and by Apple, is on the verge of introducing a new family of chips, called Ivy Bridge, which the chip maker claims will offer much faster graphics performance without sacrificing battery life.
There is a silver lining. If you watch prices carefully, you may find bargains on Windows 7 laptops running the current Intel processors
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Cloud Print can now “print” to an Android device or local FedEx store
http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/04/google-cloud-print-can-now-print-to-an-android-device-or-local-fedex-store.ars
Although modern computing devices and software offer much richer ways to consume, manipulate, and share content, there are still people who prefer to put their documents and images on slices of dead tree. Google introduced a service called Cloud Print in 2010 with the aim of helping said people print physical copies of their files from smartphones and Chromebooks.
Google Cloud Print got an update today with several new features, including improved Android integration and the ability to print a file to a local FedEx office. Google also announced that Canon has joined the lineup of hardware vendors who natively support the service.
Google Cloud Print allows users to associate their Google account with a printer, making it remotely accessible over the Internet. This feature works out of the box with “cloud-aware” printers that support Google’s protocol. It can also be used with “legacy” printers by using a software intermediary that runs on a computer. Canon, Epson, Kodak, and HP support the feature on some models.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Linus Torvalds wins the tech. equivalent of a Nobel Prize: the Millennium Technology Prize.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/linus-torvalds-wins-the-tech-equivalent-of-a-nobel-prize-the-millennium-technology-prize/10789
Summary: Linux Creator’s Linus Torvalds is one of two laureates for the Millennium Technology Prize. This award is close as technology has to a Nobel Prize.
You can win Nobel prizes for physics, chemistry, and medicine, but technology? No. There is, however the Millennium Technology Prize. This is the world’s largest technology prize. It is rewarded ever two years for a technological innovation that significantly improves the quality of human life, today and in the future. This year, Linus Torvalds, Linux’s creator, and Dr. Shinya Yamanaka, maker of a new way to create stem cells without the use of embryonic stem cells, are both laureates for the 2012 Millennium Technology Prize.
Congratulations Linus!
Vegan Christian says:
Vegan Christian…
[...]Computer technologies for 2012 « Tomi Engdahl’s ePanorama blog[...]…
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel’s Ivy Bridge waits on Windows 8
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-57418588-64/intels-ivy-bridge-waits-on-windows-8/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title
Ivy Bridge will highlight Intel’s emphasis on power-efficiency and graphics performance, but one key ingredient will be missing — Windows 8.
Part and parcel of Intel’s 22-nanometer tech is the 3D “tri-gate” transistor (see image below). Intel claims tri-gate tech allows an “unprecedented” combination of power savings and performance gains that will allow the perpetuation of Moore’s law for “years to come,” according to a statement by the company.
Ivy Bridge will also be the biggest statement by Intel to date on the importance of graphics. “Graphics are the part where you’re going to see the most sizable gains [and] on the CPU [central processing unit] you’re going to see incremental benefits,” an industry source familiar with Ivy Bridge’s performance, told CNET earlier in the month. And this has been confirmed by early Ivy Bridge benchmarks.
“Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome. They’ve all been in a performance war. And one of the things that they use to improve performance is the graphics elements of HTML,” said Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst at Insight64, referring to Ivy Bridge’s graphics silicon support for OpenCL 1.1 — an Intel first. “So, if you look at IE9 versus IE8, one of the big improvements there was being able to use the GPU accelerate a lot of that kind of work.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel’s Ivy Bridge chips launch using ’3D transistors’
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-17785464
Intel is launching its Ivy Bridge family of processors – the first to feature what it describes as a “3D transistor”.
The initial release includes 13 quad-core processors, most of which will be targeted at desktop computers.
Further dual core processors, suitable for ultrabooks – thin laptops – will be announced “later this spring”.
“There are more than 300 mobile products in development and more than 270 different desktops, many of which are all-in-one designs.
“This is the world’s first 22 nanometre product and we’ll be delivering about 20% more processor performance using 20% less average power.”
Intel hopes a new transistor technology, in development for 11 years, will help it challenge Arm’s reputation for energy efficiency.
Mr Skaugen said that those who use the integrated GPU (graphics processing unit) on the chips, rather than a separate graphics card, would see some of the biggest gains.
He said the processing speed had been significantly boosted since Sandy Bridge, meaning devices would be capable of handling high-definition video conferences and the 4K resolution offered by top-end video cameras.
The GPU’s transcoding rate also benefits from the upgrade, allowing users to recode video more quickly if they want to send clips via email or put them on a smartphone.
As advanced as Ivy Bridge sounds, the one thing it is not is future-proof. Intel has already begun to discuss its successor, dubbed Haswell.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Are we ready for enterprise tablets?
http://www.techi.com/2012/04/are-we-ready-for-enterprise-tablets/
Small kids can use them just fine. They are more portable than a laptop, more powerful than a smartphone, and perform nearly every duty that a business person needs
Why, then, are more corporations and large businesses not adopting tablets as their primary method of mobile productivity? Why do so many continue to push clunky laptops onto their employees?
The answers are numerous. Some companies simply do not trust the cloud, yet. Some still require access to programs that are either unavailable or more difficult to use on tablets. Some don’t want to spend the money just yet to replace or add to their current laptop expenses.
This infographic breaks down the pros
Tomi Engdahl says:
Open Source Project Licenses Trending Toward Open Rather than Free
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/12/04/22/0211251/open-source-project-licenses-trending-toward-open-rather-than-free
An analysis of software licenses shows usage of GPL and other copyleft licenses declining at an accelerating rate. In their place, developers are choosing permissive licenses such as BSD, MIT, and ASL.
COMMENTS:
It’s also a misleading summary and article.
The proportion of open source projects using the GPL, LGPL and AGPL is declining, not the absolute number of projects.
“Open Rather than Free” implies that there is some charge. Both licenses are “free” in terms of you can use the software without paying. The difference is that any works derived or using GPL type licenses also have to be released on the same license. Whether this is more or less open depends on your point of view.
So on a big project with lots of copyright holders, it is nearly impossible to switch to a more permissive license, but that’s because it’s so hard to get a big group of people to agree, not because the GPL doesn’t allow it.
You can choose to change your license on new code. However the code that is already release will remain GPL and can continue under someone else’s leadership.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ivy Bridge narrows AMD’s graphics lead
http://www.edn.com/article/521576-Ivy_Bridge_narrows_AMD_s_graphics_lead.php?cid=EDNToday_20120423
Intel is expected to formally roll out today Ivy Bridge, its first processors using its 22nm tri-gate technology and aimed at ultra thin and light notebooks. An analyst said the chips will narrow archrival AMD’s lead in graphics performance and inject new life into the notebook market under attack from tablets such as the Apple iPad.
AMD is said to be on the cusp of rolling out its next-generation CPUs, called Trinity. The chips are built in a 32nm process. AMD is not expected to field chips using the still scarce 28-nm process until 2013.
The x86 cores in Ivy Bridge will likely outperform those of Trinity, but Trinity’s graphics cores will probably outperform those in Ivy Bridge,” he said.
Ivy Bridge marks Intel’s first chips with graphics that support Microsoft’s latest DirectX 11 graphics APIs, an edge AMD used to claim for itself. “Now AMD has to make an argument its implementation of DX11 is superior to Intel’s and that’s a tougher argument to make,” Brookwood said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
China mulls national CPU architecture spec
http://www.edn.com/article/521582-China_mulls_national_CPU_architecture_spec.php?cid=EDNToday_20120424
China government officials kicked off a program last month that aims to define a national processor architecture. If the initiative is successful, the processor could become a requirement for use in any projects seeking government funding such as purchases of computers or smartphones.
At least five existing processor architectures are up for consideration as the basis of the standard. The initiative also could be used to define its own instruction set architecture or extend an existing one.
The effort is one of several led by China’s leaders in an effort to set its own standards and thus own intellectual property rather than paying for IP from foreign companies.