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:
FBI: New Internet addresses could hinder police investigations
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57445157-83/fbi-new-internet-addresses-could-hinder-police-investigations/
As the Internet prepares to celebrate World IPv6 Day next week, law enforcement is worried the transition could hinder legitimate investigations. Some tech companies agree it’s a concern.
The FBI is worried that an explosion of new Internet numeric addresses scheduled to begin next week may hinder its ability to conduct electronic investigations.
A historic switchover that will give the Internet a nearly inexhaustible supply of network addresses — up from the current nearly exhausted total of 4.3 billion — is planned for next Wednesday. AT&T, Comcast, Facebook, Google, Cisco, and Microsoft are among the companies participating.
Side effects from the transition to Internet Protocol version 6, or IPv6, “could have a profound effect on law enforcement,” an FBI spokesman told CNET. “Additional tools” may need to be developed to conduct Internet investigations in the future, the spokesman said.
While Wednesday’s World IPv6 Day is only one step in the transition to the next-generation system, it’s expected to mark the beginning of a gradual decline in popularity of the outgoing IPv4 standard. The participating Internet providers will begin to switch over a fraction of their residential subscribers on Wednesday, and router makers will enable IPv6 by default for their products. (Here’s an IPv6 FAQ.)
That’s what worries the FBI, which has been meeting quietly with Internet companies to figure out how its agents can maintain their ability to obtain customer records or perform court-authorized surveillance.
“This is a very real concern,” says Jason Fesler, Yahoo’s IPv6 evangelist. It will “impact a service provider’s ability to readily respond to legal requests from law enforcement agencies,” according to the Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group, or BITAG, which counts AT&T, Cisco, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Google, and Microsoft as members.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Post-PC era means mass extinction for personal computer OEMs
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/perlow/post-pc-era-means-mass-extinction-for-personal-computer-oems/20514
Eight months later, two giant PC manufacturers are in dire straits — Hewlett-Packard recently announced laying off over 27,000 employees and Dell’s Q1 2012 earnings have been weak across the board in their Consumer, Public Sector and Enterprise divisions.
Apple, on the other hand, is doing magnificently, with their products accounting for over 22.5 percent of mobile PC shipments globally in the first quarter of 2012, 80 percent of that being their own Post-PC iPad tablet, with 17 million mobile PC units shipped, according to NPD Displaysearch.
The hard truth is facing us — traditional PC purchases are slowing down dramatically. Unless you are cultivating a strong business in tablet computers and smartphones as well it’s going to be a very uncomfortable ride in the next few years for the PC manufacturers.
And dare I say it, a number of them are going to go extinct.
So what exactly is Post-PC, anyway? Is it simply just a buzzword, or is it a legitimate phenomenon?
To put it bluntly, the Post-PC world represents a displacement of computing from the traditional, 30 year-old Intel architecture used on desktop to the Datacenter and the Cloud.
In essence, we are returning to a very similar highly centralized model that was popular in the late 60’s and mid-1970’s with mainframe-based computing.
The only difference is that instead of a monolithic, purely mainframe-based time sharing model, our new centralized architecture is multi-vendor and heterogeneous, can be distributed within Public and Private Cloud infrastructure in multiple datacenters and is more business resilient and more flexible than ever before.
As soon as three to five years from now, the average business professional will be transitioning from “Heavy” clients such as desktop PCs and business laptops with large amounts of localized storage and localized applications using Intel chips and Windows to very small and extremely power efficient, SoC-based systems using completely solid state storage (SSD) which will function mostly as cache for applications that run remotely.
I see a mix of both ARM and Intel’s next-generation Systems on a Chip (SoC) using sub-22 nanometer manufacturing processes fulfilling this role, with the predominance of the market being addressed by ARM-based devices as we move further into the future and backwards compatibility no longer becomes as pressing an issue.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nvidia reveals driver support for Windows 8 preview release
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2181898/nvidia-reveals-driver-support-windows-preview-release
Nvidia has said its upcoming R302 drivers have attained Microsoft Windows hardware quality labs (WHQL) certification for the Windows 8 operating system.
“Nvidia’s Windows 8 drivers support all the features in the new Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) v1.2.”
Daniel confirmed that the Nvidia R302 drivers will only support the Windows 8 operating system. Users running older versions of Windows will have to use the Nvidia R300 drivers release.
AMD announced that it will move away from its monthly Catalyst releases.
AMD announced its Catalyst 12.6 beta release yesterday, but the firm made no mention of support for the Windows 8 preview release.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel and Thunderbolt Devices for Windows
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5894/intel-and-thunderbolt-devices-for-windows
As part of Computex, Intel invited the worlds media to discuss Thunderbolt. While nothing much new was said over what Anand has already discussed and public, we did come away with some information and an interesting look at some of the future Thunderbolt enabled devices.
A lot of the discussion was about Windows certification, given how TB has been an Apple only technology until fairly recently. In the Q&A, I asked specifically about hot-plug capabilities. I was told that Windows certification will only be given if the device or the host in the thunderbolt chain can fully support hot-plug.
On display were a few motherboards that will feature Thunderbolt technology.
Several TB-enabled ultrabooks were on display, including models from Gigabyte, ASUS and Toshiba, as well as an All-In-One from MSI. Storage was also shown, with ODM models as well as RAID devices from Promise, QNAP and Areca. We were also told that Belkin announced today that it will be selling via etailer their Thunderbolt cables.
Clendenon says:
this laptop is a gem and best design, performance and feel I have ever seen outside of Apple. I bought mine from a Microsoft Store which has the Microsoft Signature service (basically they re-load the OS with no bloatware).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hyperscale servers sell like hotcakes
Linux machines eclipse Unix boxes
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/04/idc_q1_2012_server_numbers/
The first quarter was not an easy one for the server business, according to IDC, and analysts say that 2012 is shaping up to be an interesting one.
Modular servers – including traditional blades and density-optimized servers aimed at hyperscale web operators and supercomputer installations – are where the action is.
In the quarter, IDC reckons that server unit shipments rose by 2.7 percent to 2 million machines
But revenues slipped 2.4 per cent to $11.81bn as IBM mainframe and Unix server sales from Oracle and Hewlett-Packard showed big declines.
Those modular servers were the bright spot. Blade server sales grew by 7.7 percent, bucking the overall downward trend, to hit $2bn in revenues across all blade suppliers and all blade server processor architectures. And the density-optimized machines, including those made by Google, Facebook, and others either by themselves or with the help of original design manufacturers (ODMs) skyrocketed, with revenues up 38 per cent to $430m and shipments up 29.8 per cent to 152,630 machines.
The average selling price for X86 servers has grown nine out of the past ten quarters, despite the low-cost, minimalist hyperscale and sometimes homemade servers, as Intel and Advanced Micro Devices deliver more powerful processors and chipsets that are allowing x86 machines to encroach on the jobs that were formerly done by Unix and proprietary systems.
Another way of thinking about this is that Intel and VMware have carved up the Unix and mainframe base, each taking a slice of the action and it remains to be seen exactly how much money a data center really saves. But the perception is that they are saving money, and this is what compels the move.
In the first quarter, IDC calculates that Linux based machines posted a quite remarkable 16 per cent higher revenue level than in the year-ago quarter, hitting $2.4bn in sales. The revenue bump was driven in part by some big HPC and cloud infrastructure deals, Scaramella says.
That’s more revenue than Unix-based systems accounted for
Windows-based servers are still the dominant platform in aggregate when ranked by revenues, a place that Unix held a decade ago. (Which just goes to show you how fast things can change and what we could be saying a decade hence after ARM-based servers get established in cloudy infrastructure and as the compute engines in hybrid CPU-GPU supers. We’ll see, but this kind of future with a diminished role for the x86 chip is possible even if it may not feel like it now.)
Windows machines broke through the 50 per cent of worldwide server revenue barrier, with sales rising 1.3 per cent to $5.9bn. That Windows server sales are growing much more slowly than Linux is interesting, but IDC did not explain why.
By vendor, IDC believes that HP continues to hold the top spot, with $3.46bn in sales (off 9.8 per cent).
What is worrying IDC is the server slowdown in Europe and Asia.
EMEA experienced a sharp double-digit decline in server spending.
Harootunian says:
I really like the design, its like a diamond cut kind-of look. Jet black colored. The buttons are snug raised up a bit–LOVE that!!! Features are perfect, screen is really bright and clear…as it!!!
Tomi Engdahl says:
Two in three tablets are iPads, says ABI Research
http://tabtimes.com/news/ittech-stats-research/2012/06/05/two-three-tablets-are-ipads-says-abi-research
A new report maintains the iPad’s leadership in the tablet space, highlights a fall in popularity for the Kindle Fire and reveals that most tablets are still WiFi-only.
ABI Research says that tablet shipments reached 18.2 million units in Q1 of 2012, a figure which represented a massive 185% year-on-year increase over Q1 of 2011, but a fall of 33% from the holiday-fuelled sales of Q4.
According to the report, Apple took its now customary number one spot with 11.8 million shipments, and now accounts for two in three tablets on the market.
As to be expected, the report found that most consumers still prefer WiFi-only tablets, although Apple appears to be king in this area too – shipping the most 3G-enabled tablets, and outpacing its nearest rival by a factor of eight.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IDC study: Tablet refresh to add 1% to IT budget every year
http://tabtimes.com/news/ittech-tablets/2012/06/04/idc-study-tablet-refresh-add-1-it-budget-every-year
A new report released today by International Data Corp. (IDC) finds that many IT leaders believe the tablet will become a necessary secondary device to the laptop and will need to be refreshed every 2.5 years.
Specifically, the research firm estimates it would cost the average large organization an additional 1% of their IT budget every year to refresh the tablets in their organization.
Forty-two percent report they provide limited IT help desk support for business applications on employees’ tablets and 45% for smartphones.
There have been other recent studies that show many businesses are struggling to develop mobile device policies.
Tomi Engdahl says:
There’s Never Been a Worse Time to Buy a Laptop
http://gizmodo.com/5916005/theres-never-been-a-worse-time-to-buy-a-laptop
If you’re thinking about buying a laptop any time soon, don’t. Just don’t do it. We’re at a unique point in history, where weird and wonderful new hardware and revolutionary platform changes of every stripe will converge over the next few months.
Need proof? Here’s why you should wait.
No matter what you want, you’re just better off waiting. With three days left of Computex, WWDC upon us, and some solid time left before Microsoft actually drops the latest greatest Windows, there’s just too much to look forward to. Drop your cash on something now, and you’ll be left with that same feeling as a kid who didn’t get what she wanted on Christmas morning, only to see your friends showing off their the shiny new goodness when school starts up again.
And honestly, even if none of these amazing things appeals to you, you’d still be a fool to buy a laptop right now. As soon these new devices go on sale, the cost of current ones will drop.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel says Atom chips will have process node parity with Core chips from 14nm
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2182654/intel-atom-chips-process-node-parity-core-chips-14nm
CHIPMAKER Intel has said that its Atom processors will get process node upgrades at the same time as its desktop chips.
Intel’s Atom processor is fast becoming its most important product, with the firm creating a version of it for servers and, arguably more importantly, one for smartphones and tablets, however the chip was treated as a second-class citizen when it came to process node steppings. Now Chipzilla has said it intends to cut the cadence time between process nodes for both its Core and Atom chips from 14nm onwards.
Bell said Atom chips are simply making use of the investment Intel has already put into process node technology for desktop Core-branded chips, rather than putting an additional strain on Intel’s research spending.
Bell said, “The big core side of the house [desktop and laptop Core-branded processors] does the process before we [Atom] do. We do it very quickly thereafter, but we’re not the only person using that process node. So we get the advantage of all the work that is done for the Intel PC side of the house and it just waterfalls down to us. In the past it has taken longer.”
“our goal is to be almost coincident with the introduction of the node on the big core side of the house going forward after 22nm.”
Intel has a considerable process node advantage over ARM vendors such as Qualcomm, which rely on firms such as TSMC, however Bell was adamant that Intel isn’t relying on process nodes to stay competitive with its rivals. “We’re not relying on process to get the advantage. I fundamentally think the implementation we have is just better, and the process gives us an additional kicker”
While Intel might promote its architecture as the big selling point of its processors, the truth is that its end-to-end chip design to fabrication capability could help it beat firms such as Qualcomm and Texas Instruments, which are at the mercy of wafer fabs.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Qualcomm expands into Windows 8 devices
Announces chips for tablets and laptops as well as TVs
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2182573/qualcomm-expands-windows-devices
CHIP DESIGNER Qualcomm has announced that it will expand beyond the mobile phone business, revealing a Snapdragon S4 processor this week at the Computex convention in Taiwan.
In the announcement, the San Diagan firm said there will be four different varieties of its fresh chip designs, one of which will power Windows 8 tablets and laptops.
Under the branding names Prime, Pro, Plus and Play, the chips will not only control mobile devices and PCs but also HDTVs and set-top boxes.
Qualcomm said its Snapdragon S4 Pro chips have been designed especially for the upcoming Windows 8 RT operating system for tablets and notebooks and will feature the Adreno 320 GPU in order to provide “support for higher resolution displays, as well as hardware and software compatibility with the S4 class”.
The S4 Prime chip will have a 1.5GHz quad-core processing unit as well as Adreno 320 graphics made to power the TV sets, while the Snapdragon S4 Plus featuring dual-core CPUs clocked to 1.2GHz and Adreno 203 graphics is designed for the higher end of the smartphone market.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Analysis: Stakes high as “Wintel” puts all its chips on Windows 8
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/11/us-computex-wintel-idUSBRE85905120120611
(Reuters) – The world of Wintel – Microsoft, Intel and the Taiwan-based companies that build the computers their products power and run on – is taking a huge collective bet on Windows 8.
At stake is the future of the world’s largest software developer, whose new operating system is expected to be launched in the fourth quarter, and it largest chip maker, as well as an island-wide industry of computer makers and parts suppliers.
In one corner you have Microsoft Corp, which is porting its tiled Metro interface used in Windows Phone to tablets, laptops and the desktop.
“Is this going to be a major resurrection? Well, at least it’ll help stop tablets from cannibalizing the PC laptop sector,” said Jonah Cheng, an analyst with UBS.
“Microsoft will live and die on how well the OEMs implement the features of Windows 8,” says Forrester principal analyst Frank Gillett.
Intel, too, is trying to push the OEMs to add touch screens
Intel has even gone so far as to sign agreements with touchscreen suppliers undertaking to buy up excess capacity
While Computex was show time for Windows 8 and the devices running the system, there is still some way to go until the software’s launch. And there are plenty of issues still to hammer out.
Analyst Serene Chan of Frost and Sullivan said that Microsoft plans to charge $100 for each Windows 8 licence
“The cost of the licence that OEMs have to pay Microsoft will be a major drawback,” she said.
Computex 2012 marked a divergence of interests as Microsoft is now also working closely with ARM, offering a version of Windows 8 called Windows RT that will work on its less power-hungry processors in tablet devices.
Tomi Engdahl says:
X11 7.7 Released, Brings Multi-Touch Input
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/06/10/1255216/x11-77-released-brings-multi-touch-input
“The X Window System made release X11 7.7 last night (June 9th): ‘This release incorporates both new features and stability and correctness fixes, including support for reporting multi-touch events from touchpads and touchscreens which can report input from more than one finger at a time”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Clambook Turns the Laptop Into a Smartphone-Powered Peripheral, Cats Herd Sheep
http://www.pcworld.com/article/257237/clambook_turns_the_laptop_into_a_smartphonepowered_peripheral_cats_herd_sheep.html
This year’s latest generation of smartphones will be equipped with new, more powerful mobile processors that rival the power of most laptops. So it almost seems fitting that Clamcase, the company that makes iPad keyboard docks, is making the laptop-like peripheral that’s completely powered by a smartphone.
The device won’t actually do anything until you’ve connected it to your phone through a MHL cable that carries video, audio, and power. Once you’ve got your phone plugged in, you’ll be able to use it as a mobile workstation or media hub for all your movies, apps, and games.
The idea of using a smartphone to power a portable laptop is hardly new–just ask the Motorola Atrix 2 and its Lapdock partner. The difference is that Clambook promises to work with a multitude of Android devices and iPhones.
While everything might sound great, the Clambook currently only exists as a handful of images attached to a spec sheet.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel rivals crash Hot Chips party with full-fat server silicon
Hey baby, wanna come upstairs and see my pipeline?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/11/hot_chips_24_preview/
After hogging most of the oxygen in the server market with its new Xeon E3 and E5 processors this spring, Intel is going to get a little competition this summer as its rivals in the server racket trot out their upcoming server processors at the Hot Chips 24 symposium at Stanford University.
IBM divulging the details of its Power7+ processor for its Power Systems line of servers (32 nanometer process)
IBM is also showing off what it calls its third-generation zNext processor for mainframes
Oracle will be showing off its Sparc T5 processor, which will sport 16 cores and will have the necessary circuitry on those chips to glue up to eight of them together in a single system image in a NUMA configuration with one hop between processors.
You’ll notice that Oracle is not showing off a Sparc M4 processor
Fujitsu appears to have at last committed itself to putting its future 16-core Sparc64-X processors into Unix machines
Fujitsu is already shipping a 16-core Sparc64-IXfx processor in its PrimeHPC supercomputers
Intel will be showing off its “Sandy Bridge-EP” Xeon E5-2600 processor for two-socket boxes
Applied Micro Circuits will also be showing off its 64-bit ARMv8-based X-Gene server processor
AMD will be talking about its “Jaguar” microprocessor
AMD will also be trotting out its “Trinity” Fusion APUs and HD7970 graphics processors
Intel will be talking about its “Ivy Bridge” Core v3 and “Medfield” Atom Z2460 processors, which are used in PCs or mobile devices.
Intel providing some more specifics about its x64-based “Knights Corner” Many Integrated Core (MIC) coprocessors for supercomputing applications
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wall Street Beat: Economic Uncertainty Continues to Plague Tech
Chances appear higher for a recession that could put a damper on purchases for IT
http://www.cio.com/article/708020/Wall_Street_Beat_Economic_Uncertainty_Continues_to_Plague_Tech
DG News Service (New York Bureau) — Is tech heading into another downturn? Market watchers see signs of hope for the end of the year but they are hedging their bets.
The risk of a tech downturn following a widening recession in Europe andA slower economic growth in the U.S. and Asia have risen to around 30 percent, from about 20 percent a few months ago, according to Andrew Bartels, chief economist at Forrester Research.
While Bartels still has what he calls a moderately positive outlook for IT, he said in an interview Friday that he most likely will cut his forecast for tech purchases when Forrester issues its revised forecast next month. DG News Service (New York Bureau) — Is tech heading into another downturn? Market watchers see signs of hope for the end of the year but they are hedging their bets.
The risk of a tech downturn following a widening recession in Europe andA slower economic growth in the U.S. and Asia have risen to around 30 percent, from about 20 percent a few months ago, according to Andrew Bartels, chief economist at Forrester Research.
While Bartels still has what he calls a moderately positive outlook for IT, he said in an interview Friday that he most likely will cut his forecast for tech purchases when Forrester issues its revised forecast next month.
Bartels thinks that a downward revision for U.S. purchases of technology, from 7 percent growth to about 5.5 percent or 6 percent, is called for. Taking Asia and Europe into account, a 1 percent downward revision for global tech purchases, to a growth rate of about 5 percent or 6 percent, will likely be in order. In its January forecast Forrester said that on a global basis, IT purchases will be US$2.1 trillion in 2012.
“Investors are nervous,” wrote Canaccord Genuity analyst Richard Davis in a research note Friday. “The weakness in the market has decisively shifted investors’ gaze from ‘how high is up’ to ‘how low can it go?’ ”
The mixed news has sparked cuts in forecasts for tech vendor revenue.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Growing Importance of Asymmetric and Asynchronous Processing
http://www.fpgagurus.edn.com/blog/fpga-gurus-blog/growing-importance-asymmetric-and-asynchronous-processing?cid=Newsletter+-+EDN+on+FPGAs
In the client-server computing world, the buzz about multicore processors over the past few years has centered on simple models of a single operating system and a single processing kernel. This SMP, or symmetric processing model, is useful in server-based data centers where speed is of the essence, but it isn’t necessarily the most common processing model in the embedded world.
Since a lot of SMP runs out of gas around four or eight processors, it’s also not necessarily the primary wave of the future, unless better multithreading software comes out.
There are many more opportunities for multicore chips based on asymmetric cores – where processors might work on the same data stream, but not in lockstep, and maybe not even with a common kernel – or asynchronous cores, where co-processors do not have to wait for a master processor to finish work on a data set before they can begin their own work, regardless of any common clocks.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Feds Tell Megaupload Users to Forget About Their Data
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/06/feds-megaupload-data/
Federal authorities say they may shut down cloud-storage services without having to assist innocent customers in retrieving data lost in the process.
The government is making that argument in the case of Megaupload, the file-sharing service that was shuttered in January following federal criminal copyright-infringement indictments targeting its operators.
The Obama administration is telling an Ohio man seeking the return of his company’s high school sports footage that he should instead be suing Megaupload — even though the government seized Megaupload’s assets in January.
The filing (.pdf) comes as cloud-based storage services are becoming more and more popular — despite there being little clarity about what’s legal and what’s not — and who’s to blame if copyright infringement happens on a service.
“The government also does not oppose access by Kyle Goodwin to the 1,103 servers previously leased by Megaupload. But access is not the issue – if it was, Mr. Goodwin could simply hire a forensic expert to retrieve what he claims is his property and reimburse Carpathia for its associated costs,” the government wrote in a brief filing Friday. “The issue is that the process of identifying, copying, and returning Mr. Goodwin’s data will be inordinately expensive, and Mr. Goodwin wants the government, or Megaupload, or Carpathia, or anyone other than himself, to bear the cost.”
“As more and more consumers move their data to the cloud, and as the government continues its campaign to seize whole websites without regard for third-party property residing on those sites, it’s clear that we need a better solution. We hope the court will help us get there,” said Samuels.
Carpathia said it is spending $9,000 daily to retain the Megaupload data, and is demanding that Judge Liam O’Grady relieve it of that burden. Megaupload, meanwhile, wants the government to free up some of the millions in dollars of seized Megaupload assets to be released to pay Carpathia to retain the data for its defense and possibly to return data to its customers — a proposition which the government rejects.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The future is not a single cloud
Cloud alone is not the whole IT industry’s future, says Forrester . The study of the house, part of the IT applications developed until well done to move into the cloud, but many of them will back down to earth.
“Everything does not change the cloud, as a business process, data sources and workflow requires special tools or proprietary software, which can not benefit from the cloud systems. This is why we have the central computers for 20 years from now,” Forrester analyst James Staten says.
draw attention to some of the service companies to sell ordinary and virtualized services as cloud solutions
Private could does not save as much as public or hybrid cloud models.
Source:
http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/tulevaisuus+ei+olekaan+yksin+pilvessa/a815771?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-12062012&
Tomi Engdahl says:
Top DisplayPort monitors under $400
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57450600-1/top-displayport-monitors-under-$400/
DisplayPort is a powerful display connection standard that unfortunately doesn’t get taken advantage of nearly enough. Here’s a list of some of the cheap few monitors that do.
DisplayPort has yet to supplant DVI as the premiere PC monitor connection standard. In fact, if the monitors I’ve reviewed over the past two years are any indication, HDMI is still far more ubiquitous than DisplayPort.
With a higher maximum bandwidth, a built-in cable retention feature, and multiple monitor (over one cable) support, I’m still scratching my head as to why DisplayPort isn’t more popular than it is, at the consumer level at least.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Is 2013 the year Hadoop uptake turns into a ‘tornado’?
http://gigaom.com/cloud/is-2013-the-year-hadoop-uptake-turns-into-a-tornado/
Karmasphere CEO Gail Ennis told me recently she thinks “2013 is going to be the year when we see [Hadoop adoption] go a lot more mainstream and [turn] into a tornado.” I like the prediction, as much for its imagery as for her near-term certainty.
Hadoop right now is like a funnel cloud spiraling above the ground: it took some strong forces (famous users, lots of hype and lots of venture capital) to create the cloud, but it’s still too high up to do real damage. When it hits the ground, though, watch out.
When it’s easier to access and analyze data stored in Hadoop (Karmasphere 2.o, for example, lets users write SQL-like queries while also connecting to their favorite BI tools and analytics software), business departments and IT both get a little more space. That’s also means it’s easier to sell Hadoop products because everyone knows their roles and what items are coming out of whose budgets. Individual departments buy and manage business tools such as Karmasphere, while IT buys and manages system software such as Cloudera or Hortonworks.
Datameer, is also doing its part to make the Hadoop tornado touch down, announcing on Monday a new version of its spreadsheet-for-Hadoop product that runs on a single computer.
Given that it’s halfway through 2012, Ennis’s prediction of 2013 being the year that Hadoop turns into a tornado and sucks up everything its path seems fair enough
Tomi Engdahl says:
Thunderbolt On Windows: Hardware and Performance Explored
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/06/12/1933249/thunderbolt-on-windows-hardware-and-performance-explored
“Intel’s Light Peak technology eventually matured into what now is known in the market as Thunderbolt, which debuted initially as an Apple I/O exclusive last year.”
“On the Windows front, Thunderbolt is still in its infancy and though there are still a few bugs to work out of systems and solutions, Thunderbolt capable motherboards and devices for Windows are starting to come to market. ”
Thunderbolt on Windows with Asus, Intel and Promise
http://hothardware.com/Reviews/Thunderbolt-on-Windows-with-Asus-Intel-and-Promise/
As its codename implied, Light Peak initially used optical cables for data transfer. But the original optical connections discussed with Light Peak have since been complimented by less expensive copper cables as well. If you’re unfamiliar with Light Peak, now known as ThunderBolt, it is a high-speed, dual-protocol I/O technology (PCI Express and DisplayPort) designed for high performance and to simplify installations of bandwidth hungry components.
Thunderbolt has dual, bi-directional channels that offer up to 10Gbps of bandwidth per port. For comparison, USB 3.0 offers 5Gbps per port. The Thunderbolt connections are also low latency with accurate time synchronization mechanisms down to about 8ns, they offer up to 10W of power over the cable for bus-powered devices, and because ThunderBolt has native protocol support, existing drivers for current PCIe devices should be compatible, with minor, or potentially no tweaks necessary.
Thunderbolt is enabled by a physical Thunderbolt controller, which connects to a system’s PCH (Platform Controller Hub) through four PCI Express lanes. Intel Thunderbolt controllers feature integrated Thunderbolt and PCI Express switches and can support either one or two connectors. The connectors themselves are of the mini-DP variety (as you’ll see on the next page).
We should point out, that up to seven devices can be daisy-chained off a single Thunderbolt connector, although there are limitations as to what can be connected. No more than two DisplayPort enabled monitors can be connected at a time, and those monitors must support the DP1.1a standard. At this time, there is also an issue with hot plugging of storage devices in Windows environments. At the moment, Thunderbolt storage devices must be connected to a PC running Windows before the system is powered up or the system may need to be restarted if the device is connected to an active Windows system.
Thunderbolt has been available on some Apple systems for over a year now and it’s been met with mostly positive results. There are also a handful of Thunderbolt compatible devices already on the market thanks to Apple’s head-start, from the likes of Promise, Lacie, WD and others. On the Windows front, however, Thunderbolt is still in its infancy and there are still a few bugs to work out of systems and solutions, like the hot plugging issue we mentioned earlier.
With that said, Thunderbolt on Windows has a lot of promise. We’re not confident that mainstream users will be very interested at first for the simple fact that a basic USB 3.0 external drive will likely offer enough performance and capacity for the average usage model. Content creators or video professionals that need massive amounts of fast storage are likely to be much more enamored by Thunderbolt though.
For now, Thunderbolt is likely to remain somewhat of niche interface for content creation professionals in need of fast access to big storage volumes. Moving forward, however, as Thunderbolt gets integrated into more and more systems, software and as device support improves, its impact could be much more widespread, especially with mobile devices. Having Thunderbolt on next-gen Ultra thin laptops, tablets or convertibles opens up a world of possibilities for docking stations and similar accessories.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Rivals AMD and ARM unite, summon others to become ‘heterogeneous’
http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/12/amd-arm-hsa-foundation/
Rumors of a hook-up between AMD and ARM have been circulating ever since someone coined the phrase “the enemy of Intel is my friend.” As of today, however, that alliance is real and cemented in the form of the HSA Foundation — a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the dark arts of Heterogeneous System Architecture.
It’s a relatively old concept in computing, but the Foundation’s founding partners (AMD, ARM, Imagination Technologies, MediaTek and Texas Instruments) all stand to gain from its wider adoption. How come? Because it involves boosting a chip’s performance by making it use its various components as co-processors, rather than treating them as specialized units that can never help each other out.
In other words, while Intel pursues Moore’s Law and packs ever-more sophisticated transistors into its CPUs, AMD, ARM and the other HSA pals want to achieve similar or better results through parallel computing.
In most cases, that’ll mean using the graphics processor on a chip not only for visuals and gaming, but also for general tasks and apps. This can already be achieved using a programming language called OpenCL, but AMD believes it’s too tricky to code and is putting mainstream developers off. Equally, NVIDIA has long had its own language for the same purpose, called CUDA, but it’s proprietary
Whatever niche is left in the middle, the HSA Foundation hopes to fill it with an easier and more open standard that is not only cross-OS but also transcends the PC / mobile divide.
Tomi Engdahl says:
BYOD will cost a packet, warn experts
HTML5 touted as way to keep app dev costs down
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/13/mobile_byod_idc_apps_expenses/
Enterprise mobility experts have warned IT managers not to enter bring your own device (BYOD) programs with cost reduction in mind, arguing that application development and support costs can quickly get out of hand if not strictly controlled from the start.
IDC VP Tim Dillon told attendees at the analyst’s Asia Pacific Enterprise Mobility Conference 2012 in Hong Kong that around 40 per cent of the region’s workforce, or nearly 840 million employees, could be termed ‘mobile workers’.
IT managers should not be looking at BYOD programs as a cost cutting exercise, he argued.
First there are the data and connectivity costs of such devices, which will be billed back to work and could end up higher than previously centralised corporate mobile set-ups, then there are hidden support costs, said Dillon.
“Many organisations say they won’t support these devices but please don’t take a no-support policy,” he warned.
“Everyone knows someone in the IT team and despite the belief that IT doesn’t help, many of these people will help. Support costs will escalate if not factored in from the start.”
IT teams also need to be fairly prescriptive about what platform and software version the device is running to avoid getting into “big trouble” on the support front.
Not only is the lifecycle of mobile apps significantly shorter than that of legacy enterprise applications but costs are pushed higher if in-house or outsourced developers have to write for different versions or forks of Android, argued Dillon.
Even iOS apps may need to be re-written and optimised for the different screen sizes of iPhone, iPad and now the latest, higher res, fondleslab.
“For every change you need to make in Android it costs $50,000 in developer time,” he said.
“The cost and skills shortage is leading app developers to look at HTML5. I think it will become almost like a third OS.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cisco puts a virty router in the clouds
And a virty server in a router, among other unnatural acts
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/12/cisco_cloud_router_x86_coprocessors/
Up front is a new Cloud Services Router 1000v which lifts Cisco’s routing software, running atop its IOS network operating system, off the iron and plunks it into a virtual machine for deployment out on the cloud. Cisco has taken IOS and the routing software stack in it physical hardware – including routing, VPN, firewall, NAT, QoS, application visibility, failover, and WAN optimization code – and ported it to a VM container that can execute on either VMware’s ESXi hypervisor or Citrix Systems’ XenServer hypervisor.
This is analogous to the virtual Nexus 1000v switch that Cisco created for its “California” Unified Computing System blade servers to virtualize the network links between VMs running on the blades.
Now Cisco can put routing and related security functions (all based on the familiar IOS stack) in all parts of an organizations infrastructure, whether it is an Aggregation Services Router (ASR) at the head end of the network, the Integrated Services Router (ISR) in the branch office, and the CSR out in the cloud.
By putting a virtual router out in the cloud, customers can extend their own routing networks into the data centers of cloud operators and ensure that their networks are isolated from other companies who are sharing that physical infrastructure. This will allow customers or managed service providers to offer end-to-end routing from the data center to the branch office to the cloud.
The CSR 1000v runs on x86 iron, of course, and the recommended configuration is to have four cores, 4GB of main memory, and 8GB of disk capacity allocated to its virtual machine for it to run.
It runs IOS-XE release 3.8 and will run atop ESXi 5.0 or XenServer 6.0 hypervisors. The product will be sold under a subscription model; pricing was not announced. Cisco says that the CSR 1000v will be available in the fourth quarter.
On the real router front, Cisco announced the ASR 1002-X, which delivers between 5Gb/sec and 36Gb/sec of routing bandwidth (scalable with a “golden screwdriver” software upgrade to 10Gb/sec, 20Gb/sec, or 36Gb/sec speeds).
In a nutshell, that is what all of this Cloud Connected Solution talk is all about. You can put a virtual switch or router on internal servers or external clouds, or on physical iron if you want to go that way, and also load up other software and services to run on virtual machines or coprocessors that make use of that cloudy switching and routing.
Cisco is cooking up its own Cloud Connected software
Tomi Engdahl says:
Flash Drives Replace Disks At Amazon, Facebook, Dropbox
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/06/flash-data-centers/
Inside its cage, Dropbox is running servers equipped with solid-state drives, also known as SSDs — super-fast storage devices that could one day replace traditional hard drives. The company doesn’t use SSDs in all its servers, but it’s moving in that direction.
Such names as Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Wikia are also using solid-state storage in their data centers, and judging from anecdotal evidence, the trend goes even further.
But in just the last 12 months, SSDs have turned the corner. They’re appearing in high-profile laptops such as Google’s Chromebooks and Apple’s brand-new MacBook Pros, and in the data center, many companies are realizing that they make economic sense even with their higher price tags.
“I think this is getting pretty common,” says Artur Bergman, the founder of Fastly, a San Francisco outfit that uses SSDs exclusively in providing a service that helps other businesses speed their delivery of pages over the net. “Though some people still have a hard time grasping it, these drives save a tremendous amount of money. They look more expensive, but when you need higher performance, you need way less of them.”
“I keep repeating that to every single individual I talk to, and what I get back is: ‘[SSDs are] too expensive,’” he said. “Actually, they’re cheaper.” Cost shouldn’t be measured by the price tag on an individual SSD, he said, but by how much you spend on drives across the data center in order to juggle the required information with each passing second.
One SSD, he said, can handle about 40,000 reads or writes a second, whereas the average hardware gives you about 180. And it runs at about one watt as opposed to 15 watts, which means you spend far less on power. “Do the math on how much you can save,”
Yes, many companies are still holding back, in part because they’re waiting for prices to come down even further, in part for other reasons. SSDs are not only more expensive than traditional hard drives, they can accept only so much data before they can’t accept any more. In other words, they have a limited lifespan.
But so do hard drives, which are prone to sudden and unexpected death. Bergman doesn’t see a SSD’s limited life as a big issue. “It’s a pretty good failure mode compared to a hard drive, which just takes longer and longer to write data before dying,”
“I don’t trust a hard drive after three years,” he says. “They don’t fail because they run out of write cycles, but they still fail.”
Part of the motivation, says Modzelewski says, is that with SSDs, the company’s developers can build new services much quicker. Typically, code must be optimized for use on hard disks, but this optimization isn’t necessary when you’re running on SSDs. “Things are heating up in terms of how fast you have to move as a company. SSDs let you do that. Because they’re faster, to get the same user experience, you don’t have to hyper-optimize code just to get products written and features built in,” he says.
“SSDs are more all-around-the-board fast.”
Hard drives are good at providing access to sequentially stored data, for instance, but they’re not quite as good at accessing random data.
“A lot of folks are moving to SSDs in some part of the database tier, while continuing to use hard drives in the rest of their infrastructure.”
Like Dropbox, Facebook is using flash storage in its database machines
Facebook provides quick access to oft-used data using a data caching platform called memcache, but when it pulls additional data from a traditional database, he says, it feels the need to use flash SSDs.
“Spinning disks are the highest-failure item in everybody’s data center, because they’re mechanical. Things that move tend to fail,” he says. “We want to eliminate some of these failures.”
Like Facebook and Microsoft and Amazon and Dropbox, he says, you don’t have to start big. You can begin with just a few drives. “Start small,” he said in his now iconic speech. “Don’t get fancy SSD card for tens of thousands of dollars. You don’t need to drive a fucking Formula One car. You’re currently on a bicycle.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Plasma Active – a New Approach to Tablet Computing
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/plasma-active-new-approach-tablet-computing
Why would you spend a few hundred dollars on a device that is little more than a smartphone (with a bigger screen, without the phone)?
Despite the success of Apple’s iPad, that is a question that seems to have defeated most hardware and software vendors.
Even the iPad, an acknowledged success, is little more than an oversize iPhone. Its “wall of apps” approach has been largely copied by the Android-based tablets so far appearing on the market.
The tablet sitting in your hand (or unused in one of your drawers) is a real computer. Can it do more than browse the Web and play videos? Marco Martin, well-known KDE hacker and basysKom employee, thinks so: “the fact that people download and use thousands of apps shows that there is the desire to do something more”. He dislikes the way “most mobile applications feel quite disconnected with each other”. Marco believes this is where KDE’s new user interface and application set for touchscreen devices, Plasma Active, can shine.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Linus Torvalds on Windows 8, UEFI, and Fedora
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/linus-torvalds-on-windows-8-uefi-and-fedora/11187
Summary: Microsoft has made it so that Windows 8 approved PC can only run Windows 8. Fedora Linux has forged a way around it, but not everyone like their approach. Torvalds gives his thoughts on the issue.
All Windows 8 licensed hardware will be shipping with secure boot enabled by default in their replacement for the BIOS, Unfied Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI). So far, so good, who doesn’t want more security? The fly in the soup is that by default only Windows 8 will run on these systems, so no Linux, no BSD, heck, no Windows XP for that matter.
Fedora Linux, Red Hat’s community distribution, has found a way: sign up with Microsoft, via Verisign to make their own Windows 8 system compatible UEFI secure boot key. A lot of Linux people hate this compromise.
Linus Torvalds, the father of Linux, has another take: “I’m certainly not a huge UEFI fan, but at the same time I see why you might want to have signed bootup etc. And if it’s only $99 to get a key for Fedora, I don’t see what the huge deal is.”
Matthew Garrett:
“We explored the possibility of producing a Fedora key and encouraging hardware vendors to incorporate it, but turned it down for a couple of reasons. First, while we had a surprisingly positive response from the vendors, there was no realistic chance that we could get all of them to carry it. That would mean going back to the bad old days of scouring compatibility lists before buying hardware, and that’s fundamentally user-hostile. Secondly, it would put Fedora in a privileged position. ”
“An alternative was producing some sort of overall Linux key. It turns out that this is also difficult, since it would mean finding an entity who was willing to take responsibility for managing signing or key distribution.”
In addition, the Linux Foundation had proposed a system by “Linux and other open operating systems will be able to take advantage of secure boot if it is implemented properly in the hardware.
This all makes sense, but none of it has happened. So Fedora felt, since the next release of the distribution will be coming out at about the same time as Windows 8, that they had to do something.
What Fedora ended up doing was using Microsoft’s secure boot key signing services through their sysdev portal for one-off $99 fee. Why? Because, “it’s cheaper than any realistic alternative would have been. It ensures compatibility with as wide a range of hardware as possible and it avoids Fedora having any special privileges over other Linux distributions.”
What Fedora ended up doing was using Microsoft’s secure boot key signing services through their sysdev portal for one-off $99 fee. Why? Because, “it’s cheaper than any realistic alternative would have been. It ensures compatibility with as wide a range of hardware as possible and it avoids Fedora having any special privileges over other Linux distributions.
That said, Torvalds doesn’t think Microsoft’s spin on Windows 8 UEFI secure boot is really going to do for security. “The real problem, I feel, is that clever hackers will bypass the whole key”
Torvalds concluded, “Signing is a tool in the tool-box, but it’s not solving all the security problems, and while I think some people are a bit too concerned about it, it’s true that it can be mis-used.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hardware & Software Suppliers Simplify Multicore Programming
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1395&doc_id=242648&cid=NL_Newsletters+-+DN+Daily
As multicore processing architectures grow in popularity, suppliers are rolling out solutions to help engineers program the new breed of devices.
PolyCore Software is offering a new version of its Poly-Platform that includes a graphical tool to map applications to multicore architectures. The tool is targeted at the telecom, datacom, military, aerospace, and process control sectors, but it can serve in virtually any application being migrated from the single-core world to the multicore one. The idea is to help engineers deal with the technical barriers inherent in splitting up applications to run on multiple cores in the same chip.
“For people who get used to single-core programming, the move to multicore can be challenging,” Zihong Lin, strategic marketing manager for the multicore business at Texas Instruments (TI), told us. “The environment is different. They have to think out partitioning the software and syncing up all the tasks between the cores.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
AMD 2013 APUs To Include ARM Cortex-A5 Processor For TrustZone Capabilities
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6007/amd-2013-apus-to-include-arm-cortexa5-processor-for-trustzone-capabilities
At AMD’s 2012 Financial Analyst Day, as part of their presentation on their future strategy AMD’s CTO Mark Papermaster announced that AMD would be looking into integrating 3rd party IP into future AMD APUs.
Today AMD is announcing that they are in fact going to start integrating ARM cores into future APUs starting in 2013, but not in the way you’re probably thinking.
Both Intel and ARM have hardware trusted platform/security technologies but AMD lacks such a technology.
For various reasons we’ll get to in a moment, AMD believes they need some kind of hardware security platform technology to continue to compete in the market in the future. Intel’s Trusted Execution Technology is not part of the x86 specification and is therefore not shared, so AMD would need to come up with their own technology.
So rather than design their own technology they’ve chosen to license an existing technology, and this brings us to ARM.
In order to implement a hardware security platform on their future APUs, AMD has chosen to enter into a strategic partnership with ARM for the purpose of gaining access to ARM’s TrustZone technology. By licensing TrustZone, AMD gains a hardware security platform that’s already in active use, which means they avoid fragmenting the market and the risks that would bring.
But because TrustZone is an ARM technology (both in name and ISA) AMD needs an ARM CPU to execute it. So the key to all of this will be the integration of an ARM processor into an AMD APU, specifically ARM’s Cortex-A5 CPU. The Cortex-A5 is ARM’s simplest ARMv7 application processor, and while it’s primarily designed for entry-level and other lower-performance devices, as it turns out it fits AMD’s needs quite nicely since it won’t be used as a primary application processor.
This also means that the ARM and x86 CPU cores will fit together in an interesting manner unlike any existing ARM or Intel x86 CPU. By integrating a low-power/low-performance ARM CPU in this manner an application will be split up over multiple CPUs, with the TrustZone secure backend executing on the Cortex-A5 while the frontend logic will be executing as normal on AMD’s x86 CPU and GPU cores. This gives AMD a dedicated security co-processor with all the benefits and drawbacks thereof, while on full ARM processors and on Intel’s x86 processors TrustZone and TXT respectively are hardware features of a single CPU.
By implementing a hardware security platform in this manner AMD not only gains a relatively quick turnaround time on the hardware, but on the software side too. AMD is specifically looking to leverage existing ARM applications for their tablet ambitions by taking advantage of the fact that existing TrustZone application cores can easily (if not directly) be ported over to AMD’s APUs.
As AMD is pitching this it’s not just closing a feature gap but also about what it enables. A big focus of this of course is on trusted computing in the classical sense, meaning DRM for consumer applications and on platform lockdown and auditing for business IT purposes.
But as we’ve seen Intel do with their acquisition of McAfee some years back, there’s also a strong focus on securing systems from malware in the form of new anti-virus technologies and in newer applications such as mobile payments. Even cloud services get a mention in here, since TrustZone can be used to make sure malware isn’t watching in on a session from the client.
Wrapping things up, we would be remiss to ignore the elephant in the room, which of course is the inclusion of an ARM core in the first place. A lot of speculation has been going on that AMD is considering adopting the ARM architecture on a broader basis – particularly if HSA takes off and makes the underlying architecture less important – and this certainly is going to fuel more of that.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Thin is in for PC, MacBook — upgrades out
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57452738-92/thin-is-in-for-pc-macbook-upgrades-out/
The upgradable computer is under attack.
There are fewer upgradable laptops on the market these days thanks to their thin, “sealed” designs.
In case you haven’t noticed, Apple and every other first-tier PC maker on the planet are pushing thin laptops, not to mention even thinner tablets. Problem is, really thin computers are, by design, “sealed.” That means, fewer and fewer upgradable computers.
And the rare ultrabook that is designed to provide access to components like the battery and SSD, is often the pricey variety
And don’t expect things to improve. Apple is making a statement with the non-upgradable MacBook Pro. Meanwhile, the number of ultrabooks and tablet-like hybrids will only increase in the coming years.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel not joining graphics chip alliance
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57452865-92/intel-not-joining-graphics-chip-alliance/
A group that includes AMD, ARM, and Texas Instruments is trying to tap into the graphics chip’s horsepower. Intel isn’t interested in the initiative, though.
Here’s how Lisa Su, an AMD senior vice president, described it in a phone interview with CNET.
“The point is, even if you put a really powerful CPU next to a really powerful GPU, if these [chips] don’t interact and the applications don’t know when it’s better to operate on the graphics side and when is it better to operate on the CPU side, you’re not taking advantage of all that compute horsepower,” she said, referring to the central processing unit and graphics processing unit.
Su continued. “This is meant to make it easier for software developers. So they’re not designing specifically to AMD’s features or Intel’s features but designing to a set of application standards. There’s an entire industry out there beyond just the PC market — whether it’s smartphones, tablets — where GPU acceleration is going to be helpful.”
Another goal is to make development more accessible to mainstream programmers not just the elite echelon of programmers, she said.
And anyone is welcome, including Intel. “We’ve said anybody can join. We think we’ve gathered a list of strong partners to kick off the foundation,” according to Su.
But a source close to Intel say it has no plans to join the foundation. That source cited, for example, an analogous foundation called OpenCL, which Intel supports along with AMD, Nvidia, and ARM.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel Dismisses ‘x86 Tax’, Sees No Future For ARM
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/06/14/2334237/intel-dismisses-x86-tax-sees-no-future-for-arm
In an interview with ExtremeTech, Mike Bell — Intel’s new mobile chief, previously of Apple and Palm — has completely dismissed the decades-old theory that x86 is less power efficient than ARM. ‘There is nothing in the instruction set that is more or less energy efficient than any other instruction set,’ Bell says. ‘I see no data that supports the claims that ARM is more efficient.’
Intel dismisses ‘x86 tax’, sees no future for ARM or any of its competitors
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/130552-intel-dismisses-x86-tax-sees-no-future-for-arm-or-any-of-its-competitors
We immediately start discussing smartphones: Android, iOS, and Windows Phone 8. One of the biggest surprises with x86 Android is the fact that app compatibility seems to be a non-issue. “There are two kinds of Android apps,” Bell says. “Those that use Dalvik, and ones that run natively.” Dalvik is Google’s Java-like virtual machine which many Android apps run inside. Theoretically, as long as Dalvik works on x86, then all of the apps will. “We have a large team working on making sure Dalvik apps work well.” I push the mobile chief on the topic of native apps, and he hums and haws a little. “We have developed some software that translates native apps to x86, and it seems to work well,” he says. Seizing this opening, I ask if it would be possible to build the same kind of translation layer for Windows 8 and Windows RT. In return, I get a shrug, a smile, and a non-answer.
I change tack, mentioning rumors that Windows Phone 8, which will reportedly be refactored from the Windows CE kernel to the Windows 8 kernel, will support x86. “For now, we’re focused on Android. It’s all about producing what our customers want, and right now that’s Android.” What about tablets? “Windows 8 on tablets, Android on smartphones.”
If someone came to us with a compelling business case for x86 Windows Phone 8, we’d go work with Microsoft.
“For a long time, we were trying to battle hearsay with PowerPoint presentations. The only real way to do it is to build an actual device and say “Look, go measure it yourself.’” The Medfield-powered Xolo X900, which we benchmarked earlier in the year, falls slightly behind in some tests, but pulls ahead in others. Bell continues: “It’s complicated. We’re not the lowest in power consumption, but we’re the lowest in some things.
Standby time, we’re at the top of the pack. Power-wise, we’re good; performance-wise, we either exceed by a large amount, or we’re roughly the same — and in some of those cases, we consume less power during the benchmarks.”
“There is nothing in the instruction set that is more or less energy efficient than any other instruction set,” Bell says, putting the decades-old theory to rest. “It’s all about the implementation and the process technology; whether you target power, or speed, or both.”
“I think,” Bell begins slowly, picking his words carefully, “Moving forward, it will be difficult for anyone who doesn’t have an end-to-end capability to keep up with us. I took it for granted before I joined Intel, but this really is rocket science.”
“When you think about it, the price of the SoC is such a small part of total price of these phones. People ask us ‘Can you be price competitive?’ and, well, it depends on what you wrap around it.”
Bell never actually says that Intel will match ARM on price, though.
“We need to keep moving — that’s what I keep telling people. What we’re showing is really, really good — in general, across the board, phones, tablets, ultrabooks — but we’re not resting on our laurels. We’re worrying about what’s next, what’s after that, and what’s after that. You see examples of companies recently that haven’t kept innovating, and they’ve got into trouble.” Bell is almost certainly talking about AMD, though he refuses to name names.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Computer companies are moving from hardware business more to software business in hope for better profits:
Dell outlined its software strategy on Wednesday, casting the growing business as a secondary, but key, component to the company’s enterprise product offerings in the long run.
Dell is not looking to become a stand-alone software company, but wants to build software products that it can attach to its server, services, networking and storage offerings, said John Swainson, president of the software group
“We’re not going to stand up as an independent software business at Dell.” Swainson said. “I hope to catalyze the software work that’s going on in the company.”
Dell is known primarily as a hardware vendor, but is building its product portfolio to offer a complete software and services stack with the hardware. Dell went on an acquisition spree, acquiring eight companies in the last calendar yea
The company hopes to initially develop mobile-device management software that will help manage and secure mobile devices and PCs, Swainson said.
Other software areas being explored by Dell include analytics and business intelligence software,
Dell already offers Quickstart data-warehousing appliances, which comes standard with Boomi software, to connect public cloud services and on-premise applications. Boomi is also key to Dell’s pursuit of application service delivery functionality in a SaaS model, which Swainson said is being targeting at the untapped market outside the U.S.
Dell looks to cut $2 billion in costs over next three years
Dell’s cost cuts will come in standardizing configurations, moving operations to affordable geographic areas and supply-chain efficiency.
Dell on Wednesday said it wants to cut US$2 billion in costs over the next three years as the company moves a larger part of the business toward the enterprise to increase profitability.
The cost cuts will come in a number of areas including standardizing PC and server system configurations, moving operations to more affordable geographic areas and making the supply chain more efficient, said the company’s CEO, Michael Dell, during a keynote at the company’s analyst day, which was webcast.
While the focus is on the enterprise and data centers, the company is not abandoning the PC business, Dell said. The company is trying to keep the focus on higher-margin products like XPS PCs, which are selling well, he said. The company will try to keep the PC business lean and jump only into areas where there are growth opportunities, Dell said.
Dell also sees an opportunity in Windows 8, which should boost tablet and PC shipments, Clarke said. Dell plans to release Windows 8 tablets for enterprises under the Latitude and OptiPlex brands.
Sources:
http://www.tietoviikko.fi/cio/dell+kasaa+ohjelmistopalettiaan+pala+palalta/a816651?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-15062012&
http://www.cio.com/article/708378/Dell_Lays_Out_Software_Strategy?page=1&taxonomyId=3000
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/061312-dell-looks-to-cut-2-260170.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
44 per cent of the business and the IT industry-first Tablet PC buyers will buy an Android device next 12 months compared to only 27 percent who intend to buy an iPad, Idgns news service, the owner of IDG Connect in a new study says.
“The tablet and your use of the device in the working environment has a significant impact on the future of business and the IT sector in the coming years,” says IDG Connect journalist Kathryn Cave press release. Cave of the results of the study indicate that a flat PC market leadership will change in the future.
71 per cent of respondents said they already own the Tablet PC, and of these 51 per cent said it was the iPad.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/androidtaulutietokoneet+halutumpia+tyokaytossa+kuin+ipadit/a816983?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-15062012&
Tomi Engdahl says:
PowerVR To Make Mobile Graphics, GPU Compute a Three-Way Race Again
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/06/17/1551212/powervr-to-make-mobile-graphics-gpu-compute-a-three-way-race-again
For over 10 years, the desktop and mobile graphics space has been dominated by two players: Nvidia and AMD/ATI. After 3dfx collapsed
Now, there’s a flurry of evidence to suggest that Imagination Technologies plans to re-enter PC market, but from the opposite direction. Rather than building expensive discrete solutions, IT is focused on deploying GPUs that can challenge Nvidia and AMD solutions in tablets, mobile phones, and possibly netbooks.
PowerVR Plans To Make Mobile Graphics, GPU Compute a Three-Way Race — Again
http://hothardware.com/News/PowerVR-Plans-To-Make-Mobile-Graphics-GPU-Compute-a-ThreeWay-Race–Again/
Over the past two weeks, Imagination Technologies has announced new, higher-end versions of its Power VR Series 6 GPU, claiming that the new PowerVR G6230 and G6430 go “‘all out’, adding incremental extra area for maximum performance whilst minimising power consumption.” There’s a new ray-tracing SDK out and a post discussing how PowerVR is utilizing GPU Compute and OpenCL to offload and accelerate CPU-centric tasks.
Nvidia and Qualcomm both have their own GPUs to showcase with Windows RT when it launches, but Texas Instruments has committed to using PowerVR for Windows 8. Intel also uses PowerVR for both Medfield (x86 phone) and for upcoming tablets.
Part of what makes this interesting is that PowerVR’s tile-based rendering is an excellent fit for mobile/low-power products. Tile-based rendering solutions are inherently more efficient than the immediate-mode rendering solutions used by both AMD and Nvidia.
Certainly Imagination Technologies thinks it may, and the battle for graphics space in the next few years should be very interesting to watch.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Torvalds Slams NVIDIA’s Linux Support
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/12/06/17/1415250/torvalds-slams-nvidias-linux-support
“Linus Torvalds received the Millennium prize last week for his work on Linux operating system.”
“During the Q&A, a person asks why NVIDIA does not play well with Linux. Torvalds explained shortly that NVIDIA has been one of the worst companies to work with Linux project”
“Torvalds even summarized that (‘Nvidia, f*** you!’) in a playful manner. ”
Aalto University arranged a talk session with him (video)
Aalto Talk with Linus Torvalds [Full-length]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShbP3OpASA&feature=youtu.be&hd=1&t=48m9s
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Great Replacement: Microsoft, Yammer, and a New World in Enterprise Computing
http://pandodaily.com/2012/06/16/the-great-replacement-microsoft-yammer-and-a-new-world-in-enterprise-computing/
As with Facebook’s Instagram acquisition, Microsoft’s reported $1.2 billion purchase price for business-software company Yammer likely doesn’t really reflect what the startup is worth in earning potential. Rather it’s an indication of how much the buying company is willing to pay to keep it out of competitors’ hands, acquire the talent on the team, and neutralize a potential threat to its business.
Also like the Instagram acquisition, which confirmed the transition from Web 2.0 to the Age of Mobile, it’s part of a momentous paradigm shift. It signals the end of an old world of enterprise computing, which has been dominated by large and entrenched corporations, to a new world in which smaller, more nimble outfits upset the status quo with cloud-enabled software and mobile platforms.
We are in the middle of a $600 billion disruption, but hardly anyone has noticed. The once-staid world of enterprise computing is in silent convulsions, with incumbent giants being assaulted by startups that are building from scratch for a new era in which the cloud, mobile, and on-demand software will dominate. Hot companies such as Dropbox, Asana, and Atlassian will ascend to the throne, while the corpses of the old rulers – Microsoft, Oracle, SAP – will lie rotting in the gutter. The Great Replacement is beginning.
“There is really a full blown reawakening in the innovation of enterprise,” says Peter Levine, a general partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. “This is a renaissance in enterprise computing.”
And for many, Levine says, that’s going to hurt. Data centers are being supplanted by cloud infrastructure. On-premise applications will be surpassed by software as a service (SaaS). And, thanks to the rise of mobile, PCs will become increasingly marginalized. These three shifts are dramatic, real, and they’re enlivening a sector of computing that a decade ago everyone thought was dead.
“In my 25 years in this business, I’ve never seen three simultaneous shifts of this magnitude,”
“On the cloud infrastructure side, everything is up for disruption and opportunity,” says Levine. “We believe that all of this disruption from cloud, software as a service, and mobile is going to create huge opportunities, and there’s going to be 15 to 20 new franchises out of this disruption.”
Of course, even accounting for market expansion, those new franchises will come at someone’s expense. But the rewards are massive. Every year, Levine says, about $600 billion is spent on data centers, on-premise applications, and PCs. “There’s a massive opportunity for new companies and new players to take shape.”
Microsoft acknowledges the shifts to cloud, mobile, and SaaS, but it sees the transition as an opportunity rather than a threat. Today, 80 percent of the enterprise market is still using traditional commercial software packages, O’Brien estimates, while the service component accounts for the remaining 20 percent. While the move to a more distributed ecosystem is occurring, Microsoft envisages an interim period of 10 to 15 years when a hybrid scenario will prevail, in which case his company is well placed to cater to both needs.
Cannon-Brookes thinks the future will be a lot messier than just total SaaS. And even though the landscape is changing dramatically, the likes of Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP are by no means a spent force. “There’s certainly a place for those guys,” says Cannon-Brookes. “Will they have the same business in five years’ time? Of course not. But they would argue that they don’t have the same business as they had five years ago.”
There will be pain, for sure
The Great Replacement in enterprise is well under way.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IDC says Apple’s Ipad to regain market share from Android in 2012
Overall tablet sales will surpass original expectations
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2184698/idc-apple-s-ipad-regain-market-share-android-2012
RESEARCH OUTFIT IDC is predicting that the Apple Ipad will continue to dominate the tablet market throughout 2012, snatching back market share from its Android powered rivals.
In its latest report IDC has updated its forecast to shift a larger percentage of future tablet sales toward IOS and away from Google’s Android operating system. The firm now expects the Ipad to grab 62.5 per cent of the market in 2012, up from 58.2 per cent in 2011, while Android’s hold will slip from 38.7 per cent to 36.5 per cent.
Overall, IDC expects the entire tablet market to surpass its original expectations. Worldwide sales are now expected to hit 107.4 million units
“Demand for media tablets remains robust, and we see an increasing interest in the category from the commercial side,” said Mainelli.
“We expect pending new products from major players”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wall Street Beat: Bad News Rolls in for Tech
IDC says the software market will slow down, as Nokia faces tough times ahead
http://www.cio.com/article/708563/Wall_Street_Beat_Bad_News_Rolls_in_for_Tech?page=1&taxonomyId=1375
IDC’s latest Worldwide Software Market Forecaster, released Thursday, offered a disappointing analysis for software, which is usually considered to be a bright spot for tech. While 2011 delivered nearly double-digit growth in the worldwide software market, the highest growth rate since the 2008 implosion of the banking sector, the future looks bleaker, IDC said.
“IDC expects the overall software market to return to more conservative growth in the years to come,” said Patrick Melgarejo, director of IDC’s software trackers, in the report. “The major driver behind this decelerating growth is the forecast for close to flat performance in EMEA, due to the economic difficulties in that region.”
In 2011, the Asia/Pacific and Japan area experienced the highest growth rate of all regions, as it has over the past three years, expanding from 15 percent share in 2008 to 16.5 percent. However, the region is expect to slow down and more closely match growth in other regions in the next year or so.
IDC also had some troubling news for the storage market.
“The first quarter saw decidedly mixed results,”
On the hardware and components side of tech, TI and Nokia gave fresh cause for worry. TI on Monday narrowed its expected ranges for revenue and earnings per share (EPS).
On Friday, Moody’s ratings agency downgraded Nokia’s debt grade to junk status, noting greater-than-expected pressure on the company’s earnings.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Vizio reboots the PC: a quiet American success story takes on sleeping giants
http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/15/3076519/vizio-reboot-pc-american-hdtv-success-do-it-again
It was a month after Vizio had revealed its new line of PCs at CES 2012, where the company had received near-universal praise for its slim designs, clean Windows builds, and promises of low prices.
Vizio is one of the best-kept secrets in consumer technology. The tiny Southern California company consistently sells the most HDTVs in America, but it’s a sure bet that you know virtually nothing about it. Hell, most people don’t even know Vizio is an American company, even though all but three of its 417 employees work in the US. That’s sort of what happens when you run virtually no advertising outside of sponsoring a few major events like the Rose Bowl, hold no press conferences outside of CES, and build the foundation of your empire by selling low-cost TVs at Walmart.
Vizio’s decided to come out of the shadows and go after something bigger: the PC industry. The company just announced a complete line of laptops and all-in-one desktops that feature attractive designs, high-end components, and totally clean builds of Windows, with prices between $899 and $1,299. It’s a risky bet for many reasons — the PC is full of mature, dominant players like HP and Dell, and the entire PC ecosystem is at a major inflection point with Windows 8 and Windows RT — but Vizio is confident it’s making the right move.
After all, it entered the mature TV market in much the same way almost exactly a decade ago.
“PCs aren’t going away.”
Making that strategy work requires deep ties to Asian manufacturing: Taiwan’s AmTran Technology owns 23 percent of Vizio, and the company maintains strong relationships with other major OEMs like Foxconn and Quanta.
“PCs aren’t going away,“ says McRae. “They’re still extremely important devices in people’s lives and they’re really becoming an entertainment product as much as a productivity product. And if it’s an entertainment device, it’s in our wheelhouse. We do entertainment devices pretty well.” Vizio first tried to expand beyond TVs into smart devices with the Vizio Phone and Tablet, which launched at CES 2011, but McRae killed the phone after dealing with carriers proved frustrating and expensive. PCs and tablets can be sold directly to consumers — something Vizio is pretty good at.
McRae laughs when I ask why he’s building traditional PCs instead of betting entirely on tablets or other post-PC devices. “People buy a tablet to replace their PC,” he says, “but within six weeks, they’re carrying a laptop and a tablet in the same case. They end up carrying a second device.” That doesn’t mean Vizio is giving up on its tablet product line — McRae says new Android tablets will come “over the next six months or so” — but the company sees a huge opportunity to attack as the PC market undergoes a rapid change. “The tablet has forced the PC industry out of its slumber. There wasn’t much going on. But the next three to five years in PCs will actually be very interesting. You’re going to see new form factors, you’re going to see touch embedded over time. A lot of lines that used to be very bright between products — there’s a tablet, there’s a PC, and there’s a TV — those lines are blurring.”
“There’s not a lot of innovation” in PCs, he says. “At $599 and under, there’s just tons of black plastic. It all looks the same. You can tell there was a motherboard designed first and then they wrapped plastic around it and shipped it as fast as they could.” His tone is calculated. “It’s the same players pumping out the same product every six months. So that’s ripe for disruption.”
McRae repeatedly calls out as a gap between the cheap sub-$600 machines and Apple at above $1,200. It’s a gap Windows OEMs have struggled to address
McRae’s actually quite complementary towards Apple, saying that the Cupertino company “deserves a lot of respect for bringing design back into the consumer’s purchase decision.” But his goal is to bring that level of detail and care to a lower price point
Reducing clutter and increasing overall quality also meant fighting with Microsoft and Intel to keep the machines sticker-free. “I hate opening a PC and seeing stickers and flashing LEDs all over the place,” says McManigal. McRae was even more vehement: he spent hours arguing about the stickers, even putting together PowerPoints of forum posts and websites discussing the best ways to remove stickers from other Windows PCs. The fight paid off: Vizio’s machines are totally clean apart from a small Windows emblem silkscreened on the bottom casing.
The relentless focus on reducing clutter extended to the preloaded software on the PCs as well — or rather, the almost complete lack of preloaded software. “Something like 30 percent of people buy a PC and re-image it,” says McRae. “Retailers charge $50 to clean an image that they themselves ruined.” Just like the stickers, turning down crapware means Vizio is turning down money — preloading all those demos and offers generates significant revenue for traditional PC vendors. “We thought about it for 30 seconds,” says Matt. “It’s easy to make a product that’s clean when everything else is completely messed up. There’s a big market in that crapware, but it’s not worth it.”
And it’s not just an off-the-shelf stock build of Windows — Vizio embedded Microsoft engineers on its team to optimize Windows for its hardware. The result is that every Vizio PC will be a Microsoft Signature machine, running a specially tuned version of Windows 7 that Microsoft usually offers to regular PC owners for an extra $99.
What’s interesting is that Microsoft has offered the Signature program for about a year, but it hasn’t seen much interest from consumers or PC makers.
McRae is more blunt, as usual. “Trackpads have sucked for a really long time,” he says. “We wanted to get it right.” The machines I saw at CES had finicky pre-production trackpads, but McRae says the company has spent the past six months polishing the drivers and performance. “You have to realize that it’s a pain point to consumers, it just drives them nuts. It drives returns, it drives a bad experience.”
What’s the difference between a tablet and a small size smart TV? A battery and a touch interface. If I made a 65-inch tablet it would look like the TV sitting behind me. You’re going to have fast ARM processors, they’re both going to be running Linux, you’re going to get access to Netflix.” It’s not hard to imagine Vizio blending its Windows RT PC and TV lines down the road, especially if the TV content industry begins to change as much as we all hope it does.
Matt McRae doesn’t seem afraid of any of this. “Don’t avoid the mature markets,” he says. “Sometimes those are the easiest to disrupt because everyone is asleep.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
SSD deliveries are growing at an amazing speed
The most dramatic increase in the cache of the smaller solid-state plates that are installed in parallel with a traditional hard drive.
Market research firm iSuppli IHS expects those to be supplied 23.9 million units this year.
Larger ssd’s are already partially succeeded to replace the traditional hard drives: ultra-thin notebooks do not use hard drives anymore!
Real ssd drives will take place this year 18 million units, and projections suggest that by 2016 the number rises to 69 million units a year.
the single most important factor for SSD’s popularity has been Apple .
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/ssdlevyjen+toimitukset+kasvavat+uskomatonta+vauhtia/a817489?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-18062012&
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nvidia says Tesla K20 systems will be out before November
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2184831/nvidia-tesla-k20-systems-november
CHIP DESIGNER Nvidia has said that it will have Fermi based K20 Tesla boards in supercomputers in time for November’s Top 500 list.
Nvidia recently launched its Kepler K10 Tesla boards that focus on single-precision floating point performance, with the firm claiming its Tesla K20 boards will appear in the fourth quarter. Now the firm has said it expects supercomputer clusters featuring its Tesla K20 boards will appear in the November 2012 Top 500 list.
“A lot of the supercomputing centres running Linpack need double-precision [floating point] and our double-precision product is going to be available in the Q4 time frame, so its not going to impact Top 500 in the June announcement. But we expect to make a huge impact in the November announcement.”
Nvidia claims its K20 Tesla boards will provide three times the double-precision floating point performance of its previous generation Fermi M2090 boards, which in theory would put the board in the 1.5TFLOP region, significantly higher than AMD and Intel are currently claiming with their respective Firepro and Xeon Phi products expected around the same time.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google, Asustek expected to unveil 7-inch Nexus tablet PC at Google I/O
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20120618PD220.html
Google and Asustek Computer’s jointly developed 7-inch Nexus tablet PC is set to be unveiled at Google I/O, a developer event that will be hosted from June 27-29 at San Francisco’s Moscone Center in the US, with its initially price to be set at US$199 and manufactured by Quanta Computer, according to sources from upstream component makers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Storage software sales slowed – EMC, IBM and Symantec are the biggest
Q1 increase sales increased only 3.3% from last year…
Most storage software vendor had EMC 24 per cent market share. Second place was IBM 15.7 per cent share of the market. And the third largest of Symantec 14.8 percent market share.
Total market capitalization was $ 3.5 billion in January-March, IDC’s statistics reveal.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/tallennusohjelmistojen+myynti+hidastui++emc+ibm+ja+symantec+suurimpia/a817626?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-19062012&
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google tablet timing set, says report
Google’s tablet will be available in July. And priced to move.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57455765-92/google-tablet-timing-set-says-report/
The June tablet cavalcade will continue with a Google Nexus device, say Asia-based reports.
The 7-inch Nexus tablet, jointly developed with Asus, will be unveiled at Google I/O, which starts on June 27, according to a report from Taipei-based Digitimes. An earlier rumor made a similar claim.
Other specifics include Wi-Fi-only connectivity and no rear camera, due to its low $199 price, the report said. (There is a front camera.)
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft May Be Late to Tablet Fight, But Has the Cash to Keep Sparring
http://www.wired.com/business/2012/06/msft-may-be-late-to-tablet-fight-but-has-the-cash-to-keep-sparring/
On one level, Microsoft’s likely introduction of its tablet Monday is just sad. No matter how cool, the effort seems doomed to feel half-hearted, simply because it came so late. The iPad launched more than two years ago—eons in tech dog years—and with it a category of computing in which Microsoft wholly failed to participate until now.
Or did it?
Microsoft was never in the business of increasing its hipster cachet. The company never convincingly set out to delight customers. For decades, they have made software that works well enough for businesses. Except for possibly the Xbox, Redmond’s best minds have continually come out on the wrong side of the innovator’s dilemma. But Microsoft abides.
For all I know, Microsoft’s new tablet could be a game-changing paradigm shifter of disruptively innovative proportions that causes us to question the very nature of our existence. But probably not. Certainly that hasn’t worked out for them so far on the mobile front on the mobile front.
How long Microsoft can keep throwing darts at tablets, mobile and social would seem to depend on how long companies depend on the boring old laptop-desktop-server IT model to do their work. While they do, Microsoft will continue to sell them boring old Windows, Office and SQL Server and keep its status as the friendly old uncle of computing who may not know where the cool restaurants are but never has a problem picking up the tab.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Job cuts—It’s not just Nokia
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/from-the-edge-/4375431/Job-cuts-It-s-not-just-Nokia?cid=EDNToday_20120618
The news is out–Nokia’s cutting yet another 10,000 jobs, putting Vertu, its luxury handset unit on the block. It’s hard to remember that it was just five years ago that iPhone came crashing onto the scene, sealing the fate of Nokia, and others, in the process. When Android reared its green head, who knew that firmly entrenched Nokia would suffer to this extent.
When Android reared its green head, who knew that firmly entrenched Nokia would suffer to this extent.
Nokia has hardly been the only victim—Motorola, once a number one player, and RIM, who initially dominated the smartphone market, have both fallen dramatically.
So, who else announced job cuts this year?
HP eliminated 27,000 jobs
announced a 14% cut
expectations are that RIM will whack between 2,000 to 6,000 jobs
Unmerged T-Mobile announced 2,250 jobs lost
Ericsson 1,400.
Sony said in April it will cut about 10,000
NEC kicked off 2012 with a 10,000 jobs lost
IBM cut 1,000 jobs in the U.S.
Challenger, Gray & Christmas, announced on May 31 that job cuts have hit an 8-month high of 61,887—and that was without the Nokia figures. In a recent press release, the company stated that 245,540 jobs overall were cut since January 1—just in the U.S.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The world’s fastest supercomputer title has been returned to the United States years after the break. IBM’s Sequoia has nearly 1.6 million processor cores. Performance is more than 16 petaflops (million billion calculations per second). Sequoia has a total of 1.57 million IBM’s own Power processor cores.
Japan’s K-supercomputer is in second place on list. The K-machine has more than 700 000 processor cores and 10.5 petaflops.
United States Government just got Mira computer form IBM (quite similar but smaller than Sequoia). It took third place with 8.2 petaflops.
The fourth is based in Germany SuperMUC-machine, with output of 2.9 petaflops.
Followed by Tianhe-1A (China), Jaguar (USA), Fermi (Italy) and JuQueen (Germany).
Source: http://www.3t.fi/artikkeli/uutiset/teknologia/nopeimmassa_superkoneessa_1_6_miljoonaa_prosessoriydinta