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 says:
Russian Silicon Valley Plans First IPO as Venture Capital Booms
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-20/russian-silicon-valley-plans-first-ipo-as-venture-capital-booms.html
The Kremlin’s innovation incubator plans to hold the first in a series of share sales by technology companies this year, buoyed by record venture capital investment in the country.
The emergence of Skolkovo is coinciding with a boom in venture capital investment in Russia-based companies, which jumped fourfold to a record $276 million this year to July 20, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
Since forming Skolkovo, the government has allocated about $4.2 billion for the project and amended about 200 laws to encourage high-tech investment, according to the company’s website. The campus, designed by France’s AREP and scheduled for completion next year, will be able to accommodate 31,000 scientists, researchers, students and entrepreneurs. Vekselberg has said the final cost may reach $10 billion.
Vekselberg has already used tax breaks and other incentives to lure commitments from global companies such as Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), Siemens, Cisco and Nokia Oyj.
“The Russian technology space hasn’t lived up to everybody’s fondest hopes but it has developed dramatically,”
Intel, the world’s largest semiconductor maker, last month agreed to build an R&D center in Skolkovo to work on smart-car technologies based on Glonass, Russia’s version of the U.S. Global Positioning System satellite network for navigation. Microsoft in May said it would hire more than 100 researchers to work on cloud-computing architecture at Skolkovo.
Tomi says:
Microsoft’s Lost Decade
http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2012/08/microsoft-lost-mojo-steve-ballmer
Once upon a time, Microsoft dominated the tech industry; indeed, it was the wealthiest corporation in the world. But since 2000, as Apple, Google, and Facebook whizzed by, it has fallen flat in every arena it entered: e-books, music, search, social networking, etc., etc. Talking to former and current Microsoft executives, Kurt Eichenwald finds the fingers pointing at C.E.O. Steve Ballmer, Bill Gates’s successor, as the man who led them astray.
As for announcements of quantum leaps into the technological future: nothing. Ballmer applauded the still-long-awaited Windows 8 operating system (which as of this writing is available only as a release preview online). He burbled about his expectations for Xbox, the game console that successfully competed with Sony PlayStation. Out came Windows Phone 7 again, which, despite widespread praise from users, had experienced bleak sales results. A demo followed, which proved an embarrassment; the device’s voice-to-text messaging failed and then another glitch forced a Microsoft staffer to reach for a different phone. The media response was dismal—the company’s last presentation, a prominent blogger wrote, was a “cruel joke.”
Microsoft’s low-octane swan song was nothing if not symbolic of more than a decade littered with errors, missed opportunities, and the devolution of one of the industry’s innovators into a “me too” purveyor of other companies’ consumer products. Over those years, inconsequential pip-squeaks and onetime zombies—Google, Facebook, Apple—roared ahead, transforming the social-media-tech experience, while a lumbering Microsoft relied mostly on pumping out Old Faithfuls such as Windows, Office, and servers for its financial performance.
Amid a dynamic and ever changing marketplace, Microsoft—which declined to comment for this article—became a high-tech equivalent of a Detroit car-maker, bringing flashier models of the same old thing off of the assembly line even as its competitors upended the world. Most of its innovations have been financial debacles or of little consequence to the bottom line.
Tomi says:
Valve’s Gabe Newell on the Future of Games, Wearable Computers, Windows 8 and More
http://allthingsd.com/20120725/valves-gabe-newell-on-the-future-of-games-wearable-computers-windows-8-and-more/
Newell, who spent 13 years at Microsoft working on Windows, is not well-known outside of the videogame industry, but the company he has built in Bellevue, Wash., cannot be overlooked.
Valve is not only a game developer, producing megahits like Portal 2, it owns and operates Steam, which is the largest consumer-focused digital games distribution platform in the industry. By some measures, it may be valued at $3 billion.
“We want to make it as easy as possible for the 2,500 games on Steam to run on Linux as well. It’s a hedging strategy. I think Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space. I think we’ll lose some of the top-tier PC/OEMs, who will exit the market. I think margins will be destroyed for a bunch of people. If that’s true, then it will be good to have alternatives to hedge against that eventuality.
“We think touch is short-term. The mouse and keyboard were stable for 25 years, but I think touch will be stable for 10 years. Post-touch will be stable for a really long time, longer than 25 years.
“Post touch, depending on how sci-fi you want to get, is a couple of different technologies combined together. The two problems are input and output. I haven’t had to do any presentations on this because I’m not a public company, so I don’t have any pretty slides.
“There’s some crazy speculative stuff.
Tomi says:
IaaS providers: how to select the right company for your cloud
http://www.cloudpro.co.uk/iaas/4113/iaas-providers-how-select-right-company-your-cloud?page=0,0
There’s more choice than ever when it comes to IaaS providers, how does a company negotiate the minefield
While Amazon isn’t the only player when it comes to IaaS it is by far the biggest and this gives it a sense of gravity, pulling more customers into it. But there are other vendors too. In the last few months Google and Microsoft has joined the IaaS party, with Windows Azure and Google’s Compute Engine offering organisations similar products to Amazon’s.
And that’s not forgetting that other hosting providers (such as Rackspace) and telcos (BT, Telefonica, et al) are itching to sweep up customers with their public cloud offerings. With research firm Gartner predicting by 2016 the global IaaS market will grow to $24.4 billion, many more vendors will join and create such an array of choice, it can be hard to know where to start.
Tomi says:
Apple has announced that its latest Mac OS X version, Mountain Lion, has had three million downloads in just four days thereby making it the most successful OS in Cupertino’s history.
Source: http://apple.slashdot.org/story/12/07/30/1732257/mac-os-x-mountain-lion-gets-three-million-downloads-in-4-days
Tomi says:
Are you treating your servers like snowflakes or rubber stamps?
https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/devops/entry/snowflakes_or_rubber_stamps?lang=en
A favorite analogy in the DevOps community is that the “old style” of IT server management, where people can make manual changes to their servers, leads to production servers that are unique and precious, like snowflakes. If you don’t completely automate the configuration of your servers, your chances of re-creating the exact same server twice are nearly zero, just as no two snowflakes are alike. And because you can never re-create a production server, you must do everything in your power to protect it from changes that can break it.
The problem with this approach is that it creates an adversarial relationship between developers, who want to change the servers often to release new features, and operations professionals, who want to keep the servers running and safe. Operations teams tend to “lock down” the production servers and only allow changes to them on rare occasions. This makes business-critical software less agile and more difficult to change.
So what’s the alternative to servers as snowflakes? Servers as rubber stamps! We advocate automating everything, so that your servers can be re-created on demand. Do you want another web server? Ca-chunk, here you go. Do you want another web application server? Ca-chunk, no problem.
Creating a new server for each release of new code, and replacing the old server with the new one, simplifies “rolling deployments” into production and other techniques that DevOps advocates recommend.
Cloud computing is the enabling technology that makes “rubber stamp” servers easy. While you can automate the configuration of standalone servers, it’s dramatically simpler to automatically create and configure new servers in a cloud for every code change.
These techniques have already been put into practice by other DevOps leaders, including Etsy, Facebook, and Flickr. At IBM we’re developing new tools and integrations between existing tools, to make DevOps principles and practices easier for our enterprise customers to adopt. One such solution is IBM SmartCloud Continuous Delivery, which we’re developing now.
Tomi says:
Why Google and Ubuntu don’t say “Linux”
http://www.zdnet.com/why-google-and-ubuntu-dont-say-linux-7000000221/
Summary: Some people are complaining that neither Google nor Ubuntu refer to their operating systems as Linux, here’s why they don’t use the “L” word.
The most popular mobile operating system is Android. One of the most popular non-Windows operating systems is Canonical’s Ubuntu. And, Google’s is really pushing its Chrome OS-powered Chromebooks in the retail market. What does all this have in common? Each operating system is based on Linux and neither Google nor Canonical is mentioning that fact.
That has some Linux fans upset.
If you’re a Linux user, what do you think of when you hear “Linux.” You think about stability, security, open-source, flexibility, power, and control. You probably also think about Tux, the Linux penguin.
But, now what do the 95% plus of the population who don’t use Linux directly think about it when they hear “Linux.” They think, hard-to-use, command-line, something that only a techie geek—and I don’t mean that in a fun Big Bang Theory kind of way—could use, never mind enjoy using.
It’s about perception. Canonical and Google rather than try to fight how Linux is seen by most people and the Microsoft trolls who do their best to keep the Linux lies alive, have chosen to dodge the Linux brand issue entirely.
Hence, Google emphasizes Android and Chrome OS and Canonical talks about Ubuntu. They’re doing this because this works. By doing this, they avoid all the negative FUD that Microsoft fans and trolls keep throwing at Linux and they get to set the conversation.
For those of who are Linux fans, it’s annoying.
Tomi says:
If Microsoft’s vision was to put “a computer on every desk and in every home,” then the vision of Box (and the post-PC movement more broadly) is to get the right information into every individual’s hands.
We believe that companies with cloud, mobile and social in their DNA are best positioned to serve the increasingly dynamic needs of today’s enterprises.
There’s nothing short of a revolution going on in enterprise software today
We’re determined to prove that innovation is possible in the enterprise, and that software – along with companies – can be built differently in this new era.
Much like the transition from mainframes to minicomputers in the ‘60s and ‘70s extended the computing market beyond the world’s largest enterprises, and the move from minicomputers to PCs in the 80s and 90s gave rise to the knowledge worker, this shift brings entirely new capabilities to an expanded audience – and audience that will include 1.3 billion “mobile workers” by 2015. And as a substantial portion of the $280 billion spent on enterprise technology each year moves to the cloud and unseats legacy services, it creates a window for new players to emerge and define this next wave of solutions.
Source: http://blog.box.com/2012/07/why-box-is-raising-125-million-to-change-the-enterprise/
Tomi says:
The largest PC manufacturer Acer calls within Microsoft, so it still would consider your own Surface-tablet publication. Acer’s CEO says the Financial Times newspaper that Microsoft’s own tablet caused “a huge negative impact.” Acer threat to Microsoft from the consequences.
“If Microsoft moves to the manufacture of equipment, what should we do? Should we continue to use Microsoft, or should we look for other options?”
Source: http://www.tietokone.fi/uutiset/acer_vaatii_microsoftia_peruuttamaan_surface_tabletin
Tomi says:
Apple can hit $1,000, but $1,650 is a pipe dream
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/apple-can-hit-1000-but-1650-is-a-pipe-dream-2012-08-07?link=MW_home_latest_news
I have always said that there is a probability of Apple reaching $1,000. Currently, the ZYX Change Method calculates this probability to be 55%.
Computers, iPhones, and iPads constitute 86.69% of Apple sales. The models of some analysts assume 83% of future revenues will be from iPhones and iPads.
We have concluded that 250 million potential customers is the top number for MACs, iPhones, and iPads.
excluded iPod, iTunes, peripheral, and software sales from the above analysis as they respectively constitute only 5.46%, 4.37%, 1.65%, and 1.82% of revenues.
Tomi says:
Hands on with Intel’s open all-in-one platform
http://techreport.com/articles.x/23376
After many years of arousing little more than indifference among PC buyers, all-in-one systems are enjoying a surprising surge in popularity. If you read our news section, you might have seen our coverage of a recent IHS report on the subject. IHS said all-in-one shipments are growing at a considerably faster rate than desktop PC shipments—by about 20% to 0.2%, according to the firm’s forecast for this year.
Perhaps users think desktop towers are old hat. Maybe they feel that, if they’re going to have a non-portable computer at all, that system should have as small a footprint as possible. And what has a smaller footprint than an all-in-one? With their PC guts tucked away behind the LCD panel, most of those machines resemble chubby monitors or diminutive TVs. Looking at them, you might never think there’s a fully functional PC hiding inside.
The downside is that, traditionally, all-in-ones have been as closed-off as your typical laptop.
Intel first unveiled Thin Mini-ITX at Computex 2011 a little over a year ago. As its name suggests, the standard calls for motherboards with the same 6.7″ x 6.7″ footprint as regular Mini-ITX offerings, but with a thinner port cluster and horizontally stacked SO-DIMM memory slots. The idea is to keep the I/O shield—and the other components—from protruding by more than 25 mm (0.98″) vertically. Thin Mini-ITX systems accommodate standard desktop processors
Users and system builders are free to complement the motherboard and cooler with SO-DIMMs, 2.5″ hard drives or SSDs, slim optical drives, and Mini PCI Express cards as they see fit. The resulting systems can be incredibly thin and still offer some of the benefits of full-fledged PCs.
records storage and management says:
Know that correct HR management is very important to the strategy of all corporations if the company desires to defeat their rivals.
Tomi says:
Computer and Game Console Museum Helsinki
http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g189934-d3309461-Reviews-Computer_and_Game_Console_Museum_Helsinki-Helsinki_Southern_Finland.html
We all love old computers and now Verkkokauppa com and private collector Mr. Ari Tommiska want to share a very unique collection for free for all enthusiasts and visitors. The museum has an amazing display of old computers and gaming consoles from Ari’s private collection. He’s been collecting old computers and gaming consoles since 1984 and now for the first time the collection is available for public display.
More information:
http://www.tietokonemuseo.net/
http://www.cisionwire.fi/verkkokauppa-com-oy-g/r/verkkokauppa-com-ja-ari-tommiska-avaavat-tietokone–ja-pelikonsolimuseon-helsinkiin,e324198
http://www.3t.fi/artikkeli/uutiset/teknologia/peli_ja_tietokonemuseo_helsinkiin_lahes_600_laitetta
Tomi says:
Nvidia rides the Kepler wave, proves bean counters wrong
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/10/nvidia_q2_2012_numbers_quiadro_k5000/
The “Kepler” family of graphics processors are finally lifting Nvidia, which turned in better-than-expected financial results for its second quarter of fiscal 2013 ended in July. And the first Quadro workstation graphics card using the Kepler GPU was launched, setting up a revenue bump in the third quarter.
In the quarter, Nvidia booked $1.04bn in sales, up 12.9 per cent, and a boost in yields for 28nm chips from fab partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp was a big part of that bump as Kepler-based GPUs for notebooks based on Intel’s “Ivy Bridge” processors took off in the quarter now that supplies are not as constrained as they were earlier in the year.
Huang, who started Nvidia because he is one of the 50 million to 100 million gamers in the world, said that the gamer market “is just dying for Kepler” and that the Kepler GPUs would start coming out in desktop graphics cards that ranged in price from $99 and $249, and this is considerably lower in price than the Kepler cards that Nvidia has been able to ship to date to enthusiasts at a street price of around $400.
The good news for both Nvidia and TSMC is that it is finally ramping its 28 nanometer processes.
Nvidia sold $668.3m in GPUs for notebooks and desktops in the second quarter, up 15.3 per cent from the year ago period, with growth for both types of PCs.
On the consumer front, the Tegra 3 ARM-based processors, which feature integrated Nvidia graphics, also help pushed sales up in fiscal Q2.
Microsoft has chosen a Tegra 3 chip for its Surface slab running Windows 8 for RT and that Google has done the same for its Nexus 7.
On the Quadro and Tesla side of the Nvidia house, revenues were down 7.7 per cent in the quarter, to $196.3m.
idea is to create a workstation that can do visualization and computation at the same time by putting a mix of Quadro K5000s and Tesla K20s into a single machine. This architecture is called Maximus by Nvidia, and you had better get some budget to do it, since the Tesla K20 card will run you $3,199 each.
Tomi says:
Microsoft job ad advises ‘Xbox 720′ out by Feb 2014
http://www.reghardware.com/2012/08/10/ms_job_ad_says_xbox_720_out_in_18_months/
Waiting for the next generation of Microsoft’s Xbox games console? You won’t be kept more than 18 months, it seems.
A job vacancy posted on Microsoft’s website revealed: “Over the next 18 months, Microsoft will release new versions of all of our most significant products including Windows (Client, Server, Phone and Azure), Office and Xbox.”
But the cat’s out of the bag: there’ll be an ‘Xbox 720′ out by February 2014. Christmas 2013, you reckon then?
It’s well known that the current generation of consoles are nearing the end of their life as flagship products, and that new versions will be out in the next year or two.
Analysts and other observers have been forecasting a 2013/2104 launch for both the next Xbox and the next-generation PlayStation.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The next generation of DDR is coming; how do we test it?
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/other/4392015/The-next-generation-of-DDR-is-coming–how-do-we-test-it-?cid=EDNToday
DDR4 will double the performance factor from 1,600 MT/sec (megatransfers per second) up to 3,200 MT/sec.
To verify this level of performance, the early draft JEDEC specifications are indicating some significant changes in how measurements will be made. First of all, there will be an eye-diagram mask methodology used versus a setup and hold methodology used for DQ burst signal-integrity tests. There are also plans to remove the derating measurements found in earlier generations of the DDR spec. These changes are being driven by the need to be more specific in verifying timing performance on read/write traffic that leaves little margin for error.
Verifying DQ burst performance on DDR4-based chips or components can be accomplished with an oscilloscope equipped with a flexible, area-based trigger system and a waveform persistence display mode.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hybridization and virtualization: parallel paths to x86 mobile domination?
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/brians-brain/4391326/Hybridization-and-virtualization–parallel-paths-to-x86-mobile-domination–?cid=Newsletter+-+EDN+on+Consumer+Electronics
you’re perhaps obviously going to need a CPU that natively runs each desired operating system and application code combination. You could accomplish an Android-or-Windows 8 scenario, for example, by means of redundant ARM- and x86-based hardware subsystems. Several existing hybrids have gone this route, in fact. But such an approach excessively burdens the bill-of-materials tab
And in the virtualization case, it’s theoretically possible to virtualize an entire system
Consider, though, an x86-based hardware design. It’ll natively run Android, Windows 8, Linux, and Mac OS X … plus the x86-compiled version of iOS that I bet Apple’s got running in its labs à la Marklar (along with the x86-compiled version of Windows Phone 8 that I suspect Microsoft’s also got in its back pocket).
To summarize, ARM’s ecosystem gives you native-or-virtualized access to:
• Android
• iOS
• Linux
• Windows Phone 8, and
• Windows RT
Meanwhile, x86 suppliers such as AMD and Intel deliver support for:
• Android
• Linux
• Mac OS X, and
• Windows 8
Considering that x86 chipsets such as Intel’s “Medfield” have now proven themselves competitive with mainstream ARM SOC alternative offerings, and that x86-compiled versions of iOS and Windows Phone 8 are therefore probably also under development, where would you be placing your long-term bets if you were a smartphone or tablet developer?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Slideshow: Beyond the Mouse
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1394&doc_id=248174&cid=Newsletters+-+DN+Daily
Are you a CAD or 3D design tool user feeling stuck in a rut? Do you think your creativity is being stifled by the limitations of your mouse? Don’t sweat it. There has been a burst of new, innovative technology advances that promise to change how engineers interact with their longstanding 3D design tools.
It’s not just 3D mice, though there have been some interesting developments on that front. Taking a page from smartphones and tablets, manufacturers are melding gesture-like capabilities into all sorts of input devices. The new features allow designers to sketch drawings or manipulate 3D models with more natural hand movements, instead of the cryptic and often complex mouse clicks traditionally associated with CAD or freeform sketch tools.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Dissecting the Intel 710 Enterprise SSD
http://www.edn.com/design/communications-networking/4390180/Dissecting-the-Intel-710-Enterprise-SSD-?cid=EDNToday
The main points of interest for Intel’s 200-Gbyte 710 Enterprise SSD (solid-state drive) are that the design emphasis was mostly on endurance, reliability, and power efficiency. Also of note is the use of MLC (multilevel cell) NAND flash for primary storage.
SLC (single-level cell) flash is often the more desirable choice for enterprise SSDs, a consequence of the margin for error in reading a bit from a cell being very low while the endurance remains quite high. MLC flash, on the other hand, has occurrences of higher bit errors and suffers from the perception that it has much lower endurance. Efforts are being made, however, to use MLC flash in enterprise SSDs because they can provide more storage and reduce the cost of production.
Through HET implementation, Intel has thought of a way to attain MLC flash with higher reliability by exploiting the fact that not all MLC flash chips in a batch have the same characteristics. Some have higher read margins and improved retention quality than others, and an understanding of these characteristics is what makes up Intel’s use of MLC NAND flash as HET in the Intel 710 SSD.
Intel’s innovative approach of identifying and using high-quality MLC NAND flash in its 710 SSD, coupled with the reliability during power outage, very large overprovisioning, and reduced power consumption, makes the Intel 710 a unique and innovative enterprise SSD that re-emboldens the distinction between enterprise- and consumer-grade storage.
IT support says:
Thanks!
Tomi Engdahl says:
Samsung plans ARM-based CPU for servers, says report
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4391764/Samsung-plans-ARM-based-CPU-for-servers–says-report?full
Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. is planning to introduce an ARM-based CPU for server applications in 2014, according to a Seoul Economic Daily report in Korean.
Samsung is planning to introduce a very low-power processor aimed at the micro-server market as early as 2014, the report said.
Intel currently holds 90 percent of the market for server processors, the report said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft working to minimize Surface impact, says Acer chairman
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20120809PD216.html
After publicly urging Microsoft to reconsider its move to launch own-brand tablet PCs recently, Acer chairman JT Wang on August 9, commented that Microsoft is pushing Surface to help Windows 8 succeed and the software giant has already acknowledged the concerns of the brand vendors and is trying to minimize the negative impact created by the launch.
Acer was the first brand vendor to issue a public warning about the software Microsoft’s actions saying that Surface could seriously impact the existing PC ecosystem.
Wang has clarified that the company has no intentions of quitting the Windows-based tablet PC market, and is aggressively developing related devices.
Wang noted that Microsoft is currently looking for solutions such as creating a price gap to minimize the negative impact on other vendors’ product lineups, and he believes if Microsoft launches Surface at a price of US$199, it would have a rather significant impact, but if it is priced at around US$499-599, the effects will be a lot smaller.
Wang pointed out that Microsoft did not communicate with PC brand vendors prior to announcing its Surface project.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IBM Scientists “Waltz” Closer to Using Spintronics in Computing
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/38566.wss
- IBM Research is the first to synchronize electron spins and image the formation of a persistent spin helix.
- Spintronics could enable a new class of magnetic-based semiconductor transistors resulting in more energy efficient electronic devices.
The Spintronics Waltz
A previously unknown aspect of physics, the scientists observed how electron spins move tens of micrometers in a semiconductor with their orientations synchronously rotating along the path similar to a couple dancing the waltz, the famous Viennese ballroom dance where couples rotate.
IBM scientists imaged the synchronous ‘waltz’ of the electron spins by using a time-resolved scanning microscope technique. The synchronization of the electron spin rotation made it possible to observe the spins travel for more than 10 micrometers or one-hundredth of a millimeter, increasing the possibility to use the spin for processing logical operations, both fast and energy-efficiently.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Parallel Computing with AMD Fusion-Based Computer-on-Modules
http://rtcmagazine.com/articles/view/102642
The integration of powerful graphics processors on the same die with multicore x86 processors is opening new areas of compute-intensive embedded applications.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Retooling Applications to Ride on Multiple Cores
http://rtcmagazine.com/articles/view/102681
Taking advantage of the real potentials for performance offered by multicore processors is an ongoing quest. A new tool can dissect programs into multiple threads that can run across multiple cores—with significant performance gains.
Tomi Engdahl says:
OpenCL Programming: Parallel Processing Made Faster and Easier than Ever
http://rtcmagazine.com/articles/view/102645
Newer processors may not only have multiple cores of the same architecture, they may also integrate heterogeneous computing elements. Programming such devices with a single code base has just gotten easier.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Q2 2012 Games Market Dynamics: U.S.* report
http://www.npd.com/wps/portal/npd/us/news/pressreleases/pr_120809
According to the Q2 2012 Games Market Dynamics: U.S.* report from leading market research company, The NPD Group, in addition to the $1.0 billion spent in the U.S. by consumers on new physical video and PC game software in the second quarter of 2012 (April – June), the total consumer spend on other physical forms of content (used and rental) reached $386 million, and content in digital format (full game and add-on content downloads, subscriptions, mobile games and social network games) generated $1.47 billion.
“In the second quarter of this year, sales of content in a digital format have grown 17 percent over Q2 2011,” aid Anita Frazier, industry analyst, The NPD Group. “While this growth is in stark contrast to the declines in new physical software and hardware sales, the size of digital sales is not quite large enough to offset these declines, leading to an overall drop in consumer spending in Q2 by 16 percent.”
Comparison to Europe
Similar research in the UK, France and Germany shows that the consumer spend on other forms of physical games content outside of new physical retail sales totaled $243 million (used and rental) while digital format sales in those three countries (full game and add-on content downloads, subscriptions, mobile games and social network games) generated an additional $983 million in sales during Q2 2012.
“While many European acquisition trends in the second quarter of 2012 mirrored those we saw in the U.S. due to seasonality, Europe differed from the U.S. in terms of softer mobile spending, but greater stability in rental trends. Growth in full-game and add-on content downloads in the second quarter is surprisingly similar as the content behind this increase is suitable to both markets.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Does “Shadow IT” Lurk in Your Company?
http://www.cio.com/article/713241/Does_Shadow_IT_Lurk_in_Your_Company_?taxonomyId=3024
Business divisions are bypassing the IT department, making their own decisions to buy cloud-based application services or use mobile devices, raising the specter of so-called “shadow IT” that’s outside the knowledge or control of the CIO and the IT staff.
“The data is suddenly not in the organization anymore,” says Chris Curran, principal for technology strategy and innovation at the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) consultancy, about the aftershock that can come when IT finds out that business managers found it quite simple to pay for sophisticated kinds of cloud-based applications for sales and customer relationship management without telling IT.
Based on its own analysis, including the “Raising Your Digital IQ” survey of 500 U.S. companies with annual revenues of about $500 million, PwC estimates that somewhere between 15% up to 30% of IT spending now occurs outside the standard consolidated budget of the IT department. Sometimes it’s wholly unknown to IT staff and sometimes it’s not, though IT isn’t exactly consulted. Cloud services buying, in particular, is today a major factor in spending outside “the processes and procurement practices of IT,” says Curran.
Curran argues that this shadow IT issue is only going to grow for the enterprise IT department.
CIO has to strive to “partner with the CFO to get visibility into this type of expenditure,” says Curran. “Someone needs to have the enterprise view.” In the end, the IT department may have to adopt to a changing role, he notes.
Andrzej Kawalec, global chief technology officer of Enterprise Security Services at HP, agrees shadow IT is a significant issue
He says business units often make these direct IT buying decisions out of a sense they have to move fast to reach new channels or markets.
One top concern in shadow IT will certainly be security and compliance of data.
“You’re introducing a lot of new risk into the system,”
“Shadow IT cannot be played out in the shadows,” Kawalec concludes. “Someone has to shine a light on what’s outside the norm.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
MEMORY MAKERS Micron and Samsung have announced that the Hybrid Memory Cube consortium they lead has published a first draft of its interface specification.
The Hybrid Memory Cube Consortium (HMCC) has been developing a memory interface that scales to very high bandwidths for use in network equipment and servers.
The HMCC has a number of big names behind it including ARM, HP, IBM and Microsoft, alongside leaders Micron and Samsung.
The HMCC is working to have a final interface specification published by the end of the year.
Source: The Inquirer (http://s.tt/1kO4S)
Tomi says:
Rackspace rolls up OpenStack for private clouds
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/15/rackspace_openstack_private_cloud/
Amazon doesn’t believe in private clouds, only public clouds and when you get down to it, only its own Amazon Web Services. Rackspace Hosting, which has supported other people’s apps for a lot longer than AWS, believes in public clouds just as much as Amazon – enough to start the OpenStack cloud controller project and use the code in its own public cloud.
But Rackspace also knows that companies will not – and sometimes cannot – put all of their applications out on a public cloud. That is why the hosting firm has rolled up a software stack called Private Cloud.
This takes the same OpenStack code rolled out two weeks ago on the Rackspace Cloud Servers public cloud and makes it available for companies to deploy internally on their own iron or – if you want an externally hosted private cloud – dedicated iron in its own data centers.
The Private Cloud stack is the same code base that Rackspace uses internally, and in the case of Private Cloud V1 is based on the “Essex” release of OpenStack, which the hoster is now using in production.
“Software is important,” concedes Curry. “But anybody who doesn’t think the knowledge of how the software is run is equally important is just crazy.”
fahsodahwioa says:
I’ve been browsing online more than three hours today, yet I never found any interesting article like yours Computer technologies for 2012 Tomi Engdahl’s ePanorama blog. It’s pretty worth enough for me. In my view, if all web owners and bloggers made good content as you did, the web will be much more useful than ever before.
Tomi Engdahl says:
New Analyst Report Calls Agile a Scam, Says It’s An Easy Out For Lazy Devs
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/12/07/14/1242237/new-analyst-report-calls-agile-a-scam-says-its-an-easy-out-for-lazy-devs
“We recently got a copy of a new Voke analyst report on Agile, and the firm basically blasts the movement from top to bottom. Some highlights: ‘The Agile movement is designed to sell services. … Out of over 200 survey participants, we received only four detailed comments describing success with Agile.’ ‘Survey participants report that developers use the guise of Agile to avoid planning and to avoid creating documentation required for future maintenance. … Be aware that the Agile movement might very well just be either a developer rebellion against unwanted tasks and schedules or just an opportunity to sell Agile services including certification and training.’ So did the analysts just talk to the wrong 200 people?
The Agile Dilemma
http://www.vokeinc.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=136&Itemid=206
Tomi Engdahl says:
TSMC outs 100MHz 90nm flash memory for cars
Faster storage for in-car systems
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2199271/tsmc-outs-100mhz-90nm-flash-memory-for-cars
CHIP FAB TSMC has shown off 100MHz flash memory access for automotive and industrial applications.
TSMC’s 28nm process node might get most of the press, but the firm operates a number of other process nodes including 90nm and 65nm that are used to stamp out somewhat mundane chips. Now the firm has said that it can offer 90nm 100MHz single access embedded flash memory to feed memory performance demands.
“This clearly is the right macro at the right time to meet the rigorous demands placed upon MCUs in automotive, communications and industrial applications. The new IP is fully compatible with TSMC’s 90nm logic process, allowing for re-use of existing embedded memories and logic libraries that promotes quick product ramp.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
WTF is… WiGig
http://www.reghardware.com/2012/07/11/wtfg_is_wireless_gigabit/
Wireless wonder to soup up networks, kill USB, HDMI cables?
It’s now more than two years since the Wireless Gigabit Alliance (WGA) released the first full version of its 7Gb/s would-be next-gen Wi-Fi technology.
So why is it taking so darn long to get WiGig, the standard the WGA is promoting as the future not only of wireless networking but of cable-free computing too, into our hands? We need it now: we’re streaming more HD video, doing more back-ups over the network, swapping more files between laptops, tablets and phones than ever before.
WiGig emerged in 2008, arising out of work done during the first half of the last decade to devise wireless technologies for streaming HD video content from players to screens, many of them based on ultrawideband technology operating in the 60GHz band: the section of the electromagnetic spectrum running from 57.24GHz to 65.88GHz.
The upshot of such conceptual thinking: Wireless Gigabit, a networking technology that extends Wi-Fi into the 60GHz band to ramp up speeds to a theoretical peak of 7Gb/s, for a multi-antenna, multi-carrier set-up, or 4.3Gb/s for single-aerial, low-power applications. It would incorporate Wi-Fi for compatibility with existing wireless networking software stacks, combined with a 60GHz PHY for the actual transmission.
In May 2009, the WGA was formed to steer the specification’s development and promote the finished product. By the end of the year, it was promising a Q1 2010 release of the WiGig 1.0. It was late, as these things often are, but not so very much: the WGA published the spec in May 2010.
At the same time, international standards body the IEEE agreed to use WiGig spec as the basis for its 802.11ad 60GHz networking standard, what will undoubtedly be the next generation of Wi-Fi.
WiGig devices will be able to negotiate a specific beam path and tune their directional antennae accordingly. If someone interrupts the beam – no, 60GHz signals won’t pass easily through people – the devices quickly pick a different path, relying on a nearby wall to reflect the beam around the obstacle.
Getting a signal through impermeable walls is another matter.
Unconcerned by distance considerations, VESA, the organisation behind the DisplayPort digital monitor connectivity standard selected WiGig as the basis for a wireless version of the computer-to-screen system, which the WGA duly announced, in November 2010, as WiGig AV.
It’s WiGig’s Protocol Adaption Layers (PALs) that allow it to operate as a wireless replacement for a variety of wires, from USB to DisplayPort and HDMI. Since it’ll carry PCIe traffic too, it could even form the basis for wireless Thunderbolt.
Ultra wireless for Ultrabooks?
But progress is being made, he insists. WiGig 1.2 and the final version of IEEE 802.11ad should both be published by the end of the year, paving the way for the first commercial devices to debut in 2013. Other WiGig proponents, such as chip maker Wilocity, say the same thing.
That said, it’s going to be 2014 before the WiGig begins to achieve critical mass as more devices ship with tri-band Wi-Fi radios: 2.4GHz, 5GHz and 60GHz.
iHS IMS Research, a market watcher, reckons that by 2016 up to 100m WiGig chipsets could be shipping, 20 per cent of them tri-band products.
Tomi Engdahl says:
10 Ways to Get the Most From Your Wi-Fi-Only Tablet
http://www.cio.com/article/713053/10_Ways_to_Get_the_Most_From_Your_Wi_Fi_Only_Tablet
Much to the chagrin (and much against the ill wishes) of wireless carriers such as AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile, people are buying Wi-Fi-only tablets. In fact, some studies have shown that in 2011 up to 90 percent of all tablets sold in the United States relied on Wi-Fi, rather than on 3G or 4G LTE.
Today’s Wi-Fi-focused tablets include the Wi-Fi only version of the Apple iPad, the Amazon Kindle Fire, the Asus Transformer Pad Infinity, the Google Nexus 7, and the Samsung Galaxy Tab, to mention a few.
I hate to say it, AT&T, but this makes sense: Wi-Fi only tablets are cheaper, and people are discovering that they just don’t need an extra data plan. Don’t believe me? Check out these 10 tips for getting the most out of your Wi-Fi-only tablet.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The 5 Hottest IT Jobs Right Now
http://www.cio.com/article/712298/The_5_Hottest_IT_Jobs_Right_Now
If you’re an IT professional with experience building mobile or cloud applications, it’s a good time to be job hunting. That’s because the number of job openings in these areas is up dramatically from last summer.
“Mobile and cloud are the big categories right now,” said Alice Hill, managing director of Dice.com. “Companies are looking to hire Android and IOS developers and the same thing with cloud. You also see jobs if you look at virtualization and roles around data architecture and software related to the cloud.”
Also growing – but not as quickly – is the demand for network engineers and skills related to IPv6, the next-generation Internet Protocol.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Survey: IT certifications lead to jobs, higher pay
http://www.networkworld.com/slideshows/2011/112111-survey-it-certifications-lead-to-jobs.html
In this survey of 700 IT professionals, most say certifications have led to raises and better jobs, busting the myth that certs are nothing but a scam.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Further sales of software licenses is legal within the European Union, if the software is released for the original license terms to the customer permanently. This was the opinion of a recent European Union court decision.
The Court held that the resale right applies to both physical (such as CD-ROMs) that the non-material (downloaded from the server) in the form of software products.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/eu+softaa+voi+edelleenmyyda/a829873?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-17082012&
Tomi Engdahl says:
Boundary punts freebie app monitoring from the clouds
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/16/boundary_app_monitoring/
“Cloud means the server configuration can change at any time, software-defined networking means the network configuration can change at any time, and agile development means that the code in an application can change at any time,” explains Read. “Application monitoring is therefore an analytical problem, and you need to collect data continuously and run analytics continuously.”
The Boundary service can take in all kinds of operational data from systems through agents as well as taking in input from third party monitoring tools, provisioning tools such as Chef or Puppet, and the APIs from cloud providers such as Amazon EC2, Rackspace Cloud, SoftLayer, and Google Compute Engine.
All of this data is pulled out of the network stack from all of these devices, beamed up to the Boundary service, and chewed on real-time to create an operational dashboard for system admins so they can see trouble before it starts getting out of hand.
With the freebie Boundary service, all of the bells and whistles work, but the company puts some limitations on it so you don’t get carried away and drive up its own costs on its cloud. THe service is hosted at an Equinix data center in Ashburn, Virginia, like Amazon’s EC2 location on the East coast of the US.
Tomi says:
Acer is world’s third biggest PC manufacturer after growth in Q2 earnings
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2199624/acer-is-worlds-third-biggest-pc-manufacturer-after-growth-in-q2-earnings
TAIWANESE HARDWARE MAKER Acer has become the world’s third biggest PC maker after announcing its preliminary financial results for the second quarter.
Despite rising up the ranks of the world’s PC OEMs table from fourth to third, Acer revealed that it barely managed to scrape up $14.48 million in profits.
Many believe OEMs such as Acer will benefit from the launch of Windows 8, due for public release on 26 October.
However, in a conference call, Acer chairman and CEO JT Wang said that due to the “uncertainty of the Windows 8 ecosystem” the big growth expected in the second quarter turned out to be “medium growth”.
it doesn’t appear that Acer thinks Microsoft’s next operating system will be greatly beneficial to its bottom line this year.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Software Runs the World: How Scared Should We Be That So Much of It Is So Bad?
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/08/software-runs-the-world-how-scared-should-we-be-that-so-much-is-bad/260846/
When software works, you can buy an airline ticket and sell a stock. When it fails, you can miss a flight and a bank can lose a billion dollars. Do we respect the power of software as much as we should?
Tomi Engdahl says:
One Month After Selling To Microsoft For $1.2B, Yammer CEO Predicts End Of Silicon Valley
http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/19/sad-sacks/
There is a pretty fascinating debate happening right now on David Sacks’ Facebook page.
“I think Silicon Valley as we know it may be coming to an end …,” Sacks posts, arguing mainly that because major Internet companies (like um, Microsoft?) are on the prowl for innovative ideas, it’s too risky and costly for entrepreneurs to attempt to create successful new companies.
Yammer investor George Zachary’s mystical response, “As long as the universe keeps changing, there is opportunity.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Watch out, PC disk drive floggers: Cloud will rust up those spinners
Reliable cloudy service could put them out of business
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/17/cloud_kills_hdd_consumer_biz/
The cloud is going to impact disk drive manufacturers’ bottom line, big time. Think about it: if Dropbox, iCloud and SkyDrive succeed, people won’t need disk drives on their PCs. Are you listening Seagate, Toshiba and Western Digital?
The biggest ever threat to their consumer computer disk drive business is cloud-based file ‘n synch services.
Before I would have had five drives in total, but the two notes are disk-less.
I don’t want disk drives; I want my data stored and accessed quickly with rock-solid reliability. Disk drives have crashed many times in my personal computing history. I admire the technology immensely but it isn’t good enough. Every day I use cloud-based file ‘n synch and my files are available and synchronised between my systems is another day of thinking: “This stuff is reliable.”
I don’t keep all my cash in a hardware container in my house. Why should I keep my data in hardware containers in my house?
What’s stopping me? Trust and convenience. I like having the disks that hold my data in my hands and don’t, as yet, trust cloudy service punters to be always there when I need them. I certainly don’t trust my internet service provider to be always there when I need it. BT? Are you joking? I like using Apple’s Time Machine to restore files.
Imagine if Time Machine worked with Apple’s iCloud and iCloud/SkyDrive/DropBox was rock-solid and the internet service was rock-solid. It’s a lot of ifs, but should the circumstances warrant, I might ask myself: “Why would I ever buy a disk drive again?”
I wouldn’t.
Think about it.
The disk drive suppliers would then face catastrophic falls in their shipments. Sales to cloud service providers would increase massively but I don’t think they’ll compensate for the lost consumer PC/notebook internal and external drive sales, not by any stretch of the imagination.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hard-up fondlers rejoice: Tablet PC prices plummet
Analyst: ‘If you aren’t an iPad, you’d better be cheap’
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2012/08/20/tablet_prices_down/
prices have dived 13.6 per cent in the past year – if you don’t count the iPad
And that’s because being cheap is the best way to get noticed for non-Apple tablets, says IMS market analyst Gerry Xu:
More Reading
Apple fans fondle more slabsBarnes & Noble cut Nook pricing in face of competitionApple ‘offered Samsung $30-per-mobe’ patent licence truceOK, hands up: Who hasn’t sold an iPad to a big biz?Amazon Kindle Touch Wi-Fi eBook reader review
There are few innovations from vendors to differentiate their tablets; low price seems to be the major factor to attract consumers to buy tablets other than iPads.
iPad still has 70 per cent of the market, Q2 sales figures showed, and that share increased last quarter.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Let them eat cache: EMC unleashes ass-kicking flash box
Taking on Pure Storage, WhipTail and other all-flash array vendors
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/20/emc_xtremio/
Soon EMC will have all the latest in storage tech: server flash cache, server shared-flash cache, and its very own all-flash array.
The acquired XtremIO technology will be used to craft a networked all-flash array that is a platform in its own right – not just a cache like VFCache or Project Thunder.
EMC, like other storage and system suppliers, is using flash storage in servers as a cache layer between server applications and networked disk drive arrays to eliminate disk drive and network latency and thus speed up applications.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Fujitsu making laptops from unwanted CDs and DVDs
http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/17/fujitsu-starts-making-laptops-from-unwanted-cds-and-dvds/
Back in our day, we used to listen to music on shiny plastic discs with lasers, not any of your new-fangled Zunes and what not.
Fujitsu will be putting those outdated media formats to work again, with a recycling program that uses the material to build shiny new notebooks, starting with the Lifebook P772/E enterprise laptop, with more models to follow.
it is necessary to collect only a single type of plastic to ensure the desired material properties. Even so, in a given plastic, there may be differences in ingredients, visual defects, or impurities that make it difficult to achieve the same molding characteristics, colors, strength and other properties as conventional plastics.
Furthermore, compliance with the RoHS directive(1) and REACH regulations(2) regarding the safety of chemicals in ICT products has made it challenging to control the quality of recycled plastics
Tomi Engdahl says:
All the sauce on Big Blue’s hot chip: More on Power7+
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/20/ibm_power7_plus_processor_preview/
The Hot Chips 24 conference hosted by Stanford University is next week, and IBM, Oracle, Advanced Micro Devices, Fujitsu, and Intel are expected to talk tech relating to just-announced or impending processors.
Big Blue seems unable to contain its enthusiasm for the Power7+ chip that it will talk about alongside its next-generation zNext processors for its System z mainframes.
Power 7 clock speeds range from a low of 3GHz – on a four-core chip used in the Power 720 entry server – to a high of 3.92GHz in the Power 780 with all eight cores turned on, and a high of 4.14GHz in that chip running in turbo boost mode with half the cores turned off.
“Power7+ leverages 32 nanometer technology to provide increased frequency, 2.5X L3 cache, security enhancements, and memory compression with no increased power over previous generation Power7 chips.”
So the Power7+ chips will slide into the current Power7 sockets, which is a good thing for customers and IBM alike.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IT outsourcing is distributed unevenly. Fastest growing just cloud-based services, the value of which nearly doubled last year, from $ 3.4 billion to five billion dollars this year.
What is significant is that the iaas (infrastructure-as-a-service)-based services, cloud computing is eaten up 38 per cent stake. In 2011, iaas accounted for only eight percent of the total market value of the cloud.
Data center services sector accounted for about 35 per cent share of the IT outsourcing market in the last year.
“It’s decision-making strategies on the big question is how they are going to allocate its scarce resources. Moves to decentralize procurement to many different service providers in recourse or bundled solutions. Currently, we see that both options are used,”
“Many organizations evaluate and select outsourcing partners on the basis of how well they are able to take care of customers from public or private IT services. Short run, that will offset the effects of cloud IT outsourcing.”
Application services are expected to grow by two per cent this year to about 41 billion U.S. dollars.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/cio/pilvi+haastaa+perinteisen+itulkoistuksen/a830272?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-20082012&
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cloud Service Providers Challenge Traditional IT Outsourcing
http://www.cio.com/article/714042/Cloud_Service_Providers_Challenge_Traditional_IT_Outsourcing?taxonomyId=3195.
IT organizations’ reluctance to hire and make capital investments will keep the outsourcing market chugging along, but according to Gartner, cloud-based services will begin to take a bigger piece of the pie.
Global IT services spending should reach more than $251 billion dollars this year, up 2.1 percent from 2011, according to Gartner’s latest IT outsourcing forecast. Adjusting for currency changes, that’s actually around a 4.1 percent increase in spending–about the same level of growth as the year prior, according to Gartner research director Bryan Britz.
But the fastest growing segment of outsourcing–cloud computing services–is expected to nearly double from $3.4 billion in 2011 to $5 billion this year.
infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) will contribute 38 percent of the increment outsourcing growth in 2012, compared to 8 percent in 2011.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Terasic, Altera FPGA-based boards for high-frequency trading
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-products/electronic-product-reviews/fpga-pld-products/4392073/Terasic–Altera-FPGA-based-boards-for-high-frequency-trading?Ecosystem=communications-design
Terasic has just announced a host of new FPGA boards for tackling high-bandwidth applications such as high frequency trading, data acquisition, networking, and signal processing.
“As future high frequency trading and networking applications are leaning towards utilizing FPGAs with high-bandwidth memory architectures, Terasic aims to leverage its proximity to high-quality manufacturers to deliver cost-competitive state-of-the-art solutions for today’s high performance computing and finance industry,” states Terasic CEO Sean Peng.