Gartner believes that software and hardware companies do better in 2013 than last year. I hope so this happens, it would be good for the industry. Gartner Says Worldwide IT Spending Forecast to Reach $3.7 Trillion in 2013. That would be 4.2 percent increase from 2012 spending. At the moment uncertainties surrounding prospects for an upturn in global economic growth are the major retardants to IT growth. According to the IT market research form Forrester IT market will grow globally by 3.3 per cent this year in U.S. dollar terms. Europe continues to decline (except Nordic countries, Switzerland and the United Kingdom), and growth is slower in Japan and India.
Worldwide IT spending increases were pretty anemic as IT and telecom services spending were seriously curtailed last year. Gartner believes that this uncertainty is nearing resolution and thus Earth’s anemic IT budgets to bounce back in 2013. Wall Street Beat: 2013 IT Spending Forecasts Look Upbeat article mentions that fiscal cliff deal will help unlock spending on mobility, analytics, collaboration and security technology.
According to the EPA, the average office worker uses about 10,000 sheets of paper each year. There is again a Campaign To Remove Paper From Offices. A campaign started by HelloFax, Google, Expensify, and others has challenged businesses to get rid of physical paper from their office environment in 2013. The Paperless 2013 project wants to move all documents online. The digital tools that are available today. The paperless office technology is here – we just need to use it more than our printers.
Intel x86 and ARM duopoly will continue to dominate this year. Both of the processor will sell well on their own main application fields, and they try to push to each others territories. This means that ARM tries to push to servers and x86 is trying to push more heavily to mobile devices.
Software manufacturers aim to hardware business: Microsoft, Valve, Google etc..
Still IT buyers expect too much from software they buy. This has happened earlier for long time and I expect that to continue. IT systems are easier to develop than user brains, but still system that are hard to learn are pushed to users.
IT service companies sill “sell air”. It is a good business to sell promises first and then when you get money try to do make the promised product with it. And are you sure that the backups your service provider makes can really be restored?
This year will not be a year for Linux on desktop. The fact that currently Amazon’s top selling laptop runs on Linux does not change that. Linux is more heading to smart phones and tablets that to win normal desktop.
Gaming on Linux gets boost. Valve released Steam gaming system for LinuxUbuntu users have run to use Steam game service (at the moment 0.8% of Steam users use Ubuntu, the service was started to as beta on December 2012). Valve will release this year it’s own Linux based Steam Box gaming console. Exclusive interview: Valve’s Gabe Newell on Steam Box, biometrics, and the future of gaming.
Windows 8 slow start continues. Windows 8 sales are well below projections. Computer sales dropped after release of Windows 8. U.S. consumers hesitant to make switch to Windows 8. Uncertainty could turn Windows 8 into the next Vista. Independent report says that Windows 8 Even Less Popular Than Vista and Microsoft voice says that its new OS are chugging along quite nicely, thank you very much, in much the same fashion as Windows 7 before it. Who to believe? Let’s wait and see what happens. I expect that some users will get Significant booting challenges on EFI systems when upgrading to Windows 8.
Interest in Java will decrease compared to other languages for various reasons, recent security issues playing part on that. C Beats Java As Number One Language According To TIOBE Index. It happened already.
Software optimization becomes again talked about when CPU usage on cloud system is easily measured and costs money. Cost-Aware Architectures will be talked bout. Keeping control over cost, architecturally, is just plain hard. Usually engineers we are remarkably badly trained in thinking about cost, but corporate bean counters can now start to ask how we save cost in running the software in cloud. Pinterest Cut Costs from $54 to $20 Per Hour by Automatically Shutting Down Systems.
The world of smart connected devices (desktops, notebook, tabs and smartphones) is becoming bigger and bigger on the expense of traditional PC manufacturers. At the end of 2012 HP is still top of PC league, but trailing fourth in all-devices rankings. Samsung leads the pack in terms of device shipments and Apple is next. Lenovo is the third biggest shifter of devices on the planet. The bets for increased sales are being placed behind smartphones and tablets.
It’s deja vu all over again. You see the phrase “any time, any place, anywhere” in relation to mobile access. Mobile devices bring back that old client-server feeling. The realization dawned that client-server brought with it as many problems as it solved. Following a period of re-centralisation using Web-based architectures, it looks as if we are beginning to come full circle. When the next generation is getting all excited about using mobile apps as front-ends for accessing services across the network, we can’t help noticing parallels with the past. Are HTML5 and cross-platform development and execution environments are now with us to save us? In the real world, the fast and reliable connectivity upon which this model depends just isn’t there in most countries at the moment.
End of netbooks as we know it. Netbook sales go to zero. All major manufacturers in this category has ended making netbooks. They have been replaced with booming tablet sales.
Tablet PC shipments are expected to reach more than 240 million units worldwide in 2013, easily exceeding the 207 million notebook PCs that are projected to ship, according to NPD DisplaySearch Quarterly Mobile PC Shipment and Forecast Report. The market that has been dominated by one major player, Apple, but Android tablets are quickly getting more market share.
Thin client devices seem to be popping up here and there. Dell introduces HDMI stick that turns any screen into a thin client PC. And so will several other small stick computers coming. Raspberry Pi pocket computer is selling like hot pies (nears one million milestone).
Directly soldered to board CPUs are already norm on smart phone, tablets and some laptops. There will be more and more questions when manufacturers start to drop CPU sockets on the computers. Rumors about Intel Corp.’s plan to abandon microprocessor sockets in the future has been flowing and official response has been:
Intel to Support CPU Sockets for Foreseeable Future. AMD Vows Not to Drop Microprocessor Sockets in Next Two Years. Question is still when transition to BGA starts to happen on desktop PCs.
USB speed will increase again this year. So there is again a new USB version. The future of USB 3.0 coming mid-year with data speeds doubling to 10Gbps. USB 3.0 speed to DOUBLE in 2013 article tells that USB 3.0 – aka SuperSpeed USB – is set to become 10 gigabits per second super-speedy, with a new specification scheduled for a mid-2013 release. The aim is to brings USB closer to the class-leading Thunderbolt standard. It is expected that the new specification ends to consumer hardware a year later.
Higher resolutions will become commonplace. Earlier full HD was a target. Now high end devices are aiming to “retina” and 4K resolutions. Panasonic shows off 20-inch Windows 8 tablet with insane 4K resolution Qualcomm outs Snapdragon 800 and 600: up to 2.3GHz quad-core, 4K video, due by mid 2013.
Solid state storage becomes cheaper and cheaper. You can get ssd-storage at as low as less than one dollar per gigabyte. Moore’s Law may not be running out of steam in memory as we have an insatiable appetite for memory these days. Nowadays our tastes are changing from DRAM to nonvolatile flash memory used in SSD device. For example Kingston just unveiled the world’s first 1TB USB stick and SSD drives are also getting bigger every day. We are already encountering floating-gate scaling problems for NAND flash and answer to the scaling problem appears to be growing devices “up”.
2013 in storage is dominated by flash and file systems. We will finally see some all-flash arrays starting to ship from the big boys – and this will bring credibility to some of the smaller players. Management tools are going to be big again. Expect a lot of pain as infrastructure teams try to make things just work.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel creates new business division for connected gadgets
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/06/us-intel-connected-idUSBRE9A504I20131106
Intel Corp has set up a business division aimed at making money out of a new technology wave that can link up a host of electronic devices.
“Krzanich is saying, ‘I want a higher level of focus on this to help us grow it and put the level of attention on it that it deserves,’” Davis told Reuters on Tuesday.
The new solutions group combines an existing Intel business focused on chips for commercial and industrial devices with Intel’s Wind River subsidiary, which sells software for commercial and industrial devices.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft starts donating Windows 8.1 to nonprofit organizations and public libraries
http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2013/11/06/microsoft-starts-donating-windows-8-1-nonprofit-organizations-public-libraries/
Microsoft today announced the availability of Windows 8.1 for nonprofits. The move is an extension of the company’s nod to the nonprofit community with the launch Windows 8.
The announcement means eligible nonprofit organizations and public libraries can request Windows 8.1 through Microsoft’s software donation program.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Acer Chairman and CEO J.T. Wang Tenders Resignation; Corporate President Jim Wong to Succeed as CEO
http://www.acer-group.com/public/News/2013/20131105-1.htm
TAIPEI, TAIWAN (November 5, 2013) Acer announces that the resignation of J.T. Wang, Chairman and CEO, has been approved by its board of directors.
J.T. Wang, chairman and CEO of Acer, said, “Acer encountered many complicated and harsh challenges in the past few years. With the consecutive poor financial results, it is time for me to hand over the responsibility to a new leadership team to path the way for a new era.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft glues Windows 8, Windows Phone programming programs
One account lets you publish for both platforms, CHEAPER
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/07/microsoft_unified_developer_accounts/
In a step toward creating a single, unified app store for both desktop Windows and Windows Phone, Microsoft has announced that developers can now register for both stores simultaneously using the same account.
The change also lowers the cost for developers somewhat. Previously, an individual Windows Store developer account cost $49 per year, while an individual Windows Phone account cost $19 per year. Company accounts cost $99 for each store.
Under the new pricing model, companies still pay $99 per account, but because each account now works with both stores, companies that build apps for both Windows and Windows Phone effectively now save 50 per cent.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Fed up with Windows? Linux too easy? Get weird, go ALTERNATIVE
Something really different to broaden your worldview
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/01/25_alternative_pc_operating_systems/
It’s hard to believe, looking at the modern computing world, but there is still more to life than Windows or Unix… and today, most of the alternatives run on vanilla x86 hardware and are free.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Samsung slips out slim spinner with surprisingly sizable storage supply
Two terabytes tamped into tiny two-incher
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/07/samsungs_thin_little_spinning_monster/
Seagate’s Samsung subsidiary has launched a 2TB mobile drive, claiming it to be the world’s thinnest 2TB drive.
The Samsung Spinpoint MT9 comes in 1.5TB and 2TB versions and has, we understand from Storage Review, three platters, meaning 667GB/platter areal density.
Competitors like WD/HGST and Toshiba will either have to go to 1TB/platter in their 2-platter mobile device drives or cram a third platter into their 9.5mm thick cases.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook open sources its SQL-on-Hadoop engine, and the web rejoices
http://gigaom.com/2013/11/06/facebook-open-sources-its-sql-on-hadoop-engine-and-the-web-rejoices/
Summary:
Facebook has open sourced Presto, a SQL engine it says is on average 10 times faster than Hive for running queries across large data sets stored in Hadoop and elsewhere.
Tomi Engdahl says:
When tech empires fall: 10 companies and products that dominated… and then didn’t
http://www.itworld.com/slideshow/117611/when-tech-empires-fall-10-companies-and-products-dominated-and-then-didnt-371297#slide1
These tech giants had a valuable market locked down. Then they screwed up.
Tomi Engdahl says:
New SD card format is speedy enough for 4K video
http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/07/new-sd-card-format-is-speedy-enough-for-4k-video/
Outside of a few smartphones, 4K video capture has largely been limited to pro-level hardware; the SD cards in regular cameras frequently can’t handle so many pixels at once. That won’t be a problem in the near future, as the SD Association has just unveiled an Ultra High Speed Class 3 (U3) card format that’s up to the job. The spec guarantees write performance of at least 30 MB/s, or enough bandwidth to record 4K clips without hiccups.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Internet Explorer 11 comes to Windows 7 in its final form, brings speed improvements
http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/07/internet-explorer-11-comes-to-windows-7-in-its-final-form/
Internet Explorer has already been available on Windows 7 as an optional Release Preview, but now it’s making its way to the aging OS in a more complete form.
In case you need a recap, Internet Explorer brings some security and performance improvements, along with features like Pre-fetch and Pre-render for faster load times. Also, Microsoft improved on the “Flip Ahead” feature introduced in IE10 so that now, when you move forward to the next page in a story, IE will keep the previous page around in case you want to click back to it. If you like, you can download Internet Explorer 11 now, or if you’re the estimated 90 percent of users who allow Windows to install updates without asking, then you don’t need to do a thing.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Box CEO talks European plans, warns about meeting BlackBerry’s fate
http://www.citeworld.com/business/22655/box-ceo-aaron-levie-talks-disruption-in-london
Starting by talking about the differences between European and US markets, Levie noted, “Europe sees the exact same business challenges as anywhere else in the world, the exact same trends transforming businesses.” They’re familiar trends: the move from on-premises to the cloud, the move from the traditional PC to tablets and mobile, and the changing nature of work itself. He’s been talking to CIOs around Europe, and says, “They’re trying to implement new technologies from a new set of vendors for a new set of experiences to solve a new set of problems.”
That’s why Levie sees Box as more than a collaboration platform. “We realized this transformation of the enterprise was going to be the biggest thing we could latch on”.
A key element of Box’s European announcements was its place on the G-Cloud, the UK government’s list of approved cloud software.
Asked about further European expansion, and the implementation of a European data center, Levie said “One of the things that differentiates Box is that we typically go further for regulatory compliance.” He suggests that some form of common regulatory framework is necessary for the success of cloud services, “We’re going to have to have some amount of standardization, it’s the only way we can get globalized communication.” Even so, it’s not regulations that will bring Box’s infrastructure to Europe, but performance, “We need to get closer to our customers […] It’s far more about how fast we scale out in a country rather than whether we can sell to a country”.
Privacy remains important to Box, and it’s paying close attention to the fallout from the recent NSA spying revelations. Levie remains optimistic about the future. “Our focus is on control and security…. We want to avoid some of the noise about the balkanization of the cloud. It doesn’t make sense technologically, and it’s also not where the economy is going.”
While those NSA revelations haven’t had much effect on Box, Levie isn’t being complacent.
Levie remains well aware that the biggest threat facing Box is the same one that makes it a threat to incumbent enterprise software vendors. As he points out, the shift to cloud and mobile changes the way software is bought and deployed. “This shift means the onus more than ever is on the vendor. If we don’t stay competitive, if we don’t build whatever that that next thing is the user wants to do and build it in as simple a way as they expect from the consumer tools they are using, then we will get swapped out.”
By making it simple for users to deploy solutions, companies like Box need to be aware that they’re also making it easy for customers to replace them with something new. “You will either get swapped out because IT will swap you out or just because people will stop using you because they’re using a consumer solution, And because it’s SaaS, they’re only paying for what they use — and you stop getting paid”
Tomi Engdahl says:
“The hard year for many IT vendors” – IDC: next year will be better
IT investment is expected to accelerate next year, shows research firm IDC’s recent report. IDC predicts that IT consumption will increase next year to 5 per cent worldwide to $ 2.14 trillion.
“The gradual recovery of the economy in Europe will restore faith in business. This increase oletustamme that next year will be for most IT vendors better than this year, “director Stephen Minton IDC says the release.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/quotkova+vuosi+monille+ittoimittajillequot++idc+ensi+vuodesta+tulee+parempi/a945594
Tomi Engdahl says:
GIMP, Citing Ad Policies, Moves to FTP Rather Than SourceForge Downloads
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/11/07/2328228/gimp-citing-ad-policies-moves-to-ftp-rather-than-sourceforge-downloads
“GIMP, a free and open source alternative to image manipulation software like Photoshop, recently announced that it will no longer be distributing their program through SourceForge.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
GIMP flees SourceForge over dodgy ads and installer
Devs tired of all the junk downloads, and no we DON’T mean the free software
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/08/gimp_dumps_sourceforge_over_dodgy_ads_and_installer/
The Gnu Image Manipulation Program, a popular and free Photoshop alternative that glories in the name “The GIMP”, has decided it can no longer permit itself to be downloaded from SourceForge.
The application’s developers announced their decision here, arguing that SourceForge provides a user experience it can no longer support.
“In the past few months, we have received some complaints about the site where the GIMP installers for the Microsoft Windows platforms are hosted,” the developers write.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nvidia CEO: Android ‘the most disruptive operating system in decades’
Jen-Hsun Huang loves Google’s green robot thiiiiiis much
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/08/nvidia_ceo_android_the_most_disruptive_operating_system_in_decades/
Nvidia cofounder, president, and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang is a big, big fan of the Android operating system – a fact that he made abundantly clear when speaking with analysts and reporters after announcing his company’s financial results for the third quarter of its 2014 fiscal year on Thursday.
“Android is the most disruptive operating system that we’ve seen in a few decades, in a couple of decades,” Huang said.
“Android is not just about phones,” he added, citing its appearance in not only smartphones, but also in tablets, set-top boxes, gaming systems, and all-in-one PC such as the HP’s Slate.
Tegra’s success is closely tied to Android success, and Huang waxed enthusiastic about Google’s operating system. “Android is probably the most versatile operating system that we’ve ever known,” he said, “and has the benefit of also being connected to the cloud. And so the day that you turn it on, it’s incredibly useful, with all kinds of applications already on it.”
“PC gaming represents almost 40 per cent of the worldwide gaming market,” Csongor said, “larger than console, tablet, or any other gaming markets.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Paas is – how will it affect the IT department works?
Companies fasting makes of (platform-as-a-service) cloud services are consumed amounts well above the growth in businesses other IT budget growth. Paas means to buy a cloud development platform.
Research firm IDC predicts fasting-growing market by 2017 to $ 14 billion last year to $ 3.8 billion. This fasting of the market would increase by about 30 percent boost in the other it-satsausten growth would be four per cent per annum.
According to IDC’s report, the forecast has been raised in recent years under fasting accurate solutions in the light of the introduction of the quantities, especially in the Microsoft Azure’s disposal for.
Paas services attractive to companies because they allow you to calculate your company’s IT infrastructure maintenance and development costs and expenses at the same time the need to use the scalable resources.
Paas, 2012 the market was the busiest Americas continents, which was 65.2 per cent of fasting venturing into. Similarly, Europe, Middle East and Africa representing 20.7 percent of market. Asia and the Pacific was still 14.1 per cent, but the market is expected to grow by 2017 to 19 per cent.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kehittaja/paas+tulee++miten+kay+itosaston+toille/a945773
Tomi Engdahl says:
Collapse of PC market deeper than feared
Western European PC sales have fallen even worse than feared. Gartner says sales fell last year by as much as 12.8 per cent.
Last year’s third quarter, here was sold about 13.5 million PCs, this year was missed by less than 12 million.
Notebook sales fell by 14.5 per cent, desktops went a little better. Company sales drop was “only” 8.3 percent, consumer machines crash by as much as 17 per cent. The latter figure reflects most clearly the type of trace tablet PC sales are made.
“Western European PC sales declined more rapidly than expected.”
Source: http://www.tietokone.fi/artikkeli/uutiset/pc_romahdus_pelattya_syvempi
Tomi Engdahl says:
Chrome On Windows To Start Rejecting Extensions From Outside The Chrome Web Store In January
http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/07/chrome-on-windows-to-start-rejecting-extensions-from-outside-the-chrome-web-store-in-january/
Starting in January, Google’s Chrome browser will not allow you to install extensions that aren’t hosted in Google’s own Chrome Web Store.
While Google had recently increased its security measures for keeping malicious extensions out of Chrome by adding additional warnings and disabling silent extension installs, the team clearly felt that it had to go a step further to keep Windows machines safe. The leading cause of complaints from its Windows users, Google says, is still due to malicious extensions that override browser settings and change the user experience in unexpected (and undesired) ways. Given that these malicious extensions are virtually always hosted outside of the Chrome Web Store, the team has decided to simply shut down the ability to install extensions from third-party sites.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Win 8 PC sales plunge as retailers, disties shave orders by HALF A MILLION in Q3
Certain upgrade called 8.1 was on its way…not that Chrimbo shoppers will care
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2013/11/08/gartner_q3_uk_pc/
UK retailers and wholesalers were so busy waiting for Microsoft to release the Windows 8.1 upgrade that they apparently forgot to keep ordering PCs in Q3.
Or is it – perhaps more likely – that these companies bought PCs more cautiously, based on inventory pile-ups that have occurred since the consumer market crashed three years ago?
Typically tablets drag the overall PC market into a position of growth, but that is seemingly only when Android and iOS machines are included.
“Eleven of the previous 12 quarters also showed decline in the UK PC market,” said Ranjit Atwal, research director at Gartner.
Four of the top five vendors (HP, Dell, Apple and Acer) all declined. Only Lenovo grew
Tomi Engdahl says:
‘Shared databases are crap’ Oracle reveals shared database management suite
‘Easy’ conversion from single to multiple instances, says Damascene Larry
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/08/cloud_multitenant_database_manager/
Oracle, whose CEO Larry Ellison once slagged off multi-tenant clouds, has now released software to manage those very same multi-tenant databases.
Ellison’s database giant slipped out Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c this week, updated to administer multi-tenant instances on an Oracle 12c database.
Oracle Multitenant is an option in Oracle’s 12c database that lets you turn an existing Oracle database into a multitenant container – without making changes to the apps. The multitenant option was introduced this summer with the 12c database.
It was Salesforce.com who pioneered the multitenant model of having one database with lots of secure partitions used by lots of different users.
It’s a model that Ellison previously derided, despite the fact Salesforce is actually built on an Oracle database.
Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c is the latest arrival with Oracle’s management software rolled out to work with Oracle Multitenant.
The idea is you can now manage database-, infrastructure- and platform-as-a-service, with Oracle as the plumbing.
Tomi says:
Wanted: IT world domination. Can Spiceworks succeed?
Rethinking the social network as a guild
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/09/spiceworks_company_analysis_part_one/
Coalface admins
The modern IT landscape is – broad strokes here – broken down into only a handful of categories. Coalface admins are often divided into Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs), Commercial Midmarket (CM), enterprise and government. When discussing coalface admins we are typically talking about those who work for a company in another industry, rather than IT providers themselves. This has been Spiceworks’ target market (and product) since inception.
Managed Service Providers (MSPs) are the first category of IT vendor. MSPs can range from small shops like your humble scribe’s own eGeek Consulting to megaliths like Accenture. Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) also cover the whole gamut of sizes.
Value Added Resellers (VARs) shift boxes and software, providing their value-add ranging from warranty services all the way through to full-on MSP or CSP-like services. Distributors (disties) are the local warehousing and distribution facilities that buy directly from the manufacturers and sell on to VARs.
Any individual IT company can fall into one or many of these categories. eGeek, as one example, would count as a VAR, and MSP and a CSP. eGeek also does tech marketing.
We’re about as far from the traditional “Lies as a Service” marketing as you can possibly get – indeed, we’re hired on because we tell the unreserved truth in an industry enamored of hokum, misdirection and benchmarketing – but we still have the same basic need for finding clients as the traditional marketing types we so cavalierly mock.
A good part of what we do is freelance content generation; blogs, podcasts, webexes and so forth. The sort of thing that – traditionally – has been an entirely word-of-mouth affair. For those counting that makes us coalface IT practitioners, VAR, MSP, CSP, marketing and content generation. If we could work in developer, manufacturer and distie we’d have covered the entire industry. It does, however, allow us insight into where Spiceworks really starts to get interesting.
Tomi says:
Integrated Thinking: The Answer To Enterprise IT’s Perpetual
Struggle
http://www.effectiveui.com/downloads/publications/EffectiveUI_Study_Integrated_Thinking.pdf
Enterprise Application Development Teams Struggle To Keep Up
Despite adopting agile methods and digesting a constant flow of new software development tools, technologies, and
cloud services, a mere 39% of surveyed business decision-makers say that IT has the ability to regularly deliver on
time and on budget
That’s a real problem when you consider how crucial technology is to the success of the contemporary enterprise.
Software applications, in particular, are of strategic importance to virtually every function of the business, including product research, design, and development; advertising and marketing management; sales; and customer experience. That’s why the top critical software priority for IT organizations is to support business requirements
and corporate growth
The business implications are huge because both customer- and employee-facing applications directly and indirectly affect a firm’s customer experience, employee productivity, business agility, and competitiveness
Complexity, Silos Are The Culprit
Enterprise application development teams are faced with a hydra of obstacles that make it difficult to keep up with the business demand for new applications and enhancements to existing web and mobile applications
Ultimately, application development teams are judged not by how well they gather business requirements, choose development technologies, manage the project, or march through the development process — they are judged by:
1) how well their software serves the business goals, and
2) by how people — customers or employees — feel before, during, and after they use their software.
Teams know they need to improve. Only 20% of IT decision-makers surveyed reported that they are very satisfied with the user experience of their customer-facing web applications, and only 14% were very satisfied with their customer-facing mobile applications
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft CEO Elop: Dump Bing, sell Xbox, make Office for Android
Nokia man’s burning platform dilemma for Redmond board
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/11/elop_axe_swinging_ceo/
What kind of company would Microsoft be under Stephen Elop, we asked? We have an answer – of sorts.
Elop would kill Bing and Xbox as a Microsoft chief executive and go “all business” by developing Office for as many non-Windows devices as possible.
Elop is reported to be willing to consider ending the war against Google by ending work on Bing, the search engine that has cost Microsoft billions of dollars in R&D.
After nearly a decade developing and selling Bing, and despite some wobbling around the edges on market share, Google retains a commanding lead on internet search.
Google has 66 per cent of US search traffic with Bing second on 17 per cent. Yahoo!, which is also Bing, adds another 11.4 per cent according to comScore.
During its last quarter, Google hit reported a net income of $2.97bn, far above the $2.18bn it reported in Q3 2012.
Bing, meanwhile, drains Microsoft’s coffers. For Microsoft’s entire fiscal year, the online services unit that houses Bing reported $3bn revenue, up from $2.8bn a year back. It also lost a whopping $1.2bn (better than 2012′s $8.1bn loss, although to be fair, that included a one-time goodwill impairment charge of $6.2bn).
On Xbox, Elop is reported to be willing to sell the gaming console.
Xbox is the number-one selling games console in the US, with Sony’s PlayStation in second place.
Microsoft’s new strategy is to turn Xbox into a home-entertainment hub for gaming and downloading and viewing films, TV and entertainment.
According to Bloomberg, Elop would consider selling healthy businesses such as Xbox “if he determined they weren’t critical to the company’s strategy”.
Microsoft has made web versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint available to other devices via the browser as Office Web Apps, but not client-side code.
Office apps for iOS and Android phones were released earlier this year, but you must jump through the hoop of taking out an Office 365 subscription.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Oracle’s nemesis MariaDB releases sleekest seal yet to beta
Aided by Google, envied by MySQL users, and she has GORGEOUS new features
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/11/mariadb_version_10_beta/
MariaDB has capped off a dazzling year with the release of a beta of Version 10 of the free MySQL replacement.
The beta of the database was announced on Thursday and sees the technology gain some features that can’t be found in the MySQL database upon which it is based, further driving a wedge between it and the Oracle-backed technology it was created to displace.
“People in the past few months started to understand the value of MariaDB,” the organisation wrote on its blog. “There is a good group of people and companies that have been trying out and using the MariaDB 10.0 alpha releases and providing us with excellent feedback.”
That “good group” reads like a who’s who of tech, with companies such as Google replacing all internal production MySQL servers with MariaDB; Red Hat making it its new storage engine; Fedora making it the default implementation of MySQL in Fedora 19; the foxes over at Mozilla migrating to it; as well as many others.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft shouldn’t hire any CEO who wants to kill Bing and Xbox
Analysts may push for it, but it will make the company weaker.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/11/microsoft-shouldnt-hire-any-ceo-who-wants-to-kill-bing-and-xbox/
According to “people with knowledge of his thinking,” Bloomberg is reporting that, should Stephen Elop become Microsoft’s next CEO, he would consider shutting down or selling parts of the company to “sharpen its focus.” The two divisions mentioned specifically are Xbox and Bing.
It’s important to be a little wary of this kind of anonymous, unsourced commentary. It may not be accurate, and it may be agenda-driven. This kind of “thinking” appeals greatly to short-term investors who are more interested in boosting the next quarter’s numbers than the long-term health of the company. The anonymous leak could, therefore, tend to make Elop seem more appealing to Wall Street.
Microsoft’s head of corporate communications responded to Bloomberg in typically robust fashion, saying “We appreciate Bloomberg’s foray into fiction and look forward to future episodes.”
Nonetheless, analysts, in particular Rick Sherlund of Nomura Holdings, continue to encourage Microsoft to ditch these parts of the business.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Do-it-yourself Dropbox: Western Digital’s My Cloud 2TB NAS box
Easy-peasy network storage with handy remote access
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/10/review_western_digital_my_cloud_2tb_nas/
WD’s mobile app, WD 2 Go, has long let you draw down files from your Live and upload them too as if – your home broadband bandwidth permitting – it was your own personal Dropbox.
Tomi Engdahl says:
AMD Tips Client, Server Chips for HSA
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1320059&
Kaveri client and Berlin server processors will be the first chips from Advanced Micro Devices to use technology from the Heterogeneous Systems Architecture Foundation, AMD said at its developer conference here. AMD launched the HSA Foundation with partners to define common ways for GPUs and CPUs to share SoC resources such as memory.
AMD’s Kaveri SoCs will be launched at the Consumer Electronics Show in January and ship later in the month, initially serving desktops and notebooks. Versions for embedded and server markets will follow later.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The mobile advantage – the strategy is missing
Nearly two in three companies all over the world believes in a mobile capacity-building is the best way to gain a competitive advantage.
Citrix doing this, “Mobility in Business’ results of the study show that the development of mobile capability risen rapidly in recent years a list of the top business priority.
Nevertheless, more than half of the respondents have no mobile strategy drawn, but the majority companies plan to have such plans.
Only eight percent of companies is not going to be any effort to mobile capability building.
Participants in the study of IT decision-makers identified three major development items when creating a mobile strategy.
These include the development of mobile applications, secure file sharing and collaboration methods, as well as the introduction of network performance and availability improvements.
Slightly more than half of the companies reported that they change up management processes to better respond to mobile workers and the needs of device independence.
The survey stated that half of them are taken with mobile devices supporting technologies, and file sharing, synchronization, and the recording was made possible with mobile devices 40 percent of the companies.
However, the study reveals that the BYOD attitudes have changed significantly: now their own equipment in order to allow and even encourage the vast majority, or 71 per cent of companies.
Own equipment, the use of the often proprietary applications (byoa). The survey found that for 29 percent of employees around the world to use their own choice of mobile applications to work.
The most popular are for sale, CRM systems and databases related applications. Also, intranet portals, various messaging and social media applications and file-sharing applications are intended for heavy use.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/cio/mobiilista+kilpailuetua++strategia+puuttuu/a946611
Tomi Engdahl says:
Server, server in the rack, when’s my disk drive going to crack?
Backblaze’s 25,000-drive study scries the future of your storage
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/12/server_server_in_the_rack_whens_my_disk_drive_going_to_crack/
Cloud backup outfit Backblaze has cobbled together all the data it’s gathered from the 25,000 or so disk drives it keeps spinning and drawn some conclusions about just how long you can expect disks to survive in an array.
The study’s not the best of guides to data centre performance, because Backblaze happily makes do with consumer-grade drives. As even those drives routinely offer mean time between failure (MTBF) in the hundreds of thousands of hours – decades of operation – or the storage industry’s preferred longevity metric of annualised failure rates (AFR) of under one per cent per year, the study tests those claims as well as any other
Backblaze’s study finds that both AFR and MTBF are bunk. The document finds that disks follow the predicted “bathtub” curve of failure: lots of early failures due to manufacturing errors, a slow decline in failure rates to a shallow bottom and then a steep increase in failure rates as drives age.
The study then looked at when drives fail and found a drive that survives the 5.1 per cent AFR of its first 18 months under load will then only fail 1.4 per cent of the time in the next year and half. After that, things get nasty: in year three a surviving disk has an 11.8 per cent AFR. That still leaves over 80 per cent of drives alive and whirring after four years, a decent outcome.
Tomi Engdahl says:
AMD Kaveri APU Launch Details: Desktop, January 14th
by Ryan Smith on November 11, 2013 9:33 PM EST
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7507/amd-kaveri-apu-launch-details-desktop-january-14th
Kicking off today is AMD’s annual developer conference, which now goes by the name APU13. There will be several APU/CPU related announcements coming out of the show this week, but we’ll start with what’s likely to be the most interesting for our regular readers: the launch date for AMD’s Kaveri APU.
First and foremost, AMD has confirmed that Kaveri will be shipping in Q4’13, with a launch/availability date of January 14th, 2014. For those of you keeping track of your calendars, this is the week after CES 2014, with AMD promising further details on the Kaveri launch for CES.
Kaveri will have up to 4 CPU core (2 modules), which will be based on AMD’s latest revision of their desktop CPU architecture, Steamroller. Meanwhile the GPU will be composed of 8 GCN 1.1 CUs
AMD has confirmed on the GPU side that Kaveri will be shooting for feature parity with AMD’s latest discrete GPUs, by supporting many of the same features. Specifically, TrueAudio will be making an appearance on Kaveri, bringing AMD’s dedicated audio processing block to their APUs as well as their GPUs.
For AMD Kaveri is going to be a big deal
Tomi Engdahl says:
TrueAudio Technology: GPUs Get Advanced Audio Processing
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7400/the-radeon-r9-280x-review-feat-asus-xfx/4
In a nutshell, TrueAudio is a return to the concept of hardware accelerated audio processing, with AMD leveraging their position to put the necessary hardware on the GPU. Hardware accelerated audio processing in the PC space essentially died with Windows Vista, which moved most of the Windows audio stack into software. Previously the stack was significantly implemented through drivers and as such various elements could be offloaded onto the sound card itself, which in the case of 3D audio meant having the audio card process and transform DirectSound 3D calls as it saw fit. However with Vista hardware processing and hardware access to those APIs was stripped, and combined with a general “good enough” mindset of software audio + Realtek audio codecs, the matter was essentially given up on.
Now even with the loss of traditional hardware acceleration due to Vista, you can still do advanced 3D audio and other effects in software by having the game engine itself do the work. However this is generally not something that’s done, as game developers are hesitant to allocate valuable CPU time to audio and other effects that are difficult to demonstrate and sell.
AMD for their part is looking at reversing this trend by integrating audio DSPs into their hardware. If developers have task-specific hardware, as AMD postulates, then they will be willing to take advantage of this hardware for improved audio processing and effects, comfortable in the fact that they aren’t having to give up other resources for the improved audio.
As for why AMD is doing this, it comes down to several factors. One of the biggest is as to be expected: product differentiation. AMD is always looking to differentiate themselves from Intel and NVIDIA
Only Bonaire and newer GPUs – presumably anything that’s GCN 1.1 – will feature TrueAudio.
In any case, with this week’s release of TrueAudio enabled hardware AMD is also releasing the full architectural details of their TrueAudio technology. In this case AMD is taking an off-the-shelf solution, Tensilica’s HiFi EP DSPs, with AMD providing the glue that binds them together and integrating them onto the die of their GPUs.
Tensilica’s audio DSPs are task-specific programmable hardware, somewhere between fixed function and fully programmable in design, allowing for customized effects and processing to be done while still keeping the size and power costs low. The underlying hardware is programmable in C, while AMD for their part will be providing a TrueAudio API to access the hardware with. We don’t have a ton of details on the architecture of the DSP, but Tensilica’s product sheets imply that we’re looking at a VLIW architecture of some kind.
AMD is not telling us exactly how many audio DSPs are actually on each card
Going further up the audio stack, as we’ve mentioned in the past TrueAudio is an audio processing solution, not an audio presentation solution. With their DSPs AMD can process audio but they need to pass it back to the sound card for presentation. From a technical standpoint this is a bit tricky due to latency concerns – and is why the streaming DMA engine is so important – but video cards would make for a lousy environment for analog audio components anyhow.
AMD is taking a middleware-centric attitude with TrueAudio. Rather than only chasing down individual developers, AMD is first and foremost going after middleware developers in an attempt to get TrueAudio support worked into their various audio middleware packages. Success here means that every developer that uses these audio middleware packages (and that’s most of them) will at least have basic access to TrueAudio. For their part AMD has already lined up Wwise developer Audiokinetic for TrueAudio support, and 3rd party developer GenAudio is producing plugins for Wwise, FMOD, and more.
AMD is naturally also lining up the necessary showcase titles for their new technology. Eidos will be including TrueAudio support in their upcoming Thief game, and newcomer Xaviant pledging support for their in development magical loot game, Lichdom.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft Updates Surface Firmware, Patches IE Zero-Day Exploit Among 19 Total Flaws
http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/12/microsoft-updates-surface-firmware-patches-ie-zero-day-exploit-among-19-total-flaws/
Among the updates are a set of Internet Explorer fixes that are worth checking into if you manage PCs.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google launches Portable Native Client, lets developers compile their code to run on any hardware and website
http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/11/12/google-launches-portable-native-client-lets-developers-compile-code-run-hardware-site/
Google today launched Portable Native Client (PNaCl, pronounced pinnacle) as part of its push to bring native code to more and more platforms. The tool lets developers compile their code once to run on any hardware platform and embed their PNaCl application in any website.
For those who don’t know, PNaCl was recently integrated into Chrome 31 beta, giving developers the ability to execute native code in the browser. It lets them compile C/C++ code into a single executable that runs across all desktop versions of Chrome and Chrome OS with no user installation required.
PNaCl is based on Google’s Native Client (NaCl)
There’s still a big caveat, however: PNaCl is Chrome only, though Google hints this may change. Developers can make their PNaCl applications compatible with other browsers via pepper.js, which allows applications to use the Pepper API from JavaScript, but that’s quite the extra work.
Tomi Engdahl says:
UFS Set to Eclipse e-MMC
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1320056&
Universal flash storage (UFS) is poised to replace e-MMC as devices with embedded memory continue to demand more capacity and higher performance. But both memory technologies will continue to co-exist for some time.
Scott Beekman, director of managed NAND memory products for Toshiba America Electronic Components, says that although e-MMC is still the memory device of choice for mobile applications because of its low power consumption and cost, UFS is in a better position to meet the higher performance demands that are expected in the coming years from mobile devices.
e-MMC has seen wide adoption for use in smartphones, tablets, games, servers, printers, and automotive systems, notes Beekman, but it is limited performance-wise since it only supports half duplexing. (It permits either reading or writing between the host processor and an e-MMC device, but not both at the same time.)
The ability of UFS to support full duplexing, where reading and writing occur between host processor and UFS device at the same
JEDEC, developer of global open standards for the microelectronics industry, recently published version 2.0 of the UFS specification, which was designed to accommodate mobile applications and computing systems that need high performance and low power consumption. Link bandwidth has been increased from 300 MB/s in UFS v1.1 to up to 600 MB/s per lane, and multilane support has been introduced, allowing up to 1.2 GB/s per each data transfer direction.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Developers’ Salaries Rise in 2013
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1320065&
For the last four years, Dr. Dobb’s and InformationWeek have run one of the largest independent salary surveys of US developers and their managers. As shown in the following slides, the overall message from this year’s survey is that salaries are on the rise again after being stuck in park for the last two years. This advance is doubtlessly attributable to an improving economy.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Chrome 31 Is Out: Web Payments, Portable Native Client
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/11/13/005210/google-chrome-31-is-out-web-payments-portable-native-client
“Google today released Chrome version 31 for Windows, Mac, and Linux. The new version includes support for Web payments, Portable Native Client, and 25 security fixes. ‘Under the hood, PNaCl works by compiling native C and C++ code to an intermediate representation, rather than architecture-specific representations as in Native Client. The LLVM-style bytecode is wrapped into a portable executable, which can be hosted on a web server like any other website asset.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Linux kernel community learns how to grow more penguins
http://opensource.com/education/13/11/linux-kernel-community-growth
The Linux kernel is one of the largest and most successful open source projects today.
A report from the Linux Foundation addressing Who Writes Linux (2013) shows that recent releases of the Linux kernel, that happen now at 70-days intervals, include over 10,000 patches, made by more than 1,100 developers, representing over 225 corporations.
Since April 2012, when the previous report was published, almost 92,000 changesets have been merged from 3,738 individual developers representing about 536 corporations, adding close to 2 million lines of code. Cumulatively, the Linux kernel has been the work of more than 11,000 developers collaborating for more than 20 years.
This level of participation and volume of activity is unprecedented, and serves as a model to which most open source projects aspire to. Time has truly been good to Linux and the kernel community, and with time inevitably comes change. This a good thing.
At a panel held during the Linux Collaboration Summit in 2010, Jonathan Corbet, editor in chief of the Linux Weekly News, asked a group of top Linux kernel developers: “Is the Linux kernel developer crew getting too old?” He was observing the sizes of subsequent generations of developers.
More recently, an analysis of contributions to the Linux kernel Git repository, by software development analysis company Bitergia, revealed that:
Generations are smaller and smaller from about 100-150 (in 2005) to 30-50 per quarter (2013)
Older generations are becoming less active
Younger generations are quite smaller now than they were six years ago
Tomi Engdahl says:
Collaboration Between Controls & IT Is a Growing Priority
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1386&doc_id=269526&cid=nl.dn14
It’s ironic that one of the biggest stories in automation and control for the next decade will focus on the collaboration of control engineers, engineering management, and their information technology (IT) counterparts in manufacturing production facilities.
With manufacturing targeted as one of the biggest beneficiaries in the move to the Internet of Things (IoT), this group of stakeholders is in a pivotal position to achieve a new level of connectivity between engineering and enterprise management. With the goal of bringing both the supply chain and even customers closer to the manufacturing process, plants will need new levels of communications access, security, and networking resources (video and remote services) to make it happen.
If we look at the value being placed on the IoT, we can see how both engineering and IT are key players to making a major transformation occur. Targeted areas include asset utilization, employee productivity (with an emphasis on mobility), supply chain and logistics, innovation, and customer experience. Nearly all of these areas will require an infusion of technology into plant operations that spans the skill set and responsibility of both groups.
“The longstanding issue is how to break down the silos and achieve convergence in managing networks more holistically,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
AMD Secures PC Notebooks, Tablets With ARM
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1320078&
Advanced Micro Devices announced two new 28nm mobile x86 processors using a new ARM-based security block, including a 2W tablet SoC. The chips, shipping before July, will double the performance/watt of the company’s prior notebook and tablet offerings, it said.
The chips target Windows 8.1 notebooks and tablets, supporting the OS’s new InstantGo fast wake-time feature.
Tomi Engdahl says:
AMD Faces Long Road to HSA Success
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1320069&
The Heterogeneous Systems Architecture (HSA) Foundation is making good progress in an area important for future designers of SoCs and the software that rides on them, but it still faces a long road to success.
This week, Advanced Micro Devices said it will ship the first processor to use HSA techniques of letting CPU and graphics cores share resources in January. AMD developed support under Linux for the techniques, but no other plans have been announced so far for processors or operating systems supporting the techniques. The chips (and probably the operating systems) will come at some point.
ARM, Imagination, Mediatek, Qualcomm, Samsung, and other top mobile SoC and core designers are part of HSA.
Tomi Engdahl says:
6 Tips to Help CIOs Manage Shadow IT
http://www.cio.com/article/743114/6_Tips_to_Help_CIOs_Manage_Shadow_IT
IT, mobile and security experts offer advice on how to minimize the risks associated with third-party apps and services as well as with employees using their mobile devices in the workplace.
1. Monitor your network — to find out if or where you have a Shadow IT problem. “Regardless of whether employees use company-issued or personal (i.e., BYOD) hardware, organizations need to identify where all their data resides — [in house], in the data center, at the edge or in the cloud,”
2. Prioritize risk. “Not all software/services used outside of IT control is bad,”
3. Establish guidelines around BYOD and apps/cloud services. “To accommodate the needs of business units, IT can create and share a list of approved software/applications beyond the standard issue software,”
4. Offer alternatives. “Today’s workers expect to be able to find, view and use their data across locations and devices,” says White. “If enterprises don’t provide a secure solution for access to corporate data remotely, employees will find their own ways to manage information to work efficiently by using consumer products that can put the organization at risk,” he says.
“By providing employees with secure, IT-controlled anywhere, anytime access to information on-the-go, they can reduce the risk of employees deploying outside products that are beyond the awareness, discovery and control of IT,” White says.
5. Restrict access to third-party apps. “Restrict your users’ access to applications such as Dropbox, SharePoint and SkyDrive among others,”
6. Offer amnesty on Shadow IT. “When identifying the threats of Shadow IT, you have two choices: First, your IT department can identify the traffic to and from third-party cloud solutions that deliver Shadow IT, like Skype, Box and Dropbox,”
“However, this process is time-consuming, inaccurate and blocking entirely is almost impossible,” Scott-Cowley says. The better option: “Hold an amnesty on Shadow IT. A no-consequences, ‘stand up, own up and be counted’ strategy, without fear of retribution works — especially if you give users an opportunity to explain why they needed a third-party app and why your corporate platforms weren’t up to the job.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
1.21 PetaFLOPS (RPeak) Supercomputer Created With EC2
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/11/13/1754225/121-petaflops-rpeak-supercomputer-created-with-ec2
“In honor of Doc Brown, Great Scott! Ars has an interesting article about a 1.21 PetaFLOPS (RPeak) supercomputer created on Amazon EC2 Spot Instances.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
18 hours, $33K, and 156,314 cores: Amazon cloud HPC hits a “petaflop”
1.21 petaflops? Great scott!
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/11/18-hours-33k-and-156314-cores-amazon-cloud-hpc-hits-a-petaflop/
What do you do if you need more than 150,000 CPU cores but don’t have millions of dollars to spend on a supercomputer? Go to the Amazon cloud, of course.
For the past few years, HPC software company Cycle Computing has been helping researchers harness the power of Amazon Web Services when they need serious computing power for short bursts of time. The company has completed its biggest Amazon cloud run yet, creating a cluster that ran for 18 hours, hitting 156,314 cores at its largest point and a theoretical peak speed of 1.21 petaflops. (A petaflop is one quadrillion floating point operations per second, or a million billion.)
To get all those cores, Cycle’s cluster ran simultaneously in Amazon data centers across the world, in Virginia, Oregon, Northern California, Ireland, Singapore, Tokyo, Sydney, and São Paulo. The bill from Amazon ended up being $33,000
Tomi Engdahl says:
XP updates, you should use your best judgment, “This is going to come a missed opportunity”
Many companies are currently running an extensive and costly upgrade project, as they move from Windows XP using the Windows 7 operating system on before the end of April. VMware Tuomas Mäkinen, Vice President calls for more patience, because in his view, the ongoing transformation should look more broadly.
Mäkinen says that it is up to the historic upheaval. “XP workstations update should not see the problem, but also a tremendous opportunity,” he says.
Of working methods and work environment are Mäkinen says that changed, and such a large displacement of the companies would be able to achieve the big changes with little effort.
Various types of terminals and software platforms are available for use at work for a lot of smartphones and tablets become more prevalent. Windows is no longer the one and only truth
“Some of these migrations is not necessary to carry out one to one. Not all users need a new PC-to-machine, and all machines need to be in the operating system of Windows, “he said.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/xppaivityksissa+kannattaa+kayttaa+harkintaa+quottasta+meinaa+tulla+hukattu+mahdollisuusquot/a947156?s=u&wtm=tivi-14112013
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft Releases Browser-Based IDE, Visual Studio Online
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/11/14/0418251/microsoft-releases-browser-based-ide-visual-studio-online
“Microsoft today announced a web-based development environment for app creation to complement Visual Studio 2013, called Visual Studio Online. Microsoft Senior V.P. S. Somasegar says the new web-based IDE is designed for quick tasks related to building Windows Azure websites and services.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2013 Launches With New Online Tools, Previews Browser-Based Code Editor
http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/13/microsofts-visual-studio-2013-launches-with-new-online-tools-for-team-and-build-management-preview-of-browser-based-code-editor/
Microsoft today launched the latest version of its Visual Studio tools for developers at an event in New York City. The new version includes a number of user interface improvements, smarter tools for inspecting existing code in its context and support for Windows 8.1 application development. All of these were previously announced and available in the VS2013 RTM release.
The surprise announcement, however, is the launch of Visual Studio Online, a set of development services running on Windows Azure that focus on agile team collaboration, Application Lifecycle Management and support for Windows Azure. The service will also include an elastic load testing service based on Azure that will launch in public preview today, but the focus is currently on making the development process easier for teams, which essentially makes Visual Studio Online an extension of what the company has been doing with its Team Foundation Service.
Tomi Engdahl says:
NVIDIA Announces CUDA 6: Unified Memory for CUDA
by Ryan Smith on November 14, 2013 9:00 AM EST
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7515/nvidia-announces-cuda-6-unified-memory-for-cuda
For NVIDIA, next to their annual GPU Technology Conference, SC is their second biggest GPU compute conference, and is typically the venue for NVIDIA’s summer/fall announcements.
The most important of those announcements in turn will be the announcement of the next version of CUDA, CUDA 6.
The big news here – and the headlining feature for CUDA 6 – is that NVIDIA has implemented complete unified memory support within CUDA.
The toolkit has possessed unified virtual addressing support since CUDA 4, allowing the disparate x86 and GPU memory pools to be addressed together in a single space.
With CUDA 6 NVIDIA has finally taken the next step towards removing those memory copies entirely, by making it possible to abstract the memory management away from the programmer. This is achieved through the CUDA 6 unified memory implementation
With that said NVIDIA isn’t talking about the performance impact at this time. Memory abstractions such as these typically have some kind of performance penalty over manual memory management
NVIDIA will be showing off CUDA 6 and the rest of their announcement at SC13 next week.
Tomi Engdahl says:
AMD 2014 Mobile APU Update: Beema and Mullins
by Jarred Walton on November 13, 2013 5:15 PM EST
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7514/amd-2014-mobile-apu-update-beema-and-mullins
Today AMD is taking the wraps off their upcoming mobile APUs, joining the already discussed desktop Kaveri. While Kaveri will also be coming to laptops at some point in the first half of 2014, the focus during the mobile APU briefing was squarely on the replacements for the current Temash and Kabini APUs, codenamed Mullins and Beema.
Mullins and Beema will also use 28nm technology, with “Puma” cores, but along with improvements to the design to reduce the power use, AMD is also incorporating an ARM Cortex-A5 core with TrustZone technology to help with security.
AMD hasn’t disclosed how much the underlying architecture has changed, and I would guess the Puma cores are actually quite similar to Jaguar cores, but the net result is a 2X improvement in performance per Watt according to AMD.
There are three points to discuss: AMD DockPort, Microsoft InstantGo, and the Platform Security Processor.
While DockPort sounds interesting (a non-Intel alternative to Thunderbolt that basically combines DisplayPort 1.2 with USB 3 into a single cable), AMD said precious little about DockPort in their presentation. Someone asked about it, and AMD said it was “up to laptop manufacturers” and that was about it.
Microsoft InstantGo is another feature that AMD supports. Formerly called Connected Standby, InstantGo allows your laptop to wake up from sleep mode periodically to pull down network updates – email, live tiles, etc. It also allows devices to go from deep sleep to “on” in under 500 milliseconds, basically matching what we get with tablets and smartphones.
Last up is the Security Processor, which consists of an ARM Cortex-A5 core with support for the ARM TrustZone. We discussed this in more detail previously, but the short summary is that the technology is designed to provide a Trusted Execution Environment to help protect against malware and viruses, as well as providing new ways to deal with user authentication, payment processing, etc
Tomi Engdahl says:
Dart 1.0 Released
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/11/14/1426234/dart-10-released
“Yesterday marked the release of Dart SDK 1.0, a cross-browser, open source toolkit for structured web applications. The Dart SDK 1.0 includes everything you need to write structured web applications: a simple yet powerful programming language, robust tools, and comprehensive core libraries.”
“”The new release brings a much tighter dart2js compiler reducing overall JavaScript output up to 40%; Dartium — a version of Google Chrome that has the DartVM in addition to the JavaScript VM as native to the browser;”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Computers and phones in children’s bedrooms ‘can cause anxiety and sleep loss’
Study warns televisions, computers and mobile phones in children’s bedrooms can cause anxiety and prevent sleep
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/10448123/Computers-and-phones-in-childrens-bedrooms-can-cause-anxiety-and-sleep-loss.html
Parents have been urged to take televisions, computers and mobile phones out of children’s bedrooms as they cause anxiety and prevent sleep which ruins school performance, a study has suggested.
Researchers have found that having televisions and games consoles in the bedroom teaches the brain to see the room as an entertainment zone rather than a place for quiet and rest.