Here is my collection of trends and predictions for year 2014:
It seems that PC market is not recovering in 2014. IDC is forecasting that the technology channel will buy in around 34 million fewer PCs this year than last. It seem that things aren’t going to improve any time soon (down, down, down until 2017?). There will be no let-up on any front, with desktops and portables predicted to decline in both the mature and emerging markets. Perhaps the chief concern for future PC demand is a lack of reasons to replace an older system: PC usage has not moved significantly beyond consumption and productivity tasks to differentiate PCs from other devices. As a result, PC lifespan continue to increase. Death of the Desktop article says that sadly for the traditional desktop, this is only a matter of time before its purpose expires and that it would be inevitable it will happen within this decade. (I expect that it will not completely disappear).
When the PC business is slowly decreasing, smartphone and table business will increase quickly. Some time in the next six months, the number of smartphones on earth will pass the number of PCs. This shouldn’t really surprise anyone: the mobile business is much bigger than the computer industry. There are now perhaps 3.5-4 billion mobile phones, replaced every two years, versus 1.7-1.8 billion PCs replaced every 5 years. Smartphones broke down that wall between those industries few years ago – suddenly tech companies could sell to an industry with $1.2 trillion annual revenue. Now you can sell more phones in a quarter than the PC industry sells in a year.
After some years we will end up with somewhere over 3bn smartphones in use on earth, almost double the number of PCs. There are perhaps 900m consumer PCs on earth, and maybe 800m corporate PCs. The consumer PCs are mostly shared and the corporate PCs locked down, and neither are really mobile. Those 3 billion smartphones will all be personal, and all mobile. Mobile browsing is set to overtake traditional desktop browsing in 2015. The smartphone revolution is changing how consumers use the Internet. This will influence web design.
The only PC sector that seems to have some growth is server side. Microservers & Cloud Computing to Drive Server Growth article says that increased demand for cloud computing and high-density microserver systems has brought the server market back from a state of decline. We’re seeing fairly significant change in the server market. According to the 2014 IC Market Drivers report, server unit shipment growth will increase in the next several years, thanks to purchases of new, cheaper microservers. The total server IC market is projected to rise by 3% in 2014 to $14.4 billion: multicore MPU segment for microservers and NAND flash memories for solid state drives are expected to see better numbers.
Spinning rust and tape are DEAD. The future’s flash, cache and cloud article tells that the flash is the tier for primary data; the stuff christened tier 0. Data that needs to be written out to a slower response store goes across a local network link to a cloud storage gateway and that holds the tier 1 nearline data in its cache. Never mind software-defined HYPE, 2014 will be the year of storage FRANKENPLIANCES article tells that more hype around Software-Defined-Everything will keep the marketeers and the marchitecture specialists well employed for the next twelve months but don’t expect anything radical. The only innovation is going to be around pricing and consumption models as vendors try to maintain margins. FCoE will continue to be a side-show and FC, like tape, will soldier on happily. NAS will continue to eat away at the block storage market and perhaps 2014 will be the year that object storage finally takes off.
IT managers are increasingly replacing servers with SaaS article says that cloud providers take on a bigger share of the servers as overall market starts declining. An in-house system is no longer the default for many companies. IT managers want to cut the number of servers they manage, or at least slow the growth, and they may be succeeding. IDC expects that anywhere from 25% to 30% of all the servers shipped next year will be delivered to cloud services providers. In three years, 2017, nearly 45% of all the servers leaving manufacturers will be bought by cloud providers. The shift will slow the purchase of server sales to enterprise IT. Big cloud providers are more and more using their own designs instead of servers from big manufacturers. Data center consolidations are eliminating servers as well. For sure, IT managers are going to be managing physical servers for years to come. But, the number will be declining.
I hope that the IT business will start to grow this year as predicted. Information technology spends to increase next financial year according to N Chandrasekaran, chief executive and managing director of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India’s largest information technology (IT) services company. IDC predicts that IT consumption will increase next year to 5 per cent worldwide to $ 2.14 trillion. It is expected that the biggest opportunity will lie in the digital space: social, mobility, cloud and analytics. The gradual recovery of the economy in Europe will restore faith in business. Companies are re-imaging their business, keeping in mind changing digital trends.
The death of Windows XP will be on the new many times on the spring. There will be companies try to cash in with death of Windows XP: Microsoft’s plan for Windows XP support to end next spring, has received IT services providers as well as competitors to invest in their own services marketing. HP is peddling their customers Connected Backup 8.8 service to prevent data loss during migration. VMware is selling cloud desktop service. Google is wooing users to switch to ChromeOS system by making Chrome’s user interface familiar to wider audiences. The most effective way XP exploiting is the European defense giant EADS subsidiary of Arkoon, which promises support for XP users who do not want to or can not upgrade their systems.
There will be talk on what will be coming from Microsoft next year. Microsoft is reportedly planning to launch a series of updates in 2015 that could see major revisions for the Windows, Xbox, and Windows RT platforms. Microsoft’s wave of spring 2015 updates to its various Windows-based platforms has a codename: Threshold. If all goes according to early plans, Threshold will include updates to all three OS platforms (Xbox One, Windows and Windows Phone).
Amateur programmers are becoming increasingly more prevalent in the IT landscape. A new IDC study has found that of the 18.5 million software developers in the world, about 7.5 million (roughly 40 percent) are “hobbyist developers,” which is what IDC calls people who write code even though it is not their primary occupation. The boom in hobbyist programmers should cheer computer literacy advocates.IDC estimates there are almost 29 million ICT-skilled workers in the world as we enter 2014, including 11 million professional developers.
The Challenge of Cross-language Interoperability will be more and more talked. Interfacing between languages will be increasingly important. You can no longer expect a nontrivial application to be written in a single language. With software becoming ever more complex and hardware less homogeneous, the likelihood of a single language being the correct tool for an entire program is lower than ever. The trend toward increased complexity in software shows no sign of abating, and modern hardware creates new challenges. Now, mobile phones are starting to appear with eight cores with the same ISA (instruction set architecture) but different speeds, some other streaming processors optimized for different workloads (DSPs, GPUs), and other specialized cores.
Just another new USB connector type will be pushed to market. Lightning strikes USB bosses: Next-gen ‘type C’ jacks will be reversible article tells that USB is to get a new, smaller connector that, like Apple’s proprietary Lightning jack, will be reversible. Designed to support both USB 3.1 and USB 2.0, the new connector, dubbed “Type C”, will be the same size as an existing micro USB 2.0 plug.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Windows 9 (Threshold): The Charms bar as you know it will no longer exist on the desktop
http://www.winbeta.org/news/windows-9-threshold-charms-bar-you-know-it-will-no-longer-exist-desktop
Windows Threshold is shaping up to be an operating system very different from its predecessor, with the desktop taking front and center again for desktop users, the Modern UI is in the rear-view mirror for devices that never needed it in the first place. As Threshold is putting the desktop back in first place for desktop users, a question still remains. If Microsoft is allowing Modern UI apps to run in desktop mode, how will the Charms bar work?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft’s Windows ‘Threshold’ expected to add virtual desktops, drop charms
http://www.zdnet.com/microsofts-windows-threshold-expected-to-add-virtual-desktops-drop-charms-7000032401/
Summary: Microsoft is going to do more than reintroduce a Start menu as part of its plan to make Windows 9, a k a ‘Threshold,’ more appealing to Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 users.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Report: Cloud providers taking lion’s share of overall server market
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2014/06/delloro-cloud-server-report.html?cmpid=$trackid
In a recently published report from Dell’Oro Group, the networking and telecommunications industry analyst says that its latest data reveals that the major cloud providers comprised a record portion of the server market in the first quarter 2014, due to a significant increase in their consumption of white box servers.
“In North America, 17 percent of server shipments were white box, and we estimate that over a quarter of all server shipments were destined for cloud providers,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
80% of all IT budgets are spent ‘keeping the lights on’.
81% of virtual machines run on VMware
Source: vmware marketing material
http://app.connect.vmware.com/e/es.aspx?s=524&e=41156628&elq=90f43b8b8a454928b978cbc12804a175&OPENID=Browser
Tomi Engdahl says:
6 sad-but-true tales of mind-numbing manual IT tasks
We’re not going to sugarcoat this. If you’ve ever thought to yourself “a monkey could do my job,” you’re probably right.
http://www.itworld.com/it-management/429417/so-simple-monkey-could-do-it-mind-numbing-manual-it-tasks
Tomi Engdahl says:
An AMD website in China has leaked information about the upcoming release of a line of SSDs aimed at gamers and professionals that will offer top sequential read/write speeds of 550MB/s and 530MB/s, respectively.
Source: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/14/08/08/0257208/amd-prepares-to-ship-gaming-ssds
Tomi Engdahl says:
Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst: In 2014, Open Source Innovation Is Going Mainstream
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/08/07/red-hat-ceo-jim-whitehurst-in-2014-open-source-inn.aspx
How is that 2014 forecast shaping up?
First, he described a new attitude toward open-source solutions in the cloud computing market: I rarely talk to a customer that’s not having open source as one of the top two alternatives, if not the primary alternative.
And it’s no longer an issue that it’s open source. It’s just — “Hey, this is what the industry is supporting, it’s where the innovation’s happening, and so it needs to be part of my infrastructure.”
Long story short, Whitehurst sees 2014 playing out pretty much as he had expected. Open-source solutions are stealing market share from traditional, proprietary software packages
Tomi Engdahl says:
Oracle hasn’t killed Java — but there’s still time
http://www.infoworld.com/d/application-development/oracle-hasnt-killed-java-theres-still-time-247823
Java core has stagnated, Java EE is dead, and Spring is over, but the JVM marches on. C’mon Oracle, where are the big ideas?
Java was the big opportunity. Java was Sun’s success story.
By the time Oracle bought Sun, its troubles had leaked into Java 7, which took approximately 100 years (give or take) to be released — and with far fewer features.
With Java 7 and Java 8, we got developer porn, but no new ideas or big ideas. So Typesafe stuck things into Scala, developers talked up those features, then they went into Java. This allowed the developers stuck in big companies who dreamed of writing Scala to use their favorite candy with a slightly wonkier syntax in Java.
Java EE was already stagnant. Do you know what’s new in the latest release? Neither do I, and I don’t care.
Java EE is hobbled by a Java Community Process that has outlived its usefulness because Oracle is terrible at pretending it cares what people think.
What is driving Java?
Inertia is driving Java. If you want a multiplatform runtime, the JVM is the main game in town. There is so much stuff in Java and an install base so extensive that, from a business standpoint, you’d be an idiot to ignore it.
That inertia is part of the reason Hadoop was written in Java (mostly) instead of other languages.
I don’t think Oracle knows how to create markets. It knows how to destroy them and create a product out of them, but it somehow failed to do that with Java.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel’s office of the future will be completely wireless
Believes a cable-free environment will make businesses more productive
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2359542/intels-office-of-the-future-will-be-completely-wireless
THE OFFICE of the not so far future will be cable-free, meaning there’ll be no annoying wires or leads connecting computers to monitors, laptops to plug sockets or tablets to projectors. Well, that’s if Intel’s vision of the future office is realised.
The semiconductor maker has said that it is looking to change the enterprise IT market with a strategy that will offer “three major experiences” in the office, that is, wireless display connectivity, wireless docking and wireless charging. The aim here is not only to make the lives of business employees easier, but also to improve user experiences to drive uptake of Intel’s business client technologies.
“At least five minutes of productivity is lost in every meeting trying to find out who has the right display adapters, dongles [and so on], and we believe there’s a better solution out there,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook wants Linux network stack to ‘rival or exceed’ FreeBSD
Updated Social network is seeking a high-level Linux kernel developer
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2359272/facebook-wants-linux-network-stack-to-rival-or-exceed-freebsd
FACEBOOT IS LOOKING to hire a high-level Linux kernel developer, as it seeks to upgrade the Linux network stack to rival FreeBSD.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tiny chip mimics brain, delivers supercomputer speed
http://phys.org/news/2014-08-tiny-chip-mimics-brain-supercomputer.html
Researchers Thursday unveiled a powerful new postage-stamp size chip delivering supercomputer performance using a process that mimics the human brain.
The so-called “neurosynaptic” chip is a breakthrough that opens a wide new range of computing possibilities from self-driving cars to artificial intelligence systems that can installed on a smartphone, the scientists say.
IBM’s new neurosynaptic processor intergrates 1 million neurons and 256 million (414) synapses on a single chip.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Linux Security Threats on the Rise
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/linux-security-threats-rise
Every year, heck…every month, Linux is adopted by more companies and organizations as an important if not primary component of their enterprise platform. And the more serious the hardware platform, the more likely it is to be running Linux. 60% of servers, 70% of Web servers and 95% of all supercomputers are Linux-based!
One of the many benefits cited by enterprises bringing in Linux is the security and the resultant “cost of ownership” benefits that come from, among many other things, not having to deal with security-related issues and attacks. While Gartner and other analyst companies have poo-poohed the actual cost benefits in the past, a lawsuit showed that Microsoft had actually influenced its computations and models in favor of calculating Windows’ total cost of ownership, and real-world anecdotal evidence shows the same.
“Vulnerabilities in software are found all the time, so the critical piece of advice is to make sure that your servers are kept up to date with security fixes all the time.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Russia, China could ban western tech if they want to live in the PAST
Top apps and hardware don’t appear overnight
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/07/russia_china_could_ban_western_tech_if_they_want_to_live_in_the_past/
Russia and China have both, of late, threatened western IT companies with difficult trading conditions or banishment if they can’t prove their products are secure.
The reason for their ire is, of course, Edward Snowden’s many revelations about US intelligence activities.
The response to his leaks have been widespread and fierce.
China has banished Windows 8, booted Symantec and Kaspersky from its approved vendor list, probed Microsoft, done nasty things to Qualcomm and pondered a ban on IBM.
Russia’s been belligerent too.
Canalys Senior Analyst Nushin Vaiani says “This type of activity could have devastating impacts on the IT market in general and businesses may find themselves at the mercy of their local governments when making buying decisions.
“When you go with an off-the-shelf ARM core it has a performance rating of one,” Gregory told The Register. The kind of customisation performed by a Qualcomm improves things to 1.5 and the likes of AMD or IBM get things to 2.5. Intel, he said, can get to a performance rating of six.
“It is likely that there will be much stringent requirements when it comes to government procurement,”
Those regulations won’t just be about security. “One thing becoming clear is that countries are beginning to use technology as a political tool,”
China, in particular, has demonstrated that it is willing to pick winners
Tomi Engdahl says:
New NSA-Funded Code Rolls All Programming Languages Into One
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/14/08/10/2250205/new-nsa-funded-code-rolls-all-programming-languages-into-one
“What’s your favorite programming language? Is it CSS? Is it JavaScript? Is it PHP, HTML5, or something else? Why choose? A new programming language developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University is all of those and more — one of the world’s first “polyglot” programming languages. Sound cool? It is, except its development is partially funded by the National Security Agency
It’s called Wyvern
Tomi Engdahl says:
The New NSA-Funded Code Rolls All Programming Languages Into One
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/new-nsa-funded-programming-language-is-all-programming-languages-in-one
“Web applications today are written as a poorly-coordinated mishmash of artifacts written in different languages, file formats, and technologies. For example, a web application may consist of JavaScript code on the client, HTML for structure, CSS for presentation, XML for AJAX-style communication, and a mixture of Java, plain text configuration files, and database software on the server,” Jonathan Aldrich, the researcher developing the language, wrote. “This diversity increases the cost of developers learning these technologies. It also means that ensuring system-wide safety and security properties in this setting is difficult.”
That system-wide safety and security properties bit is important, and perhaps might explain why the project is backed by the NSA.
Tomi Engdahl says:
It-the number of jobs is growing, and there is a need skills that women have not only been, but where they are men better. Nevertheless, women are still in the field in a clear minority.
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/summa/naiset+ovat+yha+harvassa+italalla/a1002688
Tomi Engdahl says:
http://www.modulecounts.com/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nvidia Q2 Profits Rise on Gaming, Datacenter Demand
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1323448&
Gaming chipmaker Nvidia Corp. couldn’t ward off the effects of the seasonal decline in the consumer PC market
Compared with a year ago, GPU sales increased just 2%, to $878 million from $858 million, but fell 2% from $878 million the prior quarter. Although GPU sales growth was tempered by cyclical weakness in the consumer PC market, Nvidia saw strong demand for its GeForce GPUs in gaming applications and for its Tesla and Nvidia GRID products for datacenter and cloud applications.
“Growth was driven by Tegra processor sales, GeForece GPUs for gaming, and Tesla and Nvidia GRID for datacenter and workloads,” according to a prepared statement by Nvidia’s chief financial officer Colette Kress.
Tomi Engdahl says:
9 Peaks From the Flash Summit
Solid state drives become compute nodes
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1323445&
I got a view of new uses for flash controllers, the significance of the still invisible Samsung V-NAND and the long road ahead for next-generation non-volatile memory.
Those were my highest peaks at the Flash Memory Summit. I also caught up on the battle over the DRAM bus and the race to pack ever more data into a solid-state drives.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Forget the cloud, now comes the fog calculation
Cloud is a reality, but as soon as we come to know a new term: the fog calculation. This view is from New York University and NYU professor of electronics Wireless Engineering Research Vice President Ted Rappaport. He was involved in the NI Weeks expert panel.
What the fog calculation (fog computing) then? Rappaport that it is thousands of mobile devices to your users. – It is a shared intelligence.
5g wireless technology brings a new era. – It is a wireless renaissance
5g’s goals are hard, because an individual user’s data will increase from a thousand-fold.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1615:unohda-pilvi-nyt-tulee-sumulaskenta&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
GE starts rolling out Pivotal’s big data technology to its own customers
http://gigaom.com/2014/08/10/ge-starts-rolling-out-pivotals-big-data-technology-to-its-own-customers/
Last year, General Electric invested $105 million in Pivotal; Now it’s starting to deploy Pivotal’s big data analytics capabilities both in house and to buyers of its jet engines.
General Electric, which has touted the potential advantages of applied big data for a few years and last year put its money where its mouth was with a $105 million investment in Pivotal, is now ready to declare that it has started to reap the rewards.
Using Pivotal’s Big Data Suite and EMC’s appliances, GE built out its own capability first for its aviation group in 90 days, which then connected up to 25 airline customers to make use of all that data and analytics, according to Bill Ruh, VP of GE Software, the executive spearheading this effort. GE is a leading builder of aircraft engines and a key goal of using machine data and analytics is to provide better predictive maintenance.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How Microsoft dragged its development practices into the 21st century
In the Web era of development, Waterfalls are finally out. Agile is in.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/08/how-microsoft-dragged-its-development-practices-into-the-21st-century/
For the longest time, Microsoft had something of a poor reputation as a software developer. The issue wasn’t so much the quality of the company’s software but the way it was developed and delivered. The company’s traditional model involved cranking out a new major version of Office, Windows, SQL Server, Exchange, and so on every three or so years.
The releases may have been infrequent, but delays, or at least perceived delays, were not. Microsoft’s reputation in this regard never quite matched the reality—the company tended to shy away from making any official announcements of when something would ship until such a point as the company knew it would hit the date—but leaks, assumptions, and speculation were routine.
In spite of this, Microsoft became tremendously successful. After all, many of its competitors worked in more or less the same way, releasing paid software upgrades every few years. Microsoft didn’t do anything particularly different.
There’s no singular cause for these periodic releases and the delays that they suffered. Software development is a complex and surprisingly poorly understood business; there’s no one “right way” to develop and manage a project.
Nonetheless, computer scientists, software engineers, and developers have tried to formalize and describe different processes for building software. The process historically associated with Microsoft—and the process most known for these long development cycles and their delays—is known as the waterfall process.
The basic premise is that progress goes one way. The requirements for a piece of software are gathered, then the software is designed, then the design is implemented, then the implementation is tested and verified, and then, once it has shipped, it goes into maintenance mode.
The waterfall process has always been regarded with suspicion. Even when first named and described in the 1970s, it was not regarded as an ideal process that organizations should aspire to. Rather, it was a description of a process that organizations used but which had a number of flaws that made it unsuitable to most development tasks.
Microsoft didn’t practice waterfall in the purest sense; its software development process was slightly iterative. But it was very waterfall-like.
For all these problems and challenges, Microsoft has nonetheless been tremendously successful as a software developer. Before the rise of the World Wide Web, these infrequent releases, troublesome as they may have been, actually made a lot of sense.
Agile development for a changing world
The adjective that’s used to describe these processes is “agile.” There are many different agile development processes, but all retain certain common features. Fundamentally, agile processes are designed around short development cycles, iterative improvement, and the ability to easily respond to change.
Iterative development processes of one kind or another have been around for almost as long as software development itself. The kinds of practices that have come to be known as “agile” proliferated in the 1990s, and the “agile” label was codified in 2001 when a group of developers published the “Agile Manifesto,”
The result of each of these short iterations should be something that is more or less usable.
The real complexity for Microsoft is scale. Many of these methodologies are built for small teams.
To keep track of all these things, every three sprints the teams talk directly to the PM, dev, and QA leadership.
Online collaboration is good, but in-person collaboration is a lot better.
With the new process in place, the Visual Studio team has been able to build better software and deliver it more frequently.
The agile approach of combining development and testing, under the name “combined engineering” (first used in the Bing team), is also spreading.
For Microsoft’s customers, the improvements that have come from the agile approach taken to Visual Studio development are visible and real.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Worldwide IT Market Showing Tentative Signs of Improvement, According to IDC
05 Aug 2014
http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS25024614
FRAMINGHAM, Mass., August 5, 2014 – According to the newly published International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Black Book (Doc #250222), recent volatility will gradually give way to a more positive outlook for IT spending in the second half of 2014. With the U.S. and other mature economies mostly heading in the right direction and a significant commercial PC refresh cycle already underway, improvements in business confidence are set to drive a moderate infrastructure upgrade cycle over the next 12-18 months, while investments in software and services will continue to accelerate.
Worldwide IT spending is now forecast to increase by 4.5% in 2014 at constant currency, or 4.1% in U.S. dollars. A significant proportion of this growth is still being driven by smartphones – IT spending excluding mobile phones will increase by just 3.1% this year in constant currency (2.8% in U.S. dollars). Aside from smartphones, the strongest growth will come from software, including rapidly expanding markets such as data analytics, data management, and collaborative applications including enterprise social networks.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple Plans to Launch Siri on MacBook and Macs
http://www.chinatopix.com/articles/6247/20140811/siri-macbook-apple-siri-patent-digital-voice-assistant-tech-app-intelligent-digital-assistant-mac.htm
Siri, Apple’s popular digital voice assistant, could be coming to MacBooks this fall.
The rumor is being fueled by news the United States Patent and Trademark Office has released a patent application for the desktop version of Siri for MacBook.
Siri first appeared and became popular in 2011 on the iPhone 4S, with the “S” standing for “Siri.”
Apple is finding ways for Siri to become more a useful digital voice assistant to its wider customer base.
The recent patent called the “Intelligent Digital Assistant” describes how Siri can be useful for Mac users.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Samsung unveils 10nm class enterprise SAS SSD
30 percent more productive than its predecessor
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2359256/samsung-unveils-10nm-class-enterprise-sas-ssd
SAMSUNG HAS RELEASED its latest enterprise SAS solid-state disk (SSD) drive.
The Samsung SAS SSD SM1623 has an 800GB capacity, and is based on 10nm class chips.
Before we all get too excited, “10nm class” means below 20nm, rather than a specific measurement, however, this does represent a jump from its 20nm class SM1625 predecessor and offers a 30 percent productivity boost.
Random read and write rates are 120,000 and 26,000 Input/Output Operations per Second (IOPS) with sequential read and write speeds up to 950MBps and 520MBps, respectively.
Tomi Engdahl says:
I Liked Everything I Saw on Facebook for Two Days. Here’s What It Did to Me
http://www.wired.com/2014/08/i-liked-everything-i-saw-on-facebook-for-two-days-heres-what-it-did-to-me/
Facebook uses algorithms to decide what shows up in your feed.
There is a very specific form of Facebook messaging, designed to get you to interact. And if you take the bait, you’ll be shown it ad nauseam.
My News Feed took on an entirely new character in a surprisingly short amount of time. After checking in and liking a bunch of stuff over the course of an hour, there were no human beings in my feed anymore. It became about brands and messaging, rather than humans with messages.
Likewise, content mills rose to the top. Nearly my entire feed was given over to Upworthy and the Huffington Post.
Tomi Engdahl says:
OpenGL 4.5 released—with one of Direct3D’s best features
The Khronos Group brings Direct State Access to OpenGL.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/08/opengl-4-5-released-with-one-of-direct3ds-best-features/
The Khronos Group today released OpenGL 4.5, the newest version of the industry standard 3D programming API. The new version contains a mix of features designed to make developers’ lives easier and to improve performance and reliability of OpenGL applications.
The big feature in OpenGL 4.5 is Direct State Access (DSA). OpenGL is a complex API that relies extensively on an implicit state that is maintained between function calls.
Direct State Access allows developers to both set and query properties on objects (textures, shader programs, frame buffers, and so on) without having to make units active or bind objects to them; programs can operate directly on the objects themselves. This makes middleware much easier to develop, as it no longer needs to worry about disturbing the graphical state that the program has set up.
DSA has been available as an extension for some years but, until OpenGL 4.5, was not a standard feature of the specification proper.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Also released today is SPIR 2.0. SPIR is Khronos’ intermediate language for general purpose GPU (GPGPU) computation. OpenCL was Khronos’ first system for using GPUs in this way, but OpenCL requires developers to use a C-like language. Often, programmers want to use something they’re more familiar with, be it Python, C++, JavaScript, or any other language.
SPIR is Khronos’ solution. Compilers for these other languages should produce SPIR code, and the OpenCL runtime will execute that SPIR code on the target machine. While technically those compilers could produce OpenCL C directly, SPIR is easier because it’s designed to be used in this intermediate way.
SPIR is based on the intermediate representation used by the LLVM compiler suite. SPIR 2.0 gives SPIR full compatibility with all the features of OpenCL 2.0 and is based on LLVM 3.4.
Source: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/08/opengl-4-5-released-with-one-of-direct3ds-best-features/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Acer’s new Chromebook 13 offers a high-resolution screen and all-day battery life
http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/11/5983635/acer-chromebook-13-nvidia-tegra-k1-processor-price-availability
The first Chromebook with Nvidia’s Tegra K1 processor promises to outgun and outlast the competition
Tomi Engdahl says:
Khronos unveils OpenGL 4.5, broadens OpenCL 2.0 language support
New SPIR spec makes compute kernel compilation a breeze
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/11/khronos_unveils_opengl_4_5_and_spir_2/
In terms of market share, OpenGL’s main competitor is Microsoft’s DirectX, and with Redmond due to release DirectX 12 next year, the Khronos Group has taken steps to make it easier to port 3D graphics between OpenGL and DirectX implementations.
“There are some pointless differences between OpenGL and DirectX that are the historical way it’s ended up, the most obvious one being the coordinate system is flipped between the two,” Trevett said. “For a few versions of OpenGL now we’ve actually been putting in some of the DirectX ways of doing things into GL that you can use, optionally, if you want.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
NVIDIA claims first 64-bit ARMv8 SoC for Androids
Mile-High ‘Denver’ Tegra K1 successor said to rival PC performance
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/12/nvidia_claims_first_64bit_armv8_soc_for_androids/
NVIDIA has taken the wraps off “Denver”, its long-rumoured 64-bit ARMv8 architecture compatible, system-on-a-chip (SoC), and claims it delivers performance equivalent to some CPUs found in PCs.
The company has blogged about the silicon, the successor to its current 32-bit Tegra K1 models.
Denver will come in two versions, both of which will be pin-compatible and offer a new technology NVIDIA calls “Dynamic Code Optimization”. Here’s the spiel for how that works:
“Dynamic Code Optimization optimizes frequently used software routines at runtime into dense, highly tuned microcode-equivalent routines. These are stored in a dedicated, 128MB main-memory-based optimization cache.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
AMD’s first 64-bit ARM cores star in … Heatless in Seattle*
* Relatively speaking – this SoC tries to be low-power, data-center-grade
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/11/amd_seattle_64_bit_arm/
Hot Chips 26 AMD today sheds more light on its “Seattle” 64-bit ARM architecture processor at the Hot Chips conference in Cupertino, California.
Take one glance at this new Opteron A1100-series system-on-chip, and you’ll realize it’s aimed squarely at servers rather than the traditional ARM scene of handheld gadgets and embedded computing – although that was to be expected
As expected, Seattle has eight Cortex-A57 cores – ARM’s top-end design running 64-bit ARMv8-A code – and will be fabricated using a 28nm process. The cores will run at 2GHz or more.
And if you like your SoCs, AMD has put a SoC within a SoC: a system control processor (SCP) packing a little Cortex-A5 core with 64KB of ROM; 512KB of SRAM; timers and a watchdog; the usual SPI, UART and I2C interfaces; TrustZone execution space; and a 1Gbps Ethernet remote management port (RGMII).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel’s 14-nm Broadwell CPU Primed For Slim Tablets
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/14/08/11/173242/intels-14-nm-broadwell-cpu-primed-for-slim-tablets
Intel’s next-gen Broadwell processor has entered production, and we now know a lot more about what it entails. The chip is built using 14-nm process technology, enabling it to squeeze into half the power envelope and half the physical footprint of last year’s Haswell processors.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel’s Broadwell processor revealed
The 14-nm Core M aims to upend the tablet market
http://techreport.com/review/26896/intel-broadwell-processor-revealed
In fact, Natarajan shared quite a few specifics about the 14-nm process in order to underscore Intel’s success. His core message: the 14-nm process provides true scaling from the prior 22-nm node, with virtually all of the traditional benefits of Moore’s Law intact.
Natarajan expects sufficient 14-nm silicon yields and wafer volumes to support “multiple 14-nm product ramps in the first half of 2015.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Samsung Galaxy Tab S 8.4: Easy to swallow 4G Android tablet
The best tablet in the world? Possibly
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/12/review_samsung_galaxy_tab_s_8_4_lte_sm_t705_android_tablet/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Flash could be CHEAPER than SAS DISK? Come off it, NetApp
Stats analysis reckons we’ll hit that point in just three years
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/12/netapp_sees_cheap_flash_costing_less_than_sas_disk/
A NetApp pitch at the Flash Memory Summit said the cost-per-GB price trends for cheap TLC flash mean it will dip below SAS disks in 2017.
TLC is triple layer cell flash which holds three bits per cell, half as much again as the standard 2-bit or MLC NAND that is used in SSDs and server flash cards.
Because TLC is denser in capacity terms than MLC its cost/GB is less – around 25 per cent less – and the NetApp number-crunchers say its price is declining faster than the cost/GB of SAS interface disk drives.
According to Gartner, some 63 exabytes of NAND will be made in 2014, with 7.6EB used for enterprise servers and storage. The disk drive suppliers shipped 99.7EB of capacity in the 12 months to the end of June (trailing 12-month basis), 13 times as much.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel admits: Broadwell Core M chip looking a bit thin, no fans found at all
Chipzilla’s ‘cool’ 14nm part to hit market this year
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/11/intel_core_m_broadwell_revealed/
The first Broadwell chip to hit the market will be the cool-running Core M, which Chipzilla first demoed at the Computex event in Taipei in June.
Initially, Intel expected to roll out the first Broadwell chips in 2013, but quality-control problems with the 14nm process forced delays. Now the first Core M devices aren’t expected to reach retail shelves until this year’s holiday season, with broad availability beginning in the first quarter of 2015.
Intel president Renee James showed off a 7.5mm-thick two-in-one typoslab at Computex that weighed just 670 grams.
Don’t expect those skinny slabs to be speed demons, though. Running cool enough to go without a fan means dialing down the clock speeds, and one of the reference tablets Intel demoed at Computex actually included a “fan dock” that could blow air onto the device to let it run faster while docked.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Saying Goodbye To Windows 8
http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/10/saying-goodbye-to-windows-8/?ncid=rss&cps=gravity
We’re starting to understand what’s next for Windows. Considering the most recent leaks involving the Charms Bar, desktop improvements, and the like, it’s becoming plain that some of what Windows 8 emphasized and introduced will be scaled back in Microsoft’s next Windows build.
Windows 9, often referred to as Threshold, isn’t too far away. There is talk of a beta late this year, and of a release in the first half of 2015, though those estimates I would hold as at least mildly optimistic.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Gartner: Users Should Start Planning to Move Off Windows 7
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Gartner-Users-Should-Start-Planning-to-Move-Off-Windows-7-454635.shtml
Windows users are getting through a long transition process, as Windows XP reached end of support in April, while rumors are pointing to a rapidly approaching debut of Windows 9.
Tomi Engdahl says:
July 31st, 2014, 09:22 GMT · By Bogdan Popa
Survey Shows Half of Companies Are Still Running Windows XP
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Survey-Shows-Half-of-Companies-Are-Still-Running-Windows-XP-452909.shtml
Windows XP support came to an end on April 8 this year, but a new research conducted by Adaptiva shows that in North America no less than 53 percent of the companies are still running it right now.
Tomi Engdahl says:
CIA infosec guru: US govt must buy all zero-days and set them free
Destroy the software industry before it destroys the world, says Dan Geer
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/07/geer_we_have_to_destroy_the_software_industry_in_order_to_save_it/
Black Hat 2014 Computer security luminary Dan Geer has proposed a radical shakeup of the software industry in hope of avoiding total disaster online.
Geer played a crucial role in the development of the X Window System and the Kerberos authentication protocol, and is now the chief security officer of the CIA’s VC fund In-Q-Tel.
Without serious and drastic action, the technology industry will be destroyed by inaction, he suggested.
“We have to do something,” Geer told the audience
When code crashes, who gets punished?
One of his more radical suggestions was restructuring the way the software industry handles liability. There are only two industries that have no liability problems, he said – religion and software – and this needs to change for the coding community.
His proposed solution was offering two different business models. Software firms could carry on selling code, but if the programs are faulty then the companies must pay out when things go wrong. Alternatively, they can publish the source code of software, allow the user to shut down functions they don’t want, and enjoy freedom from being sued.
Geer also suggested a new way to stamp out the exploitation of software security vulnerabilities for which no patches exist – dreaded zero-day vulns: the US government should make a standing offer to pay a bug bounty equivalent to TEN times the price companies are willing to pay for the security flaws, and then make them public after a patch has been developed.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple supremo Tim Cook storms: ‘As CEO, I’m NOT satisfied’
Just what’s annoyed Le Grand Fromage now?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/12/apple_diversity_report/
Apple’s US employee race statistics
Apple has published its own employee diversity numbers, and they are not much different from those of other major tech companies.
The House That Jobs Built said it had some work to do in terms of diversifying a workforce that is largely white and male, particularly in tech and leadership positions.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nvidia Flexes Custom 64-Bit ARM
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1323479&
Nvidia has opened the hood on its custom 64-bit ARM core first announced in January 2011. “Denver” is an ARM processor that uses microcode to enable a novel execution optimizer.
Two cores will ship this year in an SoC that is an upgrade to Nvidia’s Tegra K1, targeting tablets. The existing 32-bit chip targets Android and is used in an Acer Chromebook, Google’s Project Tango tablet, Xaomi’s MyPad, and Nvidia’s own Shield tablet.
Nvidia clams the 64-bit Tegra K1 will sport PC-class performance in mobile systems for gaming, business apps, and content creation. Denver was nearly on par with an Intel Haswell processor and surpassed by 10 to 25% an Apple A7 series SoC in benchmarks Nvidia showed.
Tomi Engdahl says:
SanDisk Expands ULLtraDIMM Reach
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1323482&
With its ULLtraDIMM SSD gaining traction and its recent acquisition of Fusion-io, SanDisk appears well-poised to tackle enterprise latency challenges from more than one angle.
At this year’s recent Flash Memory Summit, the company announced that its UlltraDIMM SSD would be shipping with Supermicro’s Green SuperServer and SuperStorage platforms. Supermicro tested the 200GB and 400GB capacities of the ULLtraDIMM SSD
The ULLtraDIMM SSD incorporates Diablo Technologies’ memory channel storage (MCS) architecture and connects NAND flash directly to the CPU through a server’s memory bus; persistent memory is essentially attached to the host processors of a server or storage array. SanDisk’s ULLtraDIMM can be integrated into an existing DIMM slot, and additional SSDs can also be added to available DIMM slots.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel’s Embedded DRAM: New Era of Cache Memory
Overcoming SRAM’s scaling
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1323410&
Two industry giants — Intel and Samsung — expressed their frustration with SRAM scaling at this year’s International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in February.
In the paper Song et. al. from Samsung[1] argued that SRAM not only occupied too much real estate, but the operating voltage did not scale in the same proportion as the logic devices on the same die.
Using fabrication cost and performance data, Intel concluded that an alternative configuration was needed, and therefore opted for an external high-density bandwidth cache memory in the same package.
The DRAM cell was also much smaller than the six transistor SRAM cell layout made at the same lithography node. Moreover, having a separate DRAM die in the same package as the processor reduced chip interface delay, compared with external DRAM in a different package.
The eDRAM also required 1/5 of the keep-alive power compared with an SRAM device. This analysis led Intel to release their Haswell processor with an external eDRAM.
Tomi Engdahl says:
This is Samsung’s VR headset
http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/12/5996293/this-is-samsungs-vr-headset
Samsung will be showing its rumored virtual reality headset at its upcoming product event in early September, The Verge has learned, where the company is widely expected to announce the Galaxy Note 4. The headset — codenamed “Project Moonlight” — appears to be a bit like Google’s Cardboard, a box with lenses that can effectively turn a smartphone display into an immersive world.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Reversible USB Type-C connector finalized: Devices, cables, and adapters coming soon
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/187882-reversible-usb-type-c-connector-finalized-devices-cables-and-adapters-coming-soon
The USB Promoter Group has announced that the greatest invention in the known universe — the reversible Type-C USB connector — is finally ready for mass production. The USB Implementers Forum will now take the Type-C spec and start building devices, cables, and adapters that support the new reversible connector. We could begin seeing Type-C USB devices over the next few months, but considering the lack of backwards compatibility (an adapter is required), and the fact that the existing Micro-USB connector is mandated as the standard mobile phone charging connector by several governments around the world, it may take a little while for Type-C to reach critical mass.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Opens Classroom, Its Learning Management Tool, To All Teachers
http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/12/google-opens-classroom-its-learning-management-tool-to-all-teachers/
Back in May, Google announced the limited preview of Classroom, a tool that aims to make it easier for teachers to stay in touch with their students and to give them assignments and feedback. Google says more than 100,000 educators from 45 countries signed up to try it since then. Today, it is throwing the doors wide open, and anyone with a Google Apps for Education account can now use the service.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sony has sold 10 million PlayStation 4 consoles worldwide
http://thenextweb.com/gadgets/2014/08/12/sony-sold-10-million-playstation-4-consoles-worldwide/
Tomi Engdahl says:
“Share Play” will let you play any PS4 game with friends online
New “virtual couch” feature requires only one copy of the game for live co-op.
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/08/share-play-will-let-you-play-any-ps4-game-with-friends-online/
Since the announcement and revocation of Microsoft’s “Family Sharing” features on Xbox One, we’ve been waiting for someone to come up with a fair and logical way of sharing generalized gameplay experiences with friends over the Internet. Steam’s library-wide Family Sharing features were a step in the right direction, but Sony’s newly announced Share Play feature sounds like the Internet game sharing we’ve been waiting for.
Announced at Sony’s pre-Gamescom press conference today, Share Play is being sold as a “virtual couch” that lets you in effect “pass the controller” to friends online even if they don’t own a copy of the game.