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.
2,130 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
Software Engineering Is a Dead-End Career, Says Bloomberg
http://developers-beta.slashdot.org/story/12/04/23/1928202/software-engineering-is-a-dead-end-career-says-bloomberg
“Many programmers find that their employability starts to decline at about age 35. Employers dismiss them as either lacking in up-to-date technical skills — such as the latest programming-language fad — or ‘not suitable for entry level.’ In other words, either underqualified or overqualified.”
‘the half-life of an engineer, software or hardware, is only a few years,’
Tomi Engdahl says:
Windows 9 Already? Apparently, Yes.
http://tech-beta.slashdot.org/story/14/01/13/1640212/windows-9-already-apparently-yes
“A little over a year after Microsoft released Windows 8, and a mere three months after it pushed out a major update with Windows 8.1, rumors abound that Windows 9 is already on its way. According to Paul Thurrott’s Supersite for Windows, Microsoft will begin discussing the next version of Windows (codenamed ‘Threshold,’ at least for the moment) at April’s BUILD conference.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Windows 9 preview updates can be installed with one click, no reinstallation required:
Windows Threshold: Rapid release is getting really interesting
http://www.neowin.net/news/windows-threshold-rapid-release-is-getting-really-interesting
Microsoft is working feverishly towards a release of Windows Threshold that is expected to be released late next month. The build will likely be called Windows Technical Preview (the word ‘Enterprise’ may be tossed in there too), but what will be quite convenient when the preview is finally released is how you will go about upgrading to new builds.
On current internal builds of Windows Threshold, you can upgrade builds with a single click of a button.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel’s NUC 2.0 leaks: The next unit of Steam Machines and home theater PCs
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/188533-intels-nuc-2-0-leaks-the-next-unit-of-steam-machines-and-home-theater-pcs
Thanks in large part to the Raspberry Pi, mini PCs are all the rage these days. In terms of power, none of them yet compare to a standard gaming rig, but they’re slowly creeping toward that end. If some leaked slides are to be believed, then Intel’s next NUC — the next Next Unit of Computing — is creeping much faster than the competition.
The NUC 2.0 is a significant upgrade compared to the original
The initial next-gen NUCs will be powered by Core i3 and i5 Broadwell and Braswell chips, can support up to either 8GB or 16GB of DDR3 RAM depending on the model, and will feature Intel HD graphics. Don’t balk at the inclusion of Intel graphics — Steam’s hardware survey shows that Intel GPUs are the most used on the service.
Perhaps most interestingly, it appears as though the next NUCs will make standard 2.5-inch SSDs optional, instead opting for the more flexible M.2 drives — a type that can can even be shoved onto a stick of specialized RAM.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The White House Gives Up on Making Coders Dress Like Adults
http://www.wired.com/2014/08/the-white-house-dickerson/
The U.S. Government wants to hire more people like Mikey Dickerson. He’s the former Google engineer the White House recently tapped to lead the new U.S. Digital Service.
In a White House video, Dickerson says he is asked one question again and again by people curious about his new job. They “want to know if I’m wearing a suit to work every day,” Dickerson explains in the video. “Because that’s just the quickest shorthand way of asking: ‘Is this just the same old business as usual or are they actually going to listen?’”
When it comes to computers, the federal government has a nasty reputation for prizing ISO standards and regulatory checkboxes above working code.
According to the Dickerson, that’s changed. He isn’t showing up in a T-shirt, but he’s free to wear a wrinkled button-down and comfortable pants.
Tomi Engdahl says:
US Military To Launch Open Source Academy
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1323627&
Open source software, which has become increasingly common throughout the US military from unmanned drones to desktops, has now been enlisted as a career option for military personnel. In September, Camp Shelby Joint Forces Training Center will open a Linux certification academy, marking the first time such a training program has been hosted on a military base.
Tomi Engdahl says:
China to launch home-grown OS in October as Windows replacement
Plans to compete with Microsoft, Google and Apple on the OS front
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9250627/China_to_launch_home_grown_OS_in_October_as_Windows_replacement
China hopes to launch a home-grown operating system by October to wean the country from foreign-made OSes like Windows, the government-run Xinhua news agency said Sunday.
The operating system, which Xinhua did not name, will be initially offered on desktop PCs, with the plan to later extend it to smartphones. The news service cited a report in the People’s Post and Telecommunications News, a trade paper run by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), the agency responsible for, among other things, the regulation and development of China’s software industry.
“We hope to launch a Chinese-made desktop operating system by October supporting app stores,” Ni Guangnan of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, told the trade paper, according to a translation by Reuters on Sunday.
Historically, China has been a stronghold of Windows XP, in large part because of massive piracy of Microsoft’s software.
China has long been at odds with foreign technology firms, particularly Microsoft and Google — but also at times with Apple — over their impact and influence in the country.
China has worked on a its own OS before: In 2000, Red Flag Linux
Red Flag never took off, and the company backing it shuttered earlier this year. But Red Flag — the OS, not the company — will be resurrected.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft: Roughly 25,000 Win8.x Users See Blue Screens After Botched Patch – See more at: http://www.dailytech.com/Microsoft+Roughly+25000+Win8x+Users+See+Blue+Screens+After+Botched+Patch/article36440.htm#sthash.kpGrabf0.dpuf
Tomi Engdahl says:
If Java Wasn’t Cool 10 Years Ago, What About Now?
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/14/08/24/1758222/if-java-wasnt-cool-10-years-ago-what-about-now
10 years ago today on this site, readers answered the question “Why is Java considered un-cool?” 10 years later, Java might not be hip, but it’s certainly stuck around.
Tomi Engdahl says:
ACM Blames the PC For Driving Women Away From Computer Science
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/08/24/1712215/acm-blames-the-pc-for-driving-women-away-from-computer-science
“Over at the Communications of the ACM, a new article — Computing’s Narrow Focus May Hinder Women’s Participation — suggests that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs should shoulder some of the blame for the dearth of women at Google, Facebook, Apple, Twitter and other tech companies. From the article: “Valerie Barr, chair of ACM’s Council on Women in Computing (ACM-W), believes the retreat [of women from CS programs] was caused partly by the growth of personal computers”
“ACM continued its efforts to reshape the U.S. education system to see real computer science exist and count as a core graduation credit in U.S. high schools”
Tomi Engdahl says:
GitHub.io killed the distro star: Why are people so bored with the top Linux makers?
Raise your hand if you’re interested – liar!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/25/are_linux_distros_boring/
At one time, Miller said, shows like LinuxCon would have been lined with booths showcasing free Linux distros like Fedora, Gentoo, OpenSuse, and others. This year there were none, and Miller observed that their absence wasn’t entirely due to lack of funds.
“Over the last couple of years, those have really been less interesting for the people at the booths,” he said. “Our interactions are not that great. It really doesn’t seem to build up the community at all.”
The rise of GitHub has changed this dynamic. Rather than just offering links to tarballs for download, GitHub allows developers to publish their source code in a standard format, accessible by a common set of tools. As a result, Miller observed, GitHub has rapidly become a preferred way for open source developers to offer their software to the public.
“When you go to the Docker website, it doesn’t say ‘find us in these distros,’ it says, ‘fork us on GitHub’,” Miller said, “and you see that more and more in a lot of prominent open source projects.”
“There are something like 15 million repositories on GitHub,”
One way of looking at Docker is that it’s an entirely new format for packaging applications, one that obviates the need for distro-specific package formats.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Choose your side on the Linux divide
The battle over systemd exposes a fundamental gap between the old Unix guard and a new guard of Linux developers and admins
http://www.infoworld.com/d/data-center/choose-your-side-the-linux-divide-248950
Mike Gancarz sums up the Unix philosophy:
Small is beautiful.
Make each program do one thing well.
Build a prototype as soon as possible.
Choose portability over efficiency.
Store data in flat text files.
Use software leverage to your advantage.
Use shell scripts to increase leverage and portability.
Avoid captive user interfaces.
Make every program a filter.
We have built the Internet and all modern Internet services on those principles. Systemd’s design and implementation violates nearly all of them.
Should it be a surprise that so many long-term Unix and Linux developers, architects, and administrators recoil at the thought of something like systemd? It might seem that the design of systemd purposefully dispensed with the wisdom of 45 years of Unix development and struck out in a different direction just to spite the old guard.
The old saying, “Those who don’t understand Unix are doomed to re-invent it — poorly,” has been used many times when discussing Windows. It’s disturbing to see it now used to describe Linux.
Tomi Engdahl says:
VMware Partners With Docker, Pivotal And Google To Bring Container Support To Its Platform
http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/25/vmware-partners-with-docker-pivotal-and-google-to-bring-container-support-to-its-platform/
VMware today announced that it is partnering with Docker, Google and Pivotal to bring support for Docker containers to its platform. In addition, the company said that it will work with the Kubernetes community to bring that project’s container management solution to enterprises.
At first glance, the Docker project and VMware should be at odds with each other. In many ways, Docker containers negate the need for a solution like VMware because the VMware model of the “software-defined data center” is squarely based on the idea of using its own virtual machines. There is no reason the two can’t co-exist, however — even in the same data center — given that you could run a container within a virtual machine.
“With Docker, Google and Pivotal, we are simplifying the way enterprises develop, run and manage all application types on a common platform at scale,” said Ben Fathi, the chief technology officer of VMware in a statement today. “In this way, Docker containers and virtual machines provide an IT environment without compromise. Together, we are optimizing containers for the enterprise – ensuring they run effectively in software-defined data center environments.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
VMware plays nice with OpenStack, unveils a VMware-powered data-center-in-a-box
http://gigaom.com/2014/08/25/vmware-plays-nice-with-openstack-while-also-unveiling-a-vmware-powered-data-center-in-a-box/
At VMworld, the virtualization giant will unveil new service that makes OpenStack more compatible with VMware tools and VMware-loaded data centers as well as a new appliance that will come stocked with (what else?) VMware software.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Amazon Is Turning Into Google
http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-is-google-2014-8
Tell me which company this sounds like:
A company that…
Has its own mobile operating system for tablets and smartphones.
Has its own app store.
Sells digital music, books, movies, and TV shows.
Will soon have an online ad network.
Created a way to accept payments with a smartphone.
Owns the servers that act as the backbone for several major apps and startups and even parts of the CIA.
Is experimenting with drones.
It’s not Google. It’s Amazon.
But just like Google has expanded beyond search into everything from finding ways to cheat death to making cars that can drive themselves, Amazon has been increasingly expanding beyond its core e-commerce business.
And in recent months, that only seems to be speeding up.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Rise and Fall and Rise of Virtual Reality
http://www.theverge.com/a/virtual-reality
In the wake of Facebook’s purchase of Oculus VR, can this revolutionary technology triumph anew?
Tomi Engdahl says:
VMware’s high-wire balancing act: EVO might drag us ALL down
Get it right, EMC, or there’ll be STORAGE CIVIL WAR. Mark my words
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/26/vmwares_high_wire_balancing_act/
In the battle for the software-defined data centre, one of VMware’s challenges is how to deliver software-defined/controlled storage without screwing up parent EMC’s hardware-based storage revenues.
VMware is an overall EMC Federation member along with Pivotal and the EMC Information Infrastructure (EMC II) unit. The three are allowed to compete, but what will EMC’s chairman and overall CEO Joe Tucci say if one federation member screws up another’s revenues and strategy?
EMC revenues are largely based on hardware storage arrays with software over-pinnings and connective products. VMware revenues are based on server virtualisation software with growing seedlings for software-defined networking (NSX) and storage (VSAN).
But VMware has now made it official – it is in the converged appliance business with the EVO range announced at VMworld.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Claim: Microsoft Alt-F4′d Chilean government open-source install bid
The US has form in Chile
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/22/chilean_paper_says_microsoft_crushed_local_open_source_bill/
Microsoft successfully lobbied against a law that would have seen Chile’s government adopt open-source software, says Elmostrador, a newspaper in the South American nation.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Windows Threshold ‘Technical Preview for Enterprise’: Here’s what to expect
http://www.neowin.net/news/windows-threshold-technical-preview-for-enterprise-heres-what-to-expect
Late next month, we fully expect Microsoft to release a technical preview of Windows Threshold and as we approach that launch window, we are learning more and more about the release and what all will be included. For starters, the current watermark for the builds that are circulating refer to the pre-release version as the “Windows Technical Preview for Enterprise” which should help you understand what Microsoft’s intentions are for this build.
While early Windows 8 builds were called Developer Previews, the watermark is very clear in saying that these builds are for the enterprise and that it is part of a technical preview.
Microsoft will, in the very near future, start reaching out to key partners and informing them about the Threshold enterprise preview and will be offering up bits for testing, and around that time is when they will go public with their plans.
Why? Well, Microsoft knows that once the enterprise has the bits, NDAs never hold and the builds will leak. So, to avoid having all of their fun being spoiled (like this: 1 2 3 4 5), they will release a public version of Threshold for testing.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Death by 1,000 cuts: Mainstream storage array suppliers are bleeding
Cloud, all-flash kit, object storage slicing away at titans of storage
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/21/mainstream_storage_array_suppliers_losing_business/
Great beasts can be killed by a 1,000 cuts, bleeding to death from the myriad slashes in their bodies – none of which, on their own, is a killer. And this, it seems, is the way things are going for big-brand storage arrays, as upstarts slice away at the market with converged systems, virtual SANs, all-flash kit, hybrid devices, object storage, software-defined storage and the cloud.
Up until a few years ago, say around 2009, storage arrays ruled supreme, with monolithic, multi-controller arrays on the top of the heap: VMAX, VSP, DS8000, and dual-controller arrays beneath them – NetApp FAS, EMC VNX, HP 3PAR, and Dell Compellent for example. There were rumblings in the storage jungle from object storage, early flash arrays like those from Violin Memory, and scale-out filers like Isilon, but the rumbles did not take centre stage.
These were early signs that the classic storage array was under attack because it was becoming too limiting, complex and expensive for more and more use-cases.
Another indication was the rise of virtual SANs, software-only SANs like the one produced by LeftHand Networks, with LeftHand acquired by HP and the P4000 product emerging. Shared storage went through a renaissance
In short, classic storage arrays are limited, not being software-defined in the latest use of the term, expensive, complicated to operate, slow to provide data, and with quality of service affected by RAID rebuilds.
Cloud storage avoids the on-premises mess by putting the data elsewhere. Flash and hybrid storage, say, get high-speed access to data without suffering disk array latencies. Converged storage says combine servers and storage with VSAN ideas to simplify the whole complicated mess in your data centres.
All of these ideas are “solving the problem” of traditional storage arrays.
These mainstream supplier storage results indicate a slowdown. That has been and could be attributed to a recent recession and an enterprise storage spending freeze, but startups in converged systems, virtual SANs, all-flash and hybrid arrays, etc, have grown their revenues over this period, many of them dramatically, with three-digit percentage growth numbers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
That 8TB Seagate MONSTER? It’s HERE… Have a look (sans specs)
Data gulping disk drive
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/26/seagates_eight_terabyte_spinner/
Seagate is shipping an 8TB disk drive to selected OEM customers like object data-storing CleverSafe, with general availability next quarter. Tech details are sparse.
We know the data devouring beast fits in a standard 3.5-inch drive slot and has a 6Gbit/s SATA interface.
Seagate says it has “enterprise reliability and is for cloud content, object storage and back-up/disaster recovery storage”.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IBM Gearing Up Mega Power 8 Servers For October Launch
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/14/08/26/1550219/ibm-gearing-up-mega-power-8-servers-for-october-launch
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hewlett-Packard Recalls Nearly 6 Million Power Cords Because Melting Doesn’t Charge The Computer
http://consumerist.com/2014/08/26/hewlett-packard-recalls-nearly-6-million-power-cords-because-melting-doesnt-charge-the-computer/
Computer power cords are meant to provide juice to your device; they aren’t meant to melt or catch fire. So when that happens, it’s time for a recall. Such is the case for Hewlett-Packard.
The computer company recalled nearly 6 million LS-15 AC power cords in the United States and Canada because they can overheat, posing a potential fire and burn hazard
Hewlett-Packard will replace the cords for free.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nutanix tacks Cloud Connect onto Amazon’s cloudy back-end
Plus: New hyperconverged box adds grunt…
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/27/new_nutanix_box_adds_grunt/
Nutanix claims its new hyperconverged appliance is like a high-speed train compared to the narrow gauge railway run by its competitors. It can also take you to the cloud.
The company’s hyper-converged appliances feature four nodes in a scale-out appliance, just like VMware’s basic EVO: RAIL hardware design. They also provide a private cloud environment.
Nutanix claims this is a go-faster hardware spec compared with VMware’s EVO: RAIL node
Nutanix has also announced its Cloud Connect product: this integrates Amazon’s Web Services cloud with a Nutanix environment, so making a hybrid cloud offering. It provides data protection to Amazon with recovery from it, with – according to Nutanix – no need for any third-party hardware.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple Said to Prepare New 12.9-Inch IPad for Early 2015
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-26/apple-said-to-prepare-new-12-9-inch-ipad-for-early-2015.html
Apple Inc.’s suppliers are preparing to manufacture the company’s largest-ever iPad, with production scheduled to commence by the first quarter of next year, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Chrome 64-bit browser finally available as a stable version
64-bit browser claims better stability, performance, and security.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/08/chrome-64-bit-browser-finally-available-as-a-stable-version/
Google today released a 64-bit stable version of its Chrome browser for Windows systems. The 64-bit support has been in testing since June, and as of Chrome version 37 it has made it to the mainstream version.
The 64-bit version offers three main advantages and one possible drawback. The browser’s advantages are speed, security, and stability. Google claims that certain media and graphics workloads in particular are faster with 64-bit. It offers the example of VP9 video decoding—used for some YouTube high-definition streams—being 15 percent quicker compared to 32-bit.
Security is enhanced both through enabling new protection systems and making existing protection systems stronger.
Yet the 64-bit browser is missing one feature found in the 32-bit browser: support for the NPAPI plugin API. This means that some browser plugins (including both Silverlight and Java) will not work. Google intends to remove 32-bit NPAPI support at some point in the future, so this gap will not be permanent.
The 32-bit browser is still the default at the moment
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ars Technica System Guide: August 2014
The market may be in a bit of a lull, but the System Guide still finds improvements.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/08/ars-technica-system-guide-august-2014/
As opposed to our last edition, this month’s System Guide catches the market in a bit of a lull.
Next-generation GPUs and SSDs have yet to arrive, and the same story goes for CPUs from both AMD and Intel. While a few refreshed versions of existing products are floating around, most of the changes in this update are fairly minor. Even at the high end, things like 4K (3840×2160, aka “UltraHD” or UHD) monitors seem to be caught between major improvements at the moment.
The low end of the scale, the Budget Box, is still a capable gaming machine despite its reasonable price tag ($600-$800). A few bucks toward a decent discrete video card give it some punch for gaming, while sufficient CPU power and memory ensure it’s good for everything else.
For the short version: the Budget Box is for those who are seeking the most bang for their buck.
Standard Windows 8.1 does fine for most, while Windows 8.1 Professional includes additional features such as BitLocker, Remote Desktop Connection, and domain support that home users may not need.
God Box builders sticking with Windows will want at least Windows 7 Professional or Windows 8.1 Professional (for a desktop OS)
But if you do go the Linux route, Linux Mint, Ubuntu, Fedora, Mageia, Debian, Arch Linux, and tons of other options are around.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nutanix Lands $140M On $2B+ Valuation, IPO Could Be Next
http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/27/nutanix-lands-140m-on-2b-valuation-to-keep-growing-converged-infrastructure/
Nutanix, a five-year old converged infrastructure provider, announced $140M in Series E funding today, based on a whopping $2B+ valuation. The funding comes from the two biggest Boston public market investors
Nutanix is part of a growing converged infrastructure market that combines storage and compute power in a single box greatly reducing the space, power and cooling required to run it -and the overall cost of buying these items separately. How much? They claim they can take 10 ru boxes and compress them into just two, saving 20 to 50 percent
“Speed and agility comes from the simplicity of the solution. The data center has a lot of specialized devices for storage and networking,” he explained and Nutanix reduces that number in the same way the smartphone reduced the number of devices individuals have to carry.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sony Doesn’t Know Why The PS4 Is Doing Well
http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/20/sony-doesnt-know-why-the-ps4-is-doing-well/?ncid=rss&cps=gravity
Earlier this month, Sony announced that it has already sold 10 million units of its PlayStation 4 game console since its launch last November, a record-setting figure for the company’s hardware. In an interview with Eurogamer published yesterday, Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios President Shuhei Yoshida admitted that the company doesn’t really know why its console is doing so well in today’s gaming market.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ars Technica System Guide: Bargain Box, April 2014
And with today’s prices, Bargain Boxes can quickly become storage servers or HTPCs.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/04/ars-technica-system-guide-bargain-box-april-2014/
The Bargain Box is the most basic box in the hierarchy of Ars System Guide rigs. It has no intent beyond a minimalist goal—creating a solid, affordable, basic computer. Think of it as the basic “office” box or “mom/dad/grandparent” box, if you will.
Unfortunately, this places it squarely against the cheap, pre-built boxes from the big OEMs. Dell, HP, Lenovo, and their ilk all benefit from vast economies of scale that the individual builder could never hope to emulate. By the time the big OEMs add up hardware discounts alone, building a cheap computer yourself is at best a so-so idea in terms of value. Add in the cost of the operating system, and this really goes out the window.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Linus Torvalds told Linuxcon trade show willingness to continue to push Linux to people’s desktops.
Multiple large and important organization rely on Linux.
Perhaps the most famous proponent of linux is Google. Its employees’ desks can be found in Goobuntu OS. It is a version of Ubuntu.
If a Google employee wants to use Windows, it must be specifically applied for. According to Google, Windows has “special security problems” and also the tools are usually heavy and inflexible.
NASA: International Space Station Laptops traded last year from the XP machines to devices with running Debian 6. There will be dozens of laptops.
Linux has chosen the U.S. Department of Defense. The Ministry has developed its own version of Linux, which allows employees to safely join the systems in an otherwise insecure PC computers. Employees driving their own operating system drive or DVD-ROM.
European particle physics research at CERN has more than three thousand workstations, using a number of different Linux versions.
Linux’s share of all personal computers is still only about one and a half per cent.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1710:linux-kelpaa-naiden-tyopoydalle&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
AMD and Microsoft have announced the open source C ++ -compiler, which allows developers get even more powerful applications. Compiler is able to use the AMP extensions (ACCC ++ elerated Massive Parallelism), as well as Linux and Windows platforms.
AMP is a C ++ expansion and intended for applications that take advantage of the graphics processor computing power in servers, desktops and mobile devices.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1705:avoimella-c-lla-lisaa-tehoa-sovelluksiin&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Server sales began to rise
in EU area was sold in the second quarter of 2014 almost 555 thousand a servers. According to Gartner, 0.8 per cent growth in meant that the servers improved sales grew for the first time in 11 quarters.
HP is still the clear number one in Europe. In the second quarter, it sold 210 thousand servers, or just over $ 1.1 billion. Market share increased to almost 35 per cent.
Dell retained as a clear second condition and almost 22 per cent market share
The focus is clearly shifting from x86-based servers, sales of which grew by 12.7 per cent in the second quarter. UNIX-based servers at the same time sales shrank by nearly a quarter.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1702:palvelimien-myynti-lahti-nousuun&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
PC market in 2014 a bit less dire than previously thought
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2599883/pc-market-in-2014-a-bit-less-dire-than-previously-thought.html
Worldwide PC shipments will decline at a slower pace in 2014 than previously thought, as Chromebooks and Windows XP upgrades help drive new purchases, IDC said.
Global PC shipments will decline by 3.7 percent this year, IDC said, revising its previous forecast of a 6 percent decline. The new prediction came with a caveat, though: IDC says the future of the PC market is still “tenuous.”
IDC predicts PC shipments this year will reach 303.5 million [M], comprised of 133.5 million [M] desktops and 170 million [M] laptops. The market will do much better this year than in 2013, when shipments declined by 9.8 percent from 2012.
PCs with the older Windows XP OS are being upgraded in larger numbers, IDC said. Chromebook shipments are also growing, particularly in the education sector
Tomi Engdahl says:
Research Shows RISC vs. CISC Doesn’t Matter
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/14/08/28/1347240/research-shows-risc-vs-cisc-doesnt-matter
new research examining the performance of a variety of ARM, MIPS, and X86 processors gives weight to Intel’s conclusion: the benefits of a given ISA to the power envelope of a chip are minute.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The final ISA showdown: Is ARM, x86, or MIPS intrinsically more power efficient?
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/188396-the-final-isa-showdown-is-arm-x86-or-mips-intrinsically-more-power-efficient
One of the canards that’s regularly trotted out in discussions of ARM vs. x86 processors is the idea that ARM chips are intrinsically more power efficient thanks to fundamental differences in the ISA (instruction set architecture). A new research paper examines these claims using a variety of ARM cores as well as a Loongson MIPS microprocessor, Intel’s Atom and Sandy Bridge microarchitectures, and AMD’s Bobcat.
To be clear, the ISA can sometimes matter. The report notes that in certain, extremely specific cases where die sizes must be 1-2mm2 or power consumption is specced to sub-milliwatt levels, RISC microcontrollers can still have an advantage over their CISC brethren.
This mainly plays out at the microcontroller level — if you have a Cortex-A8 or above, the differences are entirely microarchitectural.
Companies that try to claim RISC still has enormous benefits over x86 at higher performance levels are explicitly ignoring the fact that RISC and CISC are terms that describe design strategies and that those strategies were formed in response to technological limitations of the day.
Meanwhile, RISC chips could run at significantly higher clocks than their CISC counterparts thanks to reduced complexity — but that’s no longer true today. In the modern era, process technology controls clock speed, not one’s choice of RISC vs. CISC, and we’re bumping against the fundamental limits of silicon for any architecture.
Factor in the myriad advances that both design philosophies have incorporated, and the old terms simply aren’t accurate any longer. The first RISC chips looked nothing like their CISC counterparts, whereas today a Core i7 and Cortex-A57 have far more in common. Decades of experience have led designers to adopt strategies and structures that work, even if the underlying ISA is different.
Another reason this myth persists is that compiler choices and optimizations introduce enormous confounding variables.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Pay to play: The hidden cost of software defined everything
Enter credit card details if you want that system you bought to actually be useful
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/28/why_sdn_means_more_pay_to_play/
Unlocking additional functionality used to be restricted to game play, but now it’s spreading into more mainstream IT applications.
Bought the hardware? That’s just the beginning…
The thing that is enabling makers of tech to withhold features on pain of payment is software, and with more appliances and devices becoming software defined, the chatter at this week’s VMworld, we are sleepwalking into a world were buying a device is only the first step on an endless treadmill of paying to simply turn on more features.
In other words: Pay to play, for everything. No exceptions.
Remember Big Blue’s golden screwdriver?
It goes back through generations to the IBM “golden-screwdriver” upgrades. Golden-screwdriver upgrades were a practice on old IBM hardware where the computing giant would initially ship a larger than required system to a customer with additional RAM and CPU capacity.
Sometimes pay to play works in your favour
Tomi Engdahl says:
Relieving SQL Join Pain
http://blog.foundationdb.com/relieving-sql-join-pain
If you’ve built an application that stores its data in a relational database like MySQL or PostgreSQL, then you’ve likely run into situations where joining two or more large tables becomes very slow and painful. Because our SQL Layer stores its underlying data in our Key-Value Store, it has a unique feature called “Table Groups” that alleviates painful joins and allows your application to stay speedy.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tim Cook: I’m NOT worried about CRAP iPad sales. It’s just a ‘speedbump’
‘We couldn’t be happier with how we’ve done’
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/27/tim_cook_this_aint_peak_apple_its_just_a_humpy_speedbump_ti/
Tim Cook has claimed the slowdown in fondleslab sales is not a sign of Apple’s imminent demise, but merely a “speedbump” along the path to tablet world domination.
Both Apple and arch-rival Samsung have been experiencing poor tablet sales, with partners of the South Korean firm sitting on some 300,000 units that no one wants to buy.
But this isn’t the end, Cook insists. Tablets will rule the world – we just need to be patient.
“We couldn’t be happier with how we’ve done with the first four years of the iPad,” Cook said. “I’d call what’s going on recently a speed bump, and I’ve seen that in every category.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Like condoms, data now comes in big and HUGE sizes
Linux Foundation lights a fire under storage devs with new conference
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/29/like_condoms_data_now_comes_in_big_and_huge_sizes/
If condoms were made in a range of different sizes, the old joke goes, the options would be “huge”, “gigantic” and “enormous”.
We mention the joke in reference to The Linux Foundation’s decision to create a new conference, called “Vault”, to “… bring together the world’s leading developers in filesystems and storage in the Linux kernel with related projects to collaborate on continued innovation and education”.
Linux Foundation chief marketing officer Amanda McPherson says the conference is needed because “90% of the world’s data has been created in the last few years”, most of it managed under Linux, but the time is now to plan “new methods of improving capacity, efficiency and security to manage the huge data volumes envisioned in the coming years.”
What is certain is that plenty of colossal storage concerns are standing to attention ahead of the event: Facebook, IBM, NetApp, Omnibond, Red Hat, SanDisk, Seagate, and SUSE are “founding supporters”, while representatives of EMC, Google and SUSE are on the shindig’s organising committee.
Tomi Engdahl says:
PHP 5.6.0 Released
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/14/08/28/1732221/php-560-released
The PHP team has announced the release of PHP 5.6.0. New features include constant scalar expressions, exponentiation using the ** operator, function and constant importing with the use keyword, support for file uploads larger than 2 GB, and phpdbg as an interactive integrated debugger SAPI.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Brian Stevens to Step Down as CTO of Red Hat
http://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/brian-stevens-step-down-cto-red-hat
RALEIGH, N.C. — August 27, 2014 —
Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that Brian Stevens will step down as CTO.
“We want to thank Brian for his years of service and numerous contributions to Red Hat’s business. We wish him well in his future endeavors,” said Jim Whitehurst, President and CEO of Red Hat.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tablet shipments forecast slashed by half as Western markets slow
http://www.zdnet.com/tablet-shipments-forecast-slashed-by-half-as-western-markets-slow-7000033127/
Summary: IDC’s latest estimates show mature markets are leveling off, but emerging markets could still power some significant growth.
There are likely to be fewer tablets shipped this year than previously expected, according to latest estimates.
Research firm IDC lowered its tablet projections on Friday for the full year down to 233 million shipments. That’s a 6.5 percent year-over-year growth rate, compared to the 12.1 percent growth rate previously expected.
While Western markets are seeing flat growth for 2014, the rest of the world — including emerging and developing markets — will see a 12 percent growth. That’s because smaller tablets in the less-than-8-inches size are becoming increasingly popular, thanks to a lower average selling point.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Yahoo Stops New Development On YUI
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/08/31/188246/yahoo-stops-new-development-on-yui
Yahoo announced that they will cease new development on their javascript framework YUI, bowing to industry trends towards Node.js, Angular, and others.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Important Announcement Regarding YUI
http://yahooeng.tumblr.com/post/96098168666/important-announcement-regarding-yui
The Yahoo User Interface library (YUI) has been in use at Yahoo since 2005, and was first announced to the public on February 13, 2006. Although it has evolved tremendously since that time, YUI has always served the same overarching purpose of providing a comprehensive toolkit to make it easier for developers to create rich web applications.
As most of you know, the web platform has been undergoing a drastic transformation over the past few years. JavaScript is now more ubiquitous than ever. The emergence of Node.JS has allowed JavaScript to be used on the server side, opening the door to creating isomorphic single page applications. New package managers (npm, bower) have spurred the rise of an ecosystem of 3rd party, open source, single-purpose tools that complement each other, embracing the UNIX philosophy and enabling very complex development use cases. New build tools (Grunt and its ecosystem of plugins, Broccoli, Gulp) have made it easier to assemble those tiny modules into large, cohesive applications. New application frameworks (Backbone, React, Ember, Polymer, Angular, etc.) have helped architect web applications in a more scalable and maintainable way. New testing tools (Mocha, Casper, Karma, etc.) have lowered the barrier of entry to building a solid continuous delivery pipeline. Standard bodies (W3C, Ecma) are standardizing what the large JavaScript frameworks have brought to the table over the years, making them available natively to a larger number of devices. Finally, browser vendors are now committed to making continuous improvements to their web browsers while aligning more closely with standards. With so called “evergreen web browsers”, which are making it easier for users to run the latest stable version of a web browser, we can expect a significant reduction in the amount of variance across user agents.
The consequence of this evolution in web technologies is that large JavaScript libraries, such as YUI, have been receiving less attention from the community. Many developers today look at large JavaScript libraries as walled gardens they don’t want to be locked into.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wonderful wizard of WOS daddy DDN moves into big data
We’re talking profits, baby
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/01/ddn_moves_into_big_data/
HPC and supercomputer storage company Data Direct Networks (DDN) says its move into enterprise big data is providing a bridge to profits, with 100 per cent revenue growth.
DDN says it is profitable too.
Big data arrays have a relatively simply job in mission terms: keep up with data growth, write and read data fast, and don’t lose any data. Doing that with arrays that scale out past tens of petabytes towards exabyte levels is hard.
Tomi Engdahl says:
China gives Microsoft 20 days to respond to competition probe
http://www.zdnet.com/china-gives-microsoft-20-days-to-respond-to-competition-probe-7000033166/
Summary: Microsoft gets a three week deadline to come up with an explanation for “compatibility issues” in Windows and Office that could violate Chinese competition laws.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How to grill an American VC… on the storage upstart world
Battery Ventures VC looks at SanDisk
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/01/battery_ventures_vc_looks_at_sandisk/
How do VCs view the storage startup world? Willem ter Harmsel talks to Alex Benik, a partner at Battery Ventures, where he focuses on IT infrastructure technologies. He previously worked for the Yankee Group.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tech kingpins: Your kit would be tastier with a spot of open source
Come on EMC, open-source ViPR
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/01/an_opening_is_needed/
s storage infrastructure companies try to move to a more software oriented world, they are having to try different things to try to grab our business.
In today’s world, tin is not the differentiator and they need to compete head-on with open source – which might mean they have to take a more open-source type approach. Of course, they will argue that they have been moving this way with some of their products for some time, but said products have tended to be outside of their key infrastructure market.
The only way I can see software-defined products like EMC’s ViPR gaining any kind of penetration will be for the big companies that make them to actually open-source them. There is a strong demand for a ViPR-like product, especially in the arena of storage management, but it is far too easy for EMC’s competitors to ignore it and subtly block it. So for it to gain any kind of traction, it will need open-sourcing.
The same goes for ScaleIO, which is competing against a number of open-source products.
If EMC is not quite ready for such a radical step, perhaps the first move could be a commercial free-to-use licence
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ask Slashdot: Linux-Friendly Desktop x86 Motherboard Manufacturers?
http://ask.slashdot.org/story/14/09/01/2340241/ask-slashdot-linux-friendly-desktop-x86-motherboard-manufacturers
I discovered a pair of horror stories on Phoronix about the difficulties of using Linux on a multitude of motherboards. My question: if MSI, Gigabyte, Asus (and by extension Asrock) are out, who’s left and are they any good?
Comments:
They’re about as vanilla as it’s possible to get, which is what you have to do to get anything working with minimal kernel module hacking.
MSI X99 boards at least claim SteamOS compatibility out of the box.
I’ve built about 9 computers in the past 4 years and have run various flavors of Linux on all of them (mostly LTS builds of Ubuntu), and I’ve never had compatibility problems with the motherboard. Nowadays nobody can really afford not to support Linux, so I think the important thing is to wait a little while for the chipset drivers to get integrated into the newest builds of the Linux kernel, and then go from there. I’ve had issues with USB 3.0 support for an older CentOS version, but overall everything works for the most part. Linux even works better out of the box than a clean install of Windows 7 sometimes