Here are comes my long list of computer technology trends for 2015:
Digitalisation is coming to change all business sectors and through our daily work even more than before. Digitalisation also changes the IT sector: Traditional software package are moving rapidly into the cloud. Need to own or rent own IT infrastructure is dramatically reduced. Automation application for configuration and monitoring will be truly possible. Workloads software implementation projects will be reduced significantly as software is a need to adjust less. Traditional IT outsourcing is definitely threatened. The security management is one of the key factors to change as security threats are increasingly digital world. IT sector digitalisation simply means: “more cheaper and better.”
The phrase “Communications Transforming Business” is becoming the new normal. The pace of change in enterprise communications and collaboration is very fast. A new set of capabilities, empowered by the combination of Mobility, the Cloud, Video, software architectures and Unified Communications, is changing expectations for what IT can deliver.
Global Citizenship: Technology Is Rapidly Dissolving National Borders. Besides your passport, what really defines your nationality these days? Is it where you were live? Where you work? The language you speak? The currency you use? If it is, then we may see the idea of “nationality” quickly dissolve in the decades ahead. Language, currency and residency are rapidly being disrupted and dematerialized by technology. Increasingly, technological developments will allow us to live and work almost anywhere on the planet… (and even beyond). In my mind, a borderless world will be a more creative, lucrative, healthy, and frankly, exciting one. Especially for entrepreneurs.
The traditional enterprise workflow is ripe for huge change as the focus moves away from working in a single context on a single device to the workflow being portable and contextual. InfoWorld’s executive editor, Galen Gruman, has coined a phrase for this: “liquid computing.” The increase in productivity is promised be stunning, but the loss of control over data will cross an alarming threshold for many IT professionals.
Mobile will be used more and more. Currently, 49 percent of businesses across North America adopt between one and ten mobile applications, indicating a significant acceptance of these solutions. Embracing mobility promises to increase visibility and responsiveness in the supply chain when properly leveraged. Increased employee productivity and business process efficiencies are seen as key business impacts.
The Internet of things is a big, confusing field waiting to explode. Answer a call or go to a conference these days, and someone is likely trying to sell you on the concept of the Internet of things. However, the Internet of things doesn’t necessarily involve the Internet, and sometimes things aren’t actually on it, either.
The next IT revolution will come from an emerging confluence of Liquid computing plus the Internet of things. Those the two trends are connected — or should connect, at least. If we are to trust on consultants, are in sweet spot for significant change in computing that all companies and users should look forward to.
Cloud will be talked a lot and taken more into use. Cloud is the next-generation of supply chain for IT. A global survey of executives predicted a growing shift towards third party providers to supplement internal capabilities with external resources. CIOs are expected to adopt a more service-centric enterprise IT model. Global business spending for infrastructure and services related to the cloud will reach an estimated $174.2 billion in 2014 (up a 20% from $145.2 billion in 2013), and growth will continue to be fast (“By 2017, enterprise spending on the cloud will amount to a projected $235.1 billion, triple the $78.2 billion in 2011“).
The rapid growth in mobile, big data, and cloud technologies has profoundly changed market dynamics in every industry, driving the convergence of the digital and physical worlds, and changing customer behavior. It’s an evolution that IT organizations struggle to keep up with.To success in this situation there is need to combine traditional IT with agile and web-scale innovation. There is value in both the back-end operational systems and the fast-changing world of user engagement. You are now effectively operating two-speed IT (bimodal IT, two-speed IT, or traditional IT/agile IT). You need a new API-centric layer in the enterprise stack, one that enables two-speed IT.
As Robots Grow Smarter, American Workers Struggle to Keep Up. Although fears that technology will displace jobs are at least as old as the Luddites, there are signs that this time may really be different. The technological breakthroughs of recent years — allowing machines to mimic the human mind — are enabling machines to do knowledge jobs and service jobs, in addition to factory and clerical work. Automation is not only replacing manufacturing jobs, it is displacing knowledge and service workers too.
In many countries IT recruitment market is flying, having picked up to a post-recession high. Employers beware – after years of relative inactivity, job seekers are gearing up for change. Economic improvements and an increase in business confidence have led to a burgeoning jobs market and an epidemic of itchy feet.
Hopefully the IT department is increasingly being seen as a profit rather than a cost centre with IT budgets commonly split between keeping the lights on and spend on innovation and revenue-generating projects. Historically IT was about keeping the infrastructure running and there was no real understanding outside of that, but the days of IT being locked in a basement are gradually changing.CIOs and CMOs must work more closely to increase focus on customers next year or risk losing market share, Forrester Research has warned.
Good questions to ask: Where do you see the corporate IT department in five years’ time? With the consumerization of IT continuing to drive employee expectations of corporate IT, how will this potentially disrupt the way companies deliver IT? What IT process or activity is the most important in creating superior user experiences to boost user/customer satisfaction?
Windows Server 2003 goes end of life in summer 2015 (July 14 2015). There are millions of servers globally still running the 13 year-old OS with one in five customers forecast to miss the 14 July deadline when Microsoft turns off extended support. There were estimated to be 2.7 million WS2003 servers in operation in Europe some months back. This will keep the system administrators busy, because there is just around half year time and update for Windows Server 2008 or Windows 2012 to may be have difficulties. Microsoft and support companies do not seem to be interested in continuing Windows Server 2003 support, so those who need that the custom pricing can be ” incredibly expensive”. At this point is seems that many organizations have the desire for new architecture and consider one option to to move the servers to cloud.
Windows 10 is coming to PCs and Mobile devices. Just few months back Microsoft unveiled a new operating system Windows 10. The new Windows 10 OS is designed to run across a wide range of machines, including everything from tiny “internet of things” devices in business offices to phones, tablets, laptops, and desktops to computer servers. Windows 10 will have exactly the same requirements as Windows 8.1 (same minimum PC requirements that have existed since 2006: 1GHz, 32-bit chip with just 1GB of RAM). There is technical review available. Microsoft says to expect AWESOME things of Windows 10 in January. Microsoft will share more about the Windows 10 ‘consumer experience’ at an event on January 21 in Redmond and is expected to show Windows 10 mobile SKU at the event.
Microsoft is going to monetize Windows differently than earlier.Microsoft Windows has made headway in the market for low-end laptops and tablets this year by reducing the price it charges device manufacturers, charging no royalty on devices with screens of 9 inches or less. That has resulted in a new wave of Windows notebooks in the $200 price range and tablets in the $99 price range. The long-term success of the strategy against Android tablets and Chromebooks remains to be seen.
Microsoft is pushing Universal Apps concept. Microsoft has announced Universal Windows Apps, allowing a single app to run across Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 for the first time, with additional support for Xbox coming. Microsoft promotes a unified Windows Store for all Windows devices. Windows Phone Store and Windows Store would be unified with the release of Windows 10.
Under new CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft realizes that, in the modern world, its software must run on more than just Windows. Microsoft has already revealed Microsoft office programs for Apple iPad and iPhone. It also has email client compatible on both iOS and Android mobile operating systems.
With Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome grabbing so much of the desktop market—and Apple Safari, Google Chrome, and Google’s Android browser dominating the mobile market—Internet Explorer is no longer the force it once was. Microsoft May Soon Replace Internet Explorer With a New Web Browser article says that Microsoft’s Windows 10 operating system will debut with an entirely new web browser code-named Spartan. This new browser is a departure from Internet Explorer, the Microsoft browser whose relevance has waned in recent years.
SSD capacity has always lag well behind hard disk drives (hard disks are in 6TB and 8TB territory while SSDs were primarily 256GB to 512GB). Intel and Micron will try to kill the hard drives with new flash technologies. Intel announced it will begin offering 3D NAND drives in the second half of next year as part of its joint flash venture with Micron. Later (next two years) Intel promises 10TB+ SSDs thanks to 3D Vertical NAND flash memory. Also interfaces to SSD are evolving from traditional hard disk interfaces. PCIe flash and NVDIMMs will make their way into shared storage devices more in 2015. The ULLtraDIMM™ SSD connects flash storage to the memory channel via standard DIMM slots, in order to close the gap between storage devices and system memory (less than five microseconds write latency at the DIMM level).
Hard disks will be still made in large amounts in 2015. It seems that NAND is not taking over the data centre immediately. The huge great problem is $/GB. Estimates of shipped disk and SSD capacity out to 2018 shows disk growing faster than flash. The world’s ability to make and ship SSDs is falling behind its ability to make and ship disk drives – for SSD capacity to match disk by 2018 we would need roughly eight times more flash foundry capacity than we have. New disk technologies such as shingling, TDMR and HAMR are upping areal density per platter and bringing down cost/GB faster than NAND technology can. At present solid-state drives with extreme capacities are very expensive. I expect that with 2015, the prices for SSD will will still be so much higher than hard disks, that everybody who needs to store large amounts of data wants to consider SSD + hard disk hybrid storage systems.
PC sales, and even laptops, are down, and manufacturers are pulling out of the market. The future is all about the device. We have entered the post-PC era so deeply, that even tablet market seem to be saturating as most people who want one have already one. The crazy years of huge tables sales growth are over. The tablet shipment in 2014 was already quite low (7.2% In 2014 To 235.7M units). There is no great reasons or growth or decline to be seen in tablet market in 2015, so I expect it to be stable. IDC expects that iPad Sees First-Ever Decline, and I expect that also because the market seems to be more and more taken by Android tablets that have turned to be “good enough”. Wearables, Bitcoin or messaging may underpin the next consumer computing epoch, after the PC, internet, and mobile.
There will be new tiny PC form factors coming. Intel is shrinking PCs to thumb-sized “compute sticks” that will be out next year. The stick will plug into the back of a smart TV or monitor “and bring intelligence to that”. It is likened the compute stick to similar thumb PCs that plug to HDMI port and are offered by PC makers with the Android OS and ARM processor (for example Wyse Cloud Connect and many cheap Android sticks). Such devices typically don’t have internal storage, but can be used to access files and services in the cloud. Intel expects that sticks size PC market will grow to tens of millions of devices.
We have entered the Post-Microsoft, post-PC programming: The portable REVOLUTION era. Tablets and smart phones are fine for consuming information: a great way to browse the web, check email, stay in touch with friends, and so on. But what does a post-PC world mean for creating things? If you’re writing platform-specific mobile apps in Objective C or Java then no, the iPad alone is not going to cut it. You’ll need some kind of iPad-to-server setup in which your iPad becomes a mythical thin client for the development environment running on your PC or in cloud. If, however, you’re working with scripting languages (such as Python and Ruby) or building web-based applications, the iPad or other tablet could be an useable development environment. At least worth to test.
You need prepare to learn new languages that are good for specific tasks. Attack of the one-letter programming languages: From D to R, these lesser-known languages tackle specific problems in ways worthy of a cult following. Watch out! The coder in the next cubicle might have been bitten and infected with a crazy-eyed obsession with a programming language that is not Java and goes by the mysterious one letter name. Each offers compelling ideas that could do the trick in solving a particular problem you need fixed.
HTML5′s “Dirty Little Secret”: It’s Already Everywhere, Even In Mobile. Just look under the hood. “The dirty little secret of native [app] development is that huge swaths of the UIs we interact with every day are powered by Web technologies under the hood.” When people say Web technology lags behind native development, what they’re really talking about is the distribution model. It’s not that the pace of innovation on the Web is slower, it’s just solving a problem that is an order of magnitude more challenging than how to build and distribute trusted apps for a single platform. Efforts like the Extensible Web Manifesto have been largely successful at overhauling the historically glacial pace of standardization. Vine is a great example of a modern JavaScript app. It’s lightning fast on desktop and on mobile, and shares the same codebase for ease of maintenance.
Docker, meet hype. Hype, meet Docker. Docker: Sorry, you’re just going to have to learn about it. Containers aren’t a new idea, and Docker isn’t remotely the only company working on productising containers. It is, however, the one that has captured hearts and minds. Docker containers are supported by very many Linux systems. And it is not just only Linux anymore as Docker’s app containers are coming to Windows Server, says Microsoft. Containerization lets you do is launch multiple applications that share the same OS kernel and other system resources but otherwise act as though they’re running on separate machines. Each is sandboxed off from the others so that they can’t interfere with each other. What Docker brings to the table is an easy way to package, distribute, deploy, and manage containerized applications.
Domestic Software is on rise in China. China is Planning to Purge Foreign Technology and Replace With Homegrown Suppliers. China is aiming to purge most foreign technology from banks, the military, state-owned enterprises and key government agencies by 2020, stepping up efforts to shift to Chinese suppliers, according to people familiar with the effort. In tests workers have replaced Microsoft Corp.’s Windows with a homegrown operating system called NeoKylin (FreeBSD based desktop O/S). Dell Commercial PCs to Preinstall NeoKylin in China. The plan for changes is driven by national security concerns and marks an increasingly determined move away from foreign suppliers. There are cases of replacing foreign products at all layers from application, middleware down to the infrastructure software and hardware. Foreign suppliers may be able to avoid replacement if they share their core technology or give China’s security inspectors access to their products. The campaign could have lasting consequences for U.S. companies including Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO), International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), Intel Corp. (INTC) and Hewlett-Packard Co. A key government motivation is to bring China up from low-end manufacturing to the high end.
Data center markets will grow. MarketsandMarkets forecasts the data center rack server market to grow from $22.01 billion in 2014 to $40.25 billion by 2019, at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.17%. North America (NA) is expected to be the largest region for the market’s growth in terms of revenues generated, but Asia-Pacific (APAC) is also expected to emerge as a high-growth market.
The rising need for virtualized data centers and incessantly increasing data traffic is considered as a strong driver for the global data center automation market. The SDDC comprises software defined storage (SDS), software defined networking (SDN) and software defined server/compute, wherein all the three components of networking are empowered by specialized controllers, which abstract the controlling plane from the underlying physical equipment. This controller virtualizes the network, server and storage capabilities of a data center, thereby giving a better visibility into data traffic routing and server utilization.
Large data center operators will be using more and more of their own custom hardware instead of standard PC from traditional computer manufacturers. Intel Betting on (Customized) Commodity Chips for Cloud Computing and it expects that Over half the chips Intel will sell to public clouds in 2015 will have custom designs. The biggest public clouds (Amazon Web Services, Google Compute, Microsoft Azure),other big players (like Facebook or China’s Baidu) and other public clouds (like Twitter and eBay) all have huge data centers that they want to run optimally. Companies like A.W.S. “are running a million servers, so floor space, power, cooling, people — you want to optimize everything”. That is why they want specialized chips. Customers are willing to pay a little more for the special run of chips. While most of Intel’s chips still go into PCs, about one-quarter of Intel’s revenue, and a much bigger share of its profits, come from semiconductors for data centers. In the first nine months of 2014, the average selling price of PC chips fell 4 percent, but the average price on data center chips was up 10 percent.
We have seen GPU acceleration taken in to wider use. Special servers and supercomputer systems have long been accelerated by moving the calculation of the graphics processors. The next step in acceleration will be adding FPGA to accelerate x86 servers. FPGAs provide a unique combination of highly parallel custom computation, relatively low manufacturing/engineering costs, and low power requirements. FPGA circuits may provide a lot more power out of a much lower power consumption, but traditionally programming then has been time consuming. But this can change with the introduction of new tools (just next step from technologies learned from GPU accelerations). Xilinx has developed a SDAccel-tools to to develop algorithms in C, C ++ – and OpenCL languages and translated it to FPGA easily. IBM and Xilinx have already demoed FPGA accelerated systems. Microsoft is also doing research on Accelerating Applications with FPGAs.
Universal Memory for Instant-On Computing will be talked about. New memory technologies promise to be strong contenders for replacing the entire memory hierarchy for instant-on operation in computers. HP is working with memristor memories that are promised to be akin to RAM but can hold data without power. The memristor is also denser than DRAM, the current RAM technology used for main memory. According to HP, it is 64 and 128 times denser, in fact. You could very well have a 512 GB memristor RAM in the near future. HP has what it calls “The Machine”, practically a researcher’s plaything for experimenting on emerging computer technologies. Hewlett-Packard’s ambitious plan to reinvent computing will begin with the release of a prototype operating system in 2015 (Linux++, in June 2015). HP must still make significant progress in both software and hardware to make its new computer a reality. A working prototype of The Machine should be ready by 2016.
Chip designs that enable everything from a 6 Gbit/s smartphone interface to the world’s smallest SRAM cell will be described at the International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in February 2015. Intel will describe a Xeon processor packing 5.56 billion transistors, and AMD will disclose an integrated processor sporting a new x86 core, according to a just-released preview of the event. The annual ISSCC covers the waterfront of chip designs that enable faster speeds, longer battery life, more performance, more memory, and interesting new capabilities. There will be many presentations on first designs made in 16 and 14 nm FinFET processes at IBM, Samsung, and TSMC.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Lenovo exec: Yes we can get IBM’s server biz out of the crapper
It’s the three R’s: Restructure, restructure, restructure
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/24/lenovo_cador_x86_server/
Lenovo Europe president Eric Cador is banking on a major overhaul of its enterprise supply chain – among other things – to help the x86 business it acquired from IBM “recover” lost ground.
In the UK alone, IBM’s revenue share slumped to $31m by Q4 ’14 from $61m in the prior year’s quarter, caused by the uncertainty surrounding the business in a deal that took months to close.
It was a tough year for IBM’s Intel server sales, El Chan commented. “Yes, very bad,” he told us. “It varies by country but it was 40 to 50 per cent [down].
IBM shipped servers to Europe by air, which partly explains why rivals including HP and Dell gave Big Blue a beating in the price-sensitive volume segment of the market.
For the mid-market products, Lenovo will ship them by sea. “You can do sea shipments and local integration. But to ship enterprise, complex or specialised servers by sea and wait six week? No,” Cador explained.
“It works for consumer, partially works for commercial PCs and for [mid-market] servers. We are in the process of adjusting the supply chain,” he said.
“If you wart to manage a best-in-class sales force there are a set of things you need to do – customer mapping, channel partnerships, a sales curriculum and CRM usage,” he said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Směrť Špionam! BAN Windows 10, it SPIES too much, exclaim Russians
Nyet to Redmondian probe tentacles up our ass
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/24/win_russia_privacy_controversy/
Russian lawyers have filed a complaint calling for an outright ban – or at least tight restrictions – over the sale of Windows 10 in Russia.
The complaint to the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office argues that Windows 10 collects user information in a way that violates Russian laws. Moscow-based Bubnov and Partners contended that the collection of passwords, location data, typed texts and browsing history and the uploading of the information to Microsoft’s cloud violate Russian privacy legislation.
A Communist Party deputy in the Russian Duma (parliament), Vadim Solovyov, also called for the Prosecutor General’s Office to review Microsoft’s technology, over concerns that Windows 10 is spying on its users.
However a local IT trade group, the Russian Association for Electronic Communications, defended Microsoft’s technology. It pointed out that Windows 10 has flexible settings and argued that it doesn’t violate local privacy laws. The association has put out an advisory explaining how users can change default settings to improve privacy.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Insiders BAFFLED: HP split-up inexplicably NOT a disaster
Worried channel types mutter over bizarre, unnatural non-cockup
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2015/08/24/hp_split/
The separation of HP, the biggest ever of its kind in tech corporate history – with a similarly enormous potential for disaster – is going through without any operational explosions, dumfounded insiders familiar with the process have told the Register.
From this month, the US monster split the PC and print business from the rest of the organisation, and stopped shipping product during the first week as it began the “operational transition”.
Another said the upheaval was “remarkably small” given the size of the task. “I am pleasantly surprised. I said in July that if HP’s problems were limited to not shipping for a week that would have been one helluva achievement.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ex-Google Engineers Promise Ultra-Low Cost Android PC
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1327490&
Run all your favourite Android apps like on a smartphone, yet benefit from all the productivity tools commonly found on today’s PCs by plugging a palm-sized $49 box to your favourite display, mouse and keyboard: that’s the pledge of three ex-Google engineers on their Remix Mini kickstarter campaign.
Built around a 1.2GHz quad-core Cortex-A53 processor, the ellipse-shaped 124mm long and 88mm wide Android PC, only 26mm thick, runs on Remix OS, a custom engineered version of Android Lollipop developed by Jide Technology. The small box packs Ethernet, WiFi, Bluetooth, and USB connectivity options and will run under 10 watts, drawing an order of magnitude less power than what most desktop computers would consume today by leveraging existing power efficiencies found in mobile CPU architectures.
Tomi Engdahl says:
18 Views of #IDF15
Intel amps up the energy level
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1327493&
BMX bikes instrumented with Intel Curie modules entertained attendees.
Jelena Jovanovic (above), co-founder of Nixie Labs, shows the wearable drone that won $500,000 in Intel’s 2014 “Make It Wearable” design contest. Users toss it into the air and an onboard camera takes a selfie before it sails back to the user like a boomerang.
Intel is ratcheting up the competition, creating “America’s Greatest Makers” in 2016 with United Artists Media.
In a data center mega-session, Intel announced Discovery Peak (above), an open source analytics platform based on Hadoop and Spark that it has been quietly working on for three years. The project is a follow on to a streaming SQL open source project Intel developed which is now in use by China’s JD.com which claims to be the world’s second largest retailer.
One of the first big applications for Discovery Peak is a new cloud service for securely sharing genomic data among participating cancer centers.
Intel will make open source the components of the genomic cloud service early next year, hoping it becomes a model for handling genomic treatments for other diseases.
Intel announced a set of services that ride on top of the Trusted Computing Group’s hardware root of trust. Enhanced Privacy ID (EPID) enables secure groups including members who can remain anonymous, such as patients in a clinical trial.
Atmel and Microchip licensed the technology which requires the equivalent of a Trusted Platform Module.
In a keynote segment devoted to IoT, Intel showed the Nabi smart clip for a baby seat (above) that links to a parent’s smartphone via Bluetooth. “Don’t ever share the stage with a cute baby,” quipped CEO Krzanich.
He also showed the Memomi MemoryMirror (below) that uses Intel’s RealSense depth camera to let shoppers virtually try out clothes and connect over social networks
The Android tablet (above) is based on an Intel Atom x3 SoC aka Sofia that helps drive the cost of the device down as low as $50.
Outside the exhibition center, Intel demoed what looked like Google Cardboard, a box designed to turn a smartphone into a virtual reality viewer (above). The demo showcases a new VR application framework from Intel called INDE geared to work with Android, iOS or Windows.
David Blythe, director of graphics architecture at Intel (above), described a new high-end version of integrated graphics he helped design for Skylake, Intel’s latest PC processor. Intel dedicates as much as half the die area of its client SoCs to graphics these days in its attempts to close the gap with discrete chips from rivals such as AMD and Nvidia.
Mark Bohr said Intel aims to ship its first 10nm Candle Lake parts in 2017, a 2.5-year lag from its introduction of its first 14nm chips.
Ericsson came to IDF showing its first rack-mounted servers (below). One of their unique attributes is use of a 100 Gbit/second optical backplane. Ericsson said the optics, already in use in its existing telco servers, will help future-proof the systems which target big data centers. SK in Korea will pilot the systems next year.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Fanless mini PC consumes just 5W
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/other/4440168/Fanless-mini-PC-consumes-just-5W?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150824&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150824&elq=d3f893eff6134003a87b0a3a84b8cdde&elqCampaignId=24495&elqaid=27689&elqat=1&elqTrackId=627963a7ae4341a4a121f779c689f14b
Giada Technology offers the F200 mini PC, an ultracompact, low-power unit for thin client, digital signage, and industrial control applications. Within its 4.6×4.2×1.2-in. metal chassis, the fanless F200 packs 2 Gbytes of DDR3 DRAM and 8 Gbytes or 16 Gbytes of eMMC flash soldered directly on the board. It requires just 5 W of power at full load, compared to most desktop PCs using 100 W or more.
The F200 occupies minimal desktop real estate and can easily fit on the back of a display or monitor using a VESA mount for a clean installation. Powered by an Intel Celeron N2807 dual-core processor running at up to 2.16 GHz, the fanless F200 generates little heat and resists shock and vibration. The computer runs under Android, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Linux operating systems and includes an mSATA II slot for adding a solid-state drive.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Munich to switch back to Windows?
Munich received a fair amount of fame in 2004 when it disposes of Windows and the shift to linux use. This was applied for the annual up to EUR 10 million in savings. News Now covered in Bavaria, the city’s IT crowd – and in particular older wing – would like to move back to Windows.
Fair 10 years ago in the city of Munich 15 000 employees switched to Windows NT and Office 97 on a custom linux, whose name was limux. Office Documents began to produce a sharpened version of Open Office, and moved to Gimp for the handling of images.
Now in the IT Committee of the two older members have approached the mayor Dieter Reiter, a letter, which bemoans the problems caused by linux. Users have complained that the current machines fail a word and Skype video calls.
This, of course, sounds a bit strange, because PCs are equipped OpenOffice and Skype works on Linux just fine. The biggest gripe, however, is that the compatibility of the documents produced in linux with those produced by other organizations, Microsoft Office documents on may never know.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3230:m-nchen-vaihtaa-takaisin-windowsiin&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel shrunk the motherboard
Intel enthused last week’s developer meeting in the Internet of Things, mobile robots and reality show programs, but humun below it also introduced some interesting new techniques. One of the most interesting is the new motherboard format that Intel has given a name to 5×5.
The name comes from the disc Inch. Cents new plate has a size of 147 x 140 millimeters. It takes place in the mini-ITX between the EU and of Intel’s board of smaller computers. 5×5 is also the smallest motherboard, which can be selected from the LGA socket for the processor as needed.
Intel’s own estimates, the 5×5 board can be used to build a capacity of less than one liter a full computer.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3235:intel-kutisti-emolevyn&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
The decline of Flash is well and truly underway. Media publishers now have no choice but to start changing the way they bring content to the web. Many of them are not thrilled about the proposition (change is scary), but it will almost certainly be better for all of us in the long run. “By switching their platform to HTML5, companies can improve supportability, development time will decrease and the duplicative efforts of supporting two code bases will be eliminated.
Farewell To Flash: What It Means For Digital Video Publishers
http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/23/farewell-to-flash-what-it-means-for-digital-video-publishers/#.ojwuxm:hzaa
It’s been more than five years since Steve Jobs wrote his infamous “Thoughts on Flash” letter citing the high level of energy consumption, lack of performance on mobile and poor security as the reasons his company’s products would not support Adobe Flash technology. Finally, it appears we’re getting closer to the curtain closing on Flash.
Not too long ago, Flash powered a high percentage of the Internet’s vast array of video content. Today, that number is lower. But make no mistake, there are still many Flash-powered multimedia items on the web, including graphics, videos, games and animations, like GIFs, a preferred method of expression for millennials and adults alike.
We’ve been watching HTML5 impede on Flash for a while, and it’s now taking center stage, establishing itself as a predominant creative format, validated by the recent moves by Google and Mozilla that are only helping to accelerate that transition.
What Does The Change Mean For Publishers?
In spite of all this, for digital-video publishers, excitement may not be the initial emotion evoked by Flash‘s funeral. With the goal of increasing browsing speed and reducing power consumption for users, Google’s Chrome desktop browser announced their formerly opt-in setting that pauses plug-in content that isn’t considered essential to the webpage will become a default setting by early September.
This means that if publishers don’t upgrade their format specification, some or all of their video content may no longer be available for people to view; this will certainly affect viewer loyalty and monetization efforts.
For example, Flash video ads served in a desktop Chrome browser will load in a paused state, then the user will have to click the ad for it to play. These ads will still register as impressions. However, it won’t take long for programmatic buyers to scale back their bids on video ad inventory garnering a high number of impressions with no quartiles.
Publishers need to urge their buyers to prepare for the upcoming Flash-pocalypse because, despite the publishers‘ level of preparation, if their buyers don’t have the proper HTML5 creative assets, it will impact their ability to transact, having an impact on publisher revenue and the ability to successfully implement advertiser campaigns.
How Publishers Can Prepare
The most crucial thing for publishers is going to be ensuring that their advertisers and demand partners (ad networks, ad exchanges and advertisers) are providing and hosting HTML5 ad creatives moving forward.
The Impact
For publishers, one of the biggest wins of Flash‘s depreciation comes in the form of engineering resources saved. Historically, video publishers have always wanted to pick a standard, but the reality is, they haven’t been able to because of the aforementioned VPAID issue.
They’ve essentially been forced to use Flash to keep their ads business running — but also support an HTML5 code base. This means that any software management, maintenance and updates they make, like bug fixes, must be addressed in both code bases, which is very time-consuming from an engineering standpoint.
A major concern for publishers today is the amount of media consumption that’s occurring in mobile environments. They need to prioritize providing the best possible experience on mobile, and the decline of Flash and movement to HTML5 will do just that, as Flash has never worked well on mobile.
Time spent on mobile devices is still climbing steadily; according to eMarketer, U.S. adults will spend more than 5.5 hours per day with digital media in 2015, the majority (2:51) of which will be spent on a mobile device.
Popular desktop browsers, like Chrome, revoking their support for Flash, is a catalyst for HTML5 becoming digital-video advertising’s format for the future.
A Win-Win-Win
I believe that a Flash-free world will be better for everyone. HTML5 is conducive to the direction media consumption is heading and will positively affect people’s digital-video viewing (a primary concern for today’s digital publishers), creating a better overall Internet experience. It also takes less bandwidth than Flash to run, making it much more efficient for battery life on consumer’s devices.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Now’s Staff Exodus Reveals Hurdles for New CEO Pichai
http://recode.net/2015/08/24/after-staff-exodus-microsoft-apple-pressure-next-for-google-now/
On Thursday, Microsoft fired up an old rivalry. The Redmond giant released an update to its Bing search app that allows other apps to tap into its information architecture. See something in one mobile app — a nice location shot in Instagram, say — and, with a tap, you can summon information about that something via Bing.
Nothing earth-shattering. But Microsoft happened to put out the release on Android first, and did so right before Google is set to launch Now on Tap, a nearly identical feature.
Google teased the product with some fanfare in May, at its I/O developer conference, as a breakthrough iteration of Google Now, its personal assistant and one of the twin bedrocks for CEO Larry Page when he returned as executive in 2011.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Skylake Has a Voice DSP and Listens To Your Commands
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/15/08/24/1713205/skylake-has-a-voice-dsp-and-listens-to-your-commands
Intel’s new Skylake processor (like the Core M processor released last year) comes with a built-in digital signal processor (DSP) that will allow you to turn on and control your PC with your voice. Although the feature is not new, what is new is the availability of a voice controlled app to use it: Enter Windows 10 and Cortana.
This caused something of a freak-out among gamers, who feared Microsoft would be listening.’
Skylake has a voice DSP and listens to your commands
http://www.itworld.com/article/2974590/hardware/skylake-has-a-voice-dsp-and-listens-to-your-commands.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
It’s a predictable argument in any IT shop: Should the techies — with their hands on their keyboards — be the people who decide which technology or deployment is right for the company? Or should CIOs and senior management — with their strategic perspective — be the ones to make the call?
Who Makes The Decision To Go Cloud … and Who Should?
http://www.druva.com/blog/who-makes-the-decision-to-go-cloud-and-who-should/
It’s a predictable argument: Should the techies — with their hands on their keyboards — be the people who decide which technology or deployment is right for the company? Or should CIOs and senior management — with their strategic perspective — be the ones to make the call? We got input from everyone… and of course the opinions vary. A lot. See where you stand.
Want to influence the decision? Make yourself (and your expertise) heard.
I’m not a firm believer that title trumps all. If you’ve got the applicable insight, you should make your voice heard. Whatever you choose as your final answer, make sure your subject matter expert is involved and that the decision benefits the business as a whole. These decisions require buy-in across the company, and everyone plays a role.
C-level execs can push for the larger business goals to be met, while IT kicks the tires to make sure all the right questions are asked. Don’t forget to save a seat at the decision-making table for Legal or other stakeholders. Going at it alone is a recipe for disaster.
You might be wondering: Well then, after weighing the pros and cons, who should be calling the shots? Who should own the decision? Add your own answers to our poll, and then compare your experience to others.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Vysor Puts Your Android Device’s Screen On Your Desktop
http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/24/vysor-puts-your-android-devices-screen-on-your-desktop/
If you’ve ever wanted to play games or use apps from your phone on your desktop — web versions of messaging apps prove how convenient desktops are — then Vysor is a new service for Android owners that might well be up your alley.
Created by Koushik Dutta, the prominent Android developer behind apps like AllCast, it is a Chrome extension that recreates a fully functioning version of your Android screen on your desktop, with mouse support for touch and hotkeys. It’s worth noting that the app is currently in beta — it leaked out via a Reddit thread — and it requires a USB cable for the connection.
This kind of functionality is possible on newer Samsung smartphones using the SideSync feature, but Vysor brings screen emulation to many more phones powered by Android.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Citrix really needs to get its act together, and soon
Blood-sucking asset stripper may yet be fatal
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/21/citrix_needs_to_pull_it_together_and_soon/
Sysadmin Blog In the frenetic run-up to VMworld, it’s easy to forget anything else exists in the tech world at all except VMware and its orbiting ecosystem. Cutting through the acquisition rumours and flurry of meaningless minor-version bumps by startups, big things are happening and need consideration. With that in mind, let’s talk about Citrix.
Citrix’s CEO has just retired, largely in response to pressure from asset-stripping corporate death knell Elliott Management. This means Elliott Management has their teeth in deep at Citrix, something that has come at the worst possible time.
VMware, apparently bored with cannibalising its own ecosystem for the moment, bought VDI enabler Immidio. This puts VMware on a collision course with Citrix, who are the current VDI kings.
Unfortunately, VDI and related technologies is pretty much the only revenue stream Citrix has. Combatting VMware’s seemingly limitless resources would ordinarily take every last dollar – and then some – that Citrix has.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hortonworks introduces DataFlow, acquires Apache NiFi-backer Onyara
http://www.zdnet.com/article/hortonworks-introduces-dataflow-acquires-apache-nifi-backer-onyara/
Hortonworks is betting big on Apache NiFi, acquiring Onyara, the commercial entity behind it, and releasing DataFlow, a separate subscription alongside the Hadoop-based Hortonworks Data Platform.
Last month I wrote about Apache Ni-Fi, a project borne of (non-shady) work at the US National Security Agency, and now a top-level project at the Apache Software Foundation. NiFi is all about building data flow orchestrations, and features a browser-based “boxes and lines” graphical user interface for getting the work done.
NiFi certainly seemed an interesting project, but it turns out it’s more significant than I thought. Hortonworks is betting big on it: it’s acquiring Onyara, the commercial entity behind NiFi, and releasing its own distribution of NiFi as Hortonworks DataFlow, a separate subscription aside the Hadoop-based Hortonworks Data Platform.
You read that right; Hortonworks is essentially placing NiFi on equal footing with Hadoop, viewing it as its platform for data-in-motion (read: IoT) while now casting Hadoop as its platform for data-at-rest.
It will be interesting indeed to see how Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Google, each of which has a commercial cloud platform for streaming data (and IoT) respond, or if they need to. Heck, Google’s platform is even called Dataflow, and it went into general availability less than two weeks ago.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel adds big data functions to math libraries
More HPC goodness from Chipzilla
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/26/intel_adds_big_data_functions_to_math_libraries/
Intel is eyeing off the world of Big Data with the latest round of updates to its Parallel Studio Suite.
In the latest update, Chipzilla has added a Data Analytics Acceleration Library (DAAL) to its venerable Math Kernel Library (MKL).
As Intel explains here, DAAL’s aim is to speed the operation of data analysis platforms like Hadoop, Spark, Matlab, and R.
Among other things, DAAL is designed to overcome a limitation in the MKL. As James Reinders writes in the blog post, “most of Intel MKL was designed for when all the data to operate upon fits in memory at once. Intel DAAL can handle situations when data is too big to fit in memory all at once, which can be referred to as having an ‘out of core’ algorithm”.
Algorithms in the DAAL include:
Low-order moments – statistical calculations on a dataset like min, max, mean, standard deviation and variance;
Quantiles, correlation matrices, cosine distance matrices;
Matrix decomposition using Cholesky, QR and SVD algorithms;
Outlier detection, association rules mining, linear regression, classification and clustering.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Board Takes Serious Look at VMware-Led Takeover of EMC
http://recode.net/2015/08/26/board-takes-serious-look-at-vmware-led-takeover-of-emc/
The board of directors of Data storage and IT giant EMC is taking a second and closer look at a proposal under which it would be acquired by VMware, the software company of which it is a majority owner, according to people briefed on the discussions.
The transaction, known as a downstream merger, is gaining favor among board members after the China-induced market meltdown decimated the shares of U.S. tech companies, including EMC. The idea was first proposed by VMware CEO Patrick Gelsinger, sources said, and is actively being considered by EMC’s board. EMC currently owns about 80 percent of VMware.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Deep Learning Pioneer On the Next Generation of Hardware For Neural Networks
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/15/08/27/012235/deep-learning-pioneer-on-the-next-generation-of-hardware-for-neural-networks?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot%2Fto+%28%28Title%29Slashdot+%28rdf%29%29
While many recognize Yann LeCun as the father of convolutional neural networks, the momentum of which has ignited artificial intelligence at companies like Google, Facebook and beyond, LeCun has not been strictly rooted in algorithms. Like others who have developed completely new approaches to computing, he has an extensive background in hardware, specifically chip design and this recognition of specialization of hardware, movement of data around complex problems, and ultimately core performance, has proven handy. He talks in depth this week about why FPGAs are coming onto the scene as companies like Google and Facebook seek a move away from “proprietary hardware” and look to “programmable devices” to do things like, oh, say, pick out a single face of one’s choosing from an 800,000 strong population in under five seconds..
A Glimpse into the Future of Deep Learning Hardware
http://www.theplatform.net/2015/08/25/a-glimpse-into-the-future-of-deep-learning-hardware/
Convolutional neural network
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convolutional_neural_network
Tomi Engdahl says:
The future of the tablet is the PC
http://www.cnet.com/news/the-future-of-the-tablet-is-the-pc/
As the tablet market slows, mobile computing is gravitating toward devices that can convert from a tablet to a laptop and back again.
Apple CEO Tim Cook once compared a tablet-laptop combo to mashing up a refrigerator with a toaster. The resulting Frankenstein device would do an equally lousy job of chilling your food and warming it up. That was three years ago.
Today, these tablet-laptop hybrids — which blend the mobility and touchscreen friendliness of a tablet with the capabilities of a PC — are on track to becoming the fastest-growing computing category. Shipments of so-called 2-in-1 devices like Microsoft’s Surface Pro 3 and the Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro, for example, are expected to grow almost fivefold this year. That’s thanks in part to attachable or foldable keyboards and more-powerful hardware, such as Intel’s Core M microprocessors, that let slimmer, tabletlike devices hit speeds on par with midrange laptops.
And tablet sales? The market for large slabs of glass that are used mostly for playing games, reading email and watching videos has begun to slide. Sales of slate-style tablets are expected to fall 8 percent, according to a report from research firm Strategy Analytics. Sales in Apple’s iPad business, meanwhile, fell 18 percent year over year in its most recent quarter, the sixth consecutive quarterly decline.
Understanding the rise of the 2-in-1 means charting the decline of the standalone tablet.
Larger phablets, such as Apple’s new iPhone 6 Plus and the devices in Samsung’s Galaxy Note line, have become standard. And mobile software from companies like Microsoft, such as its Word document-editing application, have been tailored to work across devices as business users shift work between screens. Samsung has even managed to re-energize the smartphone stylus as a must-have productivity tool.
These phablets have eaten into the market for standalone 7- and 8-inch tablets, like the 7.9-inch iPad Mini. When your phone is only an inch or two shy, what’s the point, Bouchard points out.
“In the past 9 to 12 months, the impact of phablets on 7-inch tablets was just phenomenal,” he said. “The screen size is so similar.”
Phablets haven’t eroded demand for larger 10-inch tablets, but those larger devices have their own hurdle: getting tablet owners to upgrade to newer versions.
Tomi Engdahl says:
China Shakes Up ARM Servers
64-core chip leapfrogs competition
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1327526&
A China-based startup described at the annual Hot Chips event here the most aggressive ARM-based server processor to date. In the same session, Oracle described its first Sparc processor with integrated Infiniband.
Little known Phytium Technology Co. Ltd., founded in 2012, described a processor using 64 custom ARMv8 cores that will run at up to 2 GHz at 28nm. It can issue up to four instructions per cycle to hit up to 512 GFlops. The massive chip consumes 120W and fits in a 640mm2 die with about 3,000 pins.
The so-called Mars design surpasses existing high-end ARM-based server chips such as the 48-core ThunderX now sampling from Cavium and a high-end part still in the works at Broadcom. In February EZchip said it will ship a 100-core ARMv8 made in a 28nm process, but it may not ship until 2017.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel’s Open-Source Fabric Supersizes Comm for Data
Omni-Path Architecture scalable to supercomputers
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1327536&
Intel has concentrated all its internal and externally acquired expertise in networking to create what it believes is a multi-generational interconnection fabric scalable to any sized data-center or supercomputer array. Called Omni-Path Architecture (OPA), the fabric, announced today (Aug. 26) at the IEEE’s Hot Interconnects Symposium 2015 (Santa Clara, Calif.), is an open-source architecture designed specifically for both high-performance computing (HPC) and servers.
OPA not only does it enable 100 gigabits-per-second speeds for each link, but increases link-level reliability with built-in error-correction code (ECC) throughout. A high quality of service (QoS) is also built-in allowing priority packet preemption to deliver high-priority packets with low latency, while simultaneously ensuring bandwidth fairness for normal packets. The Host Fabric Interface (HFI) can handle 160 million messages per second with switch latency of under 110 nanoseconds. Intel says all these improvements are delivered while preserving compatibility with the existing software ecosystem, plus allowing user-level innovation beneath the application programmers interface (API).
“Every single component has been designed by Intel—from switches to cables—integrating both Intel and acquired IP [intellectual property],” Hugo Salem, director of marketing and industry development told EE Times. “We now have a flexible fabric blueprint for end-to-end connectivity, including small clusters and on-premise clouds.”
Every switch handles 48 100Gbit per second channels, which have already been proven out over 100 original equipment manufacturer (OEM) designs including over 100,000 nodes and growing, according to Salem.
The OPA architecture is designed to be “as much as 25-to-40 percent less expensive than other HPC fabrics while one-upping Infiniband by also serving the data centers rather than being force-fitted to the HPC environment,” Phil Murphy, chief system architect of the Omni-Path Architecture told us.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Fanless mini PC consumes just 5W
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/other/4440168/Fanless-mini-PC-consumes-just-5W?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_weekly_20150827&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_weekly_20150827&elq=c91010aff89c4117988b1394c6e54d09&elqCampaignId=24547&elqaid=27772&elqat=1&elqTrackId=67d09717cd5a4480b39b5771a7292401
Giada Technology offers the F200 mini PC, an ultracompact, low-power unit for thin client, digital signage, and industrial control applications. Within its 4.6×4.2×1.2-in. metal chassis, the fanless F200 packs 2 Gbytes of DDR3 DRAM and 8 Gbytes or 16 Gbytes of eMMC flash soldered directly on the board. It requires just 5 W of power at full load
Powered by an Intel Celeron N2807 dual-core processor running at up to 2.16 GHz, the fanless F200 generates little heat and resists shock and vibration. The computer runs under Android, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Linux operating systems and includes an mSATA II slot for adding a solid-state drive.
http://www.giadatech.com/index.php?act=pShow&id=136
Tomi Engdahl says:
Game Card Rides DRAM Stack
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1327544&
A veteran graphics analyst takes AMD’s first graphics card with stacked memory out for a test drive.
AMD made a breakthrough with their Graphics core Next (GCN) architecture when they brought it out in late 2013. It proved to a viable, scalable, and enduring design which has served them well. This will be the last of that generation, the last of the Fuji chips, and remarkably the test platform for their stacked 3D memory they call High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM).
With 30 percent more performance and 30 percent lower power than the previous generation Radeon R9 290X AIB, the 175W Radeon R9 Nano becomes the world’s most power efficient Mini ITX enthusiast graphics card available—period. This sets a new bar on size and performance. Its price is going to challenge a few users, but in graphics you really do get what you pay for, so we think this is a good deal if you can afford it.
The R9 Nano is the first GPU to deliver AMD’s new 3D stacked 4 GB of AMD’s new high-bandwidth memory on the main die itself. They run it at 500 MHz (1.0 GHz effective) and that gives the GPU 512 GB/s bandwidth—a scorcher.
We first saw the AIB at E3 in June, and we’ve been waiting for it ever since. The R9 Nano is a marvel of technology improvements, operating at 175 watts and requiring only one 8-pin power plug, this killer board is targeted at 4K gaming and virtual reality. This is an enthusiast AIB, and is priced according. Selling at $649 it will be available by the second week of September.
This will be the last GPU AMD offers based on the 28nm HPX process, and they’ve squeezed every ounce of performance out of the Fiji while reducing power. The Radeon R9 Nano features 64 compute units (CU) which have 64 stream processors per CU, which works out to a total of 4096 stream processors, the same as the flagship R9 Fury X.
The AIB’s GPU has 256 texture mapping units and 64 raster operation units. Compared to the Radeon R9 Fury X with 8.6 TFlops and a 1050 MHz GPU clock, the Radeon R9 Nano hits 8.19 TFlops with a 1000 MHz engine clock. It accomplishes that partially by employing greater memory bandwidth over GDDR5 via a 4096-bit memory interface. Normally a wide bus width will cost you in power consumption, but AMD came up with some clever low power switches which they are not talking about.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft releases Snip, a free screen capture app for Windows that lets users annotate with digital ink and voice — Microsoft Snip brings Windows screenshots to life with voice and ink — Microsoft has a new Office tool that’s really useful if you regularly take screenshots.
Microsoft Snip brings Windows screenshots to life with voice and ink
http://www.theverge.com/2015/8/27/9214079/microsoft-snip-windows-screenshot-tool
Microsoft has a new Office tool that’s really useful if you regularly take screenshots. Microsoft Snip, available in beta now, allows Windows users to capture screenshots and then annotate on them and record audio over the top. It can turn an ordinary screenshot into a screen tutorial, or just a neat way to share your thoughts about a document or image over the web. While Windows has long included its own Snipping Tool, Microsoft Snip is a lot more powerful.
Microsoft Snip hovers at the top of the desktop so it’s instantly accessible to create a capture from your desktop screen, webcam, or just a whiteboard to sketch up anything with digital ink.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel Memory Bus Draws Fire
SSDs next year, servers in 2017
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1327465&
Intel should open up the proprietary interface for the 3D XPoint memory chips it co-developed with Micron, said several sources. The reactions came as Intel announced at the Intel Developer Forum here new details about the chips it will ship next year in solid-state drives and system memory modules.
The so-called Intel Optane technology will include “optimized controllers and interfaces to the platform and software IP to make complete product,” said Rob Crooke, general manager of Intel’s non-volatile memory group. He spoke in a keynote where Intel chief executive Brian Krzanich called 3D XPoint “the biggest breakthrough in memory and storage in 30 years.”
Crooke showed working SSDs with the chips delivering five to seven times the I/O operations/second of Intel’s fastest flash SSDs.
The drives will come in versions for everything from “data centers to ultrabooks” as well as dual in-line memory modules (DIMMs) for Xeon servers. They will plug a hole in today’s memory products by delivering lower latency and longer endurance than flash with higher capacity than DRAM, he said.
Intel has no plans to sell 3D XPoint chips. A Micron executive said the company is about two months away from announcing its separate plans for selling 3D XPoint products.
The use of the standard NVMe interface for SSDs is not an issue. The link is a bottleneck to the raw performance of the chips but not as bad as older hard-drive interfaces such as SAS and SATA.
Tomi Engdahl says:
18 Views of #IDF15
Intel amps up the energy level
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1327493&
Tomi Engdahl says:
The server machines are still being sold at an accelerating pace, but growth can enjoy the closest x86 architecture-machinery manufacturers. Sales of Unix servers continue to fall. According to Gartner, in the second quarter, sales of Itanium-based Unix machines shrank by 18.7 per cent from one year ago.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3242:unix-palvelin-kuihtuu-hiljalleen&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
“Nobody knows what the big data should be done”
Big data now reads the buzz word in an increasing number of company presentation films. It is information that is different sensor systems to collect the enormous amount. However, the equivalent of Intel’s cloud platforms Director Jason Waxman told an investor meeting, no one really knows what the big data should be done.
- This is a really big data dirty little secret. Yes know how to collect data at all and is a big data strategy, but the processing of the useful information from a large number of sensor data is very difficult, Waxman said.
Future sensor networks, a massive amount of data to be handled, stored and analyzed, which requires an effective iron. In practice, the new Intel servers.
This year companies invest big data systems of $ 13 billion. By the year 2018 the sum will grow more than 40 billion dollars, of which more than one billion spent on equipment purchases.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3253:kukaan-ei-tieda-mita-big-datalle-pitaisi-tehda&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
LibreOffice 5.0 Looking Good and Shipping This Week
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/libreoffice-50-looking-good-and-shipping-week
LibreOffice 5.0 ships this week, and it brings a host of improvements that users will be excited about. There are changes in all of the applications which make up the suite, and there are significant changes to the shared code, too. Writer and Calc are the apps that I use most often, so I’m really glad to see the number of useful improvements in these areas.
Using a Linux-based operating system is all about making a choice in favor of free, standards-based software. But it’s still important to be able to exchange files with users of proprietary software. For most users, this really becomes an issue where office software is concerned. Although LibreOffice (and OpenOffice.org before it) has always been compatible with Microsoft’s Office suite, it’s never been 100% complete. Small incompatibilities have often led to glitches that required workarounds.
This has especially been true where files contained embedded objects such as images or audio files. Text highlighting was another feature which was sometimes messed up when importing Microsoft files. LibreOffice 5.0 has addressed a number of these issues. This will lead to a more consistent presentation of documents across platforms (i.e. complex documents and presentations won’t look broken).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ask Slashdot: Advice On Enterprise Architect Position
http://ask.slashdot.org/story/15/08/28/0230243/ask-slashdot-advice-on-enterprise-architect-position
After 5 years of succeeding in the face of all of these challenges, the organization has offered me the Enterprise Architect position. However they do not think that the position should have full access to the environment. It is an “architecture” position and not a “sysadmin” position is how they explained it to me. That seems insane. It is like asking someone to draw a map, without being able to actually visit the place that needs to be mapped.
For those of you in the community who have similar positions, what is your experience? Do you have unfettered access to the environment? Are purely architectural / advisory roles the norm at this level?
Comments:
What they’re offering isn’t out of the norm, though I might negotiate with them and ask for read-only access (non-root for servers) at least. I’ve been a network architect for a few years, and one of the things that comes with: loss of enable access to the routers and switches. Mind you, I was a data center network engineer for a whole bunch of years so I know my way around them. But the organizations would rather I “look, but don’t touch”. The great thing about it is: I can’t be called for an on-call issue because there’s nothing I can do to fix it.
Welcome to needing to think strategically. Take what they’re offering as a compliment and run with it!
I concur. Take the small wins (especially in big orgs), and help them make the transition. You don’t need rights to anything YET. That’s after you learn to trust your team to bring things into the newer enterprise model and they learn to trust you. A position of this magnitude, and the experience in performing the full migration will get you even better dollars and perhaps even CIO at a firm slightly smaller, or even the same size depending on how you play it.
If you were willing to stick it out for five years and got a major offer in that time, why not stick it out another two and see where it leads?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tech nightmares that keep Turing Award winners up at night
http://www.itworld.com/article/2976875/hardware/tech-nightmares-that-keep-turing-award-winners-up-at-night.html
It’s safe to say that Turing Award winners know a thing or two about computing, so when they express concern about key trends in the tech world, it’s worth paying attention.
no flash
Tested: How Flash destroys your browser’s performance
It’s a memory hog — and we’ve got the numbers to prove it.
Read Now
That, in fact, is just what three award winners did this week at the Heidelberg Laureate Forum in Germany, where they were gathered along with other leading thinkers in the fields of mathematics and computer science.
RSA encryption algorithm co-inventor Leonard Adleman, “Father of the Internet” Vint Cerf, and cryptography innovator Manuel Blum all shared their biggest fears.
“I worry a lot about the potential loss of openness and freedom on the Internet,” Cerf said.
“This sharing of information is an extremely important part of the Internet’s character, and I’d be very unhappy if that were to diminish,”
Current debate over the “right to be forgotten” is particularly tricky
“The other side of that coin is the freedom of people to know things they should know, and I don’t think that side is getting as much visibility as it should,” he said. “It’s just as important as the question of removing harmful information from the Internet.”
“I’m hoping we won’t lose sight of the value of the network for knitting together people and ideas around the world,” Cerf said. “If we lose that, we lose something of great value.”
Not only is the current domain name system unstable, potentially creating a future filled with broken links from the past
“We don’t have a regime that will allow us to preserve both the content and the software needed to render it over a very long time.”
Anyone with digital photos should be concerned, Cerf warned.
Cerf’s recommendation in the meantime? Print your photos on high-quality photographic paper. “There’s evidence that will last 100 years, but we’re not so sure about digital media,” he said.
“I wonder what our relationship to computers will be in 100 or even 50 years,”
Along similar lines, Blum views computers as our ultimate progeny in the not-too-distant future; his current worries tend to focus on the fact that they’re not yet in charge of driving all cars and airplanes.
“The fact that we have brains hasn’t made the world any safer,” he said. “Will it be safer with computers? I don’t know, but I tend to see it as hopeful.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D NAND Debuts in Storage Arrays
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1327545&
It looks like flash-storage company Kaminario (Needham, MA) will be the first all-flash array (AFA) vendor to go out on a limb with 3D NAND.
Last week it announced its K2 v5.5 all-flash primary storage array. CEO Dani Golan told EE Times in a telephone interview the new array introduces deployment of 3D three level cell (TLC) drives, while aiming to bring all-flash storage costs to less than a $1/GB, which is half the price for its previous array that was introduced in May 2014.
By supporting 3D TLC solid state drives (SSDs), K2 customers will be able to double the effective capacity of the array to more than 360TB per K-block and scale one K2 array to multiple petabytes in a single rack unit. Kaminario will continue to provide its seven-year warranty on all drives, including 3D TLC SSDs. The longevity is made possible by features such as inline compression and deduplication, load-balanced writes, RAID optimizations and a flash-friendly data layout technology for large blocks. Kaminario’s new array also features native array-based asynchronous replication.
For example, Kaminario is using Samsung 3D TLC SSDs in its K2, although that could change down the road.
Tomi Engdahl says:
NVIDIA reveals GPUs for blade servers, Linux desktop support
VDI-focussed for now, but the street finds its own use for things
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/30/nvidia_reveals_gpus_for_blade_servers_linux_desktop_support/
VMworld 2015 NVIDIA has announced the second version of its Grid desktop virtualisation software, complete with a pair of GPUs for blade servers.
NVIDIA is pitching GRID as a hardware offering tuned to the needs of graphically-demanding desktop virtualisation (VDI) workloads. If that sounds a bit exotic, consider environments like the resources industry, where on-site engineers need CAD and modelling tools, but miners are loathe to deploy desktops in the remote sites where stuff gets dug out of the ground. VDI works a treat in such spots.
Hitherto, NVIDIA’s “Kepler” GPUs for VDI have been designed for use with rack-mounted servers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Boffins unveil open source GPU
Benchmarks today, real hardware tomorrow?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/31/boffins_unveil_open_source_gpu/
It’s a kitten rather than a roar right now, but if the MIAOW project unveiled at last week’s Hot Chips conference can get legs, the next year could see the launch of the world’s first “open GPU”.
The result of 36 months’ development (so far) by a team of 12 developers, MIAOW – the Many-core Integrated Accelerator of Wisconsin – is based on AMD’s Southern Islands GPU ISA.
As Nicole Hemsoth writes over at The Register’s HPC sister site The Platform, the GPU takes its subset of Southern Islands and adds OpenCL codes to get performance “comparable to existing single-precision GPU results”.
The AMD basis of the project means that MIAOW is going to be confined to the research community for some time. Project leader Dr Karu Sankaralingam told The Platform AMD’s only input has come from individuals offering architectural insights, but at some point the boffins are going to have to talk to the chip vendor about its intellectual property.
The chip uses 95 vector, scalar, and memory instructions of the 400-plus available in Southern Islands.
The architecture supports 32 compute units connecting to the layer 2 cache.
As their proof-of-concept, the GPU has been implemented on an FPGA.
At the project page on GitHub, they group notes that MIAOW has an immediate use: “MIAOW implements a compute unit suitable for performing architecture analysis and experimentation with GPGPU workloads. In addition to the Verilog HDL composing the compute unit, MIAOW also includes a suite of unit tests and benchmarks for regression testing,” they write.
An open source GPU based off of the AMD Southern Islands ISA.
https://github.com/VerticalResearchGroup/miaow/
Tomi Engdahl says:
“Hack” Typeface Is Open Source, Easy On the IDEs
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/15/08/30/1733217/hack-typeface-is-open-source-easy-on-the-ides
“At SourceFoundry.org this week, programmer Chris Simpkins debuted the 2.0 version of Hack, an open-source typeface designed specifically for use in source code.”
Open-source typeface “Hack” brings design to source code
Sweet spot is 8px-12px, but you can tell the difference between I and 1 at 6px.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/open-source-typeface-hack-brings-design-to-source-code/
The days of coders being shackled to Monaco or Courier New ends now. At SourceFoundry.org this week, programmer Chris Simpkins debuted the 2.0 version of Hack, an open-source typeface designed specifically for use in source code.
Hack is characterized by a large x-height, wide aperture, and low contrast design in order to be “highly legible” at common coding text sizes. Its “sweet spot runs in the 8px-12px range on modern desktop and laptop monitors,” Simpkins writes on GitHub. “Combine it with an HD monitor and you can comfortably work at 6 or 7px sizes.”
Hack has been released as a free and open source project (available via SourceFoundry and GitHub) that is free to modify, to use in commercial situations, and to download for print, desktop, or Web. To display the typeface within its element, Sourcefoundry.org provides examples of Hack within Python, C, and Javascript. There’s also a traditional font specimen available.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Andrew Cunningham / Ars Technica:
Galaxy Tab S2 hands-on: 4:3 aspect ratio, better fingerprint reader are notable improvements, but $400+ Android tablets are a hard sell in sea of budget tablets
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/08/galaxy-tab-s2-a-lighter-tablet-with-the-right-aspect-ratio-high-price/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Rachel King / ZDNet:
Facebook engineers talk about React.js and problems the company faced going mobile first
Facebook engineers: Going mobile-first is not as easy as it looks
http://www.zdnet.com/article/facebook-engineers-offer-peek-behind-the-scenes-at-racer-mobile-development/
Going mobile-first is not as easy as making such a declaration to the world. It requires a lot of organizational changes (and money), according to Facebook engineers.
If developers are given tools that are frustrating and difficult to use, they’ll make software that is just as frustrating and hard to use, suggested Facebook senior engineer Adam Wolff.
“Making software work the way exactly we want it to work, we can make the company work the way we want it to work,” said Wolff while speaking during a whiteboard session about the social network’s product infrastructure on Wednesday.
Making software run better in order to make an entire organization successful was one of the mantras behind Facebook’s major shift toward operating as a mobile-first platform a few years ago.
Although it has proven to be Facebook’s strongest revenue stream (and arguably the saving grace following a disastrous IPO), going mobile-first wasn’t as easy as CEO Mark Zuckerberg declaring that direction to the world.
Such a plan required going back to the drafting board for every major product line from Photos to Events, requiring new code and massive organizational structures so that each product team would build for both desktop and mobile platforms alike.
“The scale of the product was not what these tools were originally built for,” Occhino reflected.
Farther down the mobile rabbit hole, problems compounded. Wolff highlighted the diversity of the Android platform as well as higher expectations upon delivery among iOS users.
“Most of the time you’re doing tedious crap,” Wolff said frankly. “Developers never want to admit that, but it’s true.”
Even when doing “more fun stuff” like animation, the amount of time and effort put in can be “painful” for developers, Wolff lamented.
“If you want to make it so you can move faster and easier to develop, you’re going to have to use more resources to do that,” Wolff explained. But those resources on mobile devices – such as CPU, memory and battery power – are precious, he stipulated.
“Building the user interface is really hard to do,” Occhino stressed, insisting React makes building UIs easier for Web and mobile because essentially makes the code “dumb” by optimizing input data and removing the logic.
Occhino compared React to Legos building blocks, explaining if you want to alter a component, you only have to change one piece rather than the entire structure.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IFS designs Siri-like ERP tool
http://www.itweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=145764
Global enterprise applications company, IFS is bringing voice capabilities to enterprise resource planning (ERP).
The company has designed the Intelligent Personal Assistant (IPA), a mobile app that lets the user control IFS Applications by their voice, via a smartphone or tablet.
Martin Gunnarsson, director of IFS Labs, IFS’s in-house think tank, says having looked closely at Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana, IFS Labs has now designed the IPA for people who want to search for data and update data in IFS Applications by only using their voice.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Everything announced at VMworld 2015 so far
http://venturebeat.com/2015/08/31/everything-announced-at-vmworld-2015/
Enterprise software vendor VMware kicked off its big annual VMworld conference in San Francisco today with several news announcements, from new open-source tools to a new “intelligent automation engine” for making the best use of companies’ data center equipment. Other companies interested in riding the wave of attention this week have made announcements, too.
A lot of people are paying attention. More than 23,000 people are here at the Moscone Center for the event, and more than 50,000 people were live streaming today’s keynote.
VMware today announced several enhancements to its vCloud Air public cloud at the company’s annual VMworld conference in San Francisco.
Companies can test and run plans for disaster recovery in vCloud Air’s new cloud-based Site Recovery Manager Air.
Nvidia launches Grid 2.0 virtual desktop technology with support for 128 users per server
VMware unveils Integrated OpenStack 2.0 based on Kilo
VMware launches vSphere Integrated Containers and the Photon Platform
ClusterHQ partners with VMware to build a vSphere storage driver for Flocker
VMware announces EVO SDDC software suite with SDDC Manager, Hardware Management Services
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft Prototypes A Keyboard Cover With E-Ink Display
http://www.newszonenetwork.com/2015/08/microsoft-prototypes-keyboard-cover.html
Tablets have became the right tool for finishing the work properly. In order to make the difference between slate and laptop bigger, Microsoft Applied Science made a new prototype device called DisplayCover: a cover for keyboard that can house an e-ink touchscreen display. Thanks to 1,280 x 305 resolution screen, you will be provided with access to app shortcuts and will be able to handle navigational touch gestures and accept stylus input as well. With the stylus feature, you will easily be able to handle things like signing document and scribbling notes based on the demo video.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Native hypervisor coming to OpenBSD
Foundation flings cash at effort to craft old-school virtual machine manager
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/01/native_hypervisor_coming_to_openbsd/
OpenBSD kernel developer Mike Larkin has let it be known he’s working on a native hypervisor for the operating system, with the OpenBSD Foundation’s support.
Larkin’s posted news of the effort, writing that it’s needed because “choosing to port an existing vmm just didn’t make a whole lot of sense.”
“For example, I’ve been baking in support for things that the other implementations don’t care about (namely i386 support, shadow paging, nested virtualization, support for legacy peripherals, etc) and trying to backfit support for those things into another hypervisor would probably have been just as hard as building it from the ground up.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
HP told some employees to choose between becoming contractors with no benefits or being fired without severance
Read more: http://uk.businessinsider.com/how-hp-cut-more-workers-without-severance-2015-8?r=US&IR=T#ixzz3kTYZUizP
Tomi Engdahl says:
Farewell to Borland C++: Embarcadero releases Delphi and C++ Builder 10
It’s CLANG all the way in new RAD Studio
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/01/borland_c_now_legacy_as_embarcadero_releases_delphi_and_c_builder_10/
Embarcadero has released RAD Studio 10, including Delphi 10 and C++ Builder 10, a suite of development tools for Windows, Mac and mobile platforms.
A new RAD Studio is a rather frequent occurrence. RAD Studio XE8 was released in April this year. The price is a hefty £3,612.60, plus VAT, for new users or £2,408.40 to upgrade.
RAD Studio 10 Seattle, to give its full name, has been updated for Windows 10.
Although it does not support the Universal Windows Platform, there are new controls that let developers create desktop application controls in the style of Windows 10, including SplitView and RelativePanel, high-DPI awareness, and custom Windows 10 styling for both VCL (Visual Component Library) – the longstanding Windows framework for Delphi and C++ Builder – and for FireMonkey, the newer framework which supports Windows, Android, iOS and OS X.
There is a wrapper for calling WinRT (Windows Runtime) APIs, to support features like Windows 10 noticifications.
This edition also features a new 32-bit C++ compiler based on the open-source CLANG project, replacing the bcc32 compiler that was carried over from Borland C++.
Borland C++ goes way back. Version 1.0, called Turbo C++, targeted MS-DOS and was released in 1990. Borland C++ arrived in 1991, and from version 3.1 in 1992 also targeted Windows, using the Object Windows Library (OWL) framework which many developers regarded as superior to the Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC).
Tomi Engdahl says:
The future of IT is – to deliver automation. Discuss
Adapt or die, says Trevor Pott
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/01/it_automation_radiical_efficiency/
Sysadmin blog You don’t have to be a large enterprise to benefit from technology, though access to seemingly endless resources tends to help. I’ve worked in SMB IT my whole life and automation changes everything at this level.
So many things that reasonably should be automated simply aren’t in the SMB world. We rely on fallible humans. Forgoing any discussions of speed gains – automation may or may not actually produce them – the real benefit of embracing automation is the reduction in mistakes.
Reading a postal code from a piece of paper and entering it into a computer is easy. Most people won’t make a mistake if they have to do it once. Do it 1,000 times a day and the odds of a mistake go up enormously.
Entire fields of management, psychology and so forth emerged to understand how and why humans make mistakes at repetitive tasks and how we can prevent them. True nerds look at the problem described above and solve it with computers.
Automation 101
This is easy if the information that needs to be put in the destination computer is arriving from another computer in a predictable format. Write a parser to convert the data into something that the destination computer expects to see and inject the data in an automated fashion.
If the destination computer refuses to allow data imports you can reduce human mistakes quite a bit by simply adding bar codes. Instead of reading the information and typing it in, the information is a series of bar codes to be scanned. Bar code readers can pretend to be keyboards so it’s easy to sneak one in, even if the computer in question is supplied by someone else (such as the shipping company).
This is automation 101. A few hours to a few weeks of work on its behalf and tens of thousands to potentially millions of dollars a year in shipping errors simply go away. The simplest such system I built was 33 lines of PHP that was executed every 15 minutes as a cron job that took me about eight hours.
That cron job parsed an incoming HTML file and both injected the information into an internal database and printed a sheet with barcodes. It ended up saving the company about $60k in the first year.
The more all-encompassing the automation, the bigger the returns.
Automate or die
The discussion about automating systems deployment versus babying servers individually has been done so many times it’s now known simply as the pets versus cattle* argument.
Boiling down years of debate gets you the simple axiom: automate or die. No company, no matter how small, can survive if its competition can offer the same goods or services at lower prices.
The future of IT isn’t beating printers into submission or explaining to Sally from sales where to find what’s she looking for on the Ribbon Bar for the eleventeenth time, it’s delivering automation.
Those who fail to adapt – from IT practitioners to vendors – are as doomed as the companies that pay them.
Tomi Engdahl says:
LILO Bootloader Development To End
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/15/09/01/1211213/lilo-bootloader-development-to-end
For any longtime Linux users, you probably remember the LILO bootloader from Linux distributions of many years ago.
LILO Boot-Loader Development To Cease At End Of Year
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=LILO-Bootloader-EOY
While most of you probably haven’t used the LILO bootloader in years in place of GRUB(2), the developer of “LInux LOader” intends to cease development at the end of the year.
The message reads, “NOTE: I plan to finish development of LILO at 12/2015 because of some limitations (e.g. with BTFS, GPT, RAID). If someone want to develop this nice software further, please let me know …”
The last LILO release was in 2014
it would be a bit hard to justify given that it’s years behind GRUB2 in functionality, unless desiring a BSD-licensed legacy bootloader rather than the GPL-licensed GRUB.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Intel Skylake Mobile and Desktop Launch, with Architecture Analysis
by Ian Cutress on September 1, 2015 11:05 PM EST
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9582/intel-skylake-mobile-desktop-launch-architecture-analysis
Tomi Engdahl says:
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Mozilla Relaunches Its Thimble Online Code Editor For Teaching HTML, CSS And JavaScript
http://techcrunch.com/2015/09/01/mozilla-relaunches-its-thimble-online-code-editor-for-teaching-html-css-and-javascript/
Back in 2012, Mozilla launched Thimble, an online code editor for teaching the basics of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Over time, though, things got pretty quiet around the project as other browser-based code editors like Brackets and full online IDEs like Nitrous took center stage. Today, however, Mozilla relaunched Thimble with a major redesign and a slew of new features.
Thimble, which is based on the Adobe-supported Brackets open source project, is still meant to be a platform for teaching the basics of web development. Mozilla is aiming the projects at educators (and their students) who want to build their own learning experiences, as well as at independent learners who want to teach themselves.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
Windows 10 grabs 5.21% market share, passing Windows Vista and Windows 8 in just one month
http://venturebeat.com/2015/09/01/windows-10-grabs-5-21-market-share-passing-windows-vista-and-windows-8-in-just-one-month/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Lenovo Unfolds New ThinkPad Yogas with Silver Chassis, 2K Displays
http://blog.laptopmag.com/lenovo-thinkpad-yoga-260-price-features
The 12-inch ThinkPad Yoga 260 and 14-inch Yoga 460 will bring a lot more than new color options when they launch in November with starting prices of $949 and $1049. These business-centric hybrids pack in Intel’s latest 6th Generation Core series CPUs, speedy PCIe SSDs and active styluses.
Both Yogas are available with a choice of Intel 6th Generation Core i5 or i7 CPUs, up to 16GB of RAM and speedy PCIe x4 SSDs. The Yoga 260’s 12.5-inch display comes in 1366 x 768 or 1920 x 1080 resolution while the Yoga 460’s 14.1-inch display can be configured with a 1366 x 768, 1920 x 1080 or 2560 x 1440 display. Lenovo promises up to 10 hours of endurance on the 460 and hasn’t published a precise estimate for the 260. Neither one has a removable battery, so that endurance number is going to be key.
Tomi Engdahl says:
What size laptop do you want?
10 to 12 inches: The thinnest and lightest notebooks around have 10 to 12-inch screens. However, you may sacrifice keyboard size for portability. Many laptops in this class double as tablets.
13 to 14 inches: Provides the best balance of portability and usability. Laptops with 13- or 14-inch screens usually weigh between 3 and 4.5 pounds.
15 inches: The most popular size, 15-inch laptops are the least expensive and provide plenty of desktop real estate. While most 15-inchers are easy to take from room to room, some are on the bulky side.
17 to 18 inches: If your laptop stays on your desk all day, a 17- or 18-inch system will likely provide everything you need for work and play. Many gaming notebooks are in this size category.
Source: http://blog.laptopmag.com/lenovo-thinkpad-yoga-260-price-features