I did not have time to post my computer technologies predictions t the ends of 2016. Because I missed the year end deadline, I though that there is no point on posting anything before the news from CES 2017 have been published. Here are some of myck picks on the current computer technologies trends:
CES 2017 had 3 significant technology trends: deep learning goes deep, Alexa everywhere and Wi-Fi gets meshy. The PC sector seemed to be pretty boring.
Gartner expects that IT sales will growth (2.7%) but hardware sales will not have any growth – can drop this year. TEKsystems 2017 IT forecast shows IT budgets rebounding from a slump in 2016, and IT leaders’ confidence high going into the new year. But challenges around talent acquisition and organizational alignment will persist. Programming and software development continue to be among the most crucial and hard-to-find IT skill sets.
Smart phones sales (expected to be 1.89 billion) and PC sales (expected to be 432 million) do not grow in 2017. According to IDC PC shipments declined for a fifth consecutive year in 2016 as the industry continued to suffer from stagnation and lack of compelling drivers for upgrades. Both Gartner and IDC estimated that PC shipments declined about 6% in 2016.Revenue in the traditional (non-cloud) IT infrastructure segment decreased 10.8 per cent year over year in the third quarter of 2016. Only PC category that has potential for growth is ultramobile (includes Microsoft Surface ja Apple MacBook Air). Need for memory chips is increasing.
Browser suffers from JavaScript-creep disease: This causes that the browing experience seems to be become slower even though computer and broadband connections are getting faster all the time. Bloat on web pages has been going on for ages, and this trend seems to continue.
Microsoft tries all it can to make people to switch from older Windows versions to Windows 10. Microsoft says that continued usage of Windows 7 increases maintenance and operating costs for businesses as malware attacks that could have been avoided by upgrading to Windows 10. Microsoft says that continued usage of Windows 7 increases maintenance and operating costs for businesses. Microsoft: Windows 7 Does Not Meet the Demands of Modern Technology; Recommends Windows 10. On February 2017 Microsoft stops the 20 year long tradition of monthly security updates. Windows 10 “Creators Update” coming early 2017 for free, featuring 3D and mixed reality, 4K gaming, more.
Microsoft plans to emulate x86 instructions on ARM chips, throwing a compatibility lifeline to future Windows tablets and phones. Microsoft’s x86 on ARM64 Emulation is coming in 2017. This capability is coming to Windows 10, though not until “Redstone 3″ in the Fall of 2017.
Parents should worry less about the amount of time their children spend using smartphones, computers and playing video games because screen time is actually beneficial, the University of Oxford has concluded. 257 minutes is the time teens can spend on computers each day before harming wellbeing.
Outsourcing IT operations to foreign countries is not trendy anymore and companied live at uncertain times. India’s $150 billion outsourcing industry stares at an uncertain future. In the past five years, revenue and profit growth for the top five companies listed on the BSE have halved. Industry leader TCS too felt the impact as it made a shift in business model towards software platforms and chased digital contacts.
Containers will become hot this year and cloud will stay hot. Research firm 451 Research predicts this year containerization will be US $ 762 million business and that Containers will become 2.6 billion worth of software business in 2020. (40 per cent a year growth rate).
Cloud services are expected to have 22 percent annual growth rate. By 2020, the sector would grow from the current 22.2 billion to $ 46 billion. In Finland 30% of companies now prefer to buy cloud services when buying IT (20 per cent of IT budget goes to cloud).Cloud spend to make up over a third of IT budgets by 2017. Cloud and hosting services will be responsible for 34% of IT budgets by 2017, up from 28% by the end of 2016, according to 451 Research. Cloud services have many advantages, but cloud services have also disadvantages. In five years, SaaS will be the cloud that matters.
When cloud is growing, so is the spending on cloud hardware by the cloud companies. Cloud hardware spend hits US$8.4bn/quarter, as traditional kit sinks – 2017 forecast to see cloud kit clock $11bn every 90 days. In 2016′s third quarter vendor revenue from sales of infrastructure products (server, storage, and Ethernet switch) for cloud IT, including public and private cloud, grew by 8.1 per cent year over year to $8.4 billion. Private cloud accounted for $3.3 billion with the rest going to public clouds. Data centers need lower latency components so Google Searches for Better Silicon.
The first signs of the decline and fall of the 20+ year x86 hegemony will appear in 2017. The availability of industry leading fab processes will allow other processor architectures (including AMD x86, ARM, Open Power and even the new RISC-V architecture) to compete with Intel on a level playing field.
USB-C will now come to screens – C-type USB connector promises to really become the only all equipment for the physical interface.The HDMI connection will be lost from laptops in the future. Thunderbolt 3 is arranged to work with USB Type-C, but it’s not the same thing (Thunderbolt is four times faster than USB 3.1).
World’s first ‘exascale’ supercomputer prototype will be ready by the end of 2017, says China
It seems that Oracle Begins Aggressively Pursuing Java Licensing Fees in 2017. Java SE is free, but Java SE Suite and various flavors of Java SE Advanced are not. Oracle is massively ramping up audits of Java customers it claims are in breach of its licences – six years after it bought Sun Microsystems. Huge sums of money are at stake. The version of Java in contention is Java SE, with three paid flavours that range from $40 to $300 per named user and from $5,000 to $15,000 for a processor licence. If you download Java, you get everything – and you need to make sure you are installing only the components you are entitled to and you need to remove the bits you aren’t using.
Your Year in Review, Unsung Hero article sees the following trends in 2017:
- A battle between ASICs, GPUs, and FPGAs to run emerging workloads in artificial intelligence
- A race to create the first generation of 5G silicon
- Continued efforts to define new memories that have meaningful impact
- New players trying to take share in the huge market for smartphones
- An emerging market for VR gaining critical mass
Virtual Reality Will Stay Hot on both PC and mobile.“VR is the heaviest heterogeneous workload we encounter in mobile—there’s a lot going on, much more than in a standard app,” said Tim Leland, a vice president for graphics and imaging at Qualcomm. The challenges are in the needs to calculate data from multiple sensors and respond to it with updated visuals in less than 18 ms to keep up with the viewer’s head motions so the CPUs, GPUs, DSPs, sensor fusion core, display engine, and video-decoding block are all running at close to full tilt.
932 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
Big Data Makes Big Waves
Efforts expand tools and data sets
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1331733&
You could say that big data got its start when Sergy Brin and Larry Page helped develop an algorithm that found more relevant results on the web than the search engines of their rivals. The lesson of Google continues to ripple through all businesses seeking competitive insights from their data pools, however large or small.
Today, the Internet of Things is opening vast new data sources, expanding big data’s promise to reshape business, technology, and the job of the technologist. Along the way, big data is inspiring new kinds of processor and systems architectures, as well as evolving algorithms and programming techniques.
“The concept of being overwhelmed by data is the new normal,” said Anthony Scriffignano, chief data scientist of Dun & Bradstreet, at a recent event hosted by the Churchill Club.
“Machine learning is impressive but really hard to use. Even the most sophisticated companies might only have a couple of people that can apply those techniques optimally,” said Stephen Eglash, executive director of the initiative. “I can imagine the day when these tools are available in the equivalent of Microsoft Office.”
To get there, Stanford researchers are developing Snorkel, a tool to automate the process of labeling and ingesting big data sets. “It’s far enough along that you can see that it will work,” said Eglash. “We want the domain experts to use these techniques without needing a computer science expert.”
Snorkel: A System for Fast Training Data Creation
http://hazyresearch.github.io/snorkel/
Snorkel is a system for rapidly creating, modeling, and managing training data, currently focused on accelerating the development of structured or “dark” data extraction applications for domains in which large labeled training sets are not available or easy to obtain.
Today’s state-of-the-art machine learning models require massive labeled training sets–which usually do not exist for real-world applications. Instead, Snorkel is based around the new data programming paradigm, in which the developer focuses on writing a set of labeling functions, which are just scripts that programmatically label data. The resulting labels are noisy, but Snorkel automatically models this process—learning, essentially, which labeling functions are more accurate than others—and then uses this to train an end model (for example, a deep neural network in TensorFlow).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Six Tech Trends for 2022
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1331870&
The year 2022 will see intelligence at edge of the Internet of Things, voice as the dominant user interface and advances in DNA and microbiome apps, top VCs said.
Churchill Club, a forum for thought leadership in Silicon Valley, annually asks top tech VCs to look out five years and beyond, and make predictions for what’s next in top investible trends. Here’s what you should know about this year’s bets.
The top predictions as voted by fellow panelists and the audience at our May 24 event, were two brainchildren of DFJ partner Steve Jurvetson. Jurvetson, who has a history of winning the annual panel’s most votes, predicted explosive growth for machine learning four years ago.
All of this will be made possible by inexpensive neural networks running on a variety of sensors and other devices. Jurvetson’s perspective comes from chip investments made in companies such as Nervana and Movidius (bought by Intel) and his current investment in Mythic, which is designing an analog chip geared to dramatically lower costs and power consumption.
Among other popular predictions from the panel:
Mike Abbott saw a rise of DNA applications due to low cost sequencing.
Hans Tung of GGV Capital said food production will be revolutionized globally.
Rebecca Lynn of Canvas Ventures said microbiome engineering will help prevent a future plague.
Sarah Tavel forecast a billion-dollar business will be built on understanding our microbiome.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel May Sue M’soft over Emulation
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1331874&
In a recent blog, Intel suggests it may sue Microsoft over plans to run Windows 10 on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon with x86 emulation.
Tomi Engdahl says:
More Enlightenment on Optane
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1331894&
Digging deeper into a transmission electron microscope image of Intel’s Optane by TechInsights.
TechInsights has released some of the results of its analytical work on Intel’s Optane in the form of a TEM of Figure 1. It is from a detailed report TechInsights is preparing with the completed version soon to be available to the public.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cyrus Farivar / Ars Technica:
Charles Thacker, one of the lead designers of the Xerox Alto, co-inventor of Ethernet, and recipient of the Turing award in 2009, dies at 74
Xerox Alto designer, co-inventor of Ethernet, dies at 74
Every computer we use today owes a debt to the legendary and influential machine.
https://arstechnica.com/business/2017/06/charles-thacker-key-designer-of-the-xerox-alto-dies-at-74/
Charles Thacker, one of the lead hardware designers on the Xerox Alto, the first modern personal computer, died of a brief illness on Monday. He was 74.
The Alto, which was released in 1973 but was never a commercial success, was an incredibly influential machine. Ahead of its time, it boasted resizeable windows as part of its graphical user interface, along with a mouse, Ethernet, and numerous other technologies that didn’t become standard until years later.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Stephen Shankland / CNET:
Mozilla launches Firefox 54 with Electrolysis tech which uses up to four processes to run content across tabs and lays foundation for sandboxing
New speed boost means maybe it’s time to try Firefox again
https://www.cnet.com/news/firefox-speed-boost-maybe-try-mozilla-browser-again/
Mozilla hopes a new phase of its Electrolysis project will bring you back to its browser by making it faster and better able to resist crashes.
A new version of Mozilla’s Firefox browser catches up partway to Google Chrome, Apple Safari and Microsoft Edge when it comes to speed and stability.
It’s through a technology called Electrolysis, which Mozilla started working on years ago but mostly put on hold in 2011 because of technical difficulties. Electrolysis splits different computing tasks into different processes using separate memory compartments, an approach that isolates problems that otherwise can slow or even crash the whole browser.
Mozilla restarted Electrolysis, aka e10s, in 2016 with a feature that made the browser’s user interface more responsive. Now it’s taken another step with Firefox 54 by walling off websites from each other.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ask Slashdot: What Are Some ‘Best Practices’ IT Should Avoid At All Costs?
https://it.slashdot.org/story/17/06/13/1833250/ask-slashdot-what-are-some-best-practices-it-should-avoid-at-all-costs
From telling everyone they’re your customer to establishing a cloud strategy, Bob Lewis outlines 12 “industry best practices” that are sure to sink your company’s chances of IT success: “What makes IT organizations fail? Often, it’s the adoption of what’s described as ‘industry best practices’ by people who ought to know better but don’t, probably because they’ve never had to do the job.”
12 ‘best practices’ IT should avoid at all costs
From telling everyone they’re your customer to establishing a cloud strategy, these “industry best practices” are sure to sink your chances of IT success.
http://www.cio.com/article/3200445/it-strategy/12-best-practices-it-should-avoid-at-all-costs.html
The 12-Fold Path to IT Failure
What makes IT organizations fail? Often, it’s the adoption of what’s described as “industry best practices” by people who ought to know better but don’t, probably because they’ve never had to do the job.
Scratch the surface, however, and you begin to find these surefire recipes for IT success are often formulas for failure.
1. Tell everyone they’re your customer
2. Establish SLAs and treat them like contracts
3. Tell dumb-user stories
4. Institute charge-backs
5. Insist on ROI
6. Charter IT projects
7. Assign project sponsors
8. Establish a cloud computing strategy
9. Go Agile. Go offshore. Do both at the same time
10. Interrupt interruptions with interruptions
11. Juggle lots of projects
12. Say no or yes no matter the request
Tomi Engdahl says:
Is Microsoft cheating on Intel with ARM?
http://www.zdnet.com/article/intel-x86-emulation-on-windows-arm-is-a-stupid-distraction/
The Wintel marriage has been a successful one for over 30 years. So, why does Microsoft suddenly want to see other CPUs? Think of the children.
Now going on for 30-plus years, “Wintel” is the power couple that solidified our technology industry.
There has never been a partnership more pervasive, more important, and more influential than any other between two technology companies. Perhaps even between two companies in any industry.
Intel x86 chip architecture and advancements drove the development of Windows. Advancements in Windows drove developments in Intel chips. In that relationship, it’s very hard to say who is the heavy. In many ways, Wintel is a partnership of equals.
But now, Microsoft wants to make PCs that use Qualcomm chips based on the ARM architecture.
Naturally, Intel is very concerned.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft is really scared of Chromebooks in businesses and schools
https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/13/15794404/microsoft-scared-chrome-os-schools-businesses
Microsoft first revealed its concerns over Chromebooks in an attack on Google’s laptops more than three years ago. While Chromebooks haven’t become best-sellers for consumers just yet, they have started to become popular with students in the US and slowly with some businesses. Microsoft is now revealing it’s worried about this threat with two new videos on its Windows YouTube channel today.
The first promises that Windows 10 “outshines” Chrome OS for businesses, with features like Windows Ink, Cortana, Windows Hello, and Microsoft Edge. Bizarrely, Microsoft isn’t positioning its new Windows 10 S operating system as its alternative to Chrome OS, instead it’s using the Windows 10 Pro version for comparisons.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft’s AI Is the First to Reach a Perfect Ms. Pac-Man Score
https://games.slashdot.org/story/17/06/15/0228214/microsofts-ai-is-the-first-to-reach-a-perfect-ms-pac-man-score
Maluuba, a deep-learning team acquired by Microsoft in January, has created an AI system that has achieved the perfect score for Ms. Pac-Man. According to The Verge, the AI system “learned how to reach the game’s maximum point value of 999,900 on Atari 2600, using a unique combination of reinforcement learning with a divide-and-conquer method.
Sorry humans, Microsoft’s AI is the first to reach a perfect Ms. Pac-Man score
Game over
https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/14/15801700/microsoft-ai-perfect-ms-pac-man-score
At long last, the perfect score for arcade classic Ms. Pac-Man has been achieved, though not by a human. Maluuba — a deep learning team acquired by Microsoft in January — has created an AI system that’s learned how to reach the game’s maximum point value of 999,900 on Atari 2600, using a unique combination of reinforcement learning with a divide-and-conquer method.
AI researchers have a documented penchant for using video games to test machine learning; they better mimic real-world chaos in a controlled environment versus more static games like chess. In 2015, Google’s DeepMind AI was able to learn how to master 49 Atari games using reinforcement learning, which provides positive or negative feedback each time the AI attempts to solve a problem.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Windows is now open
The headline message would have been impossible to write even a few years ago, but now it is far from true. Microsoft brought its Build developer event to Helsinki, where Jeff Burtoft, who is responsible for the web applications program, stressed that the new open strategy is true and works.
According to Burtoft, Microsoft’s turnaround is not based on any sudden solution and not even Satya Nadella’s choice as CEO. It is a long-term strategic change.
- A good example is our .NET platform. It was our crown jewel for a long time, for example, server solutions based on it. Now .NET is open, Burtoft reminds me.
Many people rubbed their eyes when Microsoft announced that it would bring developers an application to access linux tools. However, Windows Subsystem for Linux is already used by many developers. – Silo-centered systems have moved to open source centers. This has all changed the perception of Windows among developers, Burtoft says.
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php/13-news/6479-windows-on-nyt-avoin
Tomi Engdahl says:
Neuromorphic Computing: Modeling The Brain
Competing models vie to show how the brain works, but none is perfect.
https://semiengineering.com/neuromorphic-computing-modeling-brain/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Exascale Project Awards $258M
Researchers aim to lower cost of 2021 system
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1331899
SAN JOSE, Calif. — The U.S. Department of Energy awarded $258 million to six tech giants, paving the way to build at least one exascale-class supercomputer by 2021. AMD, Cray, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM, Intel, and Nvidia received three-year grants and will, in turn, invest $172 million in research for the PathForward program.
The grants are the latest phase of the project launched last year that has, so far, spent about $100 million, mainly on software development. The awards come at a time when China holds the top two positions on the list of the world’s Top 500 supercomputers and claims that it will deliver an exascale-class system in 2020, a year ahead of the U.S.
“This is quite an important milestone for the national exascale project … I would not characterize this as an effort to catch up with China,” said Paul Messina, director of the Exascale Computing Project and a program manager at Argonne National Lab.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Artificial intelligence with one line of code
Artificial intelligence will change everything and the change is only in the early stages. Technologies are becoming increasingly popular with tools and, for example, Microsoft Visual Studio has made it easier to utilize artificial intelligence. It works in practice with one line of code.
In the Visual Studio Code, an artificial intelligence function in the Azure Cloud can be called on a single line of code. There are already dozens of different interfaces, and Microsoft adds these conginitive services all the time.
Introducing artificial intelligence into the application is practically so that one line in the application code adds a line that calls the desired Azure function. For example, emotions can be identified by the image through the new Emotion interface. This function is still so called. But it does seem to work pretty well on the dummy.
Jeff Burtoft, MS, responsible for web applications, told reporters yesterday at the Build Developer Meeting in Helsinki that ultimately the artificial intelligence will change everything. – 5 to 10 years after the apps’ connections, functions and value have changed completely from the current, he predicts.
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php/13-news/6483-tekoaly-kayttoon-yhdella-koodirivilla
Tomi Engdahl says:
Stop trying to make The Machine happen, HPE. It’s not going to happen
IT biz bags US govt cash to tinker with lab experiment
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/16/hpe_exascale_machine/
HPE will use a research grant awarded today by the US Department of Energy to develop blueprints for a Machine-based exascale supercomputer.
An exascale system is a beast that can hit at least one exaflops – a billion billion floating-point math operations per second. Uncle Sam is bent on getting at least one of these mega-machines up and running on US soil by 2021 and in production the following year.
These computers will be so powerful, they could each catalogue an iTunes music folder in less than ten minutes.
HPE is, essentially, getting a fistful of coins from a $258m pot provided by the Department of Energy to research and develop technology needed to build screaming-fast computers for scientific and national security applications.
We might suppose the US would quite like to build an exascale system before China, possibly regarding it as being as important as the early space race, which saw Russia launch its Sputnik satellite in 1957, before the US launched its first space satellite.
Using this latest cash injection, HPE will dust off its so-called memory-driven computing architecture and try to turn it into something that could be possibly used within a next-gen supercomputer. This architecture is a portfolio of technologies, including a memory fabric and low-energy photonics interconnects, that Hewlett Packard Labs developed under the codename The Machine. An ARM-powered prototype of The Machine, said to be the world’s largest single memory computer, was demonstrated in May.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Trump Orders Government To Stop Work On Y2K Bug, 17 Years Later
https://it.slashdot.org/story/17/06/15/2047244/trump-orders-government-to-stop-work-on-y2k-bug-17-years-later
The federal government will finally stop preparing for the Y2K bug, seventeen years after it came and went. Yes, you read that right. Bloomberg reports:
The Trump administration announced Thursday that it would eliminate dozens of paperwork requirements for federal agencies, including an obscure rule that requires them to continue providing updates on their preparedness for a bug that afflicted some computers at the turn of the century. As another example, the Pentagon will be freed from a requirement that it file a report every time a small business vendor is paid, a task that consumed some 1,200 man-hours every year.
Trump Orders Government to Stop Work on Y2K Bug, 17 Years Later
https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-06-15/trump-orders-government-to-stop-work-on-y2k-bug-17-years-later
The White House is eliminating paperwork for federal agencies
Federal workers still report on preparedness for year 2000
Seventeen years after the Year 2000 bug came and went, the federal government will finally stop preparing for it.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft’s AI earns perfect Ms Pac-Man score
The system used a divide-and-conquer strategy and reinforcement learning to win
https://www.engadget.com/2017/06/14/micosoft-s-ai-earns-perfect-ms-pac-man-score/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tails 3.0 is out
https://tails.boum.org/news/version_3.0/index.en.html
We are especially proud to present you Tails 3.0, the first version of Tails based on Debian 9 (Stretch). It brings a completely new startup and shutdown experience, a lot of polishing to the desktop, security improvements in depth, and major upgrades to a lot of the included software.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook teaches bots how to negotiate. They learn to lie instead
http://www.wired.co.uk/article/facebook-teaches-bots-how-to-negotiate-and-lie
The chatbots came up with their own original and effective responses – including deceptive tactics
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mike Wheatley / SiliconANGLE:
Oath unveils Bullet, an open source general-purpose query engine for streaming data
https://siliconangle.com/blog/2017/06/15/yahoo-unloads-bullet-querying-streaming-data-real-time/
Yahoo Inc. probably hasn’t been given enough credit for its contributions to the open-source software community over the last couple of decades. The company, which famously developed the Apache Hadoop software that’s at the heart of most big data projects today, is an active participant in numerous popular open-source projects.
Today, Oath Inc., the new Verizon Communications Inc. parent company of Yahoo and AOL, is unveiling Yahoo’s latest contribution to open-source, and it could potentially be a very important one: Bullet, a new general-purpose query engine for streaming data.
For the uninitiated, there are two kinds of data: streaming, which is data that arrives in a computer system in real time, and batch, which refers to information that’s been batched together over regular time intervals, for example hourly or daily. Batch data is usually quite easy to run queries against because it’s stored in a data warehouse where it can be accessed via commonly used SQL interfaces or business intelligence tools such as Tableau, Looker or Superset. But running queries on streaming data has always been much more challenging.
Bullet is aimed at changing that.
Bullet is a “forward-looking” query engine that queries only the data that passes through the system, after the query has been made. It does not query any older data that has already passed through the system, making it “as real-time as real-time gets,” in the words of Yahoo’s team.
The company suggests a number of use cases for Bullet, including being able to quickly look at a range of metrics, check on assumptions, iterate on queries, check statuses and more
Yahoo has already put Bullet into production on a number of projects.
https://yahoo.github.io/bullet-docs/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Workwell wants to make your corporate intranet suck less
https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/16/workwell-wants-to-make-your-corporate-intranet-suck-less/
If you’ve been working for a large company, chances are that your intranet sucks. It takes too much time to find the right information, it’s not tailored for mobile and it doesn’t integrate well with the services you actually use. French startup Workwell is a mobile intranet that you’ll actually like.
It seems like a tough task, but so far Workwell is ticking all the right boxes — it’s a mobile app first and foremost, it integrates with third-party services thanks to an SDK and it’s as social as it can be.
Workwell isn’t technically a new startup.
Never Eat Alone is now just one part of Workwell, but there are a bunch of other services that will make your office life easier.
For instance, you can book a restaurant, find a ride-sharing partner, get a map of the office, book a meeting room, control the AC and more. And then you can integrate with food delivery services and more.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Rachael King / Wall Street Journal:
DOE awards $258M to be shared among AMD, Cray, HPE, IBM, Intel, and Nvidia over next three years for R&D into exascale computers to better compete with China
U.S. Invests $258 Million in Supercomputing Race With China
Energy Department to award cash to six tech companies to develop world’s fastest computers
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-invests-258-million-in-supercomputing-race-with-china-1497549600
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google releases new TensorFlow Object Detection API
https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/16/object-detection-api/?ncid=rss&utm_source=tcfbpage&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=FaceBook&sr_share=facebook
Google is releasing a new TensorFlow object detection API to make it easier for developers and researchers to identify objects within images.
AdChoices
MenuTechCrunch
Google releases new TensorFlow Object Detection API
Posted 11 hours ago by John Mannes (@JohnMannes)
Google is releasing a new TensorFlow object detection API to make it easier for developers and researchers to identify objects within images. Google is trying to offer the best of simplicity and performance — the models being released today have performed well in benchmarking and have become regularly used in research.
The handful of models included in the detection API include heavy duty inception-based convolutional neural networks and streamlined models designed to operate on less sophisticated machines — a MobileNets single shot detector comes optimized to run in real-time on a smartphone.
Earlier this week Google announced its MobileNets family of lightweight computer vision models. These models can handle tasks like object detection, facial recognition and landmark recognition.
Today’s smartphones don’t possess the computational resources of larger scale desktop and server-based setups, leaving developers with two options. Machine learning models can run in the cloud, but that adds latency and requires an internet connection — non-starters for a lot of common use cases. The alternative approach is simplifying the models themselves, making a trade-off in the interest of more ubiquitous deployment.
Google, Facebook and Apple have been pouring resources into these mobile models.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Samsung releases 49-inch desktop monitor with 32:9 aspect ratio
Imagine the spreadsheet you could view on a four-foot-wide 3840 x 1080 beast
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/16/samsung_49_inch_chg90_desktop_monitor/
Samsung’s specs don’t say how much it weighs, but Amazon says it tips the scales at 45 pounds and measures 47.4 x 15 x 20.7 inches.
Samsung has built the monitor for gamers, as apparently they’ll enjoy the immersive experience it offers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Software dev bombshell: Programmers who use spaces earn MORE than those who use tabs
Well, of course – anyone using tabs should be paid zero
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/16/spaces_vs_tabs/
Poll Weighing in on a longstanding religious war among software developers, community site Stack Overflow has found that developers who use spaces to indent their code earn more than those who use tabs.
After crunching the data from its 2017 Developer Survey (released in March), Stack Overflow data scientist David Robinson on Thursday reported, “[T]he median developer who uses spaces had a salary of $59,140, while the median tabs developer had a salary of $43,750.”
Robinson’s analytical model suggests that using spaces correlates with an 8.6 per cent higher salary and is the equivalent of an extra 2.4 years of experience in terms of salary expectations.
Last August, Google developer advocate Felipe Hoffa published data derived from 400,000 GitHub repositories that found spaces far more prevalent in programming code than tabs, with the exception of C and Go (which mandates tabs).
The Linux kernel coding style prefers tabs, too.
The debate about tabs and spaces involves concerns about consistency, readability, productivity, and storage space.
A tab can represent a different number of columns, depending upon the computing environment being used. A space always represents a single column. So code indented with tabs may appear differently on different systems.
At the same time, tabs take fewer keystrokes and take up less disk space, at least when code isn’t being minified.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft: It’s Very Clear Apple Is Copying Us
Company exec talks about Apple’s new direction
http://news.softpedia.com/news/microsoft-it-s-very-clear-apple-is-copying-us-516500.shtml
May and June have been very busy months for Microsoft and Apple, as the two tech giants unveiled their new-generation devices, including 2-in-1s that continue the successful Surface and iPad Pro series.
Apple’s increasing focus on the iPad Pro is living proof that Cupertino is now betting big on 2-in-1 devices, after the company originally ignored this market and even made fun of Microsoft for investing in it. And this is why Microsoft general manager for Surface Ryan Gavin says it’s very clear that Apple is copying the software giant, using its ideas on own products like the iPad Pro.
“Think about it, if we had been looking at [Apple] we wouldn’t have made a product like Surface Pro or Surface Book. We have been learning and perfecting our products in the 2-in-1 category for years now, [but] when Surface initially launched everyone was skeptical, including them. And then they followed, and the iPad Pro is a clear example of that,” he said in an interview with BI.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Programmers who use spaces ‘paid more’
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-40302410?utm_campaign=digest&utm_medium=email&utm_source=app
Computer programmers who use spaces as part of their coding earn $15,370 (£12,000) more per year than those who use tabs, a survey of developers has revealed.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft’s new Xbox costs $500, but that could be a good thing
http://nordic.businessinsider.com/why-xbox-one-x-costs-500-2017-6?r=US&IR=T
You might think it’s crazy that Microsoft is once again introducing a new game console with a $500 price tag.
But it’s just possible the company is being crazy like a fox.
Microsoft is pretty certain there’s a good market for its new Xbox One X game machine despite its high price point. More importantly, the company is pretty excited about who’s most likely to buy the new device.
The kinds of customers who will be attracted to the Xbox One X tend to be the best game customers of all, Phil Spencer, the head of Microsoft’s Xbox operations, said in a recent interview with Business Insider.
“The thing that we should all realize is that that customer buys a lot of games,” Spencer said. “That customer plays a lot of games.”
That’s a pretty strong argument for why huge companies like Microsoft and Sony are bothering to create more powerful, more expensive iterations of their consoles, even if those consoles serve only a small minority of console buyers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Linux Kernel 4.14 Will Be An LTS Release
https://linux.slashdot.org/story/17/06/17/204238/linux-kernel-414-will-be-an-lts-release
Development of the Linux 4.14 kernel series did not even start, as the version that’s being developed these days is Linux 4.12, which should be promoted to stable early next month,
renowned Linux kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman announced earlier this morning that the upcoming Linux 4.14 kernel series will be an LTS (Long Term Support) branch.
The developer promises to support the Linux 4.14 kernel series for at least two years after its release in November 2017, probably until November 2019.
Linux 4.14 to Be the Next LTS Kernel Series, Supported for at Least 2 Years
Development could start in mid-September 2017
http://news.softpedia.com/news/linux-4-14-to-be-the-next-lts-kernel-series-supported-for-at-least-2-years-516520.shtml
Renowned Linux kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman announced earlier this morning on his Google+ page that the upcoming Linux 4.14 kernel series will be an LTS (Long Term Support) branch.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Gartner confirms what we all know: AWS and Microsoft are the cloud leaders, by a fair way
Paranormal parallelogram for IaaS has Google on the same lap, IBM and Oracle trailing
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/19/gartner_confirms_what_we_all_know_aws_and_microsoft_are_the_cloud_leaders_by_a_fair_way/
Gartner has published a new magic quadrant for infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) that – surprising nobody – has Amazon Web Services and Microsoft alone in the leader’s quadrant and a few others thought outside of the box.
Here’s the Soothsaying Square in all its glory.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Memory/Selector Elements for Intel Optane XPoint Memory
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1331865&
TechInsights continues to dig into the process, cell structure and materials analysis of the Intel Optane XPoint memory.
Further analysis by TechInsights has determined that the Intel Optane XPoint memory die has a 128 Gb/die which is quite a bit lower memory density than the current 3D TLC NAND products, as shown in Figure 1. Memory density per die is 2.28 Gb/mm2 for Micron 32L 3D FG CuA TLC NAND, 2.57 Gb/mm2 for Samsung 48L TLC V-NAND, 2.43 Gb/mm2 for Toshiba/WD 48L BiCS TLC NAND, and 1.45 Gb/mm2 SK Hynix 36L P-BiCS MLC NAND. By comparison, the Intel Optane XPoint has 0.62 Gb/mm2.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Artificial intelligence brings new efficiency and will increase global GDP by USD 1.1 trillion by 2021. According to IDC’s new report, artificial intelligence is expected to create 800,000 new jobs, which is more than lost due to automation.
Next year, according to the IDC report, the research institute will become a turning point in the introduction of artificial intelligence. In the survey, over 40% of companies reported that they would take artificial intelligence for the next two years.
IDC predicts that by the end of 2018, 75 percent of the development of group and software companies will include machine learning activities in at least one application.
Artificial Intelligence’s share of international CRM markets is more than five times more than $ 7.9 billion to $ 46.3 billion by 2021: IDC’s report reveals the financial impact of artificial intelligence.
Source: http://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2017/06/15/tekoalysta-biljoonan-lisabuusti-talouteen/
More:
https://sfdc.co/AI_IDCReport
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ian Cutress / AnandTech:
A look at AMD’s future in servers with today’s launch of its EPYC enterprise-class processors, with configurations up to 32 cores and 64 threads per processor
AMD’s Future in Servers: New 7000-Series CPUs Launched and EPYC Analysis
by Ian Cutress on June 20, 2017 4:00 PM EST
http://www.anandtech.com/show/11551/amds-future-in-servers-new-7000-series-cpus-launched-and-epyc-analysis
The big news out of AMD was the launch of Zen, the new high-performance core that is designed to underpin the product roadmap for the next few generations of products. To much fanfare, AMD launched consumer level parts based on Zen, called Ryzen, earlier this year.
A few weeks ago AMD announced the naming of the new line of enterprise-class processors, called EPYC, and today marks the official launch with configurations up to 32 cores and 64 threads per processor. We also got an insight into several features of the design, including the AMD Infinity Fabric.’
What’s in a Processor?
Today’s announcement of the AMD EPYC product line sees the launch of the top four CPUs, focused primarily at dual socket systems. The full EPYC stack will contain twelve processors, with three for single socket environments, with the rest of the stack being made available at the end of July. It is worth taking a few minutes to look at how these processors look under the hood.
On the package are four silicon dies, each one containing the same 8-core silicon we saw in the AMD Ryzen processors. Each silicon die has two core complexes, each of four cores, and supports two memory channels, giving a total maximum of 32 cores and 8 memory channels on an EPYC processor. The dies are connected by AMD’s newest interconnect, the Infinity Fabric, which plays a key role not only in die-to-die communication but also processor-to-processor communication and within AMD’s new Vega graphics. AMD designed the Infinity Fabric to be modular and scalable in order to support large GPUs and CPUs in the roadmap going forward, and states that within a single package the fabric is overprovisioned to minimize any issues with non-NUMA aware software (more on this later).
With a total of 8 memory channels, and support for 2 DIMMs per channel, AMD is quoting a 2TB per socket maximum memory support, scaling up to 4TB per system in a dual processor system. Each CPU will support 128 PCIe 3.0 lanes, suitable for six GPUs with full bandwidth support (plus IO) or up to 32 NVMe drives for storage. All the PCIe lanes can be used for IO devices, such as SATA drives or network ports, or as Infinity Fabric connections to other devices. There are also 4 IO hubs per processor for additional storage support.
In a dual socket arrangement, each CPU uses 64 PCIe lanes in Infinity Fabric mode to communicate with each other. This means there is still a total of 128 PCIe lanes to be used inside the system, but the total memory support has doubled.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Surface Line Remains Synonymous with Sucky Serviceab
http://ifixit.org/blog/9203/2017-surface-repair/
We started our teardown week with a surprisingly upgradable iMac and ended it with a couple o’ unrepairable Surfaces. We want to like them, but they’re like a bad Tinder match—they lie about their true identity (not actually laptops), they look great on the outside but are trouble under the Surface (adhesives), and no matter how hard you try, you’ll never be able to fix or change them (unrepairable and non-upgradable).
Tomi Engdahl says:
MongoDB tries to entice time-poor devs with new Backend as a Service
Document database company has Google’s Firebase in its sights
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/20/mongodb_tries_to_entice_timepoor_devs_with_new_backend_as_a_service/
MongoDB’s latest offering, Stitch, is aiming to appeal to developers that don’t have the time – or the inclination – to write boilerplate code.
The NoSQL business – which started life as 10gen in 2007 – used its world conference in Chicago to emit a new Backend as a Service, which is being launched in beta today.
The document database company is pitching itself as the developer’s best friend, with previous announcements aimed at luring in customers who are looking to save a few dollars.
Its latest offering is BaaS Stitch, which MongoDB said would give developers a “simple way” to handle routine backend tasks, like storage and retrieving data – by handing it over to MongoDB to look after.
Tomi Engdahl says:
‘OK, everyone. Stop typing, this software is DONE,’ said no one ever
Some times it really is, though
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/20/software_is_never_done/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Want to learn machine learning in 15 minutes? Start here…
A guide to seeing the wood for the decision trees
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/21/15_minutes_in_machine_learning/
Tomi Engdahl says:
What hardware? Oracle is on cloud nine, er, twelve right now – $200,000,000,000
IT giant’s market cap soars after (mostly) strong financials
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/22/oracle_q4_fy2017/
Oracle says it has finally turned the corner with its cloud compute transition as it reports big gains for the business, both in the quarter and the fiscal year.
The database giant said that its cloud and SaaS units now account for more than 10 per cent of its total revenue haul and will take on an even larger share of the total business going forward.
This may not be entirely by choice; both the on-premises software and hardware groups have reported falling revenues, with hardware dropping by double digits.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Computer History Must Include People of Color
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1331908&
The history of computing is not complete without the acknowledgement of mathematicians, scientists, and engineers like the African American women of NASA.
The film Hidden Figures about African American women mathematicians and engineers working for NASA in the early 1960s may be the first introduction to general audiences of the contributions to technology by persons of color. Margot Lee Shetterly, author of the 2016 book upon which it was based spent several years researching the topic.
Tomi Engdahl says:
AMD Rolls Epyc Server SoCs
X86 battle with Intel moves to data center
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1331914
Advanced Micro Devices showed as many as two dozen systems using Epyc 7000, the server processor family it released today. The launch reignites competition in one of the most lucrative sectors of Intel’s x86 business.
AMD announced nine Epyc processors, using its Zen x86 core to deliver 23–70% more performance than Intel’s 14-nm Broadwell parts across a range of benchmarks. All support eight 2,666-MHz DDR 4 channels and 128 PCI Express Gen 3 lanes, compared to about four memory channels and 40 PCIe lanes in the average Xeon.
The chips arrive as Intel is about to roll out its first 10-nm Xeon chips based on its Skylake architecture. Some Epyc parts “could still be ahead of Intel’s coming generation, but not as much,” said Nathan Brookwood, principal of market watcher Insight64
Tomi Engdahl says:
Chief Digital Officer Study
Explore our latest findings on the new class of digital leaders.
https://www.strategyand.pwc.com/cdo
19% Have a CDO or equivalent
38% Of companies based in EMEA have a CDO
32% Of CDOs have a technology background
40% Are C-level members
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jessi Hempel / Wired:
Interviews with key Microsoft staff shed light on its AI strategy, utilizing Cortana and chatbots, and the firm’s plans to compete with Facebook and Google — Yoshua Bengio has never been one to take sides. As one of the three intellects who shaped the deep learning that now dominates …
Inside Microsoft’s AI Comeback
https://www.wired.com/story/inside-microsofts-ai-comeback
Tomi Engdahl says:
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Algorithmia, a marketplace for algorithms, functions and machine-learning models, raises $10.5M Series A led by Google’s new AI fund
Algorithmia raises $10.5M Series A round led by Google’s new AI fund
https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/23/algorithmia-raises-10-5m-series-a-round-led-by-googles-new-ai-fund/
About a month ago, word spread that Google had quietly launched a new fund for investing into AI companies. Now this fund has made its first (or at least its first public) investment. Led by Google’s VP of engineering for AI, Anna Patterson, this new fund is leading a $10.5 million Series A into Algorithmia, a marketplace and enterprise solution that allows developers to easily tap into its catalog of 3,500 algorithms, functions and machine-learning models.
The Seattle-based company currently has 45,000 developers on its platform, and the algorithms on the site stem from university researchers and individual developers from across the globe.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wall Street Journal:
Walmart tells some tech providers not to use Amazon Web Services if they want Walmart’s business
Wal-Mart to Vendors: Get Off Amazon’s Cloud
To do business with Wal-Mart, the retailer requires some tech providers to build the services on AWS cloud rivals
https://www.wsj.com/articles/wal-mart-to-vendors-get-off-amazons-cloud-1498037402
Tomi Engdahl says:
Expert Panel Debunks AI Hype
Neural networks seen as huge but limited
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1331940&
Tomi Engdahl says:
Steve Lohr / New York Times:
A look at “new-collar” tech-focused jobs, supported by big firms like Microsoft and IBM, that aim to provide skills to workers without college degrees in the US — ROCKET CENTER, W.Va. — A few years ago, Sean Bridges lived with his mother, Linda, in Wiley Ford …
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/28/technology/tech-jobs-skills-college-degree.html?mtrref=www.techmeme.com&gwh=26027AB5849C78DA910C6A86A6FA4343&gwt=pay
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel Banks on Artificial Intelligence
Invests in CognitiveScale, AEye, Element AI
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1331938&
Tomi Engdahl says:
React to the Software Shift
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1331921&
If you are looking to make a switch from hardware engineering to software programming, Facebook and Udacity have created a shortcut for you.
It’s called React Native. It’s a single Javascript framework that developers are increasingly using to write programs for the web, Apple’s iPhone, and Android handsets.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Linus Torvalds Explains How Linux Still Surprises and Motivates Him
https://www.linux.com/blog/event/lc3-china/20176/6/linus-torvalds-explains-how-linux-still-surprises-and-motivates-him
Tomi Engdahl says:
Peter Bright / Ars Technica:
AMD’s new Ryzen PRO CPUs designed for corporate desktops come with standard Ryzen features plus a 3-year warranty, additional management and security features
Ryzen Pro: AMD takes on Intel on the corporate desktop, with one key omission
AMD wants to go after Intel vPro while avoiding Intel’s excessive product segmentation.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/06/ryzen-pro-amd-takes-on-intel-on-the-corporate-desktop-with-one-key-omission/
AMD today launched Ryzen Pro (styled “PRO” in AMD’s branding, but we’re not going to do that here), a series of processors designed for the corporate desktop. Close counterparts to the existing line of consumer-oriented Ryzen chips, the Pro parts are aimed at Intel’s vPro-compatible processors, which enable a number of additional administrative, security, and management capabilities.
Most of the regular Ryzen models have corresponding Pro versions, albeit topping out at a 1700X rather than the 1800 and 1800X of the consumer parts. This means that at the high end, there’s a couple of eight core, 16 thread parts, which is twice the number of cores and threads of comparable Intel chips.
In general, each Ryzen numbered series approximately corresponds to Intel’s numbering—Ryzen 7 against Core i7, and so on—but AMD is claiming some advantages over Intel.
When pushed on what exactly those Pro features are, however, AMD is unclear. In the slides it prepared for the media, AMD listed features such as memory encryption, Secure Boot, and a firmware-integrated TPM as Ryzen Pro features. This is peculiar, though, because the regular Ryzen chips support Secure Boot and a firmware TPM. They also purport to support memory encryption, and at least some motherboard firmwares for Ryzen chips have settings for turning on this memory encryption. As such, these features don’t appear to be unique to Ryzen Pro.
The bigger difference seems to be in non-silicon features. The Pro CPUs have 3 year warranties, instead of the 12 months of the consumer parts; AMD also promises to manufacture the Pro parts for at least 24 months.
AMD’s relative lack of product segmentation—extending the full range of features all the way down the line to the lowliest Ryzen 3 Pro—is certainly a welcome contrast to Intel’s segmented line-up and forced upsells.