Prediction articles:
2020: A consumer electronics forecast for the year(s) ahead
AI Chips: What Will 2020 Bring?
CEO Outlook: 2020 Vision: 5G, China and AI are prominent, but big changes are coming everywhere
Top 10 Tech Failures From 2019 That Hint At 2020 Trends – Last year’s tech failures often turn into next year’s leading trends
Trends:
AMD’s 7nm Ryzen 4000 CPUs are here to take on Intel’s 10nm Ice Lake laptop chips
Top 9 challenges IT leaders will face in 2020: From skills shortages to privacy concerns
From the oil rig to the lake: a shift in perspective on data
In December 2020, the new IEC/EN 62368-1 will replace the existing safety standards EN 60950-1 and EN 60065-1
Use of technology money outside company IT department is the new normal
Tech to try:
12 Alternative Operating Systems You Can Use In 2020
CONTINUOUS INTEGRATION: WHAT IT IS AND WHY YOU NEED IT
Research:
Universal memory coming? New type of non-volatile general purpose memory on research, some call it UltraRAM.
1,318 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft Partners With Samsung, Preparing For A Post-Console Future
http://on.forbes.com/61861ihyO
As Samsung unveiled its Galaxy S20 and Galaxy Z Flip phones yesterday, it also unveiled a partnership. Details are still a little bit light, so far, but the focus is clear: Xbox and Samsung are partnering for cloud-based gaming, which Microsoft is pursuing through its Project xCloud, currently in the closed test phase.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Natalie Gagliordi / ZDNet:
Nvidia reports Q4 revenue of $3.11B, up 41% YoY, gaming revenue of $1.4B, data center revenue of $968M, and net income of $950M; stock up 6%+ after hours — Nvidia said it expects Q1 revenue of $3 billion, plus or minus two percent, above market estimates for $2.85 billion in revenue.
Nvidia delivers strong Q4, lowers guidance on coronavirus concerns
https://www.zdnet.com/article/nvidia-delivers-strong-q4-lowers-guidance-on-coronavirus-concerns/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Five Chip Companies Hold 53% of Global Wafer Capacity
https://www.eetimes.com/five-chip-companies-hold-53-of-global-wafer-capacity/
Only five semiconductor companies hold 53 percent of total global wafer capacity, according to research firm IC Insights. In 2019, each company had capacity of more than 1,000,000 wafer starts per month.
As of December 2019, Samsung had the most installed wafer capacity with 2.9 million 200mm-equivalent wafers per month.
Second in line was TSMC, the largest pure-play foundry in the world, with about 2.5 million wafers per month capacity, or 12.8 percent of total worldwide capacity.
Micron had the third largest amount of capacity at the end of 2019 with a little more than 1.8 million wafers, or 9.4 percent of worldwide capacity.
The fourth largest capacity holder at the end of 2019 was SK Hynix with a monthly wafer capacity of nearly 1.8 million wafers (8.9 percent of total worldwide capacity). More than 80 percent of it was used to make DRAM and NAND flash chips.
Rounding out the top 5 companies was memory IC supplier Kioxia (formerly Toshiba Memory) with 1.4 million wafers/month (7.2 percent of total worldwide capacity), including a substantial amount of NAND flash memory capacity for its fab investment and technology development partner Western Digital.
In contrast, the top five capacity leaders in 2009 held 36 percent of worldwide capacity. Capacity at other semiconductor leaders, including Intel (817K wafers/month), UMC (753K wafers/month), GlobalFoundries, Texas Instruments, and STMicro, fell off rapidly from the top five.
Tomi Engdahl says:
South Korea’s government explores move from Windows to Linux desktop
https://www.zdnet.com/article/south-koreas-government-explores-move-from-windows-to-linux-desktop/
In what may prove to be the biggest migration from Windows to the Linux desktop, the South Korean government is looking into shifting from Windows 7 to a trio of Linux desktops.
Tomi Engdahl says:
First, DigitalOcean cut many jobs due to money or some issues, and now Google cuts jobs at the cloud-computing group. Google is cash-rich. What is going on? Are MS and Amazon only making monies from cloud computing? Is the tech bubble going to burst? https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-cuts-jobs-at-cloud-computing-group-11581719153
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft sneaks working Surface Duo demo into failed event recording
https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/13/21135958/microsoft-surface-duo-demo-microsoft-365-dev-days-event-recording-filming-demo-fail
The new demo gives us a first glimpse of Android apps on Surface Duo
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft launches new dev tools for building Windows 10X dual-screen experiences
https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/11/microsoft-launches-new-dev-tools-for-building-windows-10x-dual-screen-experiences/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Esittelyssä Solitan data-tekeminen: tiimissä yli 200 dataan erikoistunutta konsulttia
https://www.solita.fi/blogit/esittelyssa-solitan-data-tekeminen/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Install Linux over or alongside an existing Windows install, straight from Windows, without requiring to boot from external media like a flash drive or making BIOS configuration changes.
https://github.com/mikeslattery/tunic
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Cuts Jobs at Cloud-Computing Group
Reorganization is aimed at improving operations at the business
https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-cuts-jobs-at-cloud-computing-group-11581719153
Tomi Engdahl says:
Next-Gen HAMR Platters Promise 80TB Hard Drives
We’re about to get 20 terabyte hard drives, but the path looks clear to scale up to 80TB
https://www.pcmag.com/news/next-gen-hamr-platters-promise-80tb-hard-drives
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cloud spending said to top $30B in Q4 as Amazon, Microsoft battle for market share
Ron Miller
@ron_miller / 1:00 am EET • February 19, 2020
https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/18/cloud-spending-said-to-top-30b-in-q4-as-amazon-microsoft-battle-for-market-share/?tpcc=ECFB2020
Tomi Engdahl says:
96-Core Processor Made of Chiplets
https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/semiconductors/processors/core-processor-chiplets-isscc-news
Tomi Engdahl says:
GitHub Launches Command-Line Interface Tool for Pull Requests and Issues in Open Beta: GitHub CLI
https://www.hackster.io/news/github-launches-command-line-interface-tool-for-pull-requests-and-issues-in-open-beta-github-cli-6fa14c1bff13
Launching with initial support for issue and pull request functionality, gh is designed to bring the features of GitHub outside the browser.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google v. Oracle Explained: The Fight for Interoperable Software
https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/software/google-v-oracle-explained-supreme-court-news-apis-software
Tomi Engdahl says:
FTC Refunds Victims of Office Depot Tech Support Scam
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/ftc-refunds-victims-of-office-depot-tech-support-scam/
Between 2009 and November 2016, Office Depot and Office Max employees utilized a diagnostic program called ‘PC Health Check’ that would in many cases report a person’s computer had malware even if it was not infected.
Whistleblowers told KIRO7 reporters that the employees were pressured into utilizing PC Health Check even though it was known to not be accurate to convince people to purchase repair services ranging from $180 to $300.
Tomi Engdahl says:
2020 IC Outlook: Uncertainty
How will the coronavirus impact the IC market?
https://semiengineering.com/2020-ic-outlook-growth-uncertainty/
After a downturn in 2019, the semiconductor and equipment industries looked promising at the start of 2020.
In 2019, the downturn was primarily due to the memory markets, namely DRAM and NAND. Both DRAM and NAND saw lackluster demand and falling prices last year. At the start of 2020, though, the memory markets were beginning to recover.
Unlike memory, the logic and foundry markets were somewhat stronger in the latter part of 2019. Robust demand for foundry and logic spilled over into 2020.
Demand for analog, power semis and RF were lackluster in 2019. Many of those vendors were looking for renewed growth in 2020.
Then, not long ago, the coronavirus in China hit the market. The pandemic has expanded and spread, causing some turbulence in the supply chain. Companies have lowered their forecasts.
Tomi Engdahl says:
WHOA. Arm partners have now shipped more than 160 billion Arm-based chips, with an average of more than 22 billion over the past three years.
https://www.arm.com/company/news/2020/02/record-shipments-of-arm-based-chips-in-previous-quarter
Tomi Engdahl says:
If you’re an engineer or programmer, you made a great career choice according to a survey by Indeed, which ranked tech jobs in seven of the top 10 slots in its latest survey.
Survey Says: Tech Jobs Are the Best Jobs
https://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/at-work/tech-careers/tech-jobs-best-jobs
What makes a job a really good job? Job search site Indeed defines it as a combination of salary, demand as represented by the share of job postings, and growth in the number of job postings for a particular title.
By that definition, tech jobs have generally done well.
This year, however, tech jobs claimed a whopping seven of the top ten slots, pushing out all other professions except real estate agent, dentist, and sales director.
What are Indeed’s great tech jobs? Software architect came out on top, driven by demand. Full stack developer came in second, driven by the growth in the number of job postings. Dentists and doctors, however, still top the average salary charts.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.telecomlead.com/smart-phone/smartphone-market-to-drop-2-3-in-2020-idc-94271
PC shipments will decline 9 percent in 2020 to 374.2 million. The drop in PC business is due to two significant factors; the Windows 7 to Windows 10 transition creates tougher growth comparisons and the spread of COVID-19 is hampering supply and leading to reduced demand.
PC business will drop 8.2 percent during the first quarter of 2020 and, followed by a decline of 12.7 percent in Q2 2020 as the existing inventory of components and finished goods from the first quarter will have been depleted by the second quarter.
Tomi Engdahl says:
20+ Insanely Cool Gadgets That Are Going To Sell Out Soon
https://primetips.net/2019/listicle/en/finds/?placement=mobileapp%3A%3A1-579581125&creative=411469870689&target=&adgroup=88427794263&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI0s7Rlun25wIVkpOnCh0jSwSCEAEYASAAEgIWzPD_BwE&keyword=&camp=6944175505&device=m&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI0s7Rlun25wIVkpOnCh0jSwSCEAEYASAAEgIWzPD_BwE
We’ve been keeping track of gadget sales in the last few months, and we’re absolutely confident that the following 20+ products are going to be selling like hot cakes in 2020 (each with at least an average user rating of 4.7 stars).
Tomi Engdahl says:
From VMware to Charmed OpenStack
Reduce costs and increase the efficiency of your infrastructure with open source adoption
https://ubuntu.com/engage/vmware-to-charmed-openstack
Tomi Engdahl says:
Japan Has Created The Ultimate Gaming Bed, So You Never Have To Rejoin Society Again
https://odditymall.com/ultimate-gaming-bed
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://go.mariadb.com/open-source-databases-comparison-mariadb-mysql-enterprisedb.html?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=ppc&utm_campaign=MKG-Social-Facebook-Audience-Lookalike-Clients-EMEA-AS0719-Open-Source-Database-Comparison
Tomi Engdahl says:
New in PHP 8
https://stitcher.io/blog/new-in-php-8
PHP 8, the new major PHP version, is expected to be released by the end of 2020. It’s in very active development right now, so things are likely to change a lot in the upcoming months.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/insights-ibmservices/2019/12/20/8-ways-cloud-is-transforming-business/
Tomi Engdahl says:
SETI@Home Search For Alien Life Project Shuts Down After 21 Years
https://m.slashdot.org/story/367924
Tomi Engdahl says:
Open source, cross-platform and people seem to like it: PowerShell 7 has landed
Who are you and what have you done with Microsoft?
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/03/04/powershell_7_generally_available/
The platform list is impressive. As well as Windows 7, 8.1 and 10 (on x64), pretty much every Windows Server version is supported as well as macOS and many mainstream Linux distros (including RHEL, Ubuntu and Debian). Arm32 and Arm64 flavours of Debian and Ubuntu also get a look-in.
The gang is leaving the old Windows PowerShell alone for the time being, with the legacy incarnation receiving only “high-impact servicing and security fixes”,
Tomi Engdahl says:
SETI@Home ends its crowdsourced search for alien life after 21 years
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/seti-at-home-ends-its-crowdsourced-search-for-alien-life-after-21-years/ar-BB10JdA4?OCID=ansmsnnews11
Tomi Engdahl says:
96% of tech employees don’t believe recruiters are best at evaluating candidates
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/96-of-tech-employees-dont-believe-recruiters-are-best-at-evaluating-candidates/
Fellow team members may be better at assessing candidates than the actual recruiters, a Blind report found.
Nearly all (96%) tech employees don’t think recruiters are the best at evaluating prospective hires, a Blind report found. The majority (66%) of employees instead said that team members would be better at recruiting candidates.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft Plots the End of Visual Basic
https://www.thurrott.com/dev/232268/microsoft-plots-the-end-of-visual-basic
Microsoft said this week that it will support Visual Basic on .NET 5.0 but will no longer add new features or evolve the language.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple:
Apple unveils new iPad Pro with a lidar scanner for depth-sensing, backlit keyboard and trackpad, available to order today for $799 for the 11-inch model
Apple unveils new iPad Pro with breakthrough LiDAR Scanner and brings trackpad support to iPadOS
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/03/apple-unveils-new-ipad-pro-with-lidar-scanner-and-trackpad-support-in-ipados/
New Magic Keyboard Designed for iPad Pro Features a Floating Design, Backlit Keyboard and Trackpad, Delivering the Best Typing Experience Ever on iPad
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple:
Apple launches a new MacBook Air with a Magic Keyboard with scissor-style keys, 13″ Retina display, Touch ID, and 10th-gen Intel Core CPUs, starting at $999
New MacBook Air has more to love and is now just $999
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/03/new-macbook-air-has-more-to-love-and-is-now-just-999/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/16/github-nabs-javascript-packaging-vendor-npm/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/software/programming-without-code-no-code-software-development
Tomi Engdahl says:
Chips that pass in the night: How risky is RISC-V to Arm, Intel and the others? Very
A decade on, expanding open ecosystem highlights limits of monolithic approach to CPU design
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/03/09/risc_v_intel_amd_arm/
Tomi Engdahl says:
How the information system industry became enterprise software
https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/08/how-the-information-system-industry-became-enterprise-software/
Tomi Engdahl says:
The 2020s – From choosing to composing frameworks
https://www.frantic.com/blog/2020s-choosing-or-composing-frameworks
Looking back at the past decade makes us think about what we accomplished in the web development community, and what we want to achieve in the next decade.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Miten ohjelmistokehittäjä voi suojata itsensä taantumalta?
https://talented.fi/fi/blog/miten-ohjelmistokehittaja-voi-suojata-itsensa-taantumalta/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Vahingossa liiketoimintakriittiseksi
https://www.vincit.fi/fi/vahingossa-liiketoimintakriittiseksi/
Kun ohjelmistoja rakennetaan projektiluonteisesti, on kokonaisuutta syytä ennakoida ja tarkastella myös sen ihanan vaiheen jälkeen, kun projekti on niin sanotusti taputeltu. Tarjoan tässä artikkelissa muutaman ajattelun arvoisen ajatuksen ohjelmistokehityksen kuherruskuukauden jälkeiseen aikaan.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Everybody (still) wants you, you know.
https://talented.fi/en/employee/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://futuretodayinstitute.com/2020-tech-trends/?utm_source=Future+Today+Institute+Mailing+List&utm_campaign=a125b86414-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_03_12_09_58_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_a93f10a980-a125b86414-146215589
Tomi Engdahl says:
Open-source, cross-platform and people seem to like it: PowerShell 7 has landed
Who are you and what have you done with Microsoft?
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/03/04/powershell_7_generally_available/
Tomi Engdahl says:
NASA to launch 247 petabytes of data into AWS – but forgot about eye-watering cloudy egress costs before lift-off
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/03/19/nasa_cloud_data_migration_mess/
Audit finds that error could actually mean less data flows to boffins because space agency may not be able to afford downloads
NASA needs 215 more petabytes of storage by the year 2025, and expects Amazon Web Services to provide the bulk of that capacity. However, the space agency didn’t realize this would cost it plenty in cloud egress charges. As in, it will have to pay as scientists download its data.
The data in question will come from NASA’s Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS) program, which collects information from the many missions that observe our planet. NASA makes those readings available through the Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS).
To store all the data and run EOSDIS, NASA operates a dozen Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) that provide pleasing redundancy. But NASA is tired of managing all that infrastructure, so in 2019, it picked AWS to host it all,
“Specifically, the agency faces the possibility of substantial cost increases for data egress from the cloud,” the Inspector General’s Office wrote, explaining that today NASA doesn’t incur extra costs when users access data from its DAACs. “However, when end users download data from Earthdata Cloud, the agency, not the user, will be charged every time data is egressed.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Cloud goes after the telco business with Anthos for Telecom and its Global Mobile Edge Cloud
https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/05/google-cloud-goes-after-the-telco-business-with-anthos-for-telecom-and-its-global-mobile-edge-cloud/
Google Cloud today announced a new solution for its telecom customers: Anthos for Telecom. You can think of this as a specialized edition of Google’s container-based Anthos multi-cloud platform for both modernizing existing applications and building new ones on top of Kubernetes. The announcement, which was originally slated for MWC, doesn’t come as a major surprise, given Google Cloud’s focus on offering very targeted services to its enterprise customers in a number of different verticals.
Given the rise of edge computing and, in the telco business, 5G, Anthos for Telecom makes for an interesting play in what could potentially be a very lucrative market for Google. This is also the market where the open-source OpenStack project has remained the strongest.
Tomi Engdahl says:
THE FUTURE OF DATA CAPTURE SYSTEMS (1/2): IMITATING HUMAN BEHAVIOR
https://rossum.ai/blog/the-future-of-data-capture-systems/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://gitlab.com/ap29600/icons
Tomi Engdahl says:
Scientists create quantum sensor that covers entire radio frequency spectrum
https://phys.org/news/2020-03-scientists-quantum-sensor-entire-radio.html
A quantum sensor could give Soldiers a way to detect communication signals over the entire radio frequency spectrum, from 0 to 100 GHz, said researchers from the Army.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Folding@Home Now More Powerful Than World’s Top 7 Supercomputers, Combined
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/folding-at-home-worlds-top-supercomputers-coronavirus-covid-19
The fight against coronavirus goes nuclear
Propelled by average enthusiasts in their shared quest to defeat COVID-19, the Folding@Home network is now pushing out 470 PetaFLOPS of raw compute power. To put that in perspective, that’s twice as fast as Summit, the world’s fastest supercomputer, making the network faster than any known supercomputer. It’s also faster than the top seven supercomputers in the world, combined.
It’s impressive that the Folding@Home network is now more than twice as powerful as Summit’s 149 PetaFLOPS of sustained output: ORNL announced two weeks ago that Summit had also joined the coronavirus fight and has already found 77 different small-molecule drug compounds that might be useful to fight the virus. Summit employs 220,800 CPU cores, 188,416,000 CUDA cores, 9.2PB of memory, and 250PB of mixed NVRAM/storage for the task.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Getting users to play a game to divy up resources can keep a computing “tragedy of the commons” from happening.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/data-centers-plagued-by-wasteful-computing-game-theory-could-help