Archive for November, 2011

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HP seeks EU backing in Oracle Itanium case

November 28th, 2011
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Computer giant Hewlett-Packard is calling on European antitrust regulators to investigate whether Oracle is using its powerful position in the software market to damage HP’s hardware business.

HP dubbed Oracle’s behaviour “anti-customer”, accusing the company of trying to force HP’s customers to purchase servers from Sun Microsystems, which had been bought by Oracle.

The two companies took the matter to a California state court in June, where they continue to debate the case. Oracle has meanwhile accused HP of fraud, saying the only reason Intel continues to invest in Itanium is because it is secretly contracted to do so.

HP’s attorney Robert Cooper said the European issues were separate from its US lawsuit. However, Oracle’s attorney Daniel Wall told Reuters that HP are “literally around the world to every antitrust jurisdiction, trying to say we’re trying to put them out of business”.

It’s unclear whether the European Commission will take up any investigation of Oracle.

Meanwhile, HP announced this week that it has updated the road map for its high-end Integrity servers to include systems that can accommodate both Xeon and Itanium-based servers side by side.

HP hopes that the move will help to to deflect criticism against Itanium, claiming that the new systems are being developed because customers want the choice to use lower-cost x86 hardware alongside Itanium-based servers for running mission critical applications.

“Customers have embraced our mission critical infrastructure with systems like Superdome 2, and the scalable [Itanium] blades running HP-UX, and we’ll continue to develop those platforms along with technologies like Nonstop and OpenVMS,” said Lorraine Bartlett, vice president of marketing and strategy for Business Critical Systems, HP .

“But while there’s continued demand for mission-critical capability on Unix platforms, there’s a continued message from customers about needing to get more efficient with IT budgets, and continued pressure to do more with less.”

Source:http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/software/3321039/hp-seeks-eu-backing-in-oracle-itanium-case/

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The year the tablet market grew up

November 28th, 2011
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If 2010 was the year of iPad, then 2011 was the year of the tablet.

When Apple introduced the iPad in April 2010, it convinced consumers that they wanted — even needed — tablets in their lives, as competitors scrambled to come up with their own version of the “magical” device. Running its own software, iOS, on its own hardware, Apple quickly solidified its place at the top of the market.

Fast-forward a year and another generation of the iPad. Apple is still king of the tablet world — with 68 percent of the market, according to research firm IDC — but it faces a growing number of increasingly credible competitors.

Android tablets have emerged in all sizes, niches and price points. Competitors are seizing opportunities to target customers who don’t fit the one size Apple is offering.

In some ways, it’s parallel to what happened in the smartphone world. Apple’s iPhone popularized the idea of the smartphone from its introduction in 2007, but smartphones running Google’s Android system have taken off since then. Android phones make up more than half of the world’s smartphone market, thanks in part to niche targeting and manufacturers’ efforts to go after lower price points. Tablet prices haven’t quite followed the same pattern, but analysts predict that Apple will lose ground to competitors that go after the lower end of the market.

This year’s lineup of gadgets has the potential to redefine the tablet market because it shows a deeper understanding of how people use the devices.

After all, what do we use tablets for, really? According to a March survey from Google’s AdMob team, the top five things tablet owners are doing are: gaming, surfing, e-mailing, reading the news and accessing social networks. Most tablet use is at home on weeknights in place of traditional computer use. In other words, people use their tablets to veg out.

So although Android-based Kindle Fire can’t compete with the quality and processing power of the iPad 2, the $199 device doesn’t need to. All it has to do is replace whatever is on the average nightstand or coffee table.

Amazon is particularly well positioned to fill that void because it also happens to be one of the world’s most popular bookstores. The company is betting that its low-cost device will be a hit with the tablet crowd, who might just want to replace that stack of bedside books with a paperback-size gadget that lets them read, get in a couple levels of Angry Birds during commercial breaks and finish their e-mail before bed.

Only 28 percent of the tablet owners Google surveyed said that they are using tablets as their primary computer, which would require the top-notch processing power.

There’s no doubt that the iPad 2 is still a dominant device. Bolstered by Apple’s smooth and fluid iOS, its extensive app store and access to the company’s iCloud services, it’s not likely to come down from the top spot in the market anytime soon. Google’s Android is fantastic but suffers from having to accommodate the quirks of several manufacturers that want to put their own spin on the system. Unlike devices running iOS, Android devices don’t all have the same menu options or layout, which can be frustrating for customers trying to make comparisons. But Google is cooking up a more unified version of Android for its tablets and smartphones — code-named Ice Cream Sandwich — which might address complaints that the system is too fragmented.

Once the tablet market’s trailblazer, Apple should be looking in its rearview mirror. The company is likely to stay at the top of the market for a while, but competition means it will have to avoid getting too comfortable. To stay ahead, Apple will have to continue to innovate, and consumers will reap the benefits.

Source:http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-year-the-tablet-market-grew-up/2011/11/21/gIQAOxV0vN_story.html

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Intel Processors Power The Majority of Top 500 Supercomputers, Looking to Expand With MIC Solutions

November 28th, 2011
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This year saw the 40th anniversary of (the availability of) the world’s first microprocessor- the Intel 4004 processor- and Intel is as strong as ever. On the supercomputing and HPC (High Performance Computing) front, Intel processors are powering the majority of the Top 500 supercomputers, and at this years supercomputing conference (SC11) the company talked about their current and future high performance silicon. Mainly, Intel talked about its new Intel Xeon E5 family of processors and the new Many Integrated Cores Knights Corner Larrabee successor.

The Intel Xeon E5 is available now.

The new Xeon chips are launching now and should be widely available within the first half of 2012. Several (lucky) supercomputing centers have already gotten their hands on the new chips and are now powering 10 systems on the Top 500 list where the 20,000 Xeon E5 CPUs are delivering a combined 3.4 Petaflops.

According to benchmarks, Intel is expecting a respectable 70% performance increase on HPC workloads versus the previous generation Xeon 5600 CPUs. Further Intel stated that the new E5 silicon is capable of as much as a 2x increase in raw FLOPS performance, according to Linpack benchmarks.

Intel is reporting that demand for the initial production run chips is “approximately 20 times greater than previous generation processors.” Rajeeb Hazra, the General Manager of Technical Computing of Intel’s Datacenenter and Connected Systems Group, stated that “customer acceptance of the Intel Xeon E5 processor has exceeded our expectations and is driving the fastest debut on the TOP 500 list of any processor in Intel’s history.” The company further reiterated several supercomputers that are set to go online son and will be powered by the new E5 CPUs including the 10 Petaflops Stampede computer at the Texas Advanced Computing Center and the 1 Petaflops Pleiades expansion for NASA.

While Intel processors are powering the majority of the world’s fastest supercomputers, graphics card hardware and GPGPU software has started to make its way into quite a few supercomputers as powerful companion processors that can greatly outperform a similar number of traditional CPUs (assuming the software can take advantage of the GPU hardware of course). In response to this, Intel has been working on it’s own MIC (Many Integrated Core) solution for a few years now. Starting with Larrabee, then Knights Ferry, and now Knights Corner, Intel has been working on silicon that using numerous small processing cores that can use the X86 instruction set to power highly parallel applications. Examples given by Intel as useful applications for their Many Integrated Core hardware includes weather modeling, tomography, and protein folding.

Knights Corner is the company’s latest iteration of MIC hardware, and is the first hardware that is commercially available. Knights Corner is capable of delivering more than 1 Teraflops of double precision floating point performance. Hazra stated that “having this performance now in a single chip based on Intel MIC architecture is a milestone that will once again be etched into HPC history” much like Intel’s first Teraflop supercomputer that utilized 9,680 Pentium Pro CPUs in 1997.

What’s interesting about Knights Corner lies in the ability of the hardware to run existing applications without porting to alternative programing languages like Nvidia’s CUDA or AMD’s Stream GPU languages. That is not to say that the hardware itself is not interesting, however. Knights Corner will be produced using Intel’s Tri-Gate transistors on a 22nm manufacturing process, and will feature “more than 50 cores.” Unlike current GPGPU solutions, the Knights Corner hardware is fully accessible and can be programmed as if the card is it’s own HPC node running a Linux based operating system.

More information on the Knights Corner architecture can be found here. I think it will be interesting to see how well Knights Corner will be adopted for high performance workloads versus graphics cards from Nvidia and AMD, especially now that the industry has already begun adapting GPGPU solutions using such programming technologies like CUDA, and graphics cards are becoming more general purpose (or at least less specialized) in hardware design. Is Intel too late for the (supercomputing market adoption) party, or just in time? What do you think?

Source:http://www.pcper.com/news/General-Tech/Intel-Processors-Power-Majority-Top-500-Supercomputers-Looking-Expand-MIC-Solution

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1,000 strike at Apple, IBM supplier in China

November 25th, 2011
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According to a human rights group called China Labor Watch (CLW), a thousand workers at a Jingyuan Computer Group plant in Shenzhen that makes hardware (including keyboards, hard drives, and displays) for companies like Apple and IBM held a day-long strike this week, protesting working conditions. In addition to high injury rates and frequent layoffs for older workers, CLW charges that staff “commonly worked anywhere from 100 to 200 hours of overtime a month.” According to The Register, “authorities dispatched several hundred police including riot officers to disperse the workers as they moved off-site and blocked a national highway.” As a result of the strike, the company has agreed to cut the amount of mandatory overtime hours and allow workers to come in to the plant on Saturday (when, under Chinese law, the factory would have to pay double wages).

Source:http://www.theverge.com/2011/11/24/2585098/1000-strike-at-apple-ibm-supplier-in-china

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Belkin sets $100 million sales target by 2015

November 25th, 2011
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Belkin, US-based interconnectivity solutions provider, aims to more than double its sales in India to Rs250 crore in 2011-12 as against `95 crore clocked in 2010-11.

The company is targeting to become a $100 million company by 2015, growing at a rate of 55% annually.

It also aims to double its installed base of consumer PCs to 50 million in India by 2015 from the current 25 million.

To meet its target, the computer hardware firm is expanding operations and ramping up its product portfolio in the country.
It has launched a new range of mouse and keyboard products in India.

Mohit Anand, MD, Belkin, India subcontinent, said, “The company also plans to strengthen its business through an aggressive sales channel expansion in Tier II & III markets.”

Source:http://www.dnaindia.com/money/report_belkin-sets-100-million-sales-target-by-2015_1617005

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Printer Hardware Centralisation Can Boost Efficiency

November 25th, 2011
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The benefits that organisations can realise by centralising their printer hardware and toner cartridges is being explored as part of a new scheme at Colorado State University.

At present, students print more than 60,000 documents per day, which is a lot of ink cartridges, but a new system that is being considered could see an opt-in centralised system being run on campus, the Rocky Mountain Collegian.

Each college would no longer function independently and people would no longer need to visit computer labs to print, instead using specialised printer ink kiosks around campus.

A per-page fee has also been proposed in order to reduce the number of excessive print jobs being performed, which is hoped to reduce both printer ink and paper costs.

David Thilmany, representative for the College of Liberal Arts on the College Information Technology Administrators Council, which is pursuing the change, has reassured students that the changes will be gradual.

He said: “On the technical end of things, it’s definitely possible to work towards that end, if that’s what students want to do.”

Tim Tierney, councillor and chair of the Beacon Hill-Cyrville information technology subcommittee, recently told the Ottawa Citizen that new software has been keeping track of the council’s print efficiency and is designed to drive down the authority’s impact on the environment.

Source:http://www.internet-ink.co.uk/ink-news/HP/Printer-Hardware-Centralisation-Can-Boost-Efficiency-11728

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Play PS3 games on PS Vita

November 25th, 2011
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Sony Computer Entertainment may well introduce a firmware update during the life cycle of its new hand-held, PlayStation Vita, which will allow the streaming of all PS3 games over a Wi-Fi connection, claims Eurogamer.

The gaming website doesn’t cite its source, but states that streamed games will be outputted on Vita’s screen at 480p and developers will be able work to that resolution so their games are fully Vita compatible to make the most out of the smaller display.

Due to launch in February, Sony revealed more details about Vita earlier this week, confirming the full launch line-up and discussing its social-networking capabilities while revealing the next stage of its augmented reality gaming push.

Vodaphone was recently announced as the “preferred provider” of 3G connectivity for PS Vita , though gamers can buy a unlocked model and choose their own service provider. The hand-held gaming device is set to roll-out in Europe and North America from February 22, 2012.

Would the ability to stream PS3 games through the hand-held tempt you to pick Vita up at launch? Let us know in the HEXUS.community forums.

Source:http://hexus.net/gaming/news/hardware/32751-play-ps3-games-ps-vita/

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