SAN FRANCISCO - SAN JOSE, Calif. — Data traffic volumes have surpassed voice in the mobile space, a trend that is expected to continue well into the future, an Ericsson official said during an industry panel session in Silicon Valley Tuesday evening.

Three years ago, said Ericsson CTO Hakan Eriksson, there was very little data passing over the mobile network. “Two years later, last year in the autumn, data passed voice in the mobile network,” said Eriksson, speaking at a session entitled “The March to Mobility,” which also featured executives from Intel, Nokia, and Hewlett-Packard. “It has taken data about 18 months to do what voice took 20 years to do,” in building out traffic volumes, he said.

Ericsson expects data loads to keep growing. By 2015, there will be 30 times more data than voice on the network; by 2020, data will outpace voice by 1,000 times, said Eriksson.

“Data is going to overtake voice big time,” Eriksson said.

Some kind of volume-based billing system will be needed for mobile services, since a flat fee does not make sense, said Eriksson. While users may not understand what a gigabyte is as a possible measurement for mobile transmissions, they already pay electric bills based on kilowatt hours, a measurement also not really understood by electricity customers, he said.

Panelists also pondered form factors for mobile devices as well as location-aware systems and potential issues such as the safety of handheld phones.  More touch-oriented devices are anticipated, with a range of form factors eyed, said Phil McKinney, vice president and CTO of the personal systems group at HP.

“There’s really no one-size-fits-all as far as devices,” said Eric Klein, vice president of technology planning at Nokia. 

Not everything is practical on a handheld device, according to Mike Bell, vice president of Intel’s Ultra Mobility Group. “I think trying to read a book on a three-inch cell phone screen is ridiculous. I just don’t buy it,” Bell said.

Meanwhile, handheld devices could eliminate the need to carry wallets, Klein said. Phones could maintain access to money, he explained. “You walk up and pay with a phone,” he said.

 Bell was critical of Apple’s iPhone App Store model for application distribution, describing it as akin to a  proprietary application to look at the Internet. “It’s this giant step backwards,” he said.

Panelists also were doubtful that cell phones presented any health hazards. “If there was a problem, we should have seen it with 5 billion people using [handheld phones],” Eriksson said.

Tuesday’s session was presented by the Churchill Club, a Silicon business and technology forum.

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FRAMINGHAM - Intel wants to be a force in the mobile computing world — a fact that was made clear by the company’s recently announced plans to acquire chip maker Infineon Technology’s wireless division and security software provider McAfee.

But several analysts questioned whether spending billions of dollars on those two companies and others, and revving up the MeeGo mobile operating system in partnership with Nokia, can be enough to make much difference. Some say Intel has already fallen well behind the mobile curve and has a long way to go to catch up.

With the planned acquisitions of Infineon for $1.4 billion and McAfee for $7.7 billion and the 2009 purchase of mobile software maker Wind River Systems for $884 million , Intel likely will grow more focused on mobile, several analysts said. Those deals could help the company move beyond its primary role as a chip maker whose products are used in 80% of today’s desktop and laptop computers but whose sales growth is nonetheless slower than smartphones and mobile devices.

“Becoming more vertical [in mobile] for Intel is about survival,” said analyst Jack Gold of J.Gold Associates. “Intel knows it has to change with the times. The Internet of connected things means it’s not just about the processor anymore. It’s about connectivity — hence the wireless acquisitions — and it’s about security to keep us safer when we are connected.”

Ken Dulaney, a Gartner analyst, said Intel is “not yet a force in mobile, and historically they have been unsuccessful.” Given the fact that Intel will encounter entrenched competition from Qualcomm and other chip makers that build ARM-based chips widely used in smartphones, Dulaney wasn’t willing to predict how the company will do in the mobile market.

“We will have to wait and see,” Dulaney said. ARM-based chips, which incorporate technology from ARM Holdings in Cambridge, England, work well at the low levels of power consumption required for smartphone and small devices. Intel has “never mastered” that energy-efficient architecture, he said, but he did acknowledge that Intel’s next version of its Atom chip, called Medfield , “may be on the verge of improving power management.”

Rob Enderle, an analyst at Enderle Group, said the Infineon purchase “gives Intel a foot in the door [of the mobile market], but they have to push Atom chips through that door.” So far, he added, Intel “has taken an ugly approach to the [mobile] market.”

The McAfee deal could help give Intel a comprehensive security approach, and mobile device makers might be interested in using future Intel chips if they had security baked in, Enderle said. “McAfee is much more than antivirus, and that includes encryption, which is arguably better than Research In Motion’s,” he said, referring to the maker of the popular BlackBerry smartphones.

Part of the concern about Intel’s mobile future comes from its recent history. In 2006, Intel sold its unprofitable StrongARM business (whose products were based on the ARM architecture) to Marvell Technology Group for $600 million. Intel “dropped ARM prematurely,” Enderle said. “They lost market momentum and have to rebuild it from scratch and acquisitions.”

Infineon makes ARM-based chips used in the iPhone and other smartphones, but that business alone will not propel Intel into a strong mobile position, analysts said.

The Infineon division that Intel is acquiring has about a 5% of the mobile chip market. Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and STMicroelectronics are the biggest players, accounting for half the market for mobile processors and radio chips in cell phones, according to Gartner.

Tristan Garra, a financial analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co., said buying Infineon may be “too little, too late” for Intel in the smartphone market. And Craig Berger of FBR Capital Markets wrote a note saying he was skeptical about Intel’s ability to execute in the mobile market or other businesses beyond microprocessors for personal computers.

Intel invested a great deal in high-speed WiMax technologies , but analysts said the company will also need to perform in the much bigger 4G market for LTE wireless technology. Perhaps Intel’s $6 billion annual R&D budget will make a difference there, analysts said.

Even if it offered futuristic mobile chips, analysts said Intel would still need more than chips to succeed; it might need to find a hardware partner to build smartphones with its chips.

“At the end of the day, Intel has to build something that users find compelling, and they’ve got to find somebody to build it for them, something that’s an Intel-based iPhone,” Enderle said. “That’s possible, but until they do that they aren’t going to be successful. This market is defined by devices, not components.”

Dulaney argued that any Intel-based smartphone hardware would also need to run on a major mobile operating system, not just the relatively young MeeGo. “Intel probably needs to get one of the major OSs to commit to them, like Symbian, iOS or RIM,” Dulaney said. “They have Android support, but so does everyone else. And MeeGo has a long way to go.”

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By Agam Shah
IDG News Service (New York Bureau)
August 31, 2010

NEW YORK - Intel will acquire Infineon Technologies’ wireless division for US$1.4 billion, the company said Monday.

The acquisition of Infineon’s wireless division could help Intel grow faster in the high-volume smartphone market, where the company has minimal presence. Most smartphones today carry chips designed by rival Arm, and Intel has had its eye on the smartphone market as the volume of chips for mobile devices outpaces traditional CPUs that go into PCs.

Intel earlier this year released low-power Atom chips for high-end smartphones and tablets, and next year is expected to release new Atom chips for wireless handsets that are more power efficient. Most Atom chips today go into netbooks, and Intel until now has struggled to snag customers to use Atom chips in smartphones.

The acquisition will also net Intel some of the world’s top smartphone makers as customers. Infineon’s Wireless Solutions division makes 3G chips and baseband processors that are used in smartphones like Apple’s iPhone and Samsung’s Galaxy S, and tablets like the iPad.

Infineon was originally formed when Siemens spun off its semiconductor division in 1999.

Infineon earlier said it was in discussions with interested parties about a “transaction” concerning the company’s Wireless Solutions division. The division represents approximately 30 percent to Infineon’s total annual revenue of €917 million (US$1.17 billion) from the past financial year. For the current third fiscal quarter of 2010 ending June 30, revenue for the Wireless Solutions division grew 38 percent year-over-year to €346 million, representing 29 percent of the company’s total quarterly revenue.

Companies including Samsung and Broadcom were rumored to be in talks with Infineon to acquire the division.

The announcement that Intel will acquire Infineon’s wireless division nmarks the second major acquisition by the company in less than two weeks, following the chip maker’s $7.7 billion deal to acquire McAfee.

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By Matt Hamblen
Computerworld (US)
August 25, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - Intel , Nokia and Finland’s University of Oulu announced today that they are developing a joint research center to create software for 3D and virtual reality experiences for use on mobile devices.

The software will be developed by about 24 engineers in Oulu using the open-source MeeGo operating system, which was launched in February by Intel and Nokia. An early version of the MeeGo mobile phone OS went to developers in late June. The companies said in a conference call that they envisioned 3D and virtual reality software running on a broad range of mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets.

The university has a reputation for its work on electronics, photonics and telecommunications. Oulu researchers also work with an open-source virtual reality platform known as realXtend , the officials said.

“3D and virtual worlds have the potential to revolutionize the [mobile] user experience,” said Mika Setala, Nokia’s director of strategic alliances and partnerships.

One of the earliest practical applications for the software will be to develop a virtual control panel for a mobile device to regulate heating and lighting in a real world home, Setala said. “The real world [will be] mimicked for heating and lighting… and power,” he said. No timeline was announced.

Creating social networks within virtual worlds for mobile devices coupled with GPS and other location information “will be a killer app or at least very successful,” said Heikki Huomo, director of the university’s Center for Internet Excellence. “Consumers will feel more involved and engaged with these technologies.”

Martin Curley, director of Intel Labs in Europe, said the focus of the research center will be on building open-source software that complements Intel’s chips. He also didn’t rule out the possibility that the software could give rise to new Nokia devices on future Intel chip architectures.

An avatar watches Youtube in a virtual world created using the RealXtend open-source platform. Nokia, Intel and Finland’s University of Oulu are working on making similar virtual worlds possible via mobile platforms.

Huomo said the three organizations are involved in a research collaboration, not a joint venture, and explained that the funds invested will support about two-dozen researchers for three years. Intel already has 21 research labs in Europe with 900 employees.

The research effort does not require building a custom 3D display, because some 3D experiences can be shown in two dimensions, Huomo said. The research group also wants to avoid creating a 3D experience that requires using special glasses, noting that small screens don’t have the same physical requirements as larger displays, such as big-screen TVs and movie theater screens, whose viewers can’t see 3D effects with the naked eye.

Building 3D holographic technology that would project an interactive image hasn’t been ruled out, although Huomo conceded that developing such technology would be a “stretch.” Holograms have for years been a staple of science fiction movies, including the Star Wars series . The Oulu researchers, however, “are trying to go for a truly immersive 3D hologram,” Huomo said.

The research center gives Nokia and Intel an opportunity to “kick-start” the MeeGo operating system, said Jack Gold, principal analyst at J.Gold Associates. 3D will be most important in larger screen mobile devices, such as tablets, and less so in smartphones, he said.

Both Intel and Nokia are “playing catch-up” with popular mobile technologies such as 3D, Gold said, even though both companies have been powerhouses for years in their respective markets.

Huomo said the use of 3D and virtual reality in mobile devices could set Nokia and Intel products apart from other mobile devices and applications on the market. “That’s the $1,000 question,” he said. “We are starting the research and will find usage paradigms beyond the current ones.”

“Nobody has a monopoly on innovation,” Curley added. “This [research] will stiffen the competition and raise the game for everybody.”

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LONDON - Intel said Thursday it plans to acquire security vendor McAfee in a cash deal valued at about $7.68 billion and aimed at enhancing the chip maker’s mobile strategy.

Both boards of directors have approved the deal, and McAfee is expected to become a subsidiary within Intel’s Software and Services Group. McAfee develops a variety of security software for end-users and enterprises, including antivirus applications, firewalls and intrusion protection systems.

Intel said that the current approach to security does not address the full range of Internet-connected devices, including TVs, cars, medical devices and ATM machines. “Hardware-enhanced security” will be needed to counter increasingly sophisticated threats, said Renée James, Intel senior vice president, and general manager of the group.

McAfee CEO Dave DeWalt wrote in a blog post that “current cybersecurity model isn’t extensible across the proliferating spectrum of devices.”

“The industry needed a paradigm shift, incremental improvements can’t bridge the opportunity gap,” DeWalt wrote. “There is no better partner that we could have found than Intel.”

Intel president and CEO Paul Otellini said during a conference that the deal illustrates what Intel regards as the three most important pillars of computing today: energy efficiency, Internet connectivity and security. Everywhere Intel sells a microprocessor is also an opportunity for a security sale as well, he said.

“We believe that security will be most effective when enabled in hardware,” Otellini said. Intel will continue to work with other security vendors as well, he said.

Security technology needs to be combined with hardware in order to deter new threats, said James during the call. Intel will bolster its hardware with technology that comes from McAfee’s current products, she said. The first results of that collaboration will be announced next year, she said.

The deal is expected to close after McAfee shareholder approval and regulatory clearances. Intel said the acquisition will have on a GAAP basis a slightly dilutive effect on its earnings in the first year of operations and a flat effect in the second year.

McAfee generated approximately $2 billion in revenue in 2009, and has about 6,100 employees. The company has had double-digit growth over the last year and was an attractive acquisition target, and rumors had been circulating for some time, said Ruggero Contu, senior research analyst at Gartner.

But an acquisition by Intel is surprising, Contu said. “I would have thought that in terms of synergies, I would have thought other players would have” been better positioned to integrate McAfee into their operations, he said.

Intel would be wise to continue McAfee’s successful consumer security software business, as it has been bringing in increased revenue, Contu said. In terms of the overall security market, the acquisition is likely to have an impact on Symantec, as it is McAfee’s most direct competitor, Contu said.

“We’ll see how it shakes out,” Contu said.

The deal brings Intel a wealth of security technologies, such as encryption, data loss prevention and Web messaging, said Chris Christiansen, program vice president for analyst IDC. McAfee has a large network security business, and its engineers will now have access to Intel’s manufacturing processes, advanced engineering capabilities and chip designs.

The premium price paid by Intel for McAfee indicates there may have been a bidding war, which is likely to spark a frenzy of acquisitions from other players such as Oracle and IBM, Christiansen said.

“I can’t imagine that the unsuccessful bidders will simply just go away,” he said.

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By Lucas Mearian
Computerworld (US)
August 19, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - Intel and Micron Technology today announced the delivery of 3-bit-per-cell (3bpc) NAND flash memory on 25-nanometer lithography technology. The new flash memory chips represent the industry’s highest capacity, smallest NAND device to date, the companies said.

The companies have sent initial product samples to select customers. Intel and Micron expect to be in full production by the end of the year.

The 3-bit per cell NAND flash chips are targeted for flash cards, USB drives and MP3 players. The companies’ solid state drives (SSD) continue to use two-bit-per-cell and one-bit-per-cell NAND flash.

Last August, Intel and Micron’s joint venture company, IM Flash Technologies (IMFT), announced its first 3-bit-per-cell, NAND flash memory technology using its 34nm lithography process. The advancement represented an 11% reduction in NAND flash size. However, because of reliability issues, IMFT chose to discontinue production of a 3-bit NAND flash product.

In January, IMFT then introduced the industry’s first 25nm NAND flash technology . That chip held two bits of data, making a multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash as compared to a s ingle-level cell (SLC) NAND, which holds one bit per cell.

The new NAND flash is a combination of the latter two technologies.

IMFT’s said its new 64Gbit 3-bits per cell memory chip offers even greater densities and will further reduce the base price of NAND flash.

IMFT’s 25nm 8GB die, which measures 0.35-in. by 0.74-in., is made up of many, smaller 64Gbit NAND chips. The NAND technology makes it possible to build products using half as many chips as the previous 34nm lithography technology, allowing for smaller, higher-density designs. For example, a 256GB SSD can be built with 32 of the 8GB NAND flash dies instead of 64 dies; a 32GB smartphone needs just four dies; and a 16GB flash card requires only two. The change also cuts the overall cost to produce mobile products.

The device is more than 20% smaller than the same capacity of Intel and Micron’s 25nm MLC in production today.

“With January’s introduction of the industry’s smallest die size at 25nm, quickly followed by the move to 3-bit-per-cell on 25nm, we continue to gain momentum and offer customers a compelling set of leadership products,” Tom Rampone, general manager of Intel’s NAND Solutions Group, said in a statement. “Intel plans to use the design and manufacturing leadership of IMFT to deliver higher-density, cost-competitive products to our customers based on the new 8GB 25nm NAND device.”

“We are already working to qualify the 8GB TLC NAND flash device within end-product designs, including higher-capacity products from Lexar Media and Micron,” Brian Shirley, vice president of Micron’s NAND Solutions Group, said in a statement.

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By Lucas Mearian
Computerworld (US)
August 18, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - Intel today introduced an update to its Atom processor-based platform for home and small business storage appliances.

The updated chip offers a performance boost and supports a new memory technology, Intel said.

The new 1.8GHz D425 (single core) and D525 (dual core) processors are paired with the Intel’s 82801 IR I/O controller that delivers the connectivity. Both new processor platforms support Microsoft Windows Home Server and open source Linux operating systems.

The processors include higher CPU frequencies for faster storage processing and will support next-generation memory technology DDR3 SODIMM. The DDR3 SODIMM dual in-line memory modules offer double the I/O data rates of today’s SDRAM.

In March, Intel announced a new Atom processor platform that was optimized for use in network attached storage (NAS) devices for home and small businesses.

The 1.66GHz Atom D410 single core and D510 dual core processors were bundled with the company’s 82801IR controller to create a hardware platform optimized for processing higher-intensity I/O workloads through hyper-threading, or parallelization of computations, and optimized data handling firmware.

That processing platform increased performance for popular consumer applications such as video processing by as much as 85%.

The new hardware platform supports 6 PCI Express lanes, 12 USB ports, and 2 eSATA ports.

Equipment manufacturers such as Acer, Cisco, LaCie, LG Electronics, NETGEAR, QNAP, Super Micro, Synology and Thecus have all announced plans to offer products based on the new Atom processor platform, Intel said. Storage vendor products featuring the Intel Atom processor-based platform are currently available and additional devices will be released later this year, it added.

LaCie recently introduced two storage servers using Intel’s Atom processor technology to “deliver enterprise-level storage capabilities to small and medium businesses that were previously only experienced in large, corporate environments,” said Erwan Girard, solutions business unit manager.

Dinesh Rao, product line manager for Intel’s Storage Group, said the new Atom processor “makes it possible for storage vendors to develop low-power appliances that can innocuously sit on a desk or shelf while keeping digital content safe and available anytime, anywhere.”

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By Dan Nystedt
IDG News Service (Taipei Bureau)
August 17, 2010

TAIPEI - A new startup funded by major chip makers and investment firms is taking aim at electricity bills, the biggest cost in data centers.

Smooth-Stone, which on Monday announced it secured US$48 million in new funding, plans to use mobile phone microprocessors inside the high-powered computer servers used in data centers to lower their electric bills. The chips will be an alternative to server chips such as those based on x86 technology from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).

The headlines Smooth-Stone has already garnered, Start-up Aims to Slay Chip Goliath, and, An atom bomb aimed at Intel, suggest the technology will be available soon and effortlessly.

But the reality is it might take a while. The company faces stiff competition and several daunting technological challenges in its quest to build good server chips using mobile phone processing cores.

There are already companies developing such chips, including Marvell Technology and a company Google recently acquired, Agnilux, which could have products out soon. And there’s the issue of taking on Intel, a company with a history of crushing rivals.

The excitement around Smooth-Stone appears to be coming from the fact that the company has won funding from a group of investors that includes chip makers Arm Holdings, Texas Instruments, and the major investor in GlobalFoundries, ATIC (Advanced Technology Investment Company).

“This kind of investment, the amount, and the strength of this syndicate is a strong endorsement for the innovation we are bringing to market,” said Smooth-Stone CEO Barry Evans, in a statement. Evans used to work for Marvell as vice president and general manager of its cellular and handheld group, which Marvell acquired from Intel a few years earlier.

“The capital will be applied directly to the final development and market delivery of high performance, low-power chips that will change the server market and the makeup of data centers,” the statement says.

The problem Smooth-Stone is trying to solve is serious, especially in the new world of cloud computing, which is requiring more data centers. The powerful processors inside data center servers require a lot of electricity to run and give off a lot of heat. That heat leads to even more power use in data centers via the air conditioners and other cooling methods used to keep them from overheating and shutting down.

The most popular processors used inside mobile phones, and the ones Smooth-Stone and others are aiming to use in servers, come from Arm, a company with a keen focus on low-energy processors for devices that need batteries.

But Arm’s focus on mobile phones also means there are limitations the chips will have to overcome, mainly in software and calculating speeds.

The software issue is the more serious of the two because many programs for servers are written to run on x86-based processors and would have to be rewritten for Arm’s RISC-based (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) chips. It’s not a major challenge, but it would add cost and time to the effort.

Arm cores are also still made for 32-bit computing only, not 64-bit computing, a direction the IT industry is moving more speedily toward.

Arm is working to improve chip performance due to the industry move to put its cores in servers, said Mike Inglis, general manager of Arm’s processing division, during an interview in June.

But he also said the use of Arm processing cores in server-based chips is a concept being tested and could take a few years to play out. “I think the press has gotten too excited with the server discussion with Arm,” he said.

Still, Marvell plans to launch its first server chips with Arm cores later this year, a company representative said. And it has put multiple Arm processing cores inside its server chips to better compete against those made by Intel, a strategy other companies could use.

Marvell will put out a quad-core chip based on Arm’s Cortex-A9 processors to compete with Intel on speed.

“The server market, which is currently dominated by x86 processors, continues to be plagued by concerns of growing power consumption. Marvell, by exploiting ARM’s low-power technology, hopes to make inroads into the server territory with its new offering that promises a fivefold reduction in power consumption and an on-par performance compared with an x86 processor,” wrote Gartner analyst Ganesh Ramamoorthy, in a report.

Smooth-Stone and other companies looking to enter the fray could adopt a similar approach with multiple Arm cores.

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By Jaikumar Vijayan
Computerworld (US)
August 13, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - The Open Compliance Program announced by the Linux Foundation on Tuesday is a response to the surging growth in the use of open source technologies within enterprises, and by makers of consumer electronic and mobile devices, analysts say.

Much of the program appears to be directed at addressing what many analysts said is a continuing confusion among makers of embedded devices about open source licensing requirements. But enterprises can benefit from the program as well, they added.

The Linux Foundation, a non-profit group that is focused on fostering Linux growth, announced a set of open source tools, training materials and a self-assessment checklist , designed to help companies comply with open source license requirements.

The program is supported by several large vendors, including Google , Novell, IBM , HP and Intel . Also supporting the effort are organizations such as the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), which provides free legal representation for developers of open source software, and gpl-violations.org which is focused on raising awareness of open source license violations.

The impetus for the initiative comes from the skyrocketing use of Linux as an embedded operating system in mobile, consumer electronic and numerous other products, said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the foundation.

The goal is to help companies fulfill their license obligations in as straightforward and low-cost a manner as possible, Zemlin said in a conversation with Computerworld today.

“Market adoption of open source software has reached a scale that is unprecedented,” Zemlin said. Companies ranging from embedded systems manufactures, to those with large super-computer clusters are all using open source software these days because of the cost and technology benefits, Zemlin said.

Many though appear not to understand or be fully-informed about their obligations to share their source code with the broad community as they are required to, he said.

“The Linux kernel alone has a $10 billion value, and that value comes from the fact that people are sharing it,” he said. The compliance program will ensure that all of the technical and cost benefits that companies are deriving from open source software “is matched by their ability to comply with the legal requirements of open source licenses,” Zemlin said.

Eben Moglen, founding director of the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) and a law professor at Columbia Law School said the new effort is being driven largely by what’s happening in the embedded world.

Most of the violations that the SFLC has observed and pursued have occurred among manufactures of embedded devices, Moglen said. In most cases, the violations stemmed from a lack of experience in open source use. Enterprise use of open source software for the most part appears to be more mature and in line with open source license practices, he said.

What the Linux Foundation is doing is “to provide operations advice that should make it easier for device manufactures and distributors to comply with Free and Open Source Software license at minimum cost,” Moglen said.

But enterprises that are using open source technologies will also benefit from the Linux Foundation’s newly released tools for identifying and reporting source code components, and for ensuring that the code is safe and ready for public consumption.

“Companies wanting to use or contribute to the open source world are complex mixes of developers, business management, and operational management such as the internal legal team,” said Stephen Walli, technical director of CodePlex Foundation, a non-profit that facilitates exchange of code among software companies and open source communities.

The Open Compliance Program will increase corporate contribution and participation in the open source world, and alleviate some of the FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) that surrounds open source licensing, he said.

“I think the Open Compliance Program is an important next step in the industry as more and more companies use and contribute to the open source software ecosystem,” Walli said.

“There’s a growing maturity and understanding in the software industry around intellectual property practices over the past two decades, but that understanding isn’t uniformly present across all participants,” he said. “The OCP fills that gap providing tools and education for all to use.”

The Open Compliance Program comes at a time when there are indications that adoption of open source software may have reached a turning point. A survey by Accenture of 300 IT managers in the U.S., U.K. and Ireland showed 69% expected investments in open source tools to increase this year, while about 40% said they planned on migrating mission-critical software to open source in a year.

More than 75% of the survey respondents cited quality as a primary driver of open source adoption.

The Linux Foundation’s move highlights problems being raised by the continued broadening of Linux and open source use, said Jay Lyman, an analyst with The 451 Group.

While it has extended to new markets and devices, open source software and its licensing model … are still very new to many organizations and verticals, so this type of compliance and facilitation,” is needed for continued growth, Lyman said.

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By Sharon Gaudin
Computerworld (US)
August 5, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - If you can’t beat them, buy them. At least that’s what executives at Intel Corp. seem to be thinking.

Reports are circulating around the Internet that the powerhouse chip maker is close to finalizing a deal with German semiconductor company Infineon Technologies AG to buy its wireless chip unit. If such a deal goes through, it would be a boon to Intel , which has struggled to get a footing in the lucrative smartphone market.

“Infineon chips are used in smartphones from the iPhone to other popular phones,” said Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group. “The vast number of phones and now smartphones is driving a lot of chip sales, and Intel wants a piece of that pie . If Intel grabs Infineon, it will definitely have an impact on the market. With Intel’s size and reach, they can put the competitive screws to the other companies and drive margins down.”

On Monday, Infineon announced that executives have been in discussions with “interested parties” about its wireless chip unit. “A significant progress has been made within these discussions,” the company said on its Web site, although the names of the interested parties were not disclosed.

Talk in the blogosphere and in online media sites noted that Intel has not been the only company interested in Infineon’s wireless chip business. Reportedly Samsung Electronics Co. and Broadcom have also thrown their hats into the ring, though Intel is rumored to be the frontrunner.

Infineon is a hot commodity because of the widespread adoption of its chips in the smartphone market. The company’s wireless chip unit produces cellular baseband chips used by Apple for some of its iPhones and its new iPad . The chips are also used in some BlackBerries and Samsung and Nokia phones.

The hot smartphone market would be lucrative for any chip maker these days. Research company iSuppli Corp. estimates that next year Apple will be the second-largest semiconductor buyer in the world, so the company selling a big chunk of smartphone chips to Apple could expect to be in an enviable position.

“From what I’m seeing, Intel has the inside track, and it looks to me like they’re going to cut a deal,” Olds said. “I see this as a good move for Intel. It gives them a stronger mobile play and we know that this is a market that they’ve openly lusted after for years… Intel has had a hard time cracking the phone market because they couldn’t get their heads around it. Their chips were too big and power hungry and didn’t offer the same overall value as, say, ARM chips.”

However, Rob Enderle, an analyst with the Enderle Group, said buying a piece of Infineon might be going down a road that has a few bumps.

“Infineon has a presence that Intel could find valuable, but buying a European company, particularly one in Germany, comes with a lot of regulatory problems that will make the purchase more difficult to close than otherwise,” he noted.

Enderle also said the difference between Intel’s and Infineon’s chip-building platforms could pose a problem for the company down the road.

“I see mostly downsides because of the difference in the platforms,” he added. “However it would improve their chances [in the smartphone market]. The question is whether that improvement is worth the cost and an inability to easily exit from it should this strategy fail. At least from my angle, the risks exceed the benefits with this one significantly.”

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By Sharon Gaudin
Computerworld (US)
July 20, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - When Intel Corp. posted its best quarter ever this past week, industry watchers noted that the good news extends beyond the chip maker and touches on the high-tech industry and possibly the U.S. economy.

Intel, on the strength of strong server chip sales, reported hefty earnings for the second quarter of fiscal 2010. The chip maker reported net income of $2.9 billion for the quarter ended June 26. That is a turnaround from the $398 million loss the company reported in the same quarter a year ago.

The results topped even Intel’s own expectations, and its gross margins came in at 67%, passing Wall Street’s expectations of 64.1%.

And that, according to various analysts, can only be good news for the tech sector and the economy at large.

“We appear to be at the front end of what could be a strong refresh, which is very good for the technology segment in general,” said Rob Enderle, an analyst with the Enderle Group. “This reflects a rising tide, which could raise all boats. Intel is a bellwether for the technology segment. The entire economy is based on things other than technology though, so we need to see other segments, and hiring in general, improve as well. But this is one of the strongest indicators that things could be improving.”

Industry analyst firms have been forecasting strong microprocessor and PC sales for 2010.

IDC analysts last month said they expect nearly 20% growth in global PC sales this year. And in January, IDC predicted the PC chip market was on its way back after the dark days of the recession.

The uptick in expectations is linked to an easing of economic troubles , coupled with renewed consumer and corporate buying to give the PC industry a much-needed boost. While the once-growing netbook market is slowing, there’s been renewed vigor in the desktop market, with that segment of the industry showing its first yearly growth since the second quarter of 2008.

Intel’s record-breaking second-quarter numbers are the latest indication that the chip industry may be pulling itself out of the economic doldrums.

“The demand environment for PC processors has improved because enterprises are opening up IT spending in servers and corporate clients, particularly notebooks,” said Shane Rau, an IDC analyst. “Intel is the biggest semiconductor company, and semiconductors are in so many devices that people buy now, so there’s a strong tie to the GDP.”

Last October, Intel CEO Paul Otellini said companies that had held tight to purse strings during the worst of the recession would have to relax their grip so they could replace aging desktops, laptops and servers. According to Otellini, the economy had already hit bottom, and corporate executives would soon have to start spending again.

Intel rival Advanced Micro Devices, meanwhile, didn’t show the same success that Intel did. Last Thursday, AMD reported a net loss for the second quarter of fiscal 2010, breaking a streak of two consecutive quarters of profitability.

Enderle said AMD’s slip isn’t a sign of overall industry trouble. It’s simply not the bellwether that industry heavyweight Intel is.

“AMD actually beat the street. The problem is they are bleeding on the server side a bit because Intel is executing so well there,” he added. “On the desktop and mobile side they are actually stronger then they have ever been… Intel is the bellwether for this segment, but, once again, AMD’s desktop numbers were vastly better than expected and their hit was competitive and not related to a market problem, so their results also support a recovery.”

Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group, said the key point to be made here is that Intel is doing well, and AMD is hanging on, because companies are starting to spend again. And that’s just what the economy needs to happen.

“First, companies that have postponed technology purchases due to the economy are now moving ahead with at least some of their plans,” Olds said. “Secondly, corporations are using technology to cut their costs in other areas, and companies like Intel and others are the beneficiaries. This doesn’t mean that we’re necessarily coming out of the recession, but, for technology companies, it means that things ain’t so bad.”

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By Patrick Thibodeau
Computerworld (US)
July 16, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - ATLANTA — The development of “smart TVs” is also leading, not surprisingly, to the creation of a smart remote as well, thanks to Intel .

At the annual Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, Intel researchers presented a paper detailing research into a television remote that can sense just who in a family is using the remote based on how they physically handled it and pressed its buttons.

Researchers took accelerometer technology, which is used in consumer devices such as iPhone to shift the screen to a viewer’s position, and attached it to a TV remote. The accelerator provides information about motion. For instance, was the remote picked up by a left or right hand? Data from button presses usage, such as press duration, is also collected.

This information is analyzed by algorithms that look for patterns to help identify users. Testing was conducted in real-life, on households that agreed to have their usage recorded by camera so the results could be checked.

It was tested on five households of two to four people over a several week period, producing a variety of ranges in accuracy — 70%-80% and above, all depending on the type of test, according to the paper. Work continues on refining it.

Mariano Phielipp, a researcher in Digital Home Group at Intel, who presented the paper, said the potential uses could be automatic sign-on to a game, for instance, or prioritizing of channels, depending on who has the remote.

Issues remain for establishing identity, said Phielipp. “It doesn’t mean that we have solved all the identity problems, but it is one way of helping the TV recognize who you are,” he said.

Although Intel isn’t in the business of making consumer devices, it is doing “a lot of work in the TV area, Smart TV especially, and working with a variety of OEMs,” Intel spokesman Bill Calder said by email.

Of the smart remote, highlighted in a paper titled, Fast, Accurate, and Practical Identity Inference Using TV Remote Controls (PDF document) , Calder said that “for now this is just research, to see if it can be done.”

The paper’s authors include Phielipp abd Magdiel Galan of the Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering at Arizona State University, and from Intel: Richard Lee, Branislav Kveton, and Jeffrey Hightower.

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By John Mark V. Tuazon
Computerworld Philippines
July 7, 2010

KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA – Chip maker Intel is touting WiMAX as the best choice to deliver mobile Internet, for what it claims to be a cheaper alternative to wireless broadband choices of today.

With the release here of initial laptop models embedded with dual-mode Intel Centrino Advanced-N + WiMAX 6250 that can do both WiFi and WiMAX access, Intel is saying that WiMAX is the way to go in terms of delivering a rich mobile Internet experience to users.

“WiMAX offers very high levels of bandwidth at a relatively low cost,” claimed Garth Collier, managing director for Asia/Japan – WIMAX, Intel Corporation.

Compared to LTE (Long-Term Evolution), widely touted as the next-generation of mobile Internet, WiMAX is a lot simpler to deploy, Collier said. “That 3G to LTE migration is simple is a misconception. With LTE, you need a Smart Antenna technology. It’s not as simple as it looks,” he added.

Collier said Intel is banking on WiMAX technology because it is what is available for deployment today. “WiMAX and LTE are two technologies delivering the same wireless solution,” he said. “Some operators need to deploy the technology now. And for them, WiMAX is the only technology available.”

Collier further stressed that the global chip maker believes commercial LTE won’t be a reality until after two years, saying it’s going to take some time to get the technology out there.

The need to address data traffic requirements, however, is evident in the fact that more and more users are demanding mobile data access today, resulting from what Collier would otherwise call as the “iPhone effect.” “Apple’s iPhone has shown a very consumer-oriented form-factor, a sleek OS, and a robust app store. [They made it so that] users will start to actually use heavy amounts of data,” he explained.

The iPhone effect, thus, is equivalent to 30 handheld units accessing the network. Translating that figure to laptops, that would equate to 450 handsets trying to drive data across the network. “What we’ve seen is that with many networks, an increase of 50% in data usage is logged whenever iPhones come to the network,” Collier added.

Interestingly, the Intel executive shared, a recent forecast on mobile data conducted by Cisco revealed a really significant growth in mobile data, confirming actual data usage today. “Everything happening through fixed line broadband is going mobile,” he stressed. “YouTube alone has over 14.6 billion videos viewed. It’s absolutely phenomenal, and we’re seeing that translating to mobile.”

The need, therefore, to address mobile data requirements that will match the current usage model of the Internet is ever more persistent. “Faster speeds drive increased Internet usage,” Collier said, adding that with WiMAX, users can experience speeds of up to 10Mbps, with average monthly usage of seven to 10 gigabyte of bandwidth.

Additionally, WiMAX can cover a larger territory than its wireless broadband predecessors. A total population of 620 million is covered by WiMAX as of 2009, Collier revealed, with Asia Pacific accounting for at least 1/3 of the coverage. “There are already real WiMAX networks, real customers, and real devices, proving a lot of different business models that 4G can deliver,” he reiterated.

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By John Mark V. Tuazon
Computerworld Philippines
July 6, 2010

KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA – Chip manufacturer Intel is defying conventions and moving out of its established space in personal computing systems, and spreading their territory to include tablets, mobile phones, and smart TVs, among others.

During a recent regional media workshop held here, Intel executives said they are poised to fill the gap of what is called the “compute continuum,” a whole line of personal computing devices being created by IT firms to meet the demands of the market.

“Since 2000, we’ve seen growth of extraordinary measures,” shared David McCloskey, director of platform marketing and business operations, Intel Asia Pacific. “But there has been a lot of changes in terms of how the market has evolved over the years.”

McCloskey said computing in the early 2000s was driven by desktop units, corporate hardware buy-outs, and mature market adoption. “Computing in 2010, however, is driven by a more mobile experience, purchased by consumers, and adopted mainly in emerging markets,” he pointed out.

This shift in computing is driven largely by the Internet, which, since recovering from 2001’s dot-com bust, has spawned many applications that has drawn a lot of users in. “Intel’s vision is to complete the compute continuum, to offer the right products that will shift the company towards delivering [a great] user experience,” McCloskey said.

The focal point of this unique user experience is still the PC, according to McCloskey, with notebooks and netbooks leading the pack.

But where does this leave the trusty old desktop PC? “The desktop space is still growing. In fact, we see double-digit growth for the segment in APAC. It has [completely] reinvented itself,” he explained, alluding to different form factors that have sprung up from conventional desktop tower designs, from gaming enthusiast towers down to ergonomic Atom-based nettop PCs.

Digital Prosumer
With the sudden boom of Internet usage, more and more people are accessing content over the Web. McCloskey shared that today, the number one website remains to be Facebook, and that the number two search engine—after Google—is YouTube, cementing perennial views that social media has indeed taken center stage in the way users experience the Internet.

“In a minute, at least 198,000 photos are shared, and 24 hours of video are uploaded,” he related. “More and more, the social networking, video, and media aspects of computing are becoming mind boggling.”

Users surely are guzzling up enormous amount of content online, but Intel said the same users are actually producing them, giving birth to an Internet user known as the “digital prosumer.” “[In this scenario], the PC is the sweet spot. A lot of mainstream folks are consuming content [through it], and for sure, a lot of them are producing content as well,” the Intel executive expounded.

This puts Intel in an ideal place dead smack in the center of an evolving Internet lifestyle, with solutions catering to both mainstream producers (through their Core processor offerings that offer Turbo Boost and Hyper-Threading technologies) and content consumers (through their Atom offerings that are ideal for casual content consumption).

Atom-ic Bomb
The global IT giant has, over the years, carved a niche for itself in high-power computing, releasing chip after chip that are faster and more efficient than the other. Intel’s strategy for today, however, revolves around putting an Atom chip into every device imaginable, in an effort to complete the continuum by spreading towards more mobile and intricately designed devices.

“The Atom realizes our vision of completing the compute continuum,” McCloskey continued. “It will drive the second wave of netbook innovation.”

Foremost of this innovation is fueled by an unreleased Atom platform based on Pine Trail, codenamed by Intel as “Canoe Lake.” At 14mm thin, the new platform will enable the creation of netbooks that are at least a half-inch thick, 50% thinner than most notebooks in the market today.

Intel demoed a prototype of a Canoe Lake-based netbook during the workshop here, a half-inch thick unit that has an internal fan to dissipate heat.

Another carrier of innovation lies in Intel’s next-generation Atom platform, called “Oak Trail.” Originally designed for sleek notebooks, Intel realized the new chip can deliver a rich experience in a tablet form factor. “Tablets offer different value proposition,” McCloskey said, “because they are much more touch-based, ready-to-go, quickly turns on, and offers a more visual experience.”

The executive said Oak Trail is a perfect match for tablets because of its smaller footprint allowing for a more minimalist design, 50% lower silicon power that enable low power requirements, but with a higher performance that can deliver 1080p video playback with intergated HD video decoder and an HDMI port.

An Unchartered Territory
The biggest leap for Intel, however, is its recent foray into the smartphone segment. Admittedly, McCloskey said this space is “challenging” for Intel, because “we [know we] can deliver performance, but can we deliver it on the phone model?”

Still, Intel is leaving no stones unturned in capturing the smartphone segment of the market, which McCloskey reports it as big as the PC market itself. “For us, the potential possibility of bringing full PC-like computing experience to the handheld is very compelling,” he emphasized.

While development of models that will carry the Atom chip is still underway, Intel made initial steps towards achieving its smartphone agenda by signing an agreement with Finnish phone manufacturer Nokia to merge the latter’s Linux-based mobile OS called Maemo with the homebrewed netbook OS developed by Intel called Moblin, giving birth to a third OS called MeeGo.

“MeeGo is the cornerstone of our Atom strategy. It will offer a single unified operating environment compatible across a range of form factors,” he explained.

With MeeGo, Intel is adding a single and unified software stack across all its device offerings that will carry the Atom chip. But the “Atom Everywhere” proposition doesn’t only limit itself to the MeeGo OS, since users are given a choice to install their OS flavor of their choice, whether it be Android, Linux, or Windows.

“In a lot of form factors, there is no incumbent OS,” McCloskey shared. “Our key value propositions include an open choice that is optimized for Atom, and takes advantage of all its performance factors.”

Intel’s vision, he said, is to create an open ecosystem where applications can freely flow into the system, and not to compete head-on with Apple’s iOS, widely acknowledged as one of the widely used mobile OS in the market today.

Similarly, Intel is taking Apple’s claim to fame—the Apple App Store—and twisting it to serve its own, through their own application merchant framework called AppUp. Developers can make applications and contribute to the ecosystem through AppUp, which enables their apps to be deployed across a variety of devices.

“Currently, the Intel Atom developer program has 16,000 registered members,” McCloskey said. “We have already set up a fund to attract developers to make apps for different devices.”

Applications developed for the MeeGo OS, however, have yet to see the light of day, as Intel said they are still at a very “nascent stage,” where the focus is geared towards developing the community and encouraging partners to create apps for the platform.

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By John Mark V. Tuazon
Computerworld Philippines
July 5, 2010

As a parting gift to the Filipino people, the Commission on ICT (CICT) announced recently the opening of its Innovative Technologies Laboratory (InnoTech Lab), a partnership with private sector IT firms that will feature the latest technologies in the field today.

Aimed at enriching the capabilities of its human capital development training sessions, the InnoTech Lab will give government workers and the general public a brush with the latest developments in the field of technology, thereby augmenting the courses and seminars on technology proficiency the agency offers.

On its launch, the InnoTech Lab housed a Microsoft Multipoint Server, which enabled thin client computing for several workstations; 21 desktop PCs powered by Intel’s latest Core processors and Microsoft’s latest Windows 7 operating system; various e-book readers an Android-powered phone, and an interactive whiteboard by local PC manufacturer Red Fox, which utilizes a pocket projector by Picos.

Part of its celebration of National ICT Month, the CICT said the launch of the InnoTech Lab is in accordance with their thrust for human capital development in the industry. “The InnoTech Lab combines the latest technologies to conduct skills trainings and seminars for government workers,” shared Ray Anthony Roxas-Chua III, secretary of the CICT.

Courses offered through the InnoTech Lab include basic PC literacy, applications and systems development, and PC troubleshooting, among others. Courses are offered with a nominal fee to cover overhead expenses.

Upgrading the laboratory with the latest technologies likewise gives the commission a headway for expansion in the near future. The National Computer Institute, which is tasked with the maintenance of the lab, said they are looking to offer a management program on e-Governance through the lab, as well as convert it into a review center for government workers taking the IS Auditing Certification Exam.

The Lab, originally the digital media laboratory, will likewise act as a concept room, which will feature whatever latest technologies the partner manufacturers will bring to the market, as part of a long-term commitment with CICT.

Some of the units and workstations currently in the lab, CICT said, have not yet been released into the wild.

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By Dan Nystedt
IDG News Service (Taipei Bureau)
June 8, 2010

TAIPEI - Companies showed off over a dozen new rivals for the iPad at Computex this year, including a nifty 10-inch touchscreen tablet that docks into a speaker from Compal Electronics.

The number of tablets at Computex Taipei 2010 pays testimony to the trend Apple set in motion in April. Now that the company has sold 2 million iPads in just under two months, PC vendors globally want a piece of the action.

In the weeks leading up to Computex, it appeared Google might sweep the show with Android-based tablets, but Microsoft swooped in with some key victories and the launch of Windows Embedded Compact 7 software for small devices.

One company that says it will make tablets using Android, Windows and the MeeGo software developed by Intel and Nokia, also showed off one of the neatest devices at Computex, complete with its own user interface (UI) and speaker-dock.

Compal Electronics, the world’s second largest contract maker of laptop computers, unveiled a sleek Android-based tablet with a 10-inch touchscreen and a stereo speaker it docked into. The UI is similar to Acer’s Shell UI, which works on Android smartphones. The UI simplifies navigation by making the home screen a room full of objects the user taps using the touchscreen. Tapping a stereo icon, for example, starts music playing.

Demand for tablets has risen thanks to the iPad, Compal CEO Ray Chen said at the show, adding that, “we have a lot of customers that are very interested in tablets.”

The company’s tablet uses Android version 2.1 and is on offer to PC vendors worldwide. Compal creates designs for vendors to choose from, then manufactures the devices at factories in China.

Acer, the world’s second-biggest PC vendor, offered a glimpse of its own prototype Android tablet just prior to Computex, at a news conference in Beijing. It has a 7-inch display and a keypad, but Acer didn’t say when it might be released or how much it will cost.

Several smaller Taiwanese and Chinese companies had Android-based tablets at their Computex booths, including Browan Communications, Firstone Technology, Digitran and FuJian Sanxi Electronics.

Arm Holdings, which designs the processing cores popular in Android devices, estimates there will be about 40 tablet devices made using Arm-based processors this year, and several e-readers.

“Android has become remarkably popular in a short space of time,” said Tudor Brown, president of Arm, at a news conference in Taipei.

Three Android tablets were on display at Arm’s private showroom at Computex: Foxconn’s N928-1 with a 10-inch touchscreen, the Lifepad by Prowave with a 7-inch touchscreen, and Wanlida Group’s Malata brand tablet with a 10-inch touchscreen.

Micro-Star International (MSI) also showed off an Android-based tablet PC called the Wind Pad 110 at a news conference, but the company will launch a Windows-based tablet first, a strategy some of its rivals also announced.

MSI’s Wind Pad 100 has Microsoft’s Windows 7 on board, a 10-inch display and a UI developed by MSI. It also features built-in 3G and Wi-Fi, GPS and HDMI high-definition video output. It will be available later this year.

Asustek Computer also debuted its first tablets, two Eee Pads running Windows software.

A tablet PC from Asustek with Android on board was displayed at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) early this year, but the device did not appear at Computex. Asustek Chairman Jonney Shih said he’s not sure the market is ready yet for Android-based tablets.

Shih said the launch of the iPad has created a unique opportunity for tablet-style devices and he expects demand for such products to grow this year.

Apple launched the iPad on April 3 in the U.S. and last week started selling them overseas in markets including Australia, Germany, Japan and the U.K.

Computex is one of Asia’s largest electronics trade shows. The exhibition usually offers a view of what products consumers will see on world markets later this year.

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By Sumner Lemon
IDG News Service (Singapore Bureau)
June 1, 2010

TAIPEI - Hardware makers will unite behind Google’s Android as the primary operating system for tablet computers, according to Nvidia’s CEO.

Tablets are shaping up to be one of the highlights of the annual Computex show in Taipei, where hardware makers are showing off their latest products and prototypes. Most manufacturers are expected to show off tablets, with some designed to run Android and others Windows. But Windows isn’t the best choice for a tablet, said Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO at Nvidia.

“Windows is too big and it’s too full featured for smartbooks and tablets,” Huang said, speaking with reporters in Taipei on Monday. Smartbook is a term used to describe low-cost laptops containing processors designed by Arm instead of x86 chips from Intel or Advanced Micro Devices.

“The good news is that we finally have an operating system to unite behind. Android is an operating system that has gained a tremendous amount of momentum all over the world,” Huang said.

Android was originally developed with cell phones in mind but computer makers wasted no time putting it to use in other devices. Several hardware makers showed off netbooks running the OS at Computex last year. In addition, Acer shipped a version of its Aspire One netbook that came with Windows XP and Android installed.

“Android has become the fastest growing mobile operating system in the world and, in fact, it has surpassed the iPhone in terms of growth and in terms of users,” he said.

The iPad’s success proved there is widespread demand for tablets and set the bar high for rivals. Apple sold 1 million iPads during the first four weeks it was on sale, winning praise from users for its sleek and intuitive user interface, as well as its long battery life. Matching Apple’s success won’t be easy and will require modifications to optimize Android for tablets.

“Andy Rubin and his team [at Google] know exactly where the industry needs to go. Android started out as a phone but it’s not lost on them that the tablet is going to be very important and that the Android operating system has to evolve, and be enhanced in certain capabilities, in order to be a good tablet operating system,” Huang said, citing graphics performance as one area where Android needs to be improved to match the iPad.

Nvidia has a vested interest in seeing the tablet market take off. The company is selling its own Arm-based processor, called Tegra 2, that’s designed for tablets. The chip combines a dual-core Arm processor, a graphics processor, and other components on a single piece of silicon. While tablets based on Tegra 2 have yet to hit the market, they will go on sale before the end of this year.

“I think we’ll have to wait until this fall. The operating systems are coming together, the devices are coming together,” Huang said.

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By John Mark V. Tuazon
Computerworld Philippines
May 31, 2010

CLARK, PAMPANGA - As notebooks continue to enjoy popularity due to consecutive price markdowns, desktop PCs may see a second coming in the form of all-in-one (AIO) PCs, a Lenovo executive suggested Thursday.

Citing the change as a “transformation” of the desktop space, Michael Ngan, country manager for home and small business, Lenovo Philippines, said all-in-one PCs are filling certain market needs, especially because of its unique form factor.

“We see an opportunity for all-in-one PCs, especially, for example, in call centers,” Ngan explained. “We still see growth for desktop PCs, especially in the corporate space.”

Ngan disclosed that Lenovo experienced good reception of their AIO line, but the market for it is not that big just yet. “But it has been growing consistently,” he added.

In an earlier exclusive interview with Computerworld Philippines, Vicky Agorilla, the firm’s general country manager, said desktop PCs remain to be a viable PC product for Lenovo. “Some businesses, such as those in the financial services industry and the call center industry, simply can’t do away with desktops,” she recalled.

Agorilla said their notebook business has been increasing over the years, but that “the desktop units are still growing.”

The IT executive added that they have started pitching AIO PCs to enterprise customers, and that the feedback has been good because “it provides less clutter, and it’s ergonomic and sleek.”

Agorilla likewise cited the differing business requirements of enterprises, which may not be met if they opt to use laptops, due to their limited form factor.

Additionally, large enterprises often undergo occasional hardware refreshes, which continually fuels the businesses of PC vendors such as Lenovo. “Entry-level units often get upgraded when new processors arrive, while higher-grade desktop units undergo a yearly refresh rate,” she disclosed.

Lenovo Philippines on Thursday unveiled several additions to their Ideapad and Thinkpad line, which include a new AIO PC and several notebook units.

The vendor’s new AIO PC comes in the form of the Ideapad A300, a 21.5-inch unit that comes in a shiny white finish. The A300 sports an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, and is the first AIO PC in the market to use an LED panel for display. It will retail for P47,900 come June.

SMBs, on the other hand, can take full advantage of the readily available ThinkCentre A70z, a 19-inch Windows 7-powered AIO that comes in a 2.4-inch black frame and a 16:10 widescreen monitor, which typically occupies 70% less space on most office desks.

Lenovo likewise refreshed two of its notebook lines—the Ideapad V460 and the ThinkPad Edge—to address the SMB market. The new Edge, which comes in a 14-inch display, now sports Intel’s Core i3 processor, unlike its predecessors which come with AMD processors.

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By Agam Shah
IDG News Service (New York Bureau)
May 7, 2010

NEW YORK - Intel on Thursday said it would release a successor to its eight-core Nehalem-EX chips next year with more cores and faster speeds as it tries to push the limits of server performance.

The new chips, code-named Westmere-EX, will be targeted at servers with four sockets and higher, said Stephen Smith, vice president and director of PC client operations and enabling at Intel, during a webcast speech.

The Nehalem-EX processors, available under the Xeon 7500 and 6500 brands, were introduced in March for high-end servers that require high uptime. Intel has called Nehalem-EX processors its fastest to date, and the chips include error correction and reliability, availability and serviceability (RAS) features.

However, the Nehalem-EX chips are manufactured using the older 45-nanometer process while Westmere-EX chips will be manufactured using the more advanced 32-nanometer process.

Intel has packed faster clock speeds and more cores on Westmere chips while consuming the same amount of power as chips made using the 45-nm process, Smith said.

Increasing chip core counts is a way for Intel to improve performance while trying to reduce the power drawn by the processor. Intel in March released Westmere-EP server chips made using the 32-nm process for single- and two-socket servers. The chips, available with up to six cores under the brand name Xeon 5600, include up to 50 percent more cores and boast 60 percent better performance than its predecessors, according to Intel.

“We always have to trade off whether we’re going for just raw performance and the same functionality or whether we’re putting some more capability in. In this case we chose to mix both,” Smith said.

Smith declined to reveal the clock speed and number of cores on the Westmere-EX chips. The company hasn’t nailed down the quarter next year in which Westmere-EX chips will be released. Smith characterized the release as a “midcycle refresh,” and said it would offer socket-compatibility to protect the investment of server makers offering Nehalem-EX processors in systems.

“We just launched Nehalem-EX … These platforms typically have a … two-plus year lifetime.” Smith said. “We are well along in development and we are confident that we have a product that will give us a great performance boost. It will go into the same sockets, so the idea here is the platform is an investment that the OEMs have made.”

Intel added 50 percent more cores to six with Westmere-EP, and could do the same when it upgrades to Westmere-EX, said Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst with Insight 64.

Nehalem-EX chips include up to eight cores, which points to Intel packing up to 12 processing cores in Westmere-EX, Brookwood said. That could give a massive performance boost to servers, he said.

Data centers will be able to handle more workloads without increasing the number of servers, Brookwood said. The new chips could also help cut electricity costs while consolidating servers in smaller spaces.

Westmere-EX also sets the bar higher in the ongoing core battle between Intel and its rival Advanced Micro Devices.

“What’s interesting about that is that AMD has 12 cores in their current Magny-Cours product, and has indicated they will have 16 cores in their 32-nanometer server product coming out next year,” Brookwood said.

The server processor, code-named Interlagos, will be built on a new microarchitecture called Bulldozer.

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By James Niccolai
IDG News Service (San Francisco Bureau)
April 27, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO - Hewlett-Packard is gearing up for a major refresh of its Integrity server line, an important step for customers using those systems and also for the future of Intel’s high-end Itanium processor.

HP wouldn’t discuss the products ahead of a press conference scheduled for Tuesday next week. But it has hinted that Intel’s quad-core “Tukwila” processors, launched in February, will allow it to update its Integrity servers with a more modern, modular design that lets customers scale them more easily and reduce ownership costs.

The updates have been a long time coming for Integrity customers. Aside from slightly faster processors, HP hasn’t made significant changes to most of the systems since the Integrity brand was introduced in 2003. In particular, its high-end Superdome server has had the same chassis since its introduction almost a decade ago.

Intel’s Itanium brand could also use a lift from the new systems. HP is by far the biggest seller of Itanium-based servers, so the chip’s future depends in large part on how customers respond to the new systems. With Microsoft and Red Hat both recently announcing plans to stop developing new OSes for Itanium, the HP-UX and OpenVMS platforms become even more critical to its survival.

“It’s definitely a huge launch for Itanium,” said Jim McGregor, chief technology strategist with In-Stat.

The Integrity line competes mainly with IBM’s System p servers, based on its Power processors. HP positions its boxes as a “mainframe alternative” for critical business applications that need large memory configurations and high levels of uptime. They include four-processor entry-class systems, 16-processor midrange systems, and the top-end Superdome server, which houses up to 64 Itanium processors.

Customers who buy such high-end systems don’t necessarily want frequent upgrades; stability and reliability are their top concerns, so long as the performance is sufficient. But it’s important for HP to stay competitive with IBM, especially if it wants to attract new customers to the platform.

“The high-end market does move slowly, but IBM has been updating its platforms on a two- to three-year cycle, and HP has had the same platforms but with newer, faster chips,” said Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst at Insight64. “This will be the first really major overhaul of the platforms that they have done, and they are taking advantage of all the things the new Tukwila chip enables.”

Intel says the Tukwila chips, properly called the Itanium 9300 series, offer double the performance of the current, dual-core Itanium. It has replaced the front-side bus with QuickPath Interconnect, a high-speed pathway that provides faster transfer rates between CPUs, and from CPU to memory. Tukwila also adds an on-chip memory controller to further reduce latency.

The new chips can’t be used in most existing Itanium systems, another reason why it is important for HP to entice customers onto its new hardware. Tukwila should allow HP to design a new line of Integrity systems that make it easier for customers to start small and scale up with additional processors and memory, McGregor said.

“You can do that today, but the QPI interface is going to allow a lot more design flexibility, in terms of whether those sockets go on the same board or different boards, how much memory there is and how close it is to the processor,” he said.

HP engineers have hinted as much on the company’s Mission Critical Computing blog. “Think about transforming mission critical servers from old monolithic boxes to modular building blocks,” said one post.

It’s a step HP has already taken with its Integrity NonStop servers. Last year it began offering the Nonstop software as an option on its BladeSystem hardware. The move allowed HP to make use of higher-volume components used in other product lines, keeping its manufacturing costs lower.

It may take a similar approach with other Integrity systems. Standardizing components for Itanium-based systems has been Intel’s strategy as well. QPI was carried over from Intel’s 32-bit Xeon processors, and Intel now has common chipsets for both Xeon and Itanium systems, reducing its development costs.

Indeed, Intel’s new eight-core Xeon processors might pose the biggest threat to Itanium. Commenters on HP’s Mission Critical blog note that Tukwila is manufactured using an older process technology than its Xeon chips, limiting the speed and power-efficiency improvements that Intel can offer. HP has said low latency and rock-solid reliability are more important in this class of system.

On April 27, customers will be able to make up their own minds. HP has invited customers to sign up for a launch event that will be streamed over the Web from its Technology@Work 2010 conference in Frankfurt, Germany. It is promising “the reinvention of mission critical computing.”

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By Michael Alan Hamlin

Corporations like to be in control of their communications. When marketing collateral is developed, news releases written, or web copy crafted, it typically will go through several layers of review to ensure that it is “on message.” The arrival of Web 2.0 has made controlling the distribution of the message easier and more difficult at the same time. But it has also fundamentally altered the dynamic of communications.

Before Web 2.0, corporate communications were mostly one way. Suits talked and customers listened. Today, the communications are two way, and the customers talk back. Word-of-mouth has been around as long as people have traded products and services, but distribution of customers’ view of corporations’ products and services was mostly limited to networks of friends, fan clubs, and consumer groups. No more.

“We have entered an age of more open, honest and authentic corporate communications,” corporate blogging consultant and author Debbie Weil writes in an updated version of her best-selling book, The Corporate Blogging Book. “Packaged, filtered, controlled conversations are out,” she advises. “Open, two-way less than-perfect communications with your customers and employees are in.”

To illustrate the dramatic difference in the way corporations should be communicating with stakeholders today and how they did before Web 2.0, Weil suggests it’s as if big business “has finally caught up with the baby boomer’s approach to relationships and to parenting. Listen, learn, debate, be willing to change, admit mistakes, be equals with your children, be fair to others with whom you have an adversarial relationship,” she explains. Because, “Acting like a dictator will get you nowhere.”

Top firms are figuring this out. Weil points to examples such as Boeing, GM, HP, Intel, and Sun Microsystems. These and many other companies are relying on a basket of Web 2.0 tools to communicate. They include social network sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, which have grown dramatically in very short periods. But while social networks provide the opportunity to interact with customers, employees, and other stakeholders, Weil cautions executives that they are “just playing” with these sites because they don’t control them. That means that corporations on these social networks must play by the rules that their owners and executives devise (although the rules are frequently challenged by social network users).

Weren’t we just arguing that corporations must give up control of meaningful, interactive communications? Yes, but not more control than us baby boomers gave up when we decided to be more thoughtful parents than our parents. We still made decisions for our kids. And for the most part, we did set the rules while they grew up and adjusted them as our children matured and developed.

Corporations still ultimately control the products and services they develop, and how they support them. Of course, they adjust like parents do to feedback from customers, reviewers, and sometimes regulatory authorities. And they can still exert some control, according to Weir, over their communications. Even better, corporations can respond faster and more directly to fast-breaking news and sudden unexpected events thanks to Web 2.0 tools.

A measure of control, however, is provided by corporate blogs, which Weil describes as an “e-newsletter, a viral marketing campaign, an open channel through which your customers can talk to you and your own news station all rolled up into one. Now wrap that into a lowcost, easy-to-use, always fresh Website. That’s what effective corporate blogging is.” She adds that blogs can be available to anyone on the Web, or used internally for project management and information sharing. Open blogging provides a means to establish credible, interactive relationships with customers; inward blogging provides a channel for always on interactive communications with employees, partners, and suppliers.

To many, blogs seem dated given the popularity of social network sites. But the reality according to Weil is that they are more relevant than ever. In his forward to Weil’s book,
General Motors vice chairman Bob Lutz agrees: “I can’t tell you how many times I felt handcuffed when a story broke that was blatantly untrue. (At least in my opinion.) Not any more. When the idea of blogging was first presented to me, I jumped at the opportunity,” he writes.

Why? Because blogs enable “telling a story as I see it, without a filter, and in turn, receiving unvarnished feedback.” And that’s the new control, according to Weil.

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By Agam Shah
IDG News Service (New York Bureau)
April 20, 2010

NEW YORK - Lenovo is updating its ThinkPad line with a new series of budget laptops designed to help it reach a wider audience of business users.

The ThinkPad L series is designed to provide a lower-cost alternative to Lenovo’s standard, higher-priced business laptops, said Rajat Aggarwal, worldwide product marketing manager for Lenovo’s ThinkPad line.

The first models, the L412 and L512, will start at US$649, Aggarwal said. Lenovo made several tweaks to the systems to keep prices down, like using lower-resolution screens and doing away with options like solid-state drives. The laptops are offered with a choice of Celeron, Core i3 or Core i5 processors.

Lenovo is positioning the laptops as entry-level systems for large enterprises. They are supposed to be distinct from the ThinkPad Edge laptops that Lenovo introduced earlier this year for small and medium-sized businesses, which come with chips from Advanced Micro Devices.

The new laptops come at a time when enterprises are taking longer to refresh their client PCs. Just last week, Intel CEO Paul Otellini said enterprises were still being careful with spending, and updating laptops on an as-needed basis. IDC has said PC shipments are growing again, but that purchases are being driven by consumers.

The picture changes with geography, however. Aggarwal said there has been an uptick in business laptop purchases in emerging markets like China, and Lenovo hopes to attract more of those customers with the L-series line.

The L412 and L512 have 14- and 15-inch screens, respectively. They come with Microsoft’s Windows 7 OS and up to 320GB of storage. They use integrated graphics from Intel, although AMD’s ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5145 graphics card is an optional extra.

They are due to go on sale in the middle of May, Lenovo said. It could not immediately provide international availability.

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By Agam Shah
IDG News Service (New York Bureau)
April 13, 2010

NEW YORK - Intel late on Sunday said it was collaborating with companies including Samsung and Motorola to develop the next generation of WiMax mobile broadband technology, which will provide a speed boost in 4G wireless data transfers.

The companies have joined a new group, the WiMax 2 Collaboration Initiative, which aims to accelerate the development of standards and devices surrounding WiMax 2 technology, the companies said in a joint press release. The group will collaborate with the WiMax Forum, an industry organization that certifies and promotes WiMax products.

WiMax (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) is a wireless technology that provides fast data-transfer rates over a wider area than Wi-Fi. The technology is finding adoption in Western European and developing countries, and is available in the U.S. through companies like Sprint and Clearwire. The new standard will provide transfer rates of more than 300M bps (bits per second) at peak rates.

Typical transfer rates on current WiMax networks could be between 4M bps to 6M bps for downloads and 1M bps to 2M bps for uploads, but could scale higher depending on the distance from a tower, Intel has said.

The new WiMax 2 specification is built on the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) 802.16m standard, which includes advanced on-air capabilities compared to the current WiMax deployments based on the 802.16e standard, the companies said. The 802.16m standard will be backward-compatible with previous standards and is expected to be completed by the second half of this year, the companies said.

There is increasing demand for rich-media applications on mobile devices, and the improvements will help WiMax operators provide the necessary bandwidth, the companies said. The improvements in WiMax 2 include lower latency and increased VOIP (voice-over-Internet-protocol) capacity.

Users on Clearwire’s WiMax network are consuming an average of 7GB of data per month, said Mike Sievert, chief commercial officer at Clearwire, in the statement. The improvements will be a step forward to meet increased data consumption, he said.

A number of WiMax devices are already available in the market. HTC in March released the EVO 4G smartphone, which includes WiMax capabilities. Intel has also invested a lot in the technology, and offers a chipset for laptops to connect to WiMax networks. But many wireless carriers including AT&T and Verizon support the development of LTE (Long-Term Evolution), an upcoming 4G technology that could compete with WiMax. Intel hasn’t said if it would support LTE, but is keeping its options open, a company executive said earlier this year.

The organizations joining the WiMax 2 Collaboration Initiative include Alvarion, Beceem, GCT Semiconductor, Sequans, XRONet and ZTE and Taiwanese research organization, ITRI (Industrial Technology Research Institute).

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By John Mark V. Tuazon
Computerworld Philippines
April 7, 2010

Global chip manufacturer Intel announced recently the availability of its next-generation Xeon processors which sport the popular Nehalem microarchitecture found in its consumer Core chips, and is targeted at mission-critical servers at the enterprise level.

Touting it as the “biggest performance leap in Xeon history,” Intel executives revealed during a teleconference with the Asia Pacific press that the Xeon 7500 series delivers three times more performance than its predecessor, and at least 20 times better than Intel’s initial server chip offering.

“With 20 new reliability features that address all kinds of workload, the 7500 processor is surely capable of being a foundation technology for large servers,” explained Boyd Davis, general manager, data center group marketing, Intel.

One of these recovery features, according to Davis, is MCA or Machine Check Architecture, which scans to check if no memory is corrupted, and is capable of recovering from errors.

The memory capacity on the 7500 has also increased four-fold, with the memory bandwidth moving up eight notches. This is a good setup for virtualization of servers, according to Davis.

Additionally, the Xeon 7500 chips boast of efficient modular scaling, which can go from as low as two sockets for large memory workloads, to as much as 256 sockets for mission-critical processes.

The Intel Xeon processor 7500 series also supports up to eight integrated cores and 16 threads, and can scale up to 32 cores and 64 threads per 4-chip platform. The 7500 processor also benefits from Nehalem’s inherent Turbo Boost technology, which automatically overclocks the processor when needed.

“About 90% of the volume for investments in servers today is pouring in for Intel-based servers,” shared Davis. “So with this new release, we are expecting that level to accelerate.”

The Intel Xeon 7500 completes the latest server chip releases from Intel, starting off with the 5600 for energy-efficient computing, and the C5500/C3500 Xeon processors targeted at heavy storage users, all released very recently.

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By Jim Duffy
Network World (US)
April 6, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - Cisco this week rolled out a bevy of data center products ranging from servers to switches to SANs, all designed to further broaden the company’s reach beyond networking and into IT infrastructure.

Slideshow: Cisco’s data center deluge
A test of Cisco’s Nexus 5000 data center switch

Cisco’s new offerings include blade and rack servers incorporating Intel’s Xeon 7500 processor, and supporting the company’s FEXlink switching fabric extension architecture. Cisco also unveiled two new Nexus fabric extenders supporting speeds above and below Gigabit Ethernet; an 8Gbps fixed configuration MDS FibreChannel SAN switch; and an appliance for provisioning services to virtual machines.

The sum of the parts indicates Cisco’s intention to play in virtually every facet of data center IT – not just the network and not just virtualization, analysts say.

“The targeting is the big news,” says Jonathan Eunice of Illuminata. “Cisco got into the server business with very narrow targeting: [CEO John] Chambers said, we’re not really after the server business, we’re after the virtualization business. This announcement changes that. [Cisco is] going after any workload, virtual or non-virtual. The specificity is gone.”

This means Cisco will compete more directly with data center server incumbents IBM, HP and Dell. But the company is still looking to differentiate itself by targeting “high-value” sales of server complexes instead of single, standalone servers, Eunice says; and Cisco is still stressing overall data center consolidation, virtualization and automation.

“Even though they’re relaxing their targeting, they’re still very much going for the high-value workload and they’re going for the infrastructure-by-the-ton (sale),” Eunice says. “They don’t want to sell you one; they want to sell in volume for a very standardized kind of infrastructure.”

In that vein, Cisco rolled out two new UCS blade and rack servers:  the B440 M1 and the C460 M1. Both are based on Intel’s Xeon 7500 processor and both – like the other switching and storage access components of UCS now do – support Cisco’s FEXlink architecture for increased performance, bandwidth and access to other resources in the data center.

FEXlink extends the switching fabric of a data center – the mesh of bandwidth configured from multiple core, end of row and top of rack switches — closer to the servers and server racks themselves. This results in a 4x increase in server bandwidth, or 160Gbps per blade, Cisco says. It also allows the blades to harness 8Gbps uplinks to FibreChannel switches, increasing bandwidth to storage resources by 50%, and support more virtual interfaces per NIC, the company says.

This, combined with the new processors, allow the B440 M1 and C460 M1 to support a fourfold increase in compute capacity, making UCS a more general purpose data center physical workload workhorse – not just one optimized for virtual workloads, analysts say.

The B440 M1 and C460 M1 will be available this summer. Cisco claims to have at least 400 customers to date for the platform, and expects $1 billion in revenue this year. But analysts note that demand seems to be lukewarm and that deployments are still mostly trial – not production.

“I think it’s still in the kicking the tires phase,” Eunice says. “Cisco is not a traditional vendor in the server space. This is really not even through the first full year of shipment. They have not disclosed a long list of massive sale, whereas you go to HP or IBM they have tons of references for any size sale.”

To extend the market appeal of FEXlink, meanwhile, Cisco introduced two new Nexus 2000 fabric extenders scaling above and below the 2148T Gigabit Ethernet version unveiled in January, 2009. The Nexus 2232 supports 32 10Gbps Ethernet ports and can extend the FibreChannel over Ethernet capabilities of the Nexus 5000 switch down to the server rack; the 2248 is a 48-port 10/100Mbps Ethernet configuration of the line. Cisco also unveiled a fabric extender transceiver module intended to lower the per port price points of the fabric extenders – down to about $300 per 10Gbps port, Cisco says.

“It lets you take the Nexus fabric and scale it to as much as you want,” says Zeus Kerravala, an analyst at The Yankee Group. “It’s a good way to get people started (with Nexus switching) at relatively low price/points and extend it without waiting for the (higher-end Nexus) 7000.”

Cisco says it has 2,000 customers and 1 million ports shipped of the Nexus 2000 line. The 2232 and 2248 are both available this quarter at an entry price of $9,000.

For pure FibreChannel deployments, Cisco unveiled the MDS 9148 SAN switch. It supports 48 8Gbps FibreChannel ports in a 1 RU footprint. It is intended as a complement to the existing 8Gbps FibreChannel modules for the chassis-based MDS 9500 SAN switch.

Analysts say the density of the 9148 in that configuration is impressive, but that Cisco is late to the 8Gbps FibreChannel party, which Cisco previously acknowledged.

“Eight gig FibreChannel’s been out there for a while so it’s hard to get too excited about it,” Kerravala says.  Users began migrating to 8Gbps FibreChannel in the second half of 2008.

The MDS 9148 will be available from Cisco partners this quarter.

Cisco also rolled a dedicated appliance for provisioning virtual switching service to virtual machines. The Nexus 1010 hosts virtual services, such as the Nexus 1000V virtual switch, to ease installation and bestow “ownership” of virtual services to the network administrator instead of the server administrator. The Nexus 1010 also supports network analysis down to the virtual machine layer.

The Nexus 1010 costs $25,000 and will be available this quarter.

Read more about data center in Network World’s Data Center section.

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By Agam Shah
IDG News Service (New York Bureau)
March 31, 2010

NEW YORK - Intel on Tuesday announced eight-core Nehalem-EX chips, which the company said provide performance jumps that could bring critical infrastructure computing to mainstream servers.

The Nehalem-EX processors deliver up to 20 times more performance than single-core Xeon processors, said Kirk Skaugen, vice president and general manager of Intel’s Data Center Group, during a launch event held in San Francisco that was also webcast.

“It is the single biggest leap in performance in Xeon’s history,” Skaugen said. A single Nehalem-EX server can replace up to 20 single-core servers, which should help consolidate data centers and reduce energy costs.

Nehalem-EX processors are targeted at high-end servers that require high uptime and run critical applications like databases and real-time business intelligence, Skaugen said. It could also go into high-performance computing with up to 256 sockets, Skaugen said.

The eight-core processors will run at speeds between 1.86GHz and 2.26GHz. Each core will be capable of running two threads, so an eight-socket server could run 128 threads simultaneously. The processors will include up to 24MB of cache, which is double the cache on the Intel Xeon 5600 processors launched two weeks ago for low-end and mid-range servers.

The eight-core processors will be part of the Xeon 7500 and 6500 product line. The company also introduced new quad-core and six-core processors as part of those product lines. Prices for the processors start at $744 and range to $3,692.

The Nehalem-EX processors also include a number of security, reliability and memory enhancements compared to its earlier chips, Skaugen said. Intel has put four memory channels in the eight-core processors, which puts it on par with AMD’s 12-core Opteron 6100 chip, which was announced on Monday. Nehalem-EX servers could also include separate buffered memory chips that can temporarily store data alongside the main memory for faster execution, the company has said.

In benchmarking done by InfoWorld, a 16-core system based on Intel’s Nehalem-EX X7560 processors running at 2.26GHz outperformed a 24-core server based on AMD’s Opteron 8435 processors running at 2.6GHz. The two-socket system running Intel’s Nehalem-EX X7560 also outperformed a four-socket server running Intel’s Xeon X7350 running at 2.93GHz.

Group One Trading, an options trading firm in San Francisco, is waiting to test Nehalem-EX and sees potential benefits, said Terence Judkins, managing director of systems at the company.

“We believe these will be nice upgrades for many of our infrastructure servers; market data, database, and virtualized servers,” Judkins said. The new chips will allow Group One to consolidate servers and save on power, cooling and maintenance costs in the long run.

“If we can successfully run two market data processes on a single server where before we needed two servers then that is a home run,” Judkins said.

The improved features of Nehalem-EX could also push the x86 architecture into the market dominated by chips such as Intel’s Itanium and RISC (reduced instruction set computer)-based chips like IBM’s Power and Oracle/Sun’s Sparc, said Jim McGregor, chief technology strategist for In-Stat.

Intel is adapting some technologies for Nehalem-EX from Itanium, like RAS (reliability, availability and serviceability) features to reduce data corruption and ensure reliable system performance. Technologies like MCA Recovery error correction will be able to detect system errors originating in the CPU or system memory and correct them by working with the OS.

By bringing RAS features to the x86 architecture, Intel has laid the groundwork for customers to move away from RISC, McGregor said. Customers have traditionally paid a lot to acquire servers based on RISC architecture, but Nehalem-EX offers compelling features at a considerably lower price, McGregor said.

However, some companies may stick to RISC or Itanium because of performance, legacy software and familiarity, he said.

“There’s always going to be this niche market that needs the [performance] though x86 is scaling there now,” McGregor said.

NEC, which is offering both the Nehalem-EX and Itanium servers, will continue to offer Itanium chips for those who want custom solutions, said Mike Mitsch, general manager of the IT platform group at NEC Corporation of America. However, he said that Nehalem-EX offers a price-performance advantage that could accelerate the move to x86 in high-end systems.

“No one will dispute that,” Mitsch said.

Intel’s Nehalem-EX competition also includes AMD’s 12-core Opteron 6100 chip, which contains highest number of cores in an x86 server processor, McGregor said. However, AMD’s chips cannot match Nehalem-EX on reliability features, and could make it a better fit for orthodox servers in less-critical infrastructures where customers look for a price-performance advantage, he said.

System vendors, including Dell, NEC, Cray, Cisco and IBM will introduce Nehalem-EX servers, Skaugen said. Dell announced the PowerEdge M910, R910 and R810 servers, which will all support Nehalem-EX processors. The R810 server is priced starting at $4,999, the R910 starting at $7,799 and the M910 starting at $4,999.

NEC is taking orders for NEC Express5800/A1080a server with up to eight sockets. The server is priced starting at $53,000 for a four-socket server with 128GB of memory.

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By Agam Shah
IDG News Service (New York Bureau)
March 30, 2010

NEW YORK - IBM’s former server chief, Robert Moffat, on Monday pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit securities fraud in a case connected to an insider-trading scandal.

Sentencing in the case has been scheduled for July 26. The conspiracy charge carries a potential penalty of five years in prison, while the insider-trading charge has a maximum of 25 years.

Moffat is the latest technology executive to plead guilty in a case involving illegal trades that generated millions of dollars in illicit profits. Ten others have already pleaded guilty in connection with the case, including Rajiv Goel, formerly Intel treasury’s managing director of investments.

Moffat entered a guilty plea in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Moffat was arrested and charged in October along with Goel and three Wall Street traders including Raj Rajaratnam, founder of Galleon Group and Danielle Chiesi, a portfolio manager at New York-based New Castle Funds.

Chiesi and Rajaratnam allegedly tapped into a network of high-ranking corporate executives and insiders, including Moffat, to obtain confidential details about quarterly earnings and takeover activity of companies like Intel, Google, Sun Microsystems, Akamai Technologies, Sprint Nextel and Advanced Micro Devices, according to a court document filed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in October. In the wake of the SEC investigation, the DOJ has taken over prosecution of the case.

Moffat last week waived his right for grand-jury indictment, and the DOJ filed a notice of intent to bring criminal charges in the case. Ten others involved in the case have already pleaded guilty for their involvement in the alleged scam.

Moffat, formerly senior vice president of IBM’s Systems and Technology Group, allegedly leaked insider information about IBM considering acquiring Sun to Chiesi. Chiesi allegedly made trades on behalf of New Castle Funds based on the tips and generated about US$1 million in illegal profits.

Chiesi worked along with Rajaratnam, who raked in close to $25 million in illegal profits, according to prosecutors.

Moffat was placed on a leave of absence shortly after he was arrested in October. His leave became permanent soon after, and it wasn’t clear if he resigned or was fired by IBM.

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By John Mark V. Tuazon
Computerworld Philippines
March 22, 2010

Following the recent release of its consumer-grade Intel Core i3 processor to the local market, global chip maker Intel Microelectronics unveiled on Friday its fastest processor yet, the Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition, which boasts of six-core processing power utilizing 12 computing threads at a time.

Compared to its vanilla Core i7 predecessor, the new 32-nanometer processor codenamed “Gulftown” also boasts of an upgrade to the cache, which is now at 12 MB from the previous 6 MB.

Coupled with Intel’s Turbo Boost technology which automatically overclocks the system when necessary, the Core i7-980X can run up to 3.46GHz, making it an ideal machine for high-end gamers and content producers.

Intel promises as much as 45% gain in productivity for the faster chip, which it demonstrated through video and 3D rendering, all done at a considerably faster rate than its predecessor.

Moreover, the new Intel chip is drop-in compatible with existing X58 motherboards. “Just pull the unit out, install the new one in, do a BIOS update and you’re ready to go,” added Ricky Banaag, country manager, Intel Philippines.

The Core i7-980X processor package also comes with a thermal solution especially designed to handle the cooling requirements of the processor. “The thermal solution employs a tubular design that can handle tough heat requirements even on quiet mode, so you only hear a hum when using it,” Banaag explained, adding that the thermal solution doesn’t need any chemical coolant to function.

All of the processor’s new features can be obtained at the same price point as its Core i7 predecessor atUS$999, or around P45,000. Buyers of the new processor can also get the chance to fly off to space by visiting www.intel.com/apac/turboboost and entering the contest.

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