Author: Nick Farrell

Intel plans Xeon E7-v3 CPUs with up to 18 Cores

Posted on February 13, 2015 by - News

Intel-Core-MIt seems that Intel is planning a version of its Xeon E7-v3 CPU with up to 18 Cores under the bonnet.

 CPU-World.com has dug up a list of specifications for some of the upcoming Xeon E7 series processors from Intel.

The information has not been confirmed by Intel but since the list comes from a CSV (Comma Separated Value) price list for the X-series server products from IBM it is likely to be reliable.

The CPUs based on Haswell are baked using the 22nm process. It seems to be 165 W TDP which is hardly a low power envelope but given that it is running a chip with 18 physical cores at 2.5 GHz it is pretty good.

The list is

Model                                   Cores    Frequency          TDP

Xeon E7-4809 v3               8              2.0 GHz                 115W

Xeon E7-4820 v3               10           1.9 GHz                 115W

Xeon E7-4830 v3               12           2.1 GHz                 115W

Xeon E7-4850 v3               14           2.2 GHz                 115W

Xeon E7-8860 v3               16           2.2 GHz                 140W

Xeon E7-8867 v3               16           2.5 GHz                 165W

Xeon E7-8870 v3               18           2.1 GHz                 140W

Xeon E7-8880 v3               18           2.3 GHz                 140W

Xeon E7-8880L v3             18           2.0 GHz                 115W

Xeon E7-8890 v3               18           2.5 GHz                 165W

Xeon E7-8891 v3               10           2.8 GHz                 165W

Xeon E7-8893 v3               4              3.2 GHz                 140W

 

Core counts range from four through 18 cores, and clock speeds  from 1.9 GHz through 3.2 GHz. More cores operate at lower clock speeds.

No word on price yet but these processors are likely to be very expensive so they are only going to go into server situations where they are going to get shedloads of use.

Intel’s diversity plans revealed

Posted on February 13, 2015 by - News

diversityatintel.rendition.cq5dam.thumbnail.606.336Intel’s Rosalind Hudnell is working on an ambitious plan to create a more diverse staff base at Intel.

Hudnell is Intel’s chief diversity officer,  and is responsible for implementing the company’s much publicised $300 million initiative to bring more women and under-represented minorities into its workforce by 2020. Talking to IT World she said that the company is diverse, but not diverse enough.

If she pulls it off she could break Silicon Valley’s dominance by white and Asian males, but she has an uphill battle as efforts so far have been inconsistent

Intel had 107,600 employees worldwide at the end of 2013.  Only 24 percent are women and four percent African-Americans.

Intel does have women top executives including Renee James, who is president, and Diane Bryant, who runs the Data Centre Group. And let us never forget Genevieve Bell. Intel already provides same sex domestic partner benefits; it also offers LGBT and faith- and culture-based resources to workers.  Gender and race diversity is apparently a  little tricky.

Intel is establishing specific numbers on hiring a more diverse workforce and tying executive compensation to meet those goals. However, even with Intel’s renewed commitment to diversity, the company’s workforce will still be just about 32 percent women in five years.

Most of the $300 million will be applied over five years to change hiring practices, “retool human resources”, whatever that means, fund companies run by minorities and women, and promote STEM education in high schools.

The problem is getting talent. Science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) degrees are still mostly taken by men. Around 74 percent of computer professionals and 86 percent of engineers are men.

Intel aims to build a larger pipeline of qualified candidates over time by investing in STEM education.

Intel is monitoring its diversity initiative based on 59 measures related to gender, race, education and corporate role. For example, Intel wants employ more women, Hispanic and African-Americans in technical and engineering roles, which are dominated by white and Asian males. A diversity goal for the technical group will be different from the non-technical group, which employs a larger percentage of women.

Intel will also step up investments in companies run by minorities and women. That means change for the capital investment program, which is known for relying on word-of-mouth for funding decisions and being unresponsive to companies seeking investment.

“We’ll be very clear and transparent about what we’re looking for,” Hudnell said. “We’ll have a diverse advisory board that will probably make those decisions,” Hudnell said.

 

Cisco did better than expected

Posted on February 12, 2015 by - News

cfd548a13a777938dc3e31e616d31a70Network equipment maker Cisco reported stronger than expected quarterly revenue and profits as demand for switching equipment and routers picked up.

Cisco has been trying to move towards a new cycle of high-end switches and routers.

Its switching business, which makes products that handle traffic at large internet data centres, netted  39 percent of Cisco’s total hardware revenue in 2014, while the router business accounted for about 21.2 percent.

This means that the outfit is seeing robust switching sales, which is good news for other outfits in the sector such as Infoblox, Gigamon and F5 Networks which should also be doing well.

Rvenue from Cisco’s hardware business rose 7.8 percent to $9.08 billion in the company’s second quarter ended Jan. 24.

Revenue from services, which includes the company’s software and cloud offerings, rose 4.6 percent to $2.86 billion.

So analysts think that Cisco has put the worst behind it and should start returning to the days when it was a blue chip investment.

Chief Executive John Chambers said that the quarter showed the best balance of growth across all of the company’s geographies, products and segments,.

Cisco said its net profit rose to $2.4 billion in the quarter from $1.43 billion, a year earlier. Total revenue rose seven percent to $11.94 billion.

Analysts on average had expected a revenue of $11.8 billion.

Kramer added that while Cisco has made progress in the second quarter, the company will continue to be affected by headwinds from emerging markets and telecom service providers.

The company also forecast revenue growth of 3-5 percent.

 

South Korea snaps on Qualcomm antitrust dragon

Posted on February 12, 2015 by - News

qualcomm-snapdragonSouth Korea’s Fair Trade Commission is investigating Qualcomm, adding to more antitrust woes for the US chipmaker.

The outfit had a record fine it agreed to pay in China, and claimed that other antitrust authorities would see its actions differently.

South Korea’s Maeil Business newspaper, without citing direct sources, reported that the commission will look into whether Qualcomm is abusing its dominant market position.

As part of its investigation, the commission plans to send inquiries to domestic smartphone makers such as Samsung and Intel.

Qualcomm is also dealing with antitrust probes in Europe and the United States. In their investigation of Qualcomm, Chinese antitrust officials had met with their South Korean counterparts.

In 2009, South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission fined Qualcomm more than $200 million for abusing its dominant market position, so it will be especially interested because the outfit has previous form.

Inkjets could fix OLED TV manufacturing

Posted on February 12, 2015 by - News

lg-55-inch-oled-tvMIT boffins have developed a method to slash the cost of producing OLED screens by using inkjet printing techniques.

MIT spinout Kateeva has developed an “inkjet printing” system for OLED displays  that could cut manufacturing costs enough to pave the way for mass-producing flexible and large-screen models.

Kateeva co-founder and scientific advisor Vladimir Bulovic, the Fariborz Maseeh Professor of Emerging Technology, who co-invented the technology said it removes the barriers to wider adoption of OLED technology which are all related to the expensive process.

Dubbed YIELDjet, Kateeva’s technology platform is a giant inkjet printer. Large glass or plastic substrate sheets are placed on a long, wide platform. A component with custom nozzles moves rapidly, back and forth, across the substrate, coating it with OLED and other materials — much as a printer drops ink onto paper.

Another tool, which will debut later this year, aims to cut costs and defects associated with patterning OLED materials onto substrates, in order to make producing 55-inch screens easier.

Kateeva co-founder and CEO Conor Madigan claims that by boosting yields, as well as speeding up production, reducing materials, and reducing maintenance time, the system aims to cut manufacturing costs by about 50 percent.

The system is scalable, which is really important as the display industry shifts to larger substrate sizes, he said.

Icahn tries to talk up Apple shares

Posted on February 12, 2015 by - News, Opinions

Carl_IcahnThe Tame Apple Press has teamed up with Apple shareholder Carl Ichan to see if they can talk up the price of Jobs’ Mob shares.

Icahn who owns pots of Apple shares thinks that they should be making him pots more cash – and what better way to do that than claim that they are undervalued.

Of course a shareholder thinking he should get more money for his stash is not news, but the Tame Apple Press seems to have decided to give him a leg up while promoting the value of their favourite toymaker.

Reuters, which is set to eclipse the New York Times as Apple’s favourite Public Relations expert, actually ran a story this morning where Ichan claimed that the iPhone maker’s stock should be trading at $216, far above its record high of $124.92 yesterday.

“At $216 per share, Apple – already the world’s most valuable company – would be worth about $1.3 trillion, or about the size of South Korea’s gross domestic product,” Reuters’  breathlessly said.

The company is valued at just over $700 billion currently.

Icahn said Apple should be trading at 20 times earnings per share, which taken together with net cash of $22 per share works out to $216 per share.  He didn’t say why he thought that, other than the fact that if he can convince enough thicko’s out there he is right, the share price will go up and he will be laughing all the way to the bank.

He added that if Apple introduces a TV in FY 2016 or FY 2017, we believe this “20X multiple is conservative.”   Apple TV, the Tame Apple Press had not heard that one.  It is also unlikely to be a big money spinner. The TV market is down the loo at the moment and there are plenty of nice looking Tellies out there sitting on shelves.  Jobs Mob is also yet to come up with a future proof idea since its Tablet fad started to die out.

To be fair Icahn, who is  Apple’s top 10 investors, does not only think he can convince people that the shares are worth more.  He thinks Apple should buy back more shares and raise its dividend.

Apple had cash reserves of about $178 billion as of December 27 and said last April it would return more than $130 billion to shareholders by the end of 2015.

Still Ichan’s alliance with the Tame Apple Press did make him a little richer.  Apple shares closed 2.3 percent higher at $124.88.

Tsar Putin set to make proxies and Tor illegal

Posted on February 12, 2015 by - News

Putin + gunThe Russian Government is coming up with justifications for banning proxy server access and hacking Tor networks.

Leonid Levin, Chairman of the Duma Committee on Information Policy, Information Technologies and Communications, proposed to consider limiting access to anonymising networks such as Tor and VPNs. Levin said that the world was a tough place and it needed tougher policing.

Levin also opined that restricting access to  proxy networks  which would “increase opportunities to counter the commercial distribution of malware” and also help to impede access to “forbidden” information.

Vadim Ampelonsky, the press secretary of Russia’s media watchdog Roskomnadzor  supported Levin’s stance on Tor, claiming that the technological obstacles to blocking The Onion Router’s obfuscation protocols are “difficult, but solvable,”

The Safe Internet League, which consists of Russia’s state telecom company Rostelecom and two other major mobile providers, slammed Tor.  Its spokesman Denis Davydov said: “We strongly support the idea of limiting Russia’s access to anonymous networks, including Tor. The ‘Invisible’ Internet has made it possible for offenders of all kinds to hide their intentions from the state and use it to commit crimes: acquiring drugs and weapons, distributing child pornography, trafficking in human beings – including sex slaves – and leading political struggle.”

It a return to the old language of the cold war, he added “do not forget that Tor was developed and is used by Americans, including US intelligence agencies, to expand the hegemony of the United States around the world.”

Nanning anonymising networks would increase user-trust among the Russian people and lead to economic benefits, having described Tor as an ‘Anonymous network used primarily to commit crimes’.

Roskomnadzor already maintains a government blacklist of forbidden sites, updates to which are regularly circulated to network providers, who are then obliged to block the domains.

Samsung invests in new OLED plant

Posted on February 11, 2015 by - News

oldtvSamsung thinks that more people will be interested in buying its OLED TVs which spy on you and tell advertisers your doings.

The outfit has announced that it plans to write a cheque for $3.6 billion into making organic light-emitting diode (OLED) panels.

A Samsung Display spokesman said that the new production line would mainly make medium and small-sized OLED displays for consumer electronics devices like smartphones and tablets. The investment would be made from 2015 to 2017.

The new line will initially produce curved panels like those on the Galaxy Note Edge, and eventually help win external customers which are becoming crucial to parent Samsung Electronics’ future earnings growth.

In addition to the planned OLED investment, Samsung is expected to start building a chip plant in South Korea sometime in the first half of the year. The company said in October that construction for this plant will be completed in the second half of 2017.

However it is likely that all this investment will cut back on Samsung’s total 2015 dividend payout and it is likely that share values will fall.

It is not the only one thinking of following this line. South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency said this morning that LG Display is adding capacity in an existing large-panel OLED production line.

 

 

Jeb Bush leaks supporters details

Posted on February 11, 2015 by - News

JebBushFunnyFaceFormer Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who is trying to position himself as a master of tech,  has made a serious of blunders almost as inspired and clever as his brother’s.

Bush touts his technical prowess, referring to himself as “The eGovernor” for how easy it was to email with him when he was in office.  He is expected to declare his desire to run for president in 2016, but he’s already created a major privacy blunder.

Bush’s latest project, which is designed to show the world that he is really hip and knows technology, is called Jeb Emails.  It is a huge open database of correspondence to and from his jeb@jeb.org email address, publishes the names, messages, and email addresses of his constituents who emailed him during his eight years in office.

However it is a huge misuse of the data sent to him because people did not expect them to be made public.

One woman said that she emailed Governor Bush when the state was going through the initial insurance crisis but she never gave permission to publish the emails.

She was a little embarrassed that one of the emails showed her worried about “illegal immigrants” as her feelings had changed on that subject and she hated to unduly upset anyone.

However he has had two internet related cock-ups in as many days from his campaign. His office admitted that they had asked their new Chief Technology Officer to delete jokes he’d tweeted about “sluts”.

Now the Verge  has uncovered emails that contain Social Security numbers, home addresses, and other personal information from Floridians.

ARM does better than expected

Posted on February 11, 2015 by - News

ARM-Cortex-A15-chipIt seems that the British chip designer ARM has done a lot better than the cocaine nose-jobs of Wall Street have predicted.

ARM posted a 25 percent rise in fourth-quarter profit, ahead of expectations, helped by a strong year end in companies licensing its technology and growing royalty revenues.

The Tame Apple press  claims that the ARM success has all been down to Apple’s iPhone 6, although ARM powers most of the world’s smartphones.

ARM reported pre-tax profit of 118.9 million pounds on revenue of 225.9 million pounds, up 19 percent.

Licensing revenue was up 27 per cent on the year mainly based on 53 licences signed for processors.

“We anticipate that total group dollar revenues for Q1 will be up about 10 percent year on year, based on strengthening royalty revenue growth, and our expectation of the profile of license revenue through the year,” the company said.

Analysts were predicting pre-tax profit of £113 million, according to a consensus compiled by Thomson Reuters.

 

Microsoft offers start ups Azure credits

Posted on February 11, 2015 by - News

Pic Mike MageeMicrosoft has launched a package to lure start-ups and SME’s to its Azure profile by offering them $500,000 in Azure credits. 

The deal, announced by partner Y Combinator, is only available to Y Combinator-backed companies and will be offered to the 2015 Winter and future batches.

It seems that Microsoft is following Google, AWS and IBM which already offer incentives for start-ups to join them.

Microsoft is giving Y Combinator start-ups a three years Office 365 subscription, access to Microsoft developer staff and one year of free CloudFlare and DataStax enterprise services.

It is starting to look like Microsoft is getting more aggressive in its competition with Amazon Web Services and Google, both of whom already offer credits and freebies.

Amazon offers $25,000 in AWS credits and other freebies, while Google offers $100,000 in Google platform credits and IBM offers $120,000 in credit for SoftLayer infrastructure of BlueMix PaaS.

Writing in his company’s bog Sam Altman said that this brings the total value of special offers extended to each YC company to well over $1,000,000. “The relentless nagging from partners to grow faster we throw in for free,” he said.

It is likely that the YC deal is the first of many which will be rolled out worldwide to Microsoft’s partners.

 

Dating applications expose businesses

Posted on February 11, 2015 by - News

1930s-couple-620x400Big Blue is warning that millions of people using dating apps on company smartphones could be exposing their employers to hacking, spying and theft.

IBM security researchers said 26 of 41 dating apps they analysed on Google Android mobile platform had medium or high severity vulnerabilities.  Curiously the IBM team did not look at dating applications on Apple gear, probably because the company signed a deal to push Apple gear in the workplace.

Unfortunately IBM did not name and shame the vulnerable apps but said it had alerted the app publishers to problems.

Apparently Tinder, OkCupid and Match have become hugely popular in the past few years due to their instant messaging, photo and geolocation services. In 2013 it was estimated that 31 million Americans have used a dating site or app.

IBM found employees used vulnerable dating apps in nearly 50 percent of the companies sampled for its research. By using the same phone for work and play or “bring your own device,” it means that companies are wide open for such attack vectors.

Am IBM report said that while BYOD was seen as a way that companies could save cash by allowing employees to use their home gear on corporate networks , if not managed properly, the organizations might be leaking sensitive corporate data via employee-owned devices.

IBM said the problem is that people on dating apps let their guard down and are not as sensitive to potential security problems as they might be on email or websites.

If an app is compromised, hackers can take advantage of users waiting eagerly to hear back from a potential love interest by sending bogus “phishing” messages to glean sensitive information or install malware, IBM said.

A phone’s camera or microphone could be turned on remotely through a vulnerable app, which IBM warned could be used to eavesdrop on personal conversations or confidential business meetings. Vulnerable GPS data could also lead to stalking, and a user’s billing information could be hacked to purchase things on other apps or websites.

Strangely, despite its dire warnings to Android users, IBM said it had not so far seen a rash of security breaches due to dating apps as opposed to any other kind of social media.

Meanwhile, it recommends that dating app users limit the personal information they divulge, use unique passwords on every online account, apply the latest software patches and keep track of what permissions each app has.

Amazon sells fake AMD CPUs

Posted on February 10, 2015 by - News

FireOnTheAmazonPosterAMD chip buyers using Amazon’s service have found themselves buying fake AMD A8-7600s.

When they receive the chips, the CPUs aren’t working and when they looked at the bottom of the chips they twigged that someone was taking older or less expensive CPUs and delidding them.

They were then taking newer CPUs that have more value, delidding those, and then putting the IHS from the new CPUs on the old CPUs. Unless you look at the pins before you buy, you would never spot the difference.

The cores being used are the AM2 Athlon X2 cores.

The scam is exclusive to the AMD A8-7600, and the situation appears to be limited to Amazon in the United Kingdom.

The danger is that this could spread over to other products if the scam is successful. c’t magazine said it would be a doddle to do with Haswell products, switching the IHS of a Celeron with a Core i7, because both products are LGA1150.

Amazon have not commented but AMD is furious and while refusing to confirm the scam it said:

“It is apparent that this isolated incident is not related in any way to AMD’s manufacturing or packaging, however AMD takes any reports of product tampering very seriously. As part of our ongoing efforts to help ensure consumers and businesses are sold only genuine AMD processors, we thoroughly investigate these extremely rare incidents in an effort to determine the source of the altered products, and consider all available legal remedies – including both civil and criminal prosecution – against persons found to have engaged in fraudulent actions affecting AMD products.”

AMD said it’s been on the blower to Amazon and the local enforcement authorities to fix this incident quickly and “ensure that the rigorous quality and reliability standards that AMD is known for are maintained.

“AMD already implements extensive security measures to ensure the authenticity of our products, we are currently evaluating further measures to implement additional security measures for maximum future support,” a spokesperson said.

AMD has a guide listed on its website to help verify the legitimacy of CPUs.

 

Microsoft and Samsung settle over royalties

Posted on February 10, 2015 by - News

 9545A court case between Microsoft and Samsung over patent royalties appears to have sorted itself out.

Microsoft  sued Samsung last year claiming the spy TV maker had breached a collaboration agreement by initially refusing to make royalty payments.

This was soon after Microsoft bought Nokia’s handset business in September 2013.

The lawsuit claimed Samsung still owed $6.9 million in interest on more than $1 billion in patent royalties it delayed paying. Samsung has countered that the Nokia acquisition violated its 2011 collaboration deal with Microsoft.

Microsoft has not said how much Samsung is paying it. In 2011, a technology analyst at Citigroup estimated that Microsoft was getting $5 per Android handset sold by phone maker HTC under a patent agreement, and that Microsoft was looking for up to $12.50 per phone from other handset makers it had yet to come to an agreement with.

Microsoft denied this figure but if it applied the $5 price to Samsung, the Korean company could be paying Microsoft about $1.6 billion per year.

Samsung said it had agreed in 2011 to pay Microsoft royalties in exchange for a patent license covering phones that ran Google Android operating system. Samsung also agreed to develop Windows phones and share confidential business information with Microsoft, according to court filings.

 

Varonis scores University of Liverpool file sharing contract

Posted on February 10, 2015 by - News

liverpoolVaronis has confirmed that it has scored a contract working with the University of Liverpool to overcome the challenge of students moving sensitive data to personal cloud-based storage.

Using Varonis DatAnywhere,  the university gives its 32,000 students and 4,700 staff the “flexibility” to sync its file share data across all of their devices with the added ability to securely share files with external collaborators.

It has proved popular with people –  within eight days of rolling out the software, the university had 1,366 new DatAnywhere users.

Andy Williams, Systems Manager, University of Liverpool said that there were major headaches moving data online to file sharing services.

“In addition to the data being vulnerable offsite, concerns of document version control needed to be addressed, plus the complication that when people leave the university, it is virtually impossible to retain or even revoke access to data stored in uncontrolled repositories.”

It also means that with DatAnywhere in place, the university can now offer a viable alternative to Dropbox and has recently introduced a policy stating ‘confidential documents are not to be stored on other platforms.’

The software uses the university’s existing Active Directory permissions, and no one now has access to shared data, unless they already had it or are provisioned access.

“IT still retains control over who can and can’t access files, particularly those deemed confidential. We can also revoke access centrally, and it will replicate across everything at once, saving time and reducing complexity,” he said