IBM wants to dam big data deluge

Posted on October 7, 2014 by - News

IBM logoBig Blue says it has created a new model for enterprise data storage intended to work across a large number of IT solutions.

Jamie Thomas, general manager of storage at IBM, said that it’s time the “traditional” storage model must change. That’s because data is churned out to 2.5 billion gigabytes every day.

Enterprises need to make real time decisions based on this data.  Storage and data centres are the foundation for the model using analytical tools.

She said IBM has introduced something called the Elastic Storage Server, a software storage appliance that works in conjunction with IBM Power 8 servers.

She said that software defined storage is changing the entire industry and IBM can now sell products to customers that want to manage, organise, and use data as a competitive tool.

IBM will offers its Software Defined Storage products through Elastic Storage, SAN Volume Controller and the Virtual Storage Centre.

Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2015 comes to pass

Posted on October 7, 2014 by - News, Products

microsoft-in-chinaSoftware supremo Microsoft said it has made available a product which it claims will help small to medium sized businesses (SMBs)  grow their revenues.

Microsoft Dynamics NAV is business management software and is now optimised for mobile and for cloud, the company claimed.

Features include tablet and touch features that let SMBs access data from any place or  on devices that include apps from Apple, Google and Microsoft app stores.

There’s a simplified way of designing invoices that syncs with Microsoft Word. Microsoft says that allows people to create their own customised invoice templates.

It also has new capabilities for electronic payments and account reconciliation.

Kaveri makes this Acer Aspire E5 sing

Posted on October 7, 2014 by - News, Opinions, Products

Acer E5-551_1AMD has been making a big noise about its Kaveri chip range of Mobile APUs and we got a look at what it could do to Acer E5-551 15.6 laptop.

AMD A-Series APU family, codenamed Kaveri, is starting to pop up in systems from Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, and Toshiba. According to AMD, the new mobile APUs mark the debut of Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) features and Graphics Core Next (GCN) Architecture for mobile. Acer’s Aspire E5 is first to arrive in the UK and will be sold through Debenhams so this makes it interesting from a user or a channel perspective.

The AMD A8 Kaveri chip is now powering the new Acer E5-551 laptop is designed for multi-tasking from gaming and light photo-editing to running multiples instances of software and streaming music. The E5-551 features a DVD reader and writer for long plane flights where you need a better movie. It is also well placed for the school market as it can practically anything a school kid could throw at it.

The machine is priced for about £409 which makes it a good budget model for smaller companies who are providing portables for those who have to do work, rather than just look at tablets. Normally there is not much between computers in this range. Most have WXGA screens based on TN technology and conventional hard drives and plastic bodies.

 Acer E5-551_9The Spec

Processor: AMD Quad-Core A8-7100

Mainboard: AMD A76M

Memory: 8192 MB, DDR3L, 1600 MHz, dual-channel, 2 memory banks, both filled

Graphics adapter :AMD Radeon R6 (Kaveri), Core: 533 MHz, DDR3L, shared memory, bus: 64 Bit

Display: 15.6 inch 16:9, 1366×768 pixel, AU Optronics AUO47EC, TN LED

Connections: 2 USB 2.0, 1 USB 3.0, 1 VGA, 1 HDMI, 1 Kensington Lock, Audio Connections: 1 combo audio in/out, 3.5 mm jack, Card Reader: SD/SDHC/SDXC,

Networking: Realtek RTL8168/8111 Gigabit-LAN (10/100/1000MBit), Atheros Communications AR9565 Wireless Network Adapter (b g n ), 4.0 Bluetooth

Optical drive: Matshita DVD-RAM UJ8E2Q

Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 64 Bit

Weight: 2.5 kg

Battery: 56 Wh Lithium-Ion

 Acer E5-551_10Design

The Aspire A5 design is, bluntly, a bit of a snooze and not its strongest feature. Certainly, it is thinner than many laptops in this range but it is not that thin. It is lighter and easy to carry than others we have had. Certainly in comparison to the bricks that are available in this price range it is certainly not bad. Besides, for £409 design is something that happens to other people’s computer.

The plastic case also seems to pick up every type of grease that a hand can generate and make the machine slimy.

 The chip

The important part of this computer is an AMD Quad-Core A8-7100 which is a quad core with eight GPU cores to carry out the AMD Radeon R7 series graphics. The idea of the Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) is that it allows the CPU and GPU to work together by quickly dividing and directing the right tasks toward the appropriate cores to improve performance and efficiency. The chip managed to make running software a breeze and it even passed our Firefox running trillions of opens tabs trick without any problems.

 The Graphics

The graphics on the Kaveri platform is far better than Intel’s equivalent HD graphics cores integrated into the Haswell chips. This makes Kaveri armed laptop owners able to play reasonably demanding games and videos. Playing Civ 5 was not only possible it was a quality game on Acer E5-551, something that I have only seen on our other home laptop, which has a dedicated card, when there was nothing else running. HD films came out very well, limited only by the screen which for a budget machine was still not too bad.

Connectivity

The machine has an HDMI socket, Ethernet connection, two USB 2.0 sockets, a USB 3.0 connection and a VGA out.  Not bad not great.

Communication

The Atheros AR9565 Wi-Fi module supports the IEEE 901.11 b, g and n standards,  Bluetooth, version 4.0. The signal connections were fairly standard and nothing to right home about

Battery

The 56 Wh Lithium-Ion managed 4.5 half hours before needing a recharge, which was not too bad given the thrashing we were giving it.  Again, this is due to the lower power draw of the AMD A8 chip.

Noise and heat

There was no noise coming from the machine at all. This was unheard of in any laptop in this price range, particularly one with an ordinary hard drive. One could almost believe it is fanless. The heat levels were also not to bad.  The laptop did get warm, but not hot and was comfortable to put on your lap.

Keyboard

The flat, roughened keys were not bad and were capable of fast touch typing.

Touchpad

The ClickPad which is a large, single-surface which you press when you want to ‘click’ was reasonable in comparison to the alternatives we have used.  Generally, if you are not going to have a touch screen on a laptop you are always going to be better with a mouse. When such use was impossible though once you got used to it was fine. Most of the touchpad surface can be pressed, which is interpreted as a left click except for in the lower right of the Clickpad.

 Hard-drive

The hard drive is 1TB which is more than enough for any portable music or movie collection.  It is not an SSD but we never heard it in operation.

Summery

The Acer E5-551 would be a normal budget laptop where it not for the Kaveri chip making it into something special. It enabled speed, enhanced graphics, extended battery life, and quiet operation something which we have not seen from Intel equivalents in the market.  It is still a budget machine, limited by the lack of a quality screen, but for that price it it is jolly useful.

The Eyes have it

four-stars

 

 

 

Good value for money.

 

Euro semi sales shoot up

Posted on October 6, 2014 by - News

12-inch silicon wafer - Wikimedia CommonsThings are on the turn in the chip business, and it’s a turn for the better.

The European Semiconductor Industry Association (ESIA) said today that sales hit $3.231 billion in August, that’s up 10.9 percent compared to August last year.

Its figures represent a three month rolling average.

ESIA said the logic market was pretty strong – that continues a trend that emerged early this year.  MOS (metal oxide semiconductor) based microprocessors grew strongly compared to July. And flash and NAND memory also showed good performance compared to July.

The chip market is, of course, affected by exchange rates with trading in Euro and in dollars affecting the mix.  But, nevertheless, in August this year semi sales were 2.393 billion Euro – which represents a 0.4 percent decrease over July, said ESIA.

ESIA is bullish. It said worldwide sales for August 2014 amounted to a not insignificant $28.435 billion – up 9.4 percent compared to August 2013, and up 1.3 percent compared to July 2014.

Smartgun inspires smart mouse

Posted on October 6, 2014 by - News

Mighty_Mouse_Sig_by_PanaCA security contractor working for defence outfit Raytheon has solved a problem relating to computer authentication after reading about an effort to use pressure sensitive gun grips to authenticate a gun owner.

According to Computer World  Glenn Kaufman wondered if something similar might work for a computer mouse and after four years has been awarded a patent for a biometric pressure grip that describes how a mouse can be used to authenticate someone.

One of the difficulties in high security defences is that serious attackers can by-pass them without anyone being aware of it. Smartcards can be stolen, fingerprints lifted off surfaces, passwords cracked and photographic substitutes used to defeat facial recognition and retina scans.

But a pressure sensitive mouse “is a lot harder to defeat” because it works from a neurological pattern versus a physical pattern, such as a facial scan. The way people hold a mouse, along with the amount of pressure they apply, is unique.

Kaufman built a mouse with pressure sensors and tested it on 10 people. He extrapolated the results to indicate a failure rate of one in 10,000, which is similar to what the pressure gun grip researchers had discovered.

It means that if someone wants to hack into your computer they need to have you sitting next to them with your hand on your mouse. They cannot cut your hand off because a dead hand will not hold the mouse in the same way.

The real reason for Windows 10’s name revealed

Posted on October 6, 2014 by - News

magritte-windowWhen software giant Microsoft declared that its new operating system would be called Windows 10, many of us wondered what was wrong with Windows 9 as a name.

After all, the number, nine has a good reputation. There were, for example,  The Nine Worthies – nine historical, or semi-legendary figures who, in the Middle Ages, were believed to personify the ideals of chivalry. There are nine muses in Greek mythology including Calliope, Clio, Erato, Euterpe, Melpomene, Polyhymnia, Terpsichore, Thalia, and Urania.

Of course, there were nine circles of Hell in Dante’s Divine Comedy, but that was unlikely to put people off buying an operating system. Microsoft claimed that Windows 10 was so cool and so unlike the doomed Windows 8 that it was unfair to call it Windows 9, which is about as unlikely as Mark Hurd returning as the CEO of HP.

Now it seems a Microsoft developer has spilled the beans. Microsoft skipped Windows 9 and went  straight to 10 fearing a problem like the Y2K bug.

The developer “Cranbourne” told Rededit  that  “early testing revealed just how many third party products had code in the form of Windows 9”, referring to benchmark operating systems Windows 95 and Windows 98.

He said: “This was the pragmatic solution to avoid that.”

Basically there was a lump of short-sighted code short cut designed to differentiate between Windows 95 and 98 that was too stupid to grasp that there was now a Windows 9.

It sounds daft, but Indie developer Christer Kaitila pointed out that more than 4,000 applications use the ancient coding cock-up somewhere under the bonnet of their software.

Microsoft would make each of them think that they were looking at Windows 98 rather than Windows 9 and when it could not find the floppy drive, or see a hard-drive bigger than a GB, they would pack a sad. Microsoft was never very good at software, to be fair, but excellent at marketing.

Software king backs Bitcoin

Posted on October 6, 2014 by - News

gates372Software king, Sir William Gates III, has thrown his support behind Bitcoin.

Gates told the Sibos 2014 financial-services industry conference in Boston that Bitcoin was better than cash for low cost payments.

When asked about Bitcoin’s potential to ease the cost of payment transactions for moving money from one place to another Gates said Bitcoin was exciting because it is cheap.

Talking to Erik Schatzker during a Bloomberg TV’s Smart Street show Gates said that Bitcoin was better than currency in that you don’t have to be physically in the same place and, of course, for large transactions, currency can get pretty inconvenient.

He thinks that financial transactions will eventually “be digital, universal and almost free.

But Gates is not happy about Bitcoin’s anonymity which he thinks opens it up to criminals.

“The customers we’re talking about aren’t trying to be anonymous,” he told Schatzker. “They’re willing to be known, so Bitcoin technology is key and you can add to it or you could build a similar technology where there’s enough attribution where people feel comfortable that this is nothing to do with terrorism or any type of money laundering.”

The last time Gates publicly commented on Bitcoin was last February, the day Bitcoin currency conversions debuted on Microsoft’s Bing search engine.  He avoided most questions on the subject but shifted the focus to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-backed  a mobile phone-based money transfer called Vodaphone M-pesa,and a microfinancing service in  Kenya.

Gates said that his organisation is “involved in digital money, but unlike Bitcoin it would not be anonymous digital money”. He went on to predict that “digital money will catch on in India and parts of Africa and help the poorest a lot” over the next five years.

 

Microsoft makes a billion dollars a year from Samsung

Posted on October 6, 2014 by - News

Scrooge-PorpoiseMicrosoft made a billion dollars from Samsung from its patents on Android.

According to a Samsung court case, Microsoft collected $1 billion in patent-licensing royalties last year. Samsung originally signed two contracts, a cross-licensing agreement and a business collaboration agreement, with Microsoft in 2011.

This was before Samsung started selling  so many  Android phones and late last year Samsung decided it was tired of paying on time, or paying interest when a late payment was finally made.

Microsoft took Samsung to court and the Korean company insists it wants to walk away from the original deal because of Microsoft’s purchase of Nokia’s phone business.

Samsung claims the acquisition invalidates the business collaboration agreement, but Microsoft doesn’t agree and wants the company to pay $6.9 million in unpaid interest from last year.

Samsung continues to build Windows-based smartphones, tablets, and PCs, so Microsoft is biting the hand which feeds it to some extent.

Microsoft is sure it will win and insists that Microsoft values and respects its long partnership with Samsung.  After all, a billion here, a billion there and soon you are talking about big money.

 

HP to cut itself in two

Posted on October 6, 2014 by - News

steven-ho-conan-watermelonUpdate: The news has now been confirmed. The Wall Street Journal has penned a piece which claims that the maker of expensive printer ink, HP, will announce that it will split into two today.

HP wants to separate its personal-computer and printer businesses from its corporate hardware and services operations.

The company is expected to make the split through a tax-free distribution of shares to stockholders next year.

If the split happens there would be two publicly traded companies, each with more than $50 billion in annual revenue.

Break-ups are very now amongs big companies.  eBay broke up lately, in part because of a belief that operations with different growth profiles are best managed as separate entities.

HP has suffered sharp sales declines and sees better long-term potential for its corporate hardware and services business than for its printer and PC unit so it is best that its hardware bits were lopped off, the Wall Street Journal claims.

Former chairman Ralph Whitworth said in a text message Sunday that it would be a brilliant move at just the right moment in the turnaround. It would liberate significant trapped value.”

The news has also resurrected the rumoured merger  of HP with data-storage equipment maker EMC. The talks recently ended, but the separation could pave the way for HP’s corporate hardware and services business to be combined with EMC.

It seems that the break-up has been on the cards for some time. HP mentioned the idea in 2011, when it announced the ill-fated acquisition of UK software company Autonomy.   At the time HP said then it was exploring a separation of its PC business, only to decide two months later to hold on to it.

Micron a $50 stock – maybe more…,

Posted on October 6, 2014 by - News

Micron_Lehi_UtahBarron’s claims that DRAM demand and a lack of producers will drive Micron’s share price to over $50 in their October 6th issue. They cite business PC replacement and Big Data as the market drivers behind the price climb and the fact that there are only three major producers remaining.

The simple deduction is that the DRAM market will be capacity limited for the foreseeable future.  Of course this doesn’t factor in splits between Flash and DRAM demand confusing the production mix – end result is a higher price for both.

An interesting nuance to Barron’s forecast for Micron is the introduction of a next generation non-volatile memory that reduces the price of storing very large database images.

Glimpses of HP’s version in “The Machine” using Memristor based memory is scheduled for launch in 2018 – implying that the first production devices will need to be extant by early next year. HP’s record on the Memristor Project has missed each and every promised milestone so the success expectation probability is low.

Tell Tales Out of School

An intriguing story making the underground rounds in the Valley concerns the existence of an extremely secretive program involving a new, high speed, non-volatile memory coupled with DRAM. No it’s not the Diablo Technologies, Inc. Memory Channel Storage (MCS)  – though somewhat similar it couples extremely dense non-volatile storage with low-latency parallel caching loads of high-speed low-power DRAM main storage.

The membership is limited to an exclusive set of players on both the supplier and user sides.

This is in step with a major effort to move from SATA serial interface non-volatile memory (SSD) to a high performance parallel interface. The discussion centers on whether the transition will include NAND-Flash or will begin a fresh start with the next generation replacement.

The idea has begun to percolate through the JEDEC Standards Committee. Sources predict that this will be accelerated through the standards process by an influential member group at JEDEC.

Killer Elite Application

What is the application – the one that motivates the factory to produce massive amounts of these devices. My contact looked me straight in the eye with that “you idiot look” and exclaimed, “Everything”. That’s when I got it…,

 

 

 

 

 

 

HP joggles PC/printer divisions – again

Posted on October 5, 2014 by - News

Whitman's-SamplerOnce Again, HP has decided to evolve the PC and Printer operations as a distinct and separate corporate entity.

HP came close to selling both divisions during the short reign of Leo Apotheker. After the discovery of a massive over payment for Autonomy Corp. HP’s Board decided Leo had to go and PC & Printers had to stay.

Slipping to the number two position behind Lenovo, HP has decided to spin the combined organization into a separate entity under the aegis of Dion Weisler as CEO (Weisler is an exec in the PC and printer operation currently). Patricia Russo will be installed as the Enterprise company’s new Chairman (former lead independent director).  Meg Whitman will remain CEO of the Enterprise company and oversee corporate guidance of the PC/Printer entity as Chairman.

What difference does this make? Reporting structures loaded with changes in culpability mostly, freeing Whitman up for minding the Enterprise store and:

  • Aligns Weisler for the fall when and if the PC/Printers Division comes in under plan.
  • Allows time to position the PC/Printer Group for a potential sale.

HP has been struggling in their efforts at penetrating the Cloud with their Moonshot technology – Whitman may find the ice a little thin for skating this Winter and into next Spring.

HP’s merger discussions with EMC recently ended. We’re left wondering if what we are now seeing is part of a “Plan B” by HP’s Board of Directors…,

 

Google downs celebrity pics

Posted on October 3, 2014 by - News

Hollywood, Wikimedia CommonsAfter receiving legal threats from a top notch Hollywood lawyer, Google has downed tens of thousands of pictures of celebrities.

Celebrities who had their accounts hacked include Rihanna, Kate Upton and Kim Kardashian.

Google denied that it had failed to act speedily enough. As we reported yesterday, a letter from lawyer Marty Singer threatened Google with legal action.

But a statement from Google said it had deleted many photographs within hours of being notified and had also shut down the accounts of people who had posted the pictures.

Google said it responded to requests to down material within hours and relied on people telling them or filing Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) requests.

Google has taken down material on both YouTube, Blogger and Google+.

Hong Kong protestors use smartphone app

Posted on October 3, 2014 by - News

Open Garden's FirechatStudent protestors in Hong Kong are communicating with each other by using a smartphone app called FireChat.

FireChat by Open Garden is an app that lets people communicate with each other without needing a cell network.

It is able to do that because it can make use of Bluetooth, which has a range of about 200 feet of anyone else using the map.  It also works with phone networks and wi-fi.

There are versions for Android, Apple and Windows smartphones and tablets.

According to the Taipei Times, over 100,000 people in Hong Kong downloaded the app in 24 hours, last Sunday. One person said people are downloading the app because they were worried the authorities might shut down the networks.

FireChat is apparently popular in India because of poor connectivity.

Some analysts are speculating that the company could be the subject of acquisition because big players like Google and Facebook have the ability to scale such apps globally.

Tesco introduces Hudl 2

Posted on October 3, 2014 by - News

Tesco's Hudl2Major supermarket chain Tesco said it will release its second generation Hudl tablet on the 9th of October.

It comes in eight different colours, has a larger 8.3-inch HD screen at 1920 x 1200 pixels, and uses an Intel Atom 1.84GHz quad core chip. It comes with 16GB of memory – that can be expanded to 48GB.

The unit will cost £129 although Clubcard customers may be able to buy it for as little as £65.

The unit runs the Android Kitkat 4.4.2 operating system. The Hudl 2 can also be customised with various accessories.

The device has a five megapixel rear facing camera and a front facing 1.2 megapixel camera. It claims eight hours of video batter life for the unit.

The unit comes with a built in parental filter.

Scientists claim quantum computing first

Posted on October 3, 2014 by - News

Quantum computingA team of researchers based in Canada says that it has a new method to generate photon pair sources that will fit into a computer chip.

Professor Roberto Morandotti of INRS-EMT  said mixed up photon pairs from devices smaller than a square millimetre, could well form the basis of quantum optical communication and computing technology.

One of the team said the process to generate polarised photons only creates particles with the same polarisation, and are then “entangled” by mixing the states. But the team said it has found a way to direcly generate cross polarised photon pairs.

The technique involves using two separate laser beams at different wavelengths and use a micro ring resonator to amplify quantum effects.

The fabrication method for the chips is compatible with electronic chips and will allow its devices to co-exist with standard integrated circuits.

The illustration above shows how cross polarised red and blue pump photons are spun into a microring resonator to generate cross polarised correlated photons, illustrated in green and yellow.