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Graphene May Give Processors A Boost

June 28, 2016 by  
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Researchers at MIT have figured out that graphene, sheets of atom-thick carbon, could be used to make chips a million times faster.

The researchers have worked out that slowing the speed of light to the extent that it moves slower than flowing electrons can create an “optical boom”, the optical equivalent of a sonic boom.

Slowing the speed of light is no mean feat, but the clever folks at MIT managed it by using the honeycomb shape of carbon to slow photons to slow photons to several hundredths of their normal speed in a free space, explained researcher Ido Kaminer.

Meanwhile, the characteristics of graphene speed up electrons to a million metres a second, or around 1/300 of the speed of light in a vacuum.

The optical boom is caused when the electrons passing though the graphene reach the speed of light, effectively breaking its barrier in the carbon honeycomb and causing a shockwave of light.

As electrons move faster than the trapped light, they bleed plasmons, a form of virtual particle that represents the oscillation of electrons on the graphene’s surface.

Effectively, it is the equivalent of turning electricity into light. This is nothing new – Thomas Edison did it a century ago with fluorescent tubes – but it can efficiently and controllably generate plasmons at a scale that works with microchip technology.

The discovery could allow chip components to be made from graphene to enable the creation of light-based circuits. These circuits could be the next step in the evolution of chip and computing technology, as the transfer of data through light is far faster than using electrons in today’s chips, even the fast pixel-pushing ones.

So much faster that it’s “six orders of magnitude higher than what is used in electronics”, according to Kaminer. That’s up to a million times faster in plain English.

“There’s a lot of excitement about graphene because it could be easily integrated with other electronics,” said physics professor Marin Soljačić, a researcher on the project, who is confident that MIT can turn this theoretical experiment into a working system. “I have confidence that it should be doable within one to two years.”

This is a pretty big concept and almost sci-fi stuff, but we’re always keen to see smaller and faster chips. It also shows that the future tech envisioned by the world of sci-fi may not be that far away.

Courtesy-TheInq

ARM Shows Off 10nm Chip 

June 10, 2016 by  
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ARM’s collaboration with TSMC has finally born some fruit with the tapeout of a 10nm test chip to show off the company’s readiness for the new manufacturing process.

The new test chip contains ARM’s yet-to-be-announced “Artemis” CPU core which is named after a goddess who will turn you into deer and tear you apart with wild dogs if you ever see her. [The NDA must have been pretty tough on this chip.ed]

In fact things have been ticking along on this project for ages. ARM discloses that tapeout actually took place back in December last year and is expecting silicon to come back from the foundry in the following weeks.

ARM actually implemented a full four-core Artemis cluster on the test chip which should show vendors what is possible for their production designs. The test chip has a current generation Mali GPU implementation with 1 shader core to show vendors what they will get when they use ARM’s POP IP in conjunction with its GPU IP. There is also a range of other IP blocks and I/O interfaces that are used to validation of the new manufacturing process.

TSMC’s 10FF manufacturing process is supposed to increase density with scaling’s of up to 2.1x compared to the previous 16nm manufacturing node. It also brings about 11-12 per cent higher performance at each process’ respective nominal voltage, or a 30 per cent reduction in power.

ARM siad that comparing a current Cortex A72 design on 16FF+ and an Artemis core on 10FF on the new CPU and process can halve the dynamic power consumption. Currently clock frequencies on the new design are still behind the older more mature process and IP, but ARM expects this to improve as it optimizes its POP and the process stabilizes.

Courtesy-Fud

Is IBM Going To Court Over Unix Dispute?

April 15, 2016 by  
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Defunct Unix Vendor SCO, which claimed that Linux infringed its intellectual property and sought as much as $5bn in compensation from IBM, has filed notice of yet another appeal in the 13-year-old dispute.

The appeal comes after a ruling at the end of February when SCO’s arguments claiming intellectual property ownership over parts of Unix were rejected by a US district court. That judgment noted that SCO had minimal resources to defend counter-claims filed by IBM due to SCO’s bankruptcy.

In a filing, Judge David Nuffer argued that “the nature of the claims are such that no appellate court would have to decide the same issues more than once if there were any subsequent appeals”, effectively suggesting that the case had more than run its course.

On 1 March, that filing was backed up by the judge’s full explanation, declaring IBM the emphatic victor in the long-running saga.

“IT IS ORDERED AND ADJUDGED that pursuant to the orders of the court entered on July 10, 2013, February 5, 2016, and February 8, 2016, judgment is entered in favour of the defendant and plaintiff’s causes of action are dismissed with prejudice,” stated the document.

Now, though, SCO has filed yet again to appeal that judgment, although the precise grounds it is claiming haven’t yet been disclosed.

SCO is being represented by the not-inexpensive law firm of Boise, Schiller & Flexner, which successfully represented the US government against Microsoft in the antitrust case in the late 1990s. Although SCO is officially bankrupt, it’s unclear who continues to bankroll the case. Its one remaining “asset” is its claims for damages against IBM.

Meanwhile, despite the costs of the case, IBM has fought SCO vigorously, refusing even to throw a few million dollars at the company by way of compensation, which would encourage what remains of the company to pursue other, presumably easier, open source targets.

Courtesy-TheInq

 

IBM’s Watson Goes IoT

January 4, 2016 by  
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IBM has announced a major expansion in Europe with the establishment of a new HQ for Watson Internet of Things (IoT).

The Munich site establishes a global headquarters for the Watson IoT program which is dedicated to launching “offerings, capabilities and ecosystem partners” designed to bring the cognitive powers of the company’s game show winning supercomputer to billions of tiny devices and sensors.

Some 1,000 IBM developers, consultants, researchers and designers will join the Munich facility, which the company describes as an “innovation super center”. It is the biggest IBM investment in Europe for over 20 years.

IBM Cloud will power a series of APIs that will allow IoT developers to harness Watson within their devices.

“The IoT will soon be the largest single source of data on the planet, yet almost 90 percent of that data is never acted on,” said Harriet Green, general manager for Watson IoT and Education.

“With its unique abilities to sense, reason and learn, Watson opens the door for enterprises, governments and individuals to finally harness this real-time data, compare it with historical data sets and deep reservoirs of accumulated knowledge, and then find unexpected correlations that generate new insights to benefit business and society alike.”

The APIs were first revealed in September and new ones for the IoT were announced today.

These include the Natural Language Processing API, which contextualizes language from context and is able to respond in the same simple way; Machine Learning Watson API, which can establish patterns in order to perform a repeated task better each time or change the method to suit; Video and Image Analytics API, which can infer information from video feeds; and Text Analytics Watson API, which can glean information from unstructured text data such as Twitter feeds.

The company will also open eight regional centres across four continents to give customers in those territories the opportunity to access information and experiences.

Courtesy-TheInq

 

Imagination Gives MIPS Warrior A Boost

November 24, 2015 by  
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Imagination Technologies has introduced three new additions to the MIPS Warrior CPU family, updating its embedded 32-bit M-class CPUS with the new M6200 and M6250, as well as the higher performing P-class CPU with the 64-bit P6600.

The MIPS P6600 is touted as “the next evolution” of the P-class family and is intended to “pave the way” to future generations of higher performance 64-bit processors.

The MIPS P6600 builds on the 32-bit P5600 CPU, which was the company’s first CPU core based on the MIPS Series 5 architecture and announced about two years ago. The MIPS Series 5 was designed to accelerate compute-intensive applications and thereby appeal to the embedded and mobile markets.

The P6600 CPU boasts a higher performing 64-bit architecture while other improvements over its predecessor include a deep 16-stage pipeline with multi-issue and Out-of-Order execution to deliver better computational throughput for complex software workloads.

“The P6600 CPU is the most balanced mainstream high-performance CPU choice, enabling powerful multicore 64-bit system of chips with optimal area efficiency for applications in segments including mobile, home entertainment, networking, automotive, HPC or servers, and more,” said the chip firm, adding that customers have already licensed the P6600 for applications including high-performance computing and advanced image and vision systems.

Like the P5600, MIPS P6600 is an OmniShield-ready design that supports full hardware virtualisation and security features. It is said to be able to handle up to 15 guest operating systems running simultaneously in fully isolated and trusted environments, too.

“This unprecedented level of scalability for virtualisation and security gives the MIPS Warrior family another unique advantage in the battle for supremacy in the processor space,” added the firm.

The P6600 packs a faster SIMD engine for accelerating multimedia processing as well as branch prediction and a load/store instruction bonding mechanism: two technologies that Imagination said will provide a boost in real-world workloads while keeping silicon area and power consumption in check.

As for the MIPS M6200 and M6250 chips, these are the latest additions to Imagination’s less powerful M-class family processors for MCUs/MPUs, further broadening the M-class roadmap for high-performance deeply embedded designs in segments requiring higher performance and larger address space.

Imagination said this could include things like wired/wireless modems, GPU supervisor processors, flash and SSD controllers, industrial and motor control, and advanced audio voice processing.

Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/computing-category/imagination-gives-mips-warrior-a-boost.html

Is Canon Betting Its Future On IoT?

October 26, 2015 by  
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Canon has announced that it is joining the raft of technology companies attempting to take on the Internet of Things (IoT) through what it is calling the ‘Imaging of Things’.

Speaking at the firm’s EXPO 2015 event in Paris on Tuesday, Canon CEO Fujio Mitarai talked up the firm’s global vision for the future as the IoT becomes more pervasive.

“Canon is showing how the world of imaging is expanding rapidly in the age of the IoT,” said Mitarai.

“In the future nearly everything will be connected through smart devices. These rely on built-in cameras or sensors and the data they generate. As a result, Canon predicts that the IoT will largely depend on the ‘Imaging of Things’.”

To take on this future, Mitarai plans to overhaul Canon’s business structure to build a network of smaller Canon companies and thus create an “ecosystem of innovation”.

The CEO said that these companies have been designed to “harness innovation and creative talents from across the regions”, and will include more investment in what Canon does but on a more local level in different regions across the world, as opposed to all of the innovation being created in Tokyo, as it is at the moment.

This will allow “regional independence and international collaboration [to be] put into practice”, Mitarai said.

In this new “network of companies”, Mitarai explained that each regional headquarters will manage local R&D and manufacturing, as well as service and support customised to its market.

In Europe, the smaller Canon companies will focus on printing and network video surveillance, and the firm has already brought in specialists in these business areas such as Océ, Axis and Milestone Systems.

Mitarai said that, along with its global reputation for cameras, this will make Canon the largest printing and network video surveillance company in the world.

On a B2B level, the move is also about helping other firms build new competitive advantages and improve services for their own customers.

“We are changing our own operation model and go to market structure to build more expertise in these areas and connect with our customers,” said Jeppe Frandsen, head of the Production Printing Group at Canon Europe.

“Our customers are changing so we are now looking at a way customers are changing to what their customers want – new ways to do business together.”

Canon’s EXPO 2015 event was also an opportunity for the company to show off many of the latest projects from its R&D centre in Tokyo for the first time in Europe.

These tie in with the firm’s new focus as it launches smaller companies in more regional areas, and include a range of innovative practices such as responding to society’s monitoring needs, 3D printing as part of a partnership with 3D Systems in Europe, and graphic arts via investment in digital print technologies.

Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/technology-2/is-canon-betting-its-future-on-iot.html

Suse Goes 64-bit ARM Servers

July 28, 2015 by  
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Suse wants to speed the development of server systems based on 64-bit ARM processors.

The outfit said that it is making available to its partners a version of Suse Linux Enterprise 12 ported to ARM’s 64-bit architecture (AArch64).

This will enable them to develop, test and deliver products to the market based on ARM chips.

Suse has also implemented support for AArch64 into its openSUSE Build Service. This allows the community to build packages against real 64-bit ARM hardware and the Suse Linux Enterprise 12 binaries.

Hopefully this will improve the time to market for ARM-based solutions, the firm said.

Suse partners include chip makers AMD AppliedMicro and Cavium, while Dell, HP and SoftIron. Suse wants ARM processors to be part of a scalable technology platform in the data centre.

Through participation in the programme, partners will be able to build solutions for various applications, from purpose-built appliances for security, medical and network functions, to hyperscale computing, distributed storage and software-defined networking.

There are multiple vendors using the same core technology licensed from ARM. This provides a common base for the OS vendors, like Suse, to build support in their kernel.

Suse has some competition for ARM-based systems. Last year, Red Hat started up its ARM Partner Early Access Programme (PEAP), while Canonical has offered ARM support in its Ubuntu platform for several years now, including a long-term support (LTS) release last year that included the OpenStack cloud computing framework.

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IBM Buys Blue Box

June 15, 2015 by  
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IBM HAS ACQUIRED Blue Box in an attempt to make its cloud offering even bluer. The Seattle-based company specialises in simple service-as-a-platform clouds based on OpenStack.

This, of course, fits in with IBM’s new direction of a Power PC, OpenStack cloud-based world, as demonstrated by its collaboration with MariaDB on TurboLAMP.

IBM’s move to the cloud is starting to pay off, seeing revenue of $7.7bn in the 12 months to March 2015 and growing more than 16 percent in the first quarter of this year.

The company plans to use the new acquisition to create rapid, integrating cloud-based applications and on-premise systems within the OpenStack managed cloud.

Blue Box also brings a remotely managed OpenStack to provide customers with a local cloud, better visibility control and tighter security.

“IBM is dedicated to helping our clients migrate to the cloud in an open, secure, data rich environment that meets their current and future business needs,” said IBM general manager of cloud services Jim Comfort.

“The acquisition of Blue Box accelerates IBM’s open cloud strategy, making it easier for our clients to move data and applications across clouds and adopt hybrid cloud environments.”

Blue Box will offer customers a more cohesive, consistent and simplified experience, while at the same time integrating with existing IBM packages like the Bluemix digital innovation platform. The firm also offers a single unified control panel for customer operations.

“No brand is more respected in IT than IBM. Blue Box is building a similarly respected brand in OpenStack,” said Blue Box founder and CTO Jesse Proudman.

“Together, we will deliver the technology and products businesses need to give their application developers an agile, responsive infrastructure across public and private clouds.

“This acquisition signals the beginning of new OpenStack options delivered by IBM. Now is the time to arm customers with more efficient development, delivery and lower cost solutions than they’ve seen thus far in the market.”

IBM has confirmed that it plans to help Blue Box customers to grow their technology portfolio, while taking advantage of the broader IBM product set.

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Chipmakers Advocating MIPS Open Source Moves

May 27, 2015 by  
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Qualcomm Atheros, Lantiq (part of Intel) and Broadcom have joined the Prpl Foundation.

For those who came in late Prple is the organisation set-up by Imagination Technologies to support open-source software on the MIPS architecture.

The big names follow CUPP Computing, Elliptic Technologies, Imperas Software, Kernkonzept and Seltech joined the foundation at lower levels.

In a statement the Foundation said that the newcomers to the prpl Foundation’s board of directors will participate at the executive level and appoint representatives to the technical steering committee and to engineering groups including the security.

So in other words the key players will be advocating an open source approach to MIPS.

Prpl, is open to other architectures, and focuses on “datacenter-to-device portable software and visualized architectures”, it said. Initial domains oem its hit list are: datacenter, networking, storage, connected consumer, embedded and IoT.

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AMD To Power Samsung’s Digital Media

April 28, 2015 by  
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AMD’s Embedded R-Series accelerated processing unit, previously codenamed “Bald Eagle,” is powering Samsung’s latest set-back-box digital media players.

Bald Eagle was designed for high performance at low power with broad connectivity but mostly for digital signage.

It seems that new Samsung SBB-B64DV4 is intended for demanding signage applications that transform Samsung SMART Signage Displays into digital tools for a wide range of business needs.

The chipmaker claimed that by using its Embedded R-Series APUs, Samsung SBB media players for digital signage can manage HD graphics performance and support multivideo stream capabilities up to two displays, in a power efficient and ultra-compact form factor.

Scott Aylor, corporate vice president and general manager, AMD Embedded Solutions said that digital signage is a key vertical for the AMD Embedded business.

“The AMD Embedded R-Series APU enables leading digital signage providers to harness high levels of compute and graphics performance within a low-power design envelope. AMD Embedded Solutions help designers at Samsung achieve aggressive form factor goals and drive down system costs while providing the rich multimedia their digital signage customers’ demand,” he said.

The AMD Embedded RX-425BB APU combines an x86 CPU with an integrated, discrete-class AMD Radeon R6 graphics processing unit in a low-power configuration to minimize heat dissipation constraints and meet energy efficiency requirements.

The processor uses AMD’s latest Graphics Core Next architecture, created for advanced graphics applications and parallel processing capabilities.

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