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Intel Partners With WMware
Intel has teamed up with Microsoft’s rival VMware to deliver a platform for “trusted cloud.”
The technology will mix Intel’s Trusted Execution Technology (TXT) and VMware’s vSphere 5.1, platform for building cloud infrastructures. Intel said its hardware-enhanced security capabilities integrated directly into the processor combined with vSphere 5.1 would provide a hardened and high-integrity platform to run business-critical applications in private and public cloud environments.
Intel thinks that the biggest barrier to cloud adoption is the fact that companies are worried about security. Jason Waxman, general manager of Intel’s Cloud Infrastructure Group, in a statement that Intel TXT provides hardware enforcement to help overcome some of the most challenging aspects of cloud security, including detection and prevention of bios attacks and evolving forms of stealthy malware, such as rootkits.
AMD 7990 Specs Unveiled
As we draw close to the official Nvidia GTX 680 Kepler GK104 launch day it is no wonder that we’ll hear more and more about AMD’s upcoming dual-GPU HD 7990 graphics card and Chinese site INPAI has shed some new light on the dual-headed beast. Apparently, the HD 7990 will pack two Tahiti XT chips squeezed together on one PCB.
According to the post at INPAI, the upcoming HD 7990 features two 28nm GCN Tahiti XT chips, same one found on the HD 7970 graphics card. This means that we are looking at a card that will have 2048 stream processors and 3GB of memory per GPU. Appearently, these two Tahiti chips will end up clocked at 850MHz while memory will work at 1250MHz (5GHz effective).
HP Announces TouchPad 4G Deal
Hewlett-Packard announced it would release a 4G TouchPad tablet with upgraded hardware that will be available on AT&T’s wireless network.
The tablet will have a 1.5GHz processor, which is a change from the dual-core 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor available with older Wi-Fi-only TouchPad models that went on sale just two weeks ago.
Last August Qualcomm said that by the start of this year it would ship the dual-core Snapdragon QSD8672 chip that could run at clock speeds of up to 1.5GHz.
The TouchPad will have 32GB of internal storage, GPS and built-in AT&T wireless mobile broadband capabilities, HP said in a statement. Specific pricing and availability will be announced at a later date.
Wireless connectivity will be available through AT&T’s DataConnect mobile data plans for tablets or Wi-Fi hotspots around the country, HP said.
TouchPad users have expressed concerns about the device’s performance, especially the long load times for some applications. HP attributes the performance issue to software problems and said it will deliver an over-the-air software update that should resolve some performance problems.
Some buyers also were concerned about the TouchPad’s weight of about 1.6 pounds (740 grams), which is heavier than Apple’s iPad at 1.32 pounds. The TouchPad includes a 9.7-inch screen and comes with WebOS 3.0, which is also used in smartphones.
Japan Takes 1st Place On Supercomputer List
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A Japanese computer has earned the number one spot on the Top 500 supercomputer list, ending China’s short reign of just six months. At 8.16 petaflops (quadrillion floating-point calculations per second), the K computer is more powerful than the next five systems combined.
The K computer’s performance was measured using 68,544 SPARC64 VIIIfx CPUs each with eight cores, for a total of 548,352 cores, almost twice as many as any other system on the Top500 list. The computer is still being put together, and when it enters service in November 2012 will have more than 80,000 SPARC64 VIIIfx CPUs according to its manufacturer, Fujitsu.
Japan’s ascension to the top means that the Chinese Tianhe-1A supercomputer, which took the number 1 position in November last year, is now in second spot with its 2.57 petaflops. But China continues to grow the number of systems it has on the list, up from 42 to 62 systems. The change at the top also means that Jaguar, built for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), is bumped down to third place.
Yahoo Creates Search Tools For Smartphones
June 19, 2011 by admin
Filed under Smartphones
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Yahoo wants to aid in smartphone owners finding mobile applications and information about them.
On Thursday, the company is debuting a feature in its search engine called App Search, as well as application search tools for Android and iPhone devices named AppSpot.
Both the new App search feature and the mobile search tools can be used to seek applications for iPhone and Android devices, although the company expects to expand that scope in the future.
For now, Yahoo has indexed the mobile application catalogue of the Android Market and of the Apple App Store, and is convinced that it can do a better job than the search tools of those two online shops.
Finding information about mobile applications, like descriptions, ratings, reviews and recommendations, is at a rudimentary stage similar to web search in the mid-1990s, Seth said.
The way Yahoo sees it, many people today struggle to find the right mobile application among the hundreds of thousands available for Android and iPhone devices.
Chinese Government Questioned About Cyber-attack
June 18, 2011 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
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The U.S. State Department questioned the Chinese government regarding an attack that had temporarily shut down the website Change.org after the site hosted a petition urging Chinese authorities to release artist Ai Weiwei from custody.
U.S. deputy assistant secretary Daniel Baer raised concerns about the attack in April with China’s foreign ministry, according to an official letter sent from the State Department to U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.). Change.org obtained a copy of the letter and released it Tuesday.
The nature of those talks is still somewhat vague. The U.S. Embassy in Beijing said it had no current information on the matter and deferred to the State Department. China’s foreign ministry has yet to respond to a request for comment.
Change.org, an online petitioning platform, was the victim of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack originating from China on April 17. The attacks nearly brought down the site for days.
DDoS attacks can do this by using hundreds or thousands of hacked computers to drive traffic to a website. The data will become so overwhelming that the site will become inaccessible to users.
Change.org said the DDoS attacks from China continue to bring down the site intermittently. The FBI is investigating the case, said Benjamin Joffe-Walt, an editor with Change.org.
Nokia Expects Windows Phone Before EOY
June 3, 2011 by admin
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Nokia has “increased confidence” that the first of its smartphone devices to run on the Windows Phone platform will ship by the fourth quarter, the company said on Tuesday.
Nokia’s CEO Stephen Elop is putting his full weight behind getting a Windows Phone-based product out for the important end-of-year holiday shopping season, in order to help turn around the company’s smartphone fortunes. The company’s teams are aligned around that goal, he said in a statement.
The company won’t reveal ship dates until closer to when the first phones arrive, but the pressure is on to deliver the devices this year, Elop said when the company announced its first quarter results.
Nokia will have several more opportunities to divulge more information shortly. On June 21, Elop will give a presentation at the Connection 2011 Conference, which is organized in conjunction with CommunicAsia 2011 in Singapore. He will give an update on the company’s partnership with Microsoft, and set the stage for a number of product and service launches, according to the program.
Windows 8 For Tablets To Be Outed
There is a rumor circulating around the Internet that Microsoft will demo Windows 8 for tablets next week at All Things D and Computex. That said, Bloomberg is said to have cited a source from within Microsoft that confirmed Windows 8 tablet OS will be showcased at these events next week. They went on to say the tablet will be demoed using a Tegra based ARM processor.
Over the years Microsoft has totally dedicated their Windows operating system to x86 based processors, specifically Intel and AMD. However, things have changed as smartphones and tablets use has skyrocketed using non x86 processors. This trend left Microsoft no choice but to join the ARM party or be left totally in the dust. As Microsoft showed off the new features in Windows Phone Mango update this week; they were also in the process of getting the tablet version of Windows 8 out as soon as possible.
Verizon Adds LG’s Revolution
June 1, 2011 by admin
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Verizon Wireless announced the Revolution by LG, an LTE-ready smartphone, will become available for sale in stores and online Thursday for $249.99 with a two-year service plan.
The Revolution has a 4.3-in. touch screen and 1 GHz Snapdragon processor. It utilizes the Android 2.2 mobile operating system and comes preloaded with the Netflix application for access to movies and TV shows.
Verizon called the smartphone an “entertainment powerhouse” partly due to the Netflix capability, but the Revolution also runs the Adobe Flash player, provides Dolby Mobile sound and features high-definition video recording and playback.
Will Zynga Do An IPO?
May 30, 2011 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
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The Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital blog is reporting that Zynga is set to file for its initial public offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission as early as this week. This move is not entirely unexpected considering how well the recent IPOs of several Internet companies have done recently (e.g., LinkedIn and Russian search giant Yandex). Zynga’s strong performances show the huge investor appetite for fast-growing and high-profile Web 2.0 firms.