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TSMC And Imagination Team Up
TSMC and Imagination Technologies announced the next step in their tech collaboration in an effort to develop Imagination’s next generation PowerVR 6-series GPUs.
The new GPUs are still not ready for prime time, but they should be used in future SoC designs, including those stamped out using TSMC’s 16nm FinFET process. The two companies will work to create new reference system designs, utilizing high bandwidth memory standards and TSMC’s 3D IC technology.
As GPU muscle becomes more important for next generation SoCs, designers need more advanced and more complex processes, such as TSMC’s 16FinFET.
“Through advanced projects initiated under this partnership, Imagination and TSMC are working together to showcase how SoCs will transform the future of mobile and embedded products,” said Hossein Yassaie, CEO of Imagination.
TSMC VP Cliff Hou argued that the need for high performance mobile GPUs will drive silicon processes in the future, much in the same way CPU development pushed new processes in the nineties.
LinkedIn Beefs Up
April 2, 2013 by admin
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LinkedIn has re-tooled its search engine with changes designed to make it easier for members to find information on the business networking site, whose volume of content has increased and grown more diverse in recent years.
Launched in 2003, LinkedIn initially focused on giving professionals a place to feature their resumes and career bios, as well as connect with peers and colleagues, but the site has progressively become more interactive and houses a much larger repository of data beyond individual profiles.
For example, almost 3 million companies have set up corporate pages, more than 1.5 million groups have been created, the site features a jobs section, and individuals and publishers are able to post and share comments and links to articles.
So it’s not surprising for LinkedIn to focus on improving its search engine, which fielded 5.7 billion queries last year.
LinkedIn members have until now had to run separate queries for groups, companies, jobs and other professionals, but that’s changing with the upgraded search engine.
“Now, all you need to do is type what you’re looking for into the search box and you’ll see a comprehensive page of results that pulls content from all across LinkedIn including people, jobs, groups and companies,” Johnathan Podemsky, a LinkedIn product manager, wrote in a blog post on Monday.
Users can still segment results, so as to see only job results, for example.
The LinkedIn search engine is also gaining auto-complete and suggested-searches functionalities to help people fine-tune query terms. In addition, the search engine will log members’ search queries and “learn” from them in order to deliver more relevant results.
It will also be possible for users to save search queries and be alerted about new or changed search results. The advanced search option has also gained more search filters, including location, company and school.
However, the search engine still doesn’t include content from the company’s SlideShare site, which about 60 million monthly visitors use to upload, share, rate and comment on primarily slide presentations, but also documents, videos and webinars.
Also, the search improvements are being applied to the main site, not to the mobile apps, although doing so is something the company is looking into, according to a spokeswoman.
LinkedIn started to roll out the new search features on Monday, and expects to finish delivering them to every member worldwide in the coming weeks.
As of the end of 2012, LinkedIn had topped 200 million registered members located in more than 200 countries.
3G And 4G Modems Pose Security Threats
Researchers Nikita Tarakanov and Oleg Kupreev analyzed the security of 3G/4G USB modems obtained from Russian operators for the past several months. Their findings were presented Thursday at the Black Hat Europe 2013 security conference in Amsterdam.
Most 3G/4G modems used in Russia, Europe, and probably elsewhere in the world, are made by Chinese hardware manufacturers Huawei and ZTE, and are branded with the mobile operators’ logos and trademarks, Tarakanov said. Because of this, even if the research was done primarily on Huawei modems from Russian operators, the results should be relevant in other parts of the world as well, he said.
Tarakanov said that they weren’t able to test baseband attacks against the Qualcomm chips found inside the modems because it’s illegal in Russia to operate your own GSM base station if you’re not an intelligence agency or a telecom operator. “We’ll probably have to move to another country for a few months to do it,” he said.
There’s still a lot to investigate in terms of the hardware’s security. For example, the SoC (system on a chip) used in many modems has Bluetooth capability that is disabled from the firmware, but it might be possible to enable it, the researcher said.
For now, the researchers tested the software preloaded on the modems and found multiple ways to attack it or to use it in attacks.
For one, it’s easy to make an image of the USB modem’s file system, modify it and write it on the modem again. There’s a tool available from Huawei to do modem backup and restore, but there are also free tools that support modems from other manufacturers, Tarakanov said.
Malware running on the computer could detect the model and version of the active 3G modem and could write an image with malicious customizations to it using such tools. That modem would then compromise any computer it’s used on.
The researchers also found a possible mass attack vector. Once installed on a computer, the modem application — at least the one from Huawei — checks periodically for updates from a single server, Tarakanov said. Software branded for a specific operator searchers for updates in a server directory specific to that operator.
An attacker who manages to compromise this update server, can launch mass attacks against users from many operators, Tarakanov said. Huawei 3G modems from several different Russian operators used the same server, but there might be other update servers for other countries, he said.
Research in this area is just at the beginning and there’s more to investigate, Tarakanov said. Someone has to do it because many new laptops come with 3G/4G modems directly built in and people should know if they’re a security threat.
Is Android Safer Than iOS?
The general consensus is that iOS apps tend to be somewhat safer than their Android counterparts. Apple goes to great lengths to have apps vetted and as a result far fewer iOS apps end up with malware or security issues.
However, a new report fresh out of Appthority claims iOS apps have their fair share of issues and in some respects then can pose an even greater security risk than Android apps. The report covered the top 50 apps from the Apple App Store and Google Play and found that iOS apps exhibited riskier behaviour.
“The majority of iOS apps track for location (60%), share data with advertising or analytics networks (60%) and have access to the user’s contact list (54%). A small percentage of iOS apps also had access to the user’s calendar (14%),” the report found.
However, Android fans shouldn’t be too happy since their platform is not far behind. Half of them share data with ad networks or analytics companies, while 42 percent tracked location. Slightly better, but nothing to be proud about.
One of the most worrying findings is that both Android and iOS apps don’t do much to prevent personal data from leaking from our devices. Not a single iOS app analyzed in the study used encryption to send and receive data, and neither did 92 percent of Android apps.
So while it might seem that Android is a somewhat better platform for users with privacy concerns, both Google and Apple are pants at that sort of thing.
HGST Goes Self-Assembling Molecules
HGST has announced that it has developed self-assembling molecules and nanoimprinting to potentially double data density in hard disk drives.
HGST used to be known as Hitachi Global Storage Technologies before Western Digital bought it, and has been working on lithography techniques to boost data density on hard disk platters. Now the firm has announced that it has been able to create patterns of magnetic islands that are 10nm wide, doubling present state of the art data density.
HGST Fellow Tom Albrecht described the self-assembling molecules as block copolymers that are made of segments that repel each other to create segments that are lined up in rows, and said that lab tests show promising read/write performance and data retention. The firm claims it has combined self-assembling molecules, line doubling and nanoimprinting down to the 10nm scale in a circular arrangement.
Albrecht said, “We made our ultra-small features without using any conventional photolithography. With the proper chemistry and surface preparations, we believe this work is extendable to ever-smaller dimensions.”
HGST said self-assembling patterning and nanoimprinting can result in 1.2 trillion dots per inch, which it claims is twice the density of existing hard disk drives. According to the firm, its engineers have been able to create segments only 50 atoms wide.
Although HGST showed off the technology this week at the SPIE Advanced Lithography 2013 conference, the firm said it expects the technology to be cost effective by the end of the decade, that is if solid-state disk drives haven’t eliminated the need for hard disk drives by then.
MS Surface Pro Headed To Europe
Microsoft’s Surface Pro tablet will be offered for sale Europe in the second quarter priced approximately at $1,170, while a local telco is now reselling the latest editions of its Office 365 hosted productivity suite, the company announced ahead of the Cebit trade show on Monday.
Microsoft Germany’s CEO Christian Illek didn’t give the Surface Pro’s exact price in euros, but the number will be around the same as the U.S. price in dollars, he said in a news conference at the company’s booth on the show floor in Hanover.
While an $1170 price tag appears significantly higher that the Surface Pro’s U.S. price of $899, a 30% mark-up is not unusual for electronics devices in Europe, where prices are typically displayed inclusive of value-added tax at around 20%. U.S. prices typically exclude local sales taxes. When setting international prices, vendors also tend to allow an additional margin in case exchange rates shift unfavorably.
In addition to Germany, Surface Pro will also go on sale in Australia, China, France, Hong Kong, New Zealand and the U.K. in the coming months, Microsoft said.
Illek also announced a new sales channel for two recent editions of Office 365: Deutsche Telekom.
Office 365 Small Business Premium and Office 365 Midsize Business are now on sale through Deutsche Telekom’s Business Marketplace online app store, said the German telecommunications operator’s head of marketing, Michael Hagspihl.
The Small Business Premium edition, with 25GB of storage, shared calendars, Office Web Apps, Office Professional Plus Desktop Version and support from Deutsche Telekom will sell for $14.90 per user per month for up to 25 users.
HP Goes All-In On Tablets
Hewlett-Packard garnered attention at Mobile World Congress show with its new Slate 7-inch tablet and then the sale of webOS assets, but the company is looking to put past distractions behind and will release more tablets in the future, the company said.
“You can expect going forward [to release] a family of products,” said Shane Wall, chief technology officer at Hewlett-Packard’s mobility group, in an interview at MWC. The mobility trade show is being held in Barcelona from Feb. 25 to 28.
The 7-inch tablet attracted a small crowd at the HP booth, with people lining up to photograph or use the device. The company effectively took a dive into the low-cost tablet and tried to differentiate its tablet by a lower price, and also features like a micro-SD card slot for expandable storage and dual-cameras. Google’s $199 Nexus 7 is priced higher and has a quad-core processor, a higher-resolution screen and Android 4.2, but HP believes it will sell a lot of the tablets at the $169 price.
“We’re obviously late,” Wall said. “We wanted to start and see how aggressive we can be on the low end.”
The Slate 7 also signifies HP’s re-entry into the consumer tablet market after a disastrous stint with the webOS mobile operating system, which it got with the acquisition of Palm in 2010 for $1.2 billion. The first webOS tablet, the TouchPad, was launched in 2011, but later discontinued along with webOS smartphones. Since then HP has released enterprise tablets such as ElitePad 900 with Windows 8, and now the company has adopted Android for consumer tablets.
LG Buys webOS From HP
Hewlett-Packard has sold some of the rights to its webOS mobile operating system to LG Electronics for use in smart TVs manufactured by the South Korean electronics giant.
LG has agreed to acquire the source code, webOS engineering team and other assets from HP, in a deal announced on Monday. LG will also license HP patents related to webOS and cloud technology, the companies said.
Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.
HP acquired the mobile operating system, along with device maker Palm, in February 2010. HP used the OS on its short-lived TouchPad device, which debuted in mid-2011 then disappeared weeks later.
HP announced a new tablet, the US$169 Slate 7, on Sunday. The Slate 7 will run the Android operating system.
LG will lead the Open webOS and Enyo open-source projects as part of the deal, the company said. HP will retain ownership of all of Palm’s cloud computing assets, including source code, talent, infrastructure and contracts.
HP said it will also continue to support Palm users.
LG will use the technology to expand the Web capabilities of its smart TVs, said Sam Chang, LG vice president and general manager of innovation and Smart TV, in an interview.
LG bought the webOS assets in part for the engineering team, which includes user experience engineers, he said. The webOS engineers who remained at HP — the companies aren’t saying how many there are — are to join LG’s Silicon Valley labs.
AT&T Gets GM
March 5, 2013 by admin
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AT&T Monday said it will provide LTE wireless services to most General Motors automobiles starting in 2014 in the U.S. and Canada.
A multi-year agreement between AT&T and GM subsidiary OnStar calls for vehicles to continue getting OnStar’s safety and security services while adding information and entertainment services for backseat drivers, AT&T said.
Millions of vehicles will be affected, as AT&T rolls out LTE to reach 300 million people in the U.S. by the end of 2014.
The AT&T-GM announcement is part of an explosion in the number of devices connected to the Internet, many of them wirelessly, in what some have termed the “Internet of Things.”
“The is a big announcement for connected devices,” Glenn Lurie, president of emerging enterprises and partnerships at AT&T, said in an interview at Mobile World Congress here.
Is Non-Volatile Memory The Next Craze?
A report from analysts Yole Developpement claims that MRAM/STTMRAM and PCM will lead the Emerging Non-Volatile Memory (ENVM) market and earn a combined $1.6bn by 2018. If the North Koreans have not conquered America, by 2018 then MRAM/STTMRAM and PCM will surely be the top two ENVM on the market.
Yole’s Yann de Charentenay said that their combined sales will almost double each year, with double-density chips launched every two years. So far we have only had FRAM, PCM and MRAM to play with and they were available in low-density chips to only a few players. The market was quite limited and considerably smaller than the DRAM and flash markets which had combined revenues of $50bn+ in 2012, the report said. In the next five years the scalability and chip density of those memories will be greatly improved and will spark many new applications, says the report.
ENVM will greatly improve the input/output performance of enterprise storage systems whose requirements will intensify with the growing need for web-based data supported by cloud servers, the report said. Mobile phones will increase its adoption of PCM as a substitute to flash NOR memory in MCP packages thanks to 1GB chips made available by Micron in 2012, it added. The next milestone will be the higher-density chips, expected in 2015, will allow access to smart phone applications that are quickly replacing entry-level phones.