MidiaTek Developing Two SoC’s for Tablets

MediaTek is working on two new tablet SoCs and one of them is rumored to be a $5 design.

The MT8735 looks like a tablet version of Mediatek’s smartphone SoCs based on ARM’s Cortex-A53 core. The chip can also handle LTE (FDD and TDD), along with 3G and dual-band WiFi. This means it should end up in affordable data-enabled tablets. There’s no word on the clocks or GPU.

The MT8163 is supposed to be the company’s entry-level tablet part. Priced at around $5, the chip does not appear to feature a modem – it only has WiFi and Bluetooth on board. GPS is still there, but that’s about it.

Once again, details are sketchy so we don’t know much about performance. However, this is an entry-level part, so we don’t expect miracles. It will have to slug it out with Alwinner’s $5 tablet SoC, which was announced a couple of months ago

According to a slide published by Mobile Dad, the MT8753 will be available later this month, but we have no timeframe for the MT8163.

But there’s nothing to see here as far as Torvalds is concerned. It’s just another day in the office. And all this in “Back To The Future II” year, as well.

Meanwhile under the bonnet, the community are already slaving away on Linux 4.1 which is expected to be a far more extensive release, with 100 code changes already committed within hours of Torvalds announcement of 4.0.

But there is already some discord in the ranks, with concerns that some of the changes to 4.1 will be damaging to the x86 compatibility of the kernel. But let’s let them sort that out amongst themselves.

After all, an anti-troll dispute resolution code was recently added to the Linux kernel in an effort to stop some of the more outspoken trolling that takes place, not least from Torvalds himself, according to some members of the community.

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RadioShack Plans To Sell Customer Data

RadioShack plans to keep moving forward with its plan to sell its customer data, despite opposition from a number of states.

The company has asked a bankruptcy court for approval for a second auction of its assets, which includes the consumer data.

The state of Texas, which is leading the action by the states, opposed the sale of personally identifiable information (PII), citing the online and in-store privacy policies of the bankrupt consumer electronics retailer.

The state claimed that it found from a RadioShack deposition that the personal information of 117 million customers could be involved. But it learned later from testimony in court that the number of customer files offered for sale might be reduced to around 67 million.

In the first round of the sale, RadioShack sold about 1,700 stores to hedge fund Standard General, which entered into an agreement to set up 1,435 of these as co-branded stores with wireless operator Sprint. Some other assets were also sold in the auction.

The sale of customer data, including PII, was withdrawn from the previous auction, though RadioShack did not rule out that it could be put up for sale at a later date.

The case could have privacy implications for the tech industry as it could set a precedent, for example, for large Internet companies holding consumer data, if they happen to go bankrupt.

Texas has asked the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware for a case management order to ensure that in any motion for sale of the PII, RadioShack should be required to provide information on the kind of personal data that is up for sale and the number of customers that will be affected.

On Monday, Texas asked the court that its motion be heard ahead of RadioShack’s motion for approval to auction more assets.

The court had ordered in March the appointment of a consumer privacy ombudsman in connection with the potential sale of the consumer data including PII. RadioShack said in a filing Friday that it intends to continue working with the ombudsman and the states with regard to any potential sale of PII, but did not provide details.

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RedHat And Canonical Discuss Linux 4.0

Red Hat has been telling everyone  its plans to integrate the latest Linux 4.0 kernel into its products.

In a statement, a spokesman told us, “Red Hat’s upstream community projects will begin working with 4.0 almost immediately; in fact, Fedora 22 Alpha was based on the RC1 version of the 4.0 kernel.

“From a productization perspective, we will keep an eye on these integration efforts for possible inclusion into Red Hat’s enterprise portfolio.

“As with all of our enterprise-grade solutions, we provide stable, secure and hardened features, including the Linux kernel, to our customers – once we are certain that the next iterations of the Linux kernel, be it 4.0 or later, has the features and maturity that our customer base requires, we will begin packaging it into our enterprise portfolio with the intention of supporting it for 10 years, as we do with all of our products.”

Meanwhile, Canonical Head Honcho Mark Shuttleworth has confirmed that Linux Kernel 4.0 should be making its debut in Ubuntu products before the end of the year.

In an earlier note to The INQUIRER, Shuttleworth confirmed that the newly released kernel’s integration was “likely to be in this October release.”

The news follows the release of version 4.0 of the Linux kernel in a flurry of what T S Eliot would describe as “not with a bang but a whimper”.

Writing on the Linux Kernel Mailing List on Sunday afternoon, Linux overlord Linus Torvalds explained that the new version was being released according to schedule, rather than because of any dramatic improvements, and because of a lack of any specific reason not to.

“Linux 4.0 was a pretty small release in linux-next and in final size, although obviously ‘small’ is relative. It’s still over 10,000 non-merge commits. But we’ve definitely had bigger releases (and judging by linux-next v4.1 is going to be one of the bigger ones),” he said.

“Feature-wise, 4.0 doesn’t have all that much special. Much has been made of the new kernel patching infrastructure, but realistically that wasn’t the only reason for the version number change. We’ve had much bigger changes in other versions. So this is very much a ‘solid code progress’ release.”

Come to think of it, it is very unlikely that T S Eliot would ever have written about Linux kernels, but that’s not the point.

Torvalds, meanwhile, explained that he is happier with releasing to a schedule rather than because of any specific feature-related reason, although he does note that there have been four billion code commits, and Linux 3.0 was released after the two billion mark, so there’s a nice symmetry there.

In fact, back in 2011 the version numbering of the Linux kernel was a matter of some debate, and Torvalds’ lacklustre announcement seems to be pre-empting more of the same.

In a subsequent post Torvalds jokes, “the strongest argument for some people advocating 4.0 seems to have been a wish to see 4.1.15 – because ‘that was the version of Linux Skynet used for the T-800 Terminator.’”

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LinkedIn Acquires Startup Refresh

In a move that could produce even more automated suggestions and tips for LinkedIn users, the professional network has purchased California startup Refresh, the maker of an app that gathers news and insights about participants in meetings.

Launched three years ago, Refresh is designed to be a “digital briefing book” that can call up online information related to people that users are scheduled to meet. The information can be anything from blog posts, news articles or Facebook posts to personal notes or favorite sports teams.

The Refresh mobile and desktop app is aimed at helping people relate to one another more quickly, but it can also be used to refresh one’s memory when running into acquaintances unexpectedly.

The details of the deal were not disclosed. Refresh has stopped taking on new users and its app will shut down April 15.

“Refresh has surfaced insights associated with hundreds of millions of meetings, and has been central to countless connections and closed deals,” co-founder Bhavin Shah wrote on the Refresh blog in announcing the deal.

LinkedIn already has an app called Connected that was somewhat of a rival to Refresh. It can log the people users have met and offer updates and information about interests shared with “connections,” which are acquaintances in the LinkedIn lingo. It’s unclear whether Refresh features will be added to Connected or the LinkedIn website itself.

“Our team will focus its efforts on providing LinkedIn members with more insights to help them better do their jobs,” Shah wrote.

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Toshiba And SanDisk Launch 3D Flash Chip

Toshiba has announced the world’s first 48-layer Bit Cost Scalable (BiCS) flash memory chip.

The BiCS is a two-bit-per-cell, 128Gb (16GB) device with a 3D-stacked cell structure flash that improves density and significantly reduces the overall size of the chip.

Toshiba is already using 15nm dies so, despite the layering, the finished product will be competitively thin.

24 hours after the first announcement, SanDisk made one of its own regarding the announcement. The two companies share a fabrication plant and usually make such announcements in close succession.

“We are very pleased to announce our second-generation 3D NAND, which is a 48-layer architecture developed with our partner Toshiba,” said Dr Siva Sivaram, executive vice president of memory technology at SanDisk.

“We used our first generation 3D NAND technology as a learning vehicle, enabling us to develop our commercial second-generation 3D NAND, which we believe will deliver compelling storage solutions for our customers.”

Samsung has been working on its own 3D stacked memory for some time and has released a number of iterations. Production began last May, following a 10-year research cycle.

Moving away from the more traditional design process, the BiCS uses a ‘charge trap’ which stops electrons leaking between layers, improving the reliability of the product.

The chips are aimed primarily at the solid state drive market, as the 48-layer stacking process is said to enhance reliability, write speed and read/write endurance. However, the BiCS is said to be adaptable to a number of other uses.

All storage manufacturers are facing a move to 3D because, unless you want your flash drives very long and flat, real estate on chips is getting more expensive per square inch than a bedsit in Soho.

Micron has been talking in terms of 3D NAND since an interview with The INQUIRER in 2013 and, after signing a deal with Intel, has predicted 10TB in a 2mm chip by the end of this year.

Production of the chips will roll out initially from Fab 5 before moving in early 2016 to Fab 2 at the firm’s Yokkaichi Operations plant.

This is in stark contrast to Intel, which mothballed its Fab 42 chip fabrication plant in Chandler, Arizona before it even opened, as the semiconductors for computers it was due to produce have fallen in demand by such a degree.

The Toshiba and Sandisk BiCS chips are available for sampling from today.

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Will Intel Challenge nVidia In The GPU Space?

Intel has released details of its next -generation Xeon Phi processor and it is starting to look like Intel is gunning for a chunk of Nvidia’s GPU market.

According to a briefing from Avinash Sodani, Knights Landing Chief Architect at Intel, a product update by Hugo Saleh, Marketing Director of Intel’s Technical Computing Group, an interactive technical Q&A and a lab demo of a Knights Landing system running on an Intel reference-design system, Nvidia could be Intel’s target.

Knights Landing and prior Phi products are leagues apart and more flexible for a wider range of uses. Unlike more specialized processors, Intel describes Knights Landing as taking a “holistic approach” to new breakthrough applications.

The current generation Phi design, which operates as a coprocessor, Knights Landing incorporates x86 cores and can directly boot and run standard operating systems and application code without recompilation.

The test system had socketed CPU and memory modules was running a stock Linux distribution. A modified version of the Atom Silvermont x86 cores formed a Knights Landing ’tile’ which was the chip’s basic design unit consisting of dual x86 and vector execution units alongside cache memory and intra-tile mesh communication circuitry.

Each multi-chip package includes a processor with 30 or more tiles and eight high-speed memory chips.

Intel said the on-package memory, totaling 16GB, is made by Micron with custom I/O circuitry and might be a variant of Micron’s announced, but not yet shipping Hybrid Memory Cube.

The high-speed memory is similar to the DDR5 devices used on GPUs like Nvidia’s Tesla.

It looks like Intel saw that Nvidia was making great leaps into the high performance arena with its GPU and thought “I’ll be having some of that.”

The internals of a GPU and Xeon Phi are different, but share common ideas.

Nvidia has a big head start. It has already announced the price and availability of a Titan X development box designed for researchers exploring GPU applications to deep learning. Intel has not done that yet for Knights Landing systems.

But Phi is also a hybrid that includes dozens of full-fledged 64-bit x86 cores. This could make it better at some parallelizable application categories that use vector calculations.

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Oracle Launches OpenStack Platform With Intel

Oracle and Intel have teamed up for the first demonstration of carrier-grade network function virtualization (NFV), which will allow communication service providers to use a virtualized, software-defined model without degradation of service or reliability.

The Oracle-led project uses the Intel Open Network Platform (ONP) to create a robust service over NFV, using intelligent direction of software to create viable software-defined networking that replaces the clunky equipment still prevalent in even the most modern networks.

Barry Hill, Oracle’s global head of NFV, told The INQUIRER: “It gets us over one of those really big hurdles that the industry is desperately trying to overcome: ‘Why the heck have we been using this very tightly coupled hardware and software in the past if you can run the same thing on standard, generic, everyday hardware?’. The answer is, we’re not sure you can.

“What you’ve got to do is be smart about applying the right type and the right sort of capacity, which is different for each function in the chain that makes up a service.

“That’s about being intelligent with what you do, instead of making some broad statement about generic vanilla infrastructures plugged together. That’s just not going to work.”

Oracle’s answer is to use its Communications Network Service Orchestration Solution to control the OpenStack system and shrink and grow networks according to customer needs.

Use cases could be scaling out a carrier network for a rock festival, or transferring network priority to a disaster recovery site.

“Once you understand the extent of what we’ve actually done here, you start to realize just how big an announcement this is,” said Hill.

“On the fly, you’re suddenly able to make these custom network requirements instantly, just using off-the-shelf technology.”

The demonstration configuration optimizes the performance of an Intel Xeon E5-2600 v3 processor designed specifically for networking, and shows for the first time a software-defined solution which is comparable to the hardware-defined systems currently in use.

In other words, it can orchestrate services from the management and orchestration level right down to a single core of a single processor, and then hyperscale it using resource pools to mimic the specialized characteristics of a network appliance, such as a large memory page.

“It’s kind of like the effect that mobile had on fixed line networks back in the mid-nineties where the whole industry was disrupted by who was providing the technology, and what they were providing,” said Hill.

“Suddenly you went from 15-year business plans to five-year business plans. The impact of virtualization will have the same level of seismic change on the industry.”

Today’s announcement is fundamentally a proof-of-concept, but the technology that powers this kind of next-generation network is already evolving its way into networks.

Hill explained that carrier demand had led to the innovation. “The telecoms industry had a massive infrastructure that works at a very slow pace, at least in the past,” he said.

“However, this whole virtualization push has really been about the carriers, not the vendors, getting together and saying: ‘We need a different model’. So it’s actually quite advanced already.”

NFV appears to be the next gold rush area for enterprises, and other consortium are expected to make announcements about their own solutions within days.

The Oracle/Intel system is based around OpenStack, and the company is confident that it will be highly compatible with other systems.

The ‘Oracle Communications Network Service Orchestration Solution with Enhanced Platform Awareness using the Intel Open Network Platform’ – or OCNSOSWEPAUTIONP as we like to think of it – is currently on display at Oracle’s Industry Connect event in Washington DC.

The INQUIRER wonders whether there is any way the marketing department can come up with something a bit more catchy than OCNSOSWEPAUTIONP before it goes on open sale.

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Juniper Networks Goes OpenStack

Juniper and Mirantis are getting close, with news that they are to form a cloud OpenStack alliance.

The two companies have signed an engineering partnership that the companies believe will lead to a reliable, scalable software-defined networking solution.

Mirantis OpenStack will now inter-operate with Juniper Contrail Networking, as well as OpenContrail, an open source software-defined networking system.

The two companies have published a reference architecture for deploying and managing Juniper Contrail Networking with Mirantis OpenStack to simplify deployment and reduce the need for third-party involvement.

Based on OpenStack Juno, Mirantis OpenStack 6.0 will be enhanced by a Fuel plugin in the second quarter that will make it even easier to deploy large-scale clouds in house.

However, Mirantis has emphasized that the arrival of Juniper to the fold is not a snub to the recently constructed integration with VMware.

Nick Chase of Mirantis explained, “…with this Juniper integration, Mirantis will support BOTH VMware vCenter Server and VMware NSX AND Juniper Networks Contrail Networking. That means that even if they’ve got VMware in their environment, they can choose to use NSX or Contrail for their networking components.

“Of course, all of that begs the question, when should you use Juniper, and when should you use VMware? Like all great engineering questions, the answer is ‘it depends’. How you choose is going to be heavily influenced by your individual situation, and what you’re trying to achieve.”

Juniper outlined its goals for the tie-up as:

– Reduce cost by enabling service providers and IT administrators to easily embrace SDN and OpenStack technologies in their environments

– Remove the complexity of integrating networking technologies in OpenStack virtual data centres and clouds

– Increase the effectiveness of their operations with fully integrated management for the OpenStack and SDN environments through Fuel and Juniper Networks® Contrail SDN Controller

The company is keen to emphasize that this is not meant to be a middle finger at VMware, but rather a demonstration of the freedom of choice offered by open source software. However, it serves as another demonstration of how even the FOSS market is growing increasingly proprietary and competitive.

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Can MediaTek Bring The Cortex-A72 To Market?

MediaTek became the first chipmaker to publicly demo a SoC based on ARM’s latest Cortex-A72 CPU core, but the company’s upcoming chip still relies on the old 28nm manufacturing process.

We had a chance to see the upcoming MT8173 in action at the Mobile World Congress a couple of weeks ago.

The next step is to bring the new Cortex-A72 core to a new node and into mobiles. This is what MediaTek is planning to do by the end of the year.

Cortex-A72 smartphone parts coming in Q4

It should be noted that MediaTek’s 8000-series parts are designed for tablets, and the MT8173 is no exception. However, the new core will make its way to smartphone SoCs later this year, as part of the MT679x series.

According to Digitimes Research, MediaTek’s upcoming MT679x chips will utilize a combination of Cortex-A53 and Cortex-A57 cores. It is unclear whether MediaTek will use the planar 20nm node or 16nm FinFET for the new part.

By the looks of it, this chip will replace 32-bit MT6595, which is MediaTek’s most successful high performance part yet, with a few relatively big design wins, including Alcatel, Meizu, Lenovo and Zopo. The new chip will also supplement, and possibly replace the recently introduced MT6795, a 64-bit Cortex-A53/Cortex-A72 part used in the HTC Desire 826.

More questions than answers

Digitimes also claims the MT679x Cortex-A72 parts may be the first MediaTek products to benefit from AMD technology, but details are scarce. We can’t say whether or not the part will use AMD GPU technology, or some HSA voodoo magic. Earlier this month we learned that MediaTek is working with AMD and the latest report appears to confirm our scoop.

The other big question is the node. The chip should launch toward the end of the year, so we probably won’t see any devices prior to Q1 2016. While 28nm is still alive and kicking, by 2016 it will be off the table, at least in this market segment. Previous MediaTek roadmap leaks suggested that the company would transition to 20nm on select parts by the end of the year.

However, we are not entirely sure 20nm will cut it for high-end parts in 2016. Huawei has already moved to 16nm with its latest Kirin 930 SoC, Samsung stunned the world with the 14nm Exynos 7420, and Qualcomm’s upcoming Snapdragon 820 will be a FinFET part as well.

It is obvious that TSMC’s and Samsung’s 20nm nodes will not be used on most, if not all, high-end SoCs next year. With that in mind, it would be logical to expect MediaTek to use a FinFET node as well. On the other hand, depending on the cost, 20nm could still make sense for MediaTek – provided it ends up significantly cheaper than FinFET. While a 20nm chip wouldn’t deliver the same level of power efficiency and performance, with the right price it could find its way to more affordable mid-range devices, or flagships designed by smaller, value-oriented brands (especially those focusing on Chinese and Indian markets).

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Target Settles Security Breach

Target is reportedly close to paying out $10m to settle a class-action case that was filed after it was hacked and stripped of tens of millions of peoples’ details.

Target was smacked by hackers in 2013 in a massive cyber-thwack on its stores and servers that put some 70 million people’s personal information in harm’s way.

The hack has had massive repercussions. People are losing faith in industry and its ability to store their personal data, and the Target incident is a very good example of why people are right to worry.

As well as tarnishing Target’s reputation, the attack also led to a $162m gap in its financial spreadsheets.

The firm apologized to its punters when it revealed the hack, and chairman, CEO and president Gregg Steinhafel said he was sorry that they have had to “endure” such a thing

Now, according to reports, Target is willing to fork out another $10m to put things right, offering the money as a proposed settlement in one of several class-action lawsuits the company is facing. If accepted, the settlement could see affected parties awarded some $10,000 for their troubles.

We have asked Target to either confirm or comment on this, and are waiting for a response. For now we have an official statement at Reuters to turn to. There we see Target spokeswoman Molly Snyder confirming that something is happening but not mentioning the 10 and six zeroes.

“We are pleased to see the process moving forward and look forward to its resolution,” she said.

Not available to comment, not that we asked, will be the firm’s CIO at the time of the hack. Thirty-year Target veteran Beth Jacob left her role in the aftermath of the attack, and a replacement was immediately sought.

“To ensure that Target is well positioned following the data breach we suffered last year, we are undertaking an overhaul of our information security and compliance structure and practices at Target,” said Steinhafel then.

“As a first step in this effort, Target will be conducting an external search for an interim CIO who can help guide Target through this transformation.”

“Transformational change” pro Bob DeRodes took on the role in May last year and immediately began saying the right things.

“I look forward to helping shape information technology and data security at Target in the days and months ahead,” he said.

“It is clear to me that Target is an organization that is committed to doing whatever it takes to do right by their guests.”

We would ask Steinhafel for his verdict on DeRodes so far and the $10m settlement, but would you believe it, he’s not at Target anymore either having left in the summer last year with a reported $61m golden parachute.

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