gridtech

FreeBSD 8 Released

2009-11-26T14:49:00.000-08:00

The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team has announced the availability of FreeBSD 8 stable release. The release comes with a bunch of features such as network stack virtualization, Xen DomU support, stack-smashing protection, improved ZFS v13, multicast updates including IGMPv3, a new virtualization container vimage, Fedora 10 Linux binary compatibility to run Linux software.
Thanks team.

The highlights in the 8.0-RELEASE are the following:
A new virtualization container named “vimage” has been implemented. This is a jail with a virtualized instance of the FreeBSD network stack and can be created by using jail(8) command.
The FreeBSD netisr framework has been reimplemented for parallel threading support. This is a kernel network dispatch interface which allows device drivers (and other packet sources) to direct packets to protocols for directly dispatched or deferred processing. The new implementation supports up to one netisr thread per CPU, and several benchmarks on SMP machines show substantial performance improvement over the previous version.
The FreeBSD TTY layer has been replaced with a new one which has better support for SMP and robust resource handling. A tty now has own mutex and it is expected to improve scalability when compared to the old implementation based on the Giant lock.
[amd64, i386] The FreeBSD Linux emulation layer has been updated to version 2.6.16 and the default Linux infrastructure port is now emulators/linux_base-f10 (Fedora 10).
The FreeBSD GENERIC kernel now includes Trusted BSD MAC (Mandatory Access Control) support. No MAC policy module is loaded by default.
The FreeBSD USB subsystem has been reimplemented to support modern devices and better SMP scalability. The new implementation includes Giant-lock-free device drivers, a Linux compatibility layer, usbconfig(8) utility, full support for split transaction and isochronous transaction, and so on.
The FreeBSD CAM SCSI subsystem ( cam(4)) now includes experimental support for ATA/SATA/AHCI-compliant devices.
The shared vnode locking for pathname lookups in the VFS(9) subsystem has been improved.
The ZFS file system has been updated to version 13. The changes include ZFS operations by a regular user, L2ARC, ZFS Intent Log on separated disks (slog), sparse volumes, and so on.
The FreeBSD NFS subsystem now supports RPCSEC_GSS authentication on both the client and server.
The FreeBSD NFS subsystem now includes a new, experimental implementation with support for NFSv2, NFSv3, and NFSv4.
The wireless network support layer (net80211) now supports multiple BSS instances on the supported network devices.
The FreeBSD L2 address translation table has been reimplemented to reduce lock contention on parallel processing and simplify the routing logic.
The IGMPv3 and SSM (Source-Specific Multicast) including IPv6 SSM and MLDv2 have been added.
The ipsec(4) subsystem now supports NAT-Traversal (RFC 3948).
The GCC stack protection (also known as ProPolice) has been enabled in the FreeBSD base system.
The supported version of the GNOME desktop environment (x11/gnome2) has been updated to 2.26.3.
The supported version of the KDE desktop environment (x11/kde4) has been updated to 4.3.1.

First Programmable Quantum Processor For Quantum Computer Tested At NIST

2009-11-18T09:11:00.000-08:00

Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated the first “universal” programmable quantum information processor able to run any program allowed by quantum mechanics—the rules governing the submicroscopic world—using two quantum bits (qubits) of information. The processor could be a module in a future quantum computer, which theoretically could solve some important problems that are intractable today.

The NIST processor stores binary information (1s and 0s) in two beryllium ions (electrically charged atoms), which are held in an electromagnetic trap and manipulated with ultraviolet lasers. Two magnesium ions in the trap help cool the beryllium ions.

NIST scientists can manipulate the states of each beryllium qubit, including placing the ions in a “superposition” of both 1 and 0 values at the same time, a significant potential advantage of information processing in the quantum world. Scientists also can “entangle” the two qubits, a quantum phenomenon that links the pair’s properties even when the ions are physically separated.

“This is the first time anyone has demonstrated a programmable quantum processor for more than one qubit,” says NIST postdoctoral researcher David Hanneke, first author of the paper. “It’s a step toward the big goal of doing calculations with lots and lots of qubits. The idea is you’d have lots of these processors, and you’d link them together.

Fedora 12 Pre release Ready

2009-10-20T12:38:00.000-07:00

Fedora anounced today that the Pre release of fedora 12 is available for download. But be sure to read the release notes and to keep in mind that this a a pre release
Fedora 12
Release notes

Oracle, Sell MySQL To A Third Party Says MySQL Founder Michael Widenius

2009-10-20T11:11:00.000-07:00

MySQL founder is asking Oracle to give the MySQL to third party to avoid trouble with EU regarding it's acquisition of SUN. According the press release on Michael Widenius' blog below;

MYSQL FOUNDER OUTLINES SOLUTION:
INSTEAD OF LETTING SUN SUFFER,
ORACLE SHOULD SELL MYSQL
(ORCL, JAVA)

Michael 'Monty' Widenius says European Commission is "absolutely right to be concerned" about proposed merger between Oracle Corporation [ORCL] and Sun Microsystems [JAVA], nominates award-winning EU strategist to support the proceeding

Tuusula, Finland, 19 October 2009 -- Michael 'Monty' Widenius, the creator of open source database MySQL and founder of the namesake company later acquired by Sun, today suggested Oracle should resolve antitrust concerns over its US$7.4 billion acquisition of Sun by committing to sell MySQL to a suitable third party. The proposed takeover has not yet been consummated because it is being investigated in depth by the European Commission as well as competition authorities in several other jurisdictions.

Widenius, who posted this press release to his blog, believes the EU's antitrust regulator is "absolutely right to be concerned" and called on Oracle "to be constructive and commit to sell MySQL to a suitable third party, enabling an instant solution instead of letting Sun suffer much longer."

The Finnish software developer and entrepreneur wishes Sun "all the best, but MySQL needs a different home than Oracle, a home where there will be no conflicts of interest concerning how, or if, MySQL should be developed further."

MySQL was the only Sun business unit to be mentioned in the EC's early September announcement of its in-depth investigation into the proposed takeover.

Acquirers commonly resolve regulatory concerns (before, during or after an investigation) by committing to divest problematic assets to a third party. By contrast, Oracle and Sun officials have thus far insisted they continue to seek approval of the entire transaction, irrespectively of Sun currently losing, according to Oracle, $100 million a month.

In order to support the regulators' work on the case, Widenius' new company, Monty Program Ab, works closely with Florian Mueller, a MySQL and EU affairs expert. Widenius said: "Florian gave MySQL strategic advice from 2001 on and was a shareholder until the sale to Sun in 2008, and with our support led an award-winning campaign against a proposed EU law on software patents. In August he helped us to demonstrate to the EC the need to investigate this merger and he is now on board again to meet the information needs of regulators, journalists and analysts."

According to Mueller, "every day that passes without Oracle excluding MySQL from the deal is further evidence that Oracle just wants to get rid of its open source challenger and that the EU's investigation is needed to safeguard innovation and customer choice. This is highly critical because the entire knowledge-based economy is built on databases."

Mueller demands more respect for the EC: "It's inappropriately arrogant for some interested parties to suggest that the EC has yet to understand the case. The EC is really doing a great job under huge time pressure."

In what he calls "a solution-oriented information effort that is now necessary after other parties made public statements on the case in recent weeks", Mueller announced that he will be available to journalists and analysts in Brussels (Wednesday, 21 October), London (Thursday, 22 October) and Silicon Valley (Monday, 26 October) to discuss the case.

In August, Mueller authored a position paper that Monty Program provided to the EC along with several other submissions. The latest version of the document was published today on the Internet.

Microsoft Patents Auction Goes Flop! OIN Safeguards Linux Community

2009-09-13T11:29:00.000-07:00

Balmer --> Balder Blamer!

Steve Balmer's plans went really wrong with recent Linux patent auction. Instead of patents ending up with patent trolls, as Microsoft wished, AST acquired the patents, which was later sold to OIN, Open Invention Network.
Up your Bolder :)
"Allied Security Trust is pleased that Open Invention Network had interest in acquiring the Open Source patent portfolio. OIN's purchase ensures that these important patents will not be used by patent trolls or others seeking to disrupt Linux and the many companies and individuals advancing this important technology," said Dan McCurdy, Chief Executive Officer of Allied Security Trust.
Following is the complete press release by OIN;

Durham, NC (September 8, 2009) - Open Invention Network (OIN), a collaborative enterprise that enables innovation in open source, today announced the acquisition of 22 Linux-focused patents that were marketed and sold by Microsoft. The patents were recently purchased by Allied Security Trust (AST) from Microsoft to ensure the patents did not fall into the hands of non-practicing entities (more information on non-practicing entities is available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_troll, among other sites) that could seek to assert the patents against Linux products. OIN subsequently acquired the Microsoft patents from AST.

"Today's announcement evidences OIN's continued commitment to acquire patents that may be relevant to Linux," said Keith Bergelt, Chief Executive Officer of Open Invention Network. "We are pleased to have purchased these patents and view this as a model of successful collaboration among defensive patent organizations that share a common goal of creating freedom of action for practicing entities across Linux and the broader technology sector. The prospect of these patents being placed in the hands of non-practicing entities was a threat that has been averted with these purchases, irrespective of patent quality and whether or not the patents truly read on Linux.
"Allied Security Trust is pleased that Open Invention Network had interest in acquiring the Open Source patent portfolio. OIN's purchase ensures that these important patents will not be used by patent trolls or others seeking to disrupt Linux and the many companies and individuals advancing this important technology," said Dan McCurdy, Chief Executive Officer of Allied Security Trust.
About Allied Security Trust
AST is a Delaware statutory trust currently with 15 member companies headquartered in North America, Europe and Asia. The Trust provides opportunities to enhance companies freedom to sell products by sharing the cost of patent licenses. To date, the Trust has invested $40 million in patent purchases over its 30 months of operations. Through such purchases, the Trust provides an excellent opportunity for patent holders of all sizes to generate a return on their rights by selling patents to the Trust.
AST is not an investment vehicle. Its purpose is freedom of operation and cost reduction. It generates no profits and does not engage in patent assertions against other companies. AST maintains a catch-and-releas; commitment that returns to the market in a timely manner patents acquired on behalf of Trust members after licenses are secured. The Trust also addresses the increasing need for innovative companies to defend against costly patent law suits. For more information, visit www.alliedsecuritytrust.com.
About Open Invention Network
Open Invention Network is a collaborative enterprise that enables innovation in open source and an increasingly vibrant ecosystem around Linux by acquiring and licensing patents, influencing behaviors and policy, and protecting the integrity of the ecosystem through strategic programs such as Linux Defenders. It enables the growth and continuation of open source software by fostering a healthy Linux ecosystem of investors, vendors, developers and users.
Open Invention Network has considerable industry backing. It was launched in 2005, and has received investments from IBM, NEC, Novell, Philips, Red Hat and Sony. For more information, visit www.openinventionnetwork.com.
Media-Only Contact:
Ed Schauweker
Ketchum for Open Invention Network
ed.schauweker@ketchum.com
(703) 963-5238

Humble Yourself With Hubble's Universe Information In 3D.

2009-08-12T14:12:00.000-07:00

Just to think that some moronic beurocrats planned to scrap the Hubble continuation makes me want to scream some times. But the information coming from Hubble that manage to amaze me every turn, makes me want to laugh at them. So I decided laughing is better than screaming. But go through the whole video, it is really amazing!

Android OS Live CD

2009-07-13T12:29:00.000-07:00

Android OS on a live CD, give it a try,
Android OS Live CD, LiveAndroid, For Your PC | VOIP IP Telephony
Tags: Android OS Live CD, LiveAndroid, Google Android, T-Mobile G1, Google Android Developer Phone

Intel Acquires Wind River For $884 Million

2009-06-04T15:11:00.000-07:00

ANTA CLARA, Calif., June 4, 2009 – Intel Corporation has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Wind River Systems Inc, under which Intel will acquire all outstanding Wind River common stock for $11.50 per share in cash, or approximately $884 million in the aggregate. Wind River is a leading software vendor in embedded devices, and will become part of Intel’s strategy to grow its processor and software presence outside the traditional PC and server market segments into embedded systems and mobile handheld devices. Wind River will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Intel and continue with its current business model of supplying leading-edge products and services to its customers worldwide.

"This acquisition will bring us complementary, market-leading software assets and an incredibly talented group of people to help us continue to grow our embedded systems and mobile device capabilities," said Renee James, Intel vice president and general manager of the company’s Software and Services Group. "Wind River has thousands of customers in a wide range of markets, and now both companies will be better positioned to meet growth opportunities in these areas."

"Our combination of strengths will be of great benefit to Wind River’s existing and future customers," said Ken Klein, Wind River Chairman, president and CEO. "As a wholly owned subsidiary, Wind River will more tightly align its software expertise to Intel’s platforms to speed the pace of progress and software innovation. We remain committed to continuing to provide leading solutions across multiple hardware architectures and delivering the same world-class support to which our customers have grown accustomed."

The acquisition will deliver to Intel robust software capabilities in embedded systems and mobile devices, both important growth areas for the company. Embedded systems and mobile devices include smart phones, mobile Internet devices, other consumer electronics (CE) devices, in-car "info-tainment" systems and other automotive areas, networking equipment, aerospace and defense, energy and thousands of other devices. This multi-billion dollar market opportunity is increasingly becoming connected and more intelligent, requiring supporting applications and services as well as full Internet functionality.

The board of directors of Wind River has unanimously approved the transaction. It is expected to close this summer, subject to certain regulatory approvals and other conditions specified in the definitive agreement. Upon completion of the acquisition, Wind River will report into Intel’s Software and Services Group, headed by Renee James.

Google Flies In A Very CLOUDy Sky

2009-05-15T11:47:00.000-07:00

Google has offered an explanation about it's service disruption yesterday that made many people wonder about the cloud computing. It all boils down to a routing issue.
Official Google Blog: This is your pilot speaking. Now, about that holding pattern...

Intel Fined $1.45 Billion By European Commission In Antitrust Case

2009-05-13T10:38:00.000-07:00

Intel was fined a staggering 1.06 billion euros ($1.45 Billion) fine on Wednesday by The European Commission for abusing its dominance in the computer chip market to exclude its only serious rival, Advanced Micro Devices.
Following is the Introductory remarks at press conference given by Neelie Kroes, European Commissioner for Competition Policy

Brussels, 13^th May 2009

Ladies and gentlemen,

I want to talk to you today about an antitrust decision that is focussed on consumer choice and innovation.

The Commission's decision finds that Intel abused its dominant position on the market for computer chips known as "x86 central processing units" in violation of Article 82 of the EC Treaty. This violation lasted for more than five years – from late 2002 to the end of 2007.

These x86 chips are the key hardware component of a computer – in other words, your computer won't work without these chips.

Throughout the period covered by the decision, Intel held at least 70% of the worldwide market in these chips.

The fact that Intel had such a large market share is not a problem in itself. What is a problem is that Intel abused its dominant position. Specifically, Intel used illegal anti-competitive practices to exclude essentially its only competitor, and thus reduce consumer choice, in the worldwide market for x86 chips.

The Commission has ordered Intel to cease the illegal practices immediately, to the extent that they are still ongoing, and to refrain from these and any equivalent practices in the future. The Commission will be monitoring Intel’s compliance closely.

For this abusive behaviour, the Commission has fined Intel 1.06 billion euros.

Frustrating innovation

The Commission finds that Intel did not compete fairly, frustrating innovation and reducing consumer welfare in the process.

Whenever dominant companies use their market position to exclude competitors, innovation suffers – and consumers are harmed because they are denied choice.-.

The Commission has found that Intel excluded its competitor in two ways:

through illegal loyalty rebates
by paying manufacturers and retailers to restrict the commercialisation of competitors' products.

These illegal actions were designed to preserve Intel's market share at a time when their only significant rival - AMD - was a growing threat to Intel's position. This threat was widely recognised by both computer manufacturers and in Intel's own internal documents seen by the Commission.

The computer manufacturers involved are Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo and NEC. The retailer involved is Media Saturn Holdings, the parent company of Media Markt.

Rebates

Naturally, the Commission favours strong, vigorous price competition, including by dominant firms. However, Intel went beyond normal price competition by giving rebates to computer manufacturers on the condition that they bought all, or almost all, of their CPUs from Intel.

Intel also made direct payments to a major retailer – Media Markt - on the condition that it stocked only computers with Intel CPUs.

Not all rebates are a competition problem – often they will lead to lower prices for consumers in the long term as well as the short. But the Intel rebates in this case were a problem because of the conditions that Intel attached to its rebates. Moreover, the Commission has examined closely whether an efficient competitor could have matched these rebates. These conditions, to buy less of AMD's products or to not buy them at all, prevented AMD from competing with Intel on the merits of its products. This removed the possibility of genuine choice for consumers and undermined innovation.

Just to give you one example: in one case, a computer manufacturer took up only a small part of an offer by AMD of free CPUs because acceptance of all the free CPUs offered would have led that computer manufacturer to breach the conditions of its agreement with Intel and to lose rebates on all its much more numerous Intel purchases.

Everyone but Intel was worse off in this anti-competitive scenario.

But rebates are only part of the story.

Pay-for-delay

Intel made direct payments to computer manufacturers to halt or delay the launch of products using their rival's chips, and to limit their distribution once available.

The Commission has specific, documented examples, of Intel paying other manufacturers to, for example, delay the launch of an AMD-based PC by six months, and to restrict the sales of AMD-based products to certain customers.

Why is pay-for-delay wrong?

Because it was aimed at preventing a competitor from selling its products on their merits, again restricting genuine choice for consumers and undermining innovation.

Concealment

The Commission Decision contains evidence that Intel went to great lengths to cover-up many of its anti-competitive actions. Many of the conditions mentioned above were not to be found in Intel’s official contracts.

However, the Commission was able to gather a broad range of evidence demonstrating Intel's illegal conduct through statements from companies, on-site inspections, and formal requests for information.

Concluding remarks

The Commission's investigation has uncovered serious wrongdoing in the x86 computer chip market.

Given that Intel has harmed millions of European consumers by deliberately acting to keep competitors out of the market for over five years, the size of the fine should come as no surprise.

I am very grateful for the interest and support that both BEUC (the European Consumers' Association) and UFC Que Choisir (French consumers' association) have shown in intervening on the side of the Commission in this case. This goes to show the widespread discontent at Intel's behaviour and the priority the Commission places on consumers and their welfare.

Finally, I would like to draw your attention to Intel's latest global advertising campaign which proposes Intel as the "Sponsors of Tomorrow."

Their website invites visitors to add their 'vision of tomorrow'. Well, I can give my vision of tomorrow for Intel here and now: "obey the law".

Naked Astronomy

2009-05-08T13:13:00.000-07:00

M42, This cosmic nursery measures 30 light-years from side to side, and contains dozens of newborn baby suns.

According to this press release, you will be able to roam the milkyway and other far away galaxies in your bathing suite (summer is coming) or naked!

“Astronomers and enthusiasts have used our technology for years, but thanks to Otto and our new design, anyone can have a powerful telescope and an expert astronomer available at home whenever they want,” says Michael Paolucci, founder of Slooh. “Otto unveils the space stories and science behind the views that our technology feeds to the world.”

New York, March 30, 2009—Slooh is well known among astronomy enthusiasts for providing a space camera that offers unprecedented access to real-time views of the ever-changing night sky. Now, the company is unlocking space for those who never dared explore beyond our terrestrial world by introducing Otto, the Night Watchdog for the Milky Way Galaxy as their guide.

This comes just in time for the 100 Hours of Astronomy, a worldwide event aimed at bringing everyone the same sense of wonderment felt by Galileo when he first looked through a telescope 400 years ago.

Slooh also added two new telescopes to its worldwide network. The new sites in Chile and Australia complement the telescopes that have operated in Europe continuously since 2003. The complete network now offers space enthusiasts 24 hour views of the night sky from their computer screens.

Available online at Slooh.com and retail channels across the country, including, in nearly every Toys“R”Us store, Slooh fulfills the common yearning to see and capture images from space. A true space camera, Slooh and Otto guide users on quests to see and record the best current views of the night sky with tailored missions happening every few hours.

Otto’s night missions such as "Lunar Risings: The Phases of the Moon,” and "Starburst: The Birth, Life & Death of a Star" guide and shape exploration and discovery for kids and parents through telescopes situated at some of the world’s finest observatories. These missions use the same high-caliber images and patented technologies that have made Slooh critical to astronomical discovery.

Pricing and Availability

Slooh adventures are available for as little as $14.99 for 150 minutes of missions with each mission lasting about five minutes. Mission books can be found at Toys“R”Us stores or online at www.slooh.com.

Wolfram|Alpha, A Computational Engine For Your Web Searches.

2009-05-05T09:20:00.000-07:00

I have been a fan of Mathematica ever since high school and used it throughout my university years and even to date, I continue to use it. Mathematica is a well received application or a computational platform as many refer to it as.
There is some thing new from the Wolfram Research, the company that gave us the Mamthematica, a Web-based "computation engine"--Wolfram Alpha-- Alpha accesses databases that are maintained by Wolfram Research, or licensed from others, and deploys formulas and algorithms to compute answers for searchers.
When I read the test done by Technology Review, I had to smile, typical mathematica, to the point.
I know O will have a permanent bookmark to Wolfram Alpha.
You can read Technology Review article to get detailed information on Google and WolframAlpha comparison.

Cloud Computing The Google Way!

2009-05-03T00:34:00.000-07:00

When We speak or think of enterprise computing we always think of enterprise hardware. multi core processors, terabytes of high end storage and globs of memory.
Then we get our software on these heavy handed structures and run happily for about a year and in most cases six months as new better hardware comes around and our software begin to lag. So we rinse and repeat.
It seems Google is doing this in a bit of different way. The difference is that Google build its system from ground up, on low cost hardware. It is their software infrastructure that scales and manage to run on every possible hardware solution thrown at them.
Google work with the premise that even the best and most expensive hardware have a limit of not being 100% reliable. So they make their software the resilient one.
There is one good story that I read at Google Enterprise blog which explains very well the Google Enterprise architecture. I learned about it of course at Google official blog. You will find the links to both below.
Official Google Enterprise Blog: What we talk about when we talk about cloud computing
Business in the cloud

Linus Torvalds has released Linux 2.6.29.

2009-03-23T20:09:00.000-07:00

The most obvious change is the (temporary) change of logo to Tuz, the Tasmanian Devil. But there's a number of driver updates and some m68k header updates (fixing headers_install after the merge of non-MMU/MMU) that end up being pretty noticeable in the diffs. The List Entry

The new features include the inclusion of Kernel Modesetting, Btrfs, Squashfs, Support of 4096 CPUs, "Tree RCU": scalable classic RCU, WiMAX, Wireless Access Point mode support, eCryptfs filename encryption, Filesystem freeze Memory controller swap management and other improvements, Ext4 no journal mode, OCFS2 metadata checksums,Staging drivers, and other features. Kernal Newbies.

SheevaPlug, Make Every Wall Plug A Computer Node

2009-02-24T09:56:00.000-08:00

Perhaps this is an easy way to build a multinode grid computer. If you do not have enough plug points you can get those monstrous power extenders and plug in 10 or 20 of Sheevaplugs.
Marvell®’s SheevaPlug™ is a plug computer — an embedded computer that plugs into the wall socket and can run networkbased services that normally require a dedicated personal computer. Featuring a 1.2GHz Marvell Sheeva™ CPU with 512MB of flash memory and 512MB of DDR2 memory, the SheevaPlug provides ample processing power and resources to run any embedded computing application. Network connectivity is via Gigabit Ethernet; peripheral devices can be connected using USB2.0. Software for the SheevaPlug includes multiple Linux distributions and follows the open-source model, making the SheevaPlug an ideal platform on which to develop or port any application. The SheevaPlug development kit contains the SheevaPlug as well as all of the software tools needed to develop applications for the platform.
Marvell

Linux Defenders To Protect Interests Of OSS Community.

2009-01-12T13:19:00.001-08:00

Open Invention Network^SM (Another way to fight Patents!), an intellectual property company that was formed to promote Linux by using patents to create a collaborative environment has now unveiled a new program called Linux Defenders, with the aim of making prior art more readily accessible to patent and trademark office examiners. It also fore see an increase the quality of granted patents and aid to eliminate or revoke poor quality patents.

Following is the press release about Unveiling of Landmark 'Linux Defenders' Program;

Durham, NC (December 9, 2008) - Open Invention Network (OIN), a collaborative enterprise that enables open source innovation and an increasingly vibrant ecosystem around Linux, today unveiled the Linux Defenders program, which is designed to make prior art more readily accessible to patent and trademark office examiners, and increase the quality of granted patents and reduce the number of poor quality patents.

"Linux Defenders offers the Linux and broader open source community a unique opportunity to harness its collaborative passion, intelligence, and ingenuity to ensure Linux's natural migration to mobile devices and computing,>" said Keith Bergelt, chief executive officer of Open Invention Network. >"This landmark program will benefit open source innovation by significantly reducing the number of poor quality patents that might otherwise be used by patent trolls or strategics whose behaviors and business models are antithetical to true innovation and are thus threatened by Linux.>"

Co-sponsored by the Software Freedom Law Center and the Linux Foundation, Linux Defenders is a first-of-its-kind program which aims to reduce future intellectual property concerns about meritless patents for the Linux and open source community. The program is designed to accomplish this by soliciting prior art to enable the rejection of poor quality patent applications; soliciting prior art to enable the invalidation of poor quality issued patents; and soliciting high quality inventions that can be prepared as patent applications or defensive publications.

The Linux Defenders program is expected to enable individuals and organizations to efficiently impact the patenting process by enabling the contribution of relevant prior art, and by creating defensive publications which will establish a body of new prior art. The prior art can be used by examiners to screen patent applications more effectively and ensure only truly novel ideas are patented. The net effect of higher patent quality will be to provide greater freedom for the open source community to build on the Linux platform. Linux has enjoyed adoption in many industries and market segments around the world, and this program will help facilitate future progress in the expansion of the Linux footprint. Use of Linux Defenders is free of charge to contributors of prior art or inventions, and the hosting of defensive publications on databases accessible by patent and trademark office examiners around the world is borne by the program's sponsors. The Linux Defenders website is located at http://www.linuxdefenders.org.

"A large number of poor quality patents have the potential to stifle innovation," said Eben Moglen, chairman of the Software Freedom Law Center. "The Software Freedom Law Center is pleased to co-sponsor Linux Defenders with the goal of ridding the world of patents that unscrupulous organizations use to cripple the innovation inherent in freely redistributable, open source software."

"This is an important program that will give the community additional confidence in the code they develop," said Jim Zemlin, executive director of The Linux Foundation. "The open source community is getting an IP rights tool that will limit distractions created from organizations that like to play the FUD game. We enthusiastically encourage the Linux and open source communities to contribute to Linux Defenders."

"We are pleased to be working with Open Invention Network, Software Freedom Law Center and the Linux Foundation, as Linux Defenders is a natural extension of our 'Peer to Patent' and 'Post Issue' platforms and our explicit goal of working with industry to address core issues effecting the integrity of the patent system," said Mark Webbink, executive director of the Center for Patent Innovations at the New York Law School.

A Note on Defensive Publications
Defensive publications, which are endorsed by the United States Patent & Trademark Office as an IP rights management tool, are documents that provide descriptions and artwork of a product, device or method so that it enters the public domain and becomes prior art. This powerful preemptive disclosure prevents other parties from obtaining a patent on the product, device or method. It enables original inventors to ensure that they have access to their inventions by preventing others from later making patent claims against them. It also means that they do not have to shoulder the cost of patent applications.

The Defensive Publications program, a component of Linux Defenders, enables non-attorneys to use a set of Web-based forms to generate defensive publications. It relies on substantial participation from the open source community using a "Wiki"-like contribution model. OIN plans to work with participants to ensure that each defensive publication is an effective disclosure. The completed defensive publication will be added by OIN to the IP.com database, which is, in turn, used by IP attorneys and the patent and trademark office to search for prior art when examining patent applications.

About Open Invention Network
Open Invention Network^sm is a collaborative enterprise that enables innovation in open source and an increasingly vibrant ecosystem around Linux by acquiring and licensing patents, influencing behaviors and policy, and defending the integrity of the ecosystem through strategic programs such as Linux Defenders. It enables the growth and continuation of open source software by fostering a healthy Linux ecosystem of investors, vendors, developers and users.

Open Invention Network has considerable industry backing. It was launched in 2005, and has received investments from IBM, NEC, Novell, Philips, Red Hat and Sony. For more information, visit www.openinventionnetwork.com.

Media-Only Contact:
Ed Schauweker
Ketchum for Open Invention Network
ed.schauweker@ketchum.com
703-963-5238

Fourty Year Old Computer Mouse Demo!

2009-01-12T11:10:00.000-08:00

BBC is carrying on a tiny article and a video clip of Doug Engelbart, the inventor of the computer mouse, doing the first demo of the device that we have come to be a part of day to day computing.
The computer mouse is now 40 years old and Dr Engelbart used the mouse made of wood containing single button to demonstrate novel ways of working with computers on 9 December 1968. You will smile when you see the protruding scroll wheels!
Since BBC does not allow to embed here is the complete demo from Youtube.

Google Open Source Blog: New File Systems Added to MacFUSE

2008-12-17T06:33:00.000-08:00

MacFUSE, an Open Source mechanism that allows you to extend Mac OS X's native file system capabilities had a State of the Union talk recently and offered many dmos, including the following:

AncientFS - a file system that lets you mount ancient, and in some cases current-day Unix data containers as regular volumes on Mac OS X.

UnixFS - a general-purpose abstraction layer for implementing Unix-style file systems in user space.

ufs - a user-space implementation (read-only) of the UFS file system family.

sysvfs -a user-space implementation (read-only) of the System V file system family.

minixfs -a user-space implementation (read-only) of the Minix file system family.

If you are a Mac or MacFUSE user, it is time to checkout the video below and the code at the repository!

Google Open Source Blog: New File Systems Added to MacFUSE

HP / NetSuite Takes Small Business To Cloud Computing.

2008-11-12T09:09:00.000-08:00

Hewlett-Packard (HP) announce that it will offer software from NetSuite to bring software as a service (SaaS) business applications to the small and midsize business (SMB) market.
With the Netsuite, small businesses can manage their operations online like ecommerce to managing inventories, order fulfillment, customer relationships.
If you see similarities with Salesforce offerings, yes you are right and the Netsuite competes with the Salesforce. But it caters to companies with fewer than 1000 users.
The Netsuite stand to gain a lot from the relation ship with HP and it's 15000 strong value added resellers in the HP chnnel in the United States.
"This collaboration with HP will accelerate our penetration of the SMB market worldwide and demonstrate that the channel can play a major role in delivering cloud computing solutions," said Zach Nelson, chief executive officer, NetSuite.
You will find the official press release here.

Azure, Cloud Computing Platform From Microsoft.

2008-10-28T10:15:00.000-07:00

Microsoft has released a CTP, Customer Technical Preview of Windows Azure, a cloud services operating system that serves as a development, service hosting, and service management environment for the Azure Services Platform.

Windows Azure provides developers with on-demand compute and storage to host and manage web applications on the internet through Microsoft data centers.

So if you want to be up in the clouds, follow this link.

SUSE Gets Wyse And Collaborates On Enterprise Thin Client Virtualization.

2008-09-21T11:50:00.000-07:00

SAN JOSE, Calif. and WALTHAM, Mass.— Wyse Technology, the global leader in thin computing, and Novell today announced the joint delivery of Wyse Enhanced SUSE® Linux Enterprise, the next-generation of Linux* operating system designed for thin computing environments and available only on Wyse desktop and mobile thin client devices. Wyse Enhanced SUSE Linux Enterprise is a powerful combination of Wyse's extensive experience in thin computing and the ease of use, flexibility and security of SUSE Linux Enterprise. Wyse Enhanced SUSE Linux Enterprise will be available pre-loaded on the Wyse thin client devices in Q4 2008.

According to a 2008 IDC report (1), the Linux thin client market will grow from nearly 1 million units in 2008 to 1.8 million units in 2011. Linux will reach a 30.5 percent share of all operating system shipments on thin client devices by 2011. The ever-increasing market penetration of Linux-based thin clients is due to their ability to lower total cost of ownership, while helping enterprises gain a more secure and flexible computing environment. Additionally, in emerging areas such as desktop virtualization, the operating system used by client devices is becoming less relevant, as long as it is an enabler of virtualization technologies, and not the limiting factor.

With Wyse Enhanced SUSE Linux Enterprise customers gain a host of benefits. End-users will be able to maximize productivity and minimize training costs due to the easy-to-use graphical user interface combined with the rich user experience provided only by Wyse, including cross-platform multimedia support, USB peripheral support and flexible hardware options. IT administrators will gain the flexibility of having their thin client devices automatically update and configured upon boot-up, or being able to use the enhanced scalable management capabilities of Wyse Device Manager, the industry-leading thin computing management software solution.

"With the announcement of Wyse Enhanced SUSE Linux Enterprise pre-loaded on our platforms, we are providing more choices and more flexibility to users who wish to deploy Linux-based thin clients," said Ricardo Antuna, vice president of Product Management and Business Development at Wyse Technology, Inc. "Since we announced our intention to collaborate with Novell last year, we have worked towards creating a solution that will enable our customers to deploy Linux without the compromises on security, scalability and performance encountered with non-standard and proprietary thin Linux distributions. Wyse Enhanced SUSE Linux Enterprise doesn't disappoint."

"We are pleased that Wyse has selected SUSE Linux Enterprise as the platform for their next generation Linux-based thin clients," said Carlos Montero-Luque, vice president of product management for Open Platform Solutions at Novell. "This is clear indication of the readiness of desktop Linux overall to meet the needs of enterprise customers, including lower costs, stronger security and improved manageability. All kinds of organizations are finding Linux thin client deployments to be a good fit for their hardware, security needs and budgets, and we are excited to partner with Wyse to deliver a market-leading solution."

Integration with Microsoft* Active Directory* and unparalleled driver and software support will enable enterprises to easily deploy Wyse Enhanced SUSE Linux Enterprise thin clients in a Windows* environment. Finally, Wyse Enhanced SUSE Linux Enterprise includes built-in support for Wyse's suite of virtualization software, enabling enterprises to take advantage of third-party desktop virtualization solutions such as Citrix* XenDesktop* and VMware* VDI.

"Wyse Enhanced SUSE Linux Enterprise further builds momentum for client virtualization by providing customers with multiple options when deploying desktop appliances within their organizations," said Raj Dhingra, group vice president and general manager, Desktop Delivery Group, Citrix Systems Inc. "The tight integration between Wyse’s suite of desktop appliances and Citrix client virtualization technologies, XenDesktop and Citrix XenApp, provides a superior experience for the user and a cost-effective solution for desktop and application delivery."

"The VMware-Wyse partnership has been extended with the release of Wyse Enhanced SUSE Linux Enterprise with built-in support for the VDM client. This release further helps lower the overall costs of deploying a VMware VDI solution by eliminating the need for expensive client-side hardware and operating systems," said Jerry Chen, VMware's senior director of Product Marketing for Enterprise Desktop Products.

Wyse Enhanced SUSE Linux Enterprise includes the GNOME* desktop, Firefox* browser, a powerful terminal emulator, as well as pre-built technologies for connecting to thin computing architectures. These architectures include the VDM client from VMware, the ICA client from Citrix, and the RDP client from Microsoft. This flexibility and support makes Wyse Enhanced SUSE Linux Enterprise the ideal choice for organizations whether they wish to run server-based, Web-based, or local (including legacy) applications.

Wyse Enhanced SUSE Linux Enterprise will be available in Q4 2008 pre-loaded Wyse X50L mobile thin client devices. For more information on Wyse Enhanced SUSE Linux Enterprise and the Wyse family of thin clients visit http://www.wyse.com/products.

IC (Integrated Circuit) Is 50 Years Old And TI Launches Kilby Labs To Honor Jack Kilby.

2008-09-15T08:12:00.000-07:00

DALLAS (September 12, 2008) - Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) (NYSE:TXN) announced its new "Kilby Labs" today, a center of innovation designed to foster creative ideas for breakthrough semiconductor technology. Launched on September 12, the 50th anniversary of the integrated circuit, the new labs will build on IC inventor Jack Kilby's legacy of revolutionizing our lives through chip innovation.

Kilby Labs will be located on TI's Dallas North Campus and is inspired by the original TI lab, where Kilby first designed the chip that opened the door to 3G cell phones, portable ultrasound machines and automotive antilock braking systems. The new facility, though, will bring together university researchers and leading TI engineers to discover life-changing opportunities for semiconductor technology. From creating new ways to make health care more mobile to harnessing new power sources to enabling more fuel-efficient vehicles, researchers at the Kilby Labs will focus on developing chip advances that make a difference.

"All of us at TI believe that technologies that significantly impact our lives are the right technologies for our business," said Rich Templeton, Chairman and CEO of TI, at the launch celebration held at the Semiconductor Building on TI's North Campus. "The power to help make the world healthier, safer, greener and more fun is what gets us excited about chip innovation, and why we come to work every day at TI. It's what motivated Jack Kilby to build the first IC and why he was able to transform the world through his ideas and inventions."

"Our vision for Kilby Labs," said Gregg Lowe, TI senior vice president and the project's executive sponsor, "is that it will combine TI's experience in developing new chip technologies and our understanding of customer needs with the dreams of a new generation of innovators. Technology springs from imagination, and we want to create an environment where people can both imagine a better world and help build it. The best way we can celebrate Jack's contributions is by providing people with the opportunity to carry on his work and find new ways for a tiny chip to dramatically improve millions of lives around the world."

TI has named Ajith Amerasekera as director of its new Kilby Labs. Ajith, who is a TI Fellow, joined the company in 1991 and holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering and Physics. He previously served as CTO for TI's application-specific integrated circuit division, and as the holder of 28 issued patents and author of four books on semiconductors, Ajith is well recognized in the international technical community.

In addition to the new Kilby Labs, TI is honoring Jack Kilby's life and legacy with a variety of events showcasing his unique vision within the world of engineering and his creative expression through photography:

Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University, Dallas: Jack Kilby: The Eye of Genius - Photographs by the Inventor of the Microchip will run through September 21. The exhibit displays several artifacts, such as a collection of Kilby's photography, his original notebook of sketches and ideas for the integrated circuit, his Nobel Prize in Physics, the world's first microchip and the first handheld calculator.
The Museum of Nature and Science, Dallas: A microchip mini-exhibit will run through October 19. The display features items from the TI archives in contrast to their modern form, along with video footage.
Texas Instruments Headquarters: The original lab where Kilby worked and made his significant discovery of the first integrated circuit has been recreated onsite. The recreated lab will inspire future inventors and serve as a visual reminder of the power of science and technology combined with creativity.
Great Bend, Kansas: TI has made a donation toward Jack Kilby's memorial statue in his hometown of Great Bend, Kansas. To learn more about the 50th anniversary of Jack Kilby's invention of the integrated circuit, please visit www.ti.com/tichip.

Volunteer Astronomer Finds “Cosmic Ghost”

2008-08-07T15:51:00.000-07:00

Green Object in the center is the “Hanny’s Voorwerp”

New Haven, Conn. — When Yale astrophysicist Kevin Schawinski and his colleagues at Oxford University enlisted public support in cataloguing galaxies, they never envisioned the strange object Hanny van Arkel found in archived images of the night sky.

The Dutch school teacher, a volunteer in the Galaxy Zoo project that allows members of the public to take part in astronomy research online, discovered a mysterious and unique object some observers are calling a “cosmic ghost.”

van Arkel came across the image of a strange, gaseous object with a hole in the center while using the www.galaxyzoo.org website to classify images of galaxies.

When she posted about the image that quickly became known as “Hanny’s Voorwerp” ( Dutch for “object”) on the Galaxy Zoo forum, astronomers who run the site began to investigate and soon realized van Arkel might have found a new class of astronomical object.

“At first, we had no idea what it was. It could have been in our solar system, or at the edge of the universe,” said Schawinski, a member and co-founder of the Galaxy Zoo team.

Scientists working at telescopes around the world and with satellites in space were asked to take a look at the mysterious Voorwerp. “What we saw was really a mystery,” said Schawinski. “The Voorwerp didn’t contain any stars.” Rather, it was made entirely of gas so hot — about 10,000 Celsius — that the astronomers felt it had to be illuminated by something powerful. They will soon use the Hubble Space Telescope to get a closer look.

Apache, PHP and PostgreSQL. As A Stack For All Your OS Platforms,

2008-08-05T21:30:00.000-07:00

Bitnami has released a new set of Infrastructure Stacks: LAPPStack, MAPPStack and WAPPStack. If you did not know what they are, it is time you get to know them.These stacks provide an easy to install distribution of Apache, PostgreSQL, PHP and supporting libraries. The user-friendly installer allows users to quickly install and configure a PHP-PostgreSQL platform on Linux, Windows and OS X. These also include phpPgAdmin, a management tool for PostgreSQL, to make administration tasks even easier.
LAPPStack for Linux, MAPPStack for MAC OS X and WAPPStack for of course windows. I have all my development machines that spans all three plaforms, supported by these stacks. If you are in the visinity of any web development, I suggest you pay a visit to BitNami.
You will also find that forum, wiki, CRM and document management applications such as Drupal, Joomla!, WordPress, DokuWiki, KnowledgeTree and SugarCRM are provided as packages for easy deployment. Now you know where I go to get mmost of my development stacks!
Info Source, BitNami Blog

$360 Million Data Center in North Carolina by IBM to Serve Cloud Computing.

2008-08-04T12:07:00.000-07:00

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, NC - 01 Aug 2008: IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced today plans to build a $360 million state-of-the-art data center at its facility in Research Triangle Park (RTP), North Carolina. The data center will include new technologies and services that will enable IBM to deliver Cloud Computing capabilities to clients.

Cloud computing uses advanced technologies and global delivery mechanisms to enable individuals to access information and services from any device with extremely high levels of availability and quality of experience.

IBM will renovate an existing building on its RTP campus in North Carolina to create one of the most technologically advanced and energy efficient data centers in the world. The new data center will be the first in the world to be built with IBM's New Enterprise Data Center design principles. Clients using this center will have unparalleled access to massive internet-scale computing capabilities, while gaining the cost and environmental protection advantages of IBM's industry-leading energy efficiency data center design.

Data centers are the backbone of information technology (IT) infrastructure for businesses and other organizations, with powerful servers and storage systems running business-critical technology including software applications, email and web sites. IBM owns and operates more than eight million square feet of data center space -- more than any other company in the world.

This new RTP data center is a key component in IBM's Project Big Green initiative to dramatically increase energy efficiency in the data center, as companies face escalating energy costs and the requirement to handle a rapidly rising amount of data.

"This announcement further demonstrates IBM's commitment to our state and to our people," said Gov. Mike Easley. "I look forward to maintaining this partnership with IBM for years to come."

"This new data center is part of IBM's commitment to construct the world's most advanced data centers," said Bob Greenberg, general manager of IT Optimization and North Carolina Senior State Executive at IBM. "This is the latest example of IBM's deep history of innovation in North Carolina. When we open for business in late 2009, the new IBM data center assures that Research Triangle Park will be a strategic location for our outsourcing business for many years to come. I'd like to thank the State of North Carolina, Durham County, the Durham Chamber of Commerce, and Duke Energy for their outstanding support that helped make this project possible."

"IBM's innovations have been a cornerstone of the Research Triangle Park and Durham County, and this new state-of-the-art data center certainly continues that outstanding legacy," said Ellen W. Reckhow, Chairman of the Durham County Board of Commissioners. Durham County approved allocating $750,000 in economic development incentives for IBM's new data center.

More nformation from IBM.

Phoenix, We Have Water On Mars.

2008-07-31T18:58:00.000-07:00

TUCSON, Ariz. -- Laboratory tests aboard NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander have identified water in a soil sample. The lander's robotic arm delivered the sample Wednesday to an instrument that identifies vapors produced by the heating of samples.

"We have water," said William Boynton of the University of Arizona, lead scientist for the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, or TEGA. "We've seen evidence for this water ice before in observations by the Mars Odyssey orbiter and in disappearing chunks observed by Phoenix last month, but this is the first time Martian water has been touched and tasted."

With enticing results so far and the spacecraft in good shape, NASA also announced operational funding for the mission will extend through Sept. 30. The original prime mission of three months ends in late August. The mission extension adds five weeks to the 90 days of the prime mission.

"Phoenix is healthy and the projections for solar power look good, so we want to take full advantage of having this resource in one of the most interesting locations on Mars," said Michael Meyer, chief scientist for the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

The soil sample came from a trench approximately 2 inches deep. When the robotic arm first reached that depth, it hit a hard layer of frozen soil. Two attempts to deliver samples of icy soil on days when fresh material was exposed were foiled when the samples became stuck inside the scoop. Most of the material in Wednesday's sample had been exposed to the air for two days, letting some of the water in the sample vaporize away and making the soil easier to handle.

"Mars is giving us some surprises," said Phoenix principal investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona. "We're excited because surprises are where discoveries come from. One surprise is how the soil is behaving. The ice-rich layers stick to the scoop when poised in the sun above the deck, different from what we expected from all the Mars simulation testing we've done. That has presented challenges for delivering samples, but we're finding ways to work with it and we're gathering lots of information to help us understand this soil."

Since landing on May 25, Phoenix has been studying soil with a chemistry lab, TEGA, a microscope, a conductivity probe and cameras. Besides confirming the 2002 finding from orbit of water ice near the surface and deciphering the newly observed stickiness, the science team is trying to determine whether the water ice ever thaws enough to be available for biology and if carbon-containing chemicals and other raw materials for life are present.

The mission is examining the sky as well as the ground. A Canadian instrument is using a laser beam to study dust and clouds overhead.

"It's a 30-watt light bulb giving us a laser show on Mars," said Victoria Hipkin of the Canadian Space Agency.

A full-circle, color panorama of Phoenix's surroundings also has been completed by the spacecraft.

"The details and patterns we see in the ground show an ice-dominated terrain as far as the eye can see," said Mark Lemmon of Texas A&M University, lead scientist for Phoenix's Surface Stereo Imager camera. "They help us plan measurements we're making within reach of the robotic arm and interpret those measurements on a wider scale."

The Phoenix mission is led by Smith at the University of Arizona with project management at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and development partnership at Lockheed Martin in Denver. International contributions come from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus in Denmark; the Max Planck Institute in Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute.

For more about Phoenix, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix

Media contacts: Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov

Argonne National Laboratory's IBM Blue Gene/P, The Fastest Supercomputer In The World For Open Science.

2008-07-16T13:44:00.000-07:00

Argonne National Laboratory's IBM Blue Gene/P, The Fastest Supercomputer In The World For Open Science.

ARGONNE, Ill. (June 18, 2008) — The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory's IBM Blue Gene/P high-performance computing system is now the fastest supercomputer in the world for open science, according to the semiannual Top500 List of the world's fastest computers.

The Top500 List was announced today during the International Supercomputing Conference in Dresden, Germany.

The Blue Gene/P – known as Intrepid and located at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF) – also ranked third fastest overall. Both rankings represent the first time an Argonne-based supercomputing system has ranked in the top five of the industry's definitive list of supercomputers.

The Blue Gene/P has a peak-performance of 557 Teraflops (put in other terms, 557 trillion calculations per second). Intrepid achieved a speed of 450.3 Teraflops on the Linpack application used to measure speed for the Top500 rankings.

"Intrepid's speed and power reflect the DOE Office of Science's determined effort to provide the research and development community with powerful tools that enable them to make innovative and high-impact science and engineering breakthroughs," said Rick Stevens, associate laboratory director for computing, environmental and life sciences at Argonne.

"The ALCF and Intrepid have only just begun to have a meaningful impact on scientific research," Stevens said. "In addition, continued expansion of ALCF computing resources will not only be instrumental in addressing critical scientific research challenges related to climate change, energy, health and our basic understanding of the world, but in the future will transform and advance how science research and engineering experiments are conducted and attract social sciences research projects, as well."

"Scientists and society are already benefiting from ALCF resources," said Peter Beckman, ALCF acting director. "For example, ALCF's Blue Gene resources have allowed researchers to make major strides in evaluating the molecular and environmental features that may lead to the clinical diagnosis of Parkinson's disease and Lewy body dementia, as well as to simulate materials and designs that are important to the safe and reliable use of nuclear energy plants."

Eighty percent of Intrepid's computing time has been set aside for open science research through the DOE Office of Science's (SC) highly select Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) program. There are currently 20 INCITE projects at the ALCF that will use 111 million hours of computing time this year. SC's Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research provides high-level computer power focused on large-scale installation used by scientists and engineers in many disciplines.

The Top500 List is compiled by Hans Meuer of the University of Mannheim in Germany, Jack Dongarra of the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Erich Strohmaier and Horst Simon of DOE's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The list made its debut in June 1993 and ranked as No. 1 DOE's Los Alamos National Laboratory's Thinking Machine Corporation's CM-5, with 1,024 processors and a peak-performance of 131 gigaflops.

Argonne National Laboratory brings the world's brightest scientists and engineers together to find exciting and creative new solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology. The nation's first national laboratory, Argonne conducts leading-edge basic and applied scientific research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne researchers work closely with researchers from hundreds of companies, universities, and federal, state and municipal agencies to help them solve their specific problems, advance America 's scientific leadership and prepare the nation for a better future. With employees from more than 60 nations, Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science.

For more information, please contact Angela Hardin (630/252-5501 or ahardin@anl.gov) at Argonne.

Happy 4th Of July America!

2008-07-04T12:55:00.000-07:00

Happy 4th Of July America!

Tags: 4th of July, America People We See, Independence day

Ixia To Demo 100 GbE Network Connections

2008-06-18T18:17:00.000-07:00

June 17, 2008. In Las Vegas, NV, Ixia will be the first test vendor to demonstrate testing of 100 GbE network connections. This proof-of-concept demonstration can be seen as part of Infinera's demonstration of 100 GbE transport at their booth (#5607) and by appointment in Ixia's private meeting room (MSL 4704).

More Internet bandwidth is continually needed due to the general expansion of Internet usage and to the adoption of bandwidth-hungry applications, including IPTV, video, peer-to-peer sharing, and wireless backhaul. Computer and network architecture and technology have kept pace with such advancements as multi-core processing, virtualization, networked storage, and I/O convergence. These improvements have similarly led to increased demand for data center bandwidth.

Historically, increased bandwidth requirements have been addressed with solutions that begin by combining multiple lower bandwidth links, and then transition to higher bandwidth links. We've seen this multiple times, in the transition from 10 Mbps to 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps to 10 Gbps.

Today, both within data centers and across major Internet links, multiple 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 GbE) links are aggregated using one of several link aggregation protocols. Aggregation, however, comes with a raft of problems. Use of multiple 10 GbE links requires a large-scale replication of resources, including expensive computer interfaces and switch ports. Aggregation of multiple flows can be a complex operation, calling for packing of flows that use less than 10 Gbps of traffic and splitting of flows that use more than 10 Gbps. The bursty nature of most Internet protocols, coupled with stringent SLAs, often results in bandwidth wastage.

It's essential that single, logical, high-speed links be available in the data center and throughout the Internet. The step to 100 GbE is seen as a key ingredient to the next major expansion of the Internet - "the core empowers the edge."

If these high-speed links are ever to become ubiquitous, standards and conventions must be developed. The IEEE has taken the lead in 40 GbE and 100 GbE standards. Starting with the inception of the IEEE HSSG (high speed study group) in mid-2006, the Task Force (IEEE 802.3ba) was formalized at the end of 2007 and is scheduled to issue approved standards by 2010. At the same time, multiple network component vendors are participating in multi-source agreements (MSAs) for internal and interface components not dictated by the standards.

The members of the IEEE committee strongly believe that 100 GbE is ready now - that no new breakthrough is needed to proceed. In fact, due to the immediate need for high-speed links, NEMS and carriers have implemented the 802.3ba pre-standards. There's likewise an immediate need for test equipment to be used by NEMs, carriers, and enterprises to validate full line-rate operation, verify interoperability, and validate protocol operation.

To meet the needs of 100 GbE users, Ixia has concentrated its efforts toward providing IEEE 802.3ba test equipment that tracks the evolving standards for 100 GbE.

Ixia's 100 Gigabit Ethernet Proof of Concept Demonstration offers:

An IEEE 802.3ba Task Force-based implementation
The first 100 GbE line-rate traffic generation and analysis solution
The first PCS-layer implementation using multilane distribution (MLD)

Ixia believes that its active participation in the IEEE standardization effort and its dedication to providing test equipment that paces the standardization effort will help to foster the development of 100 GbE network products. A full family of compatible, tested products will serve to ensure the acceptance of this important technology.

When available, Ixia's 100 GbE interface card will merge seamlessly with all other Ixia interfaces and test applications. As a compatible member of Ixia's test platform, it will allow full layer 2-7 testing with all types of interfaces, at all speeds.

For more information, including white papers on 100 GbE and PCS/MLD, please go to http://www.ixiacom.com/100GbE. For a private demonstration and briefing at NXTComm'08 - e-mail Thananya Baldwin, Strategic Programs Director, at tbaldwin@ixiacom.com to make an appointment to see this leading-edge technology.

One quadrillion floating point operations per second Supercomputer, “Roadrunner,” Tops 31st TOP 500 SuperComputer List

2008-06-18T11:37:00.000-07:00

MANNHEIM, Germany; BERKELEY, Calif. & KNOXVILLE, Tenn.—With the publication of the latest edition of the TOP500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers today (Wednesday, June 18), the global high performance computing community has officially entered a new realm—a supercomputer with a peak performance of more than 1 petaflop/s (one quadrillion floating point operations per second).

The new No. 1 system, built by IBM for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory and and named “Roadrunner,” by LANL after the state bird of New Mexico achieved performance of 1.026 petaflop/s—becoming the first supercomputer ever to reach this milestone. At the same time, Roadrunner is also one of the most energy efficient systems on the TOP500.

The 31st edition of the TOP500 list was released at the International Supercomputing Conference in Dresden, Germany. Since 1993, the list has been produced twice a year and is the most extensive survey of trends and changes in the global supercomputing arena.

“Over the past few months, there were a number of rumors going around about whether Roadrunner would be ready in time to make the list, as well as whether other high-profile systems would submit performance numbers,” said Erich Strohmaier, a computer scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a founding editor of the TOP500 list. “So, as the reports came in during recent weeks, it’s been both exciting and challenging to compile this edition.”

The Roadrunner system is based on the IBM QS22 blades which are built with advanced versions of the processor in the Sony PlayStation 3, displaces the reigning IBM BlueGene/L system at DOE’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Blue Gene/L, with a performance of 478.2 teraflop/s (trillions of floating point operations per second) is now ranked No. 2 after holding the top position since November 2004.

Rounding out the top five positions, all of which are in the U.S., are the new IBM BlueGene/P (450.3 teraflop/s) at DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory, the new Sun SunBlade x6420 “Ranger” system (326 teraflop/s) at the Texas Advanced Computing Center at the University of Texas – Austin, and the upgraded Cray XT4 “Jaguar” (205 teraflop/s) at DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Among all systems, Intel continues to power an increasing number, with Intel processors now found in 75 percent of the TOP500 supercomputers, up from 70.8 percent of the 30th list released last November.

Other highlights from the latest list include:

Quad-core processor based systems have taken over the TOP500 quite rapidly. Already 283 systems are using them. Two hundred three systems are using dual-core processors, only eleven systems still use single core processors, and three systems use IBMs advanced Sony PlayStation 3 processor with 9 cores.
The top industrial customer, at No. 10, is the French oil company: Total Exploration Production.
IBM held on to its lead in systems with 210 systems (42 percent) over Hewlett Packard with 183 systems (36.6 percent). IBM had 232 systems (46.4 percent) six months ago, compared to HP with 166 systems (33.2 percent).
IBM remains the clear leader in the TOP500 list in performance with 48 percent of installed total performance (up from 45), compared to HP with 22.4 percent (down from 23.9). In the system category Dell, SGI and Cray follow with 5.4 percent, 4.4 percent and 3.2 percent respectively.
The last system on the list would have been listed at position 200 in the previous TOP500 just six months ago. This is the largest turnover rate in the 16-year history of the TOP500 project.

For the first time, the TOP500 list will also provide energy efficiency calculations for many of the computing systems and will continue tracking them in consistent manner.

Most energy efficient supercomputers are based on
- IBM QS22 Cell processor blades (up to 488 Mflop/s/Watt),
- IBM BlueGene/P systems (up to 376 Mflop/s/Watt)
Intel Harpertown quad-core blades are catching up fast:
- IBM BladeCenter HS21with low-power processors (up to 265 Mflop/s/Watt)
- SGI Altix ICE 8200EX Xeon quad-core nodes, (up to 240 Mflop/s/Watt) ,
- Hewlett-Packard Cluster Platform 3000 BL2x220 with double density blades (up to 227 Mflop/s/Watt)
These systems are already ahead of BlueGene/L (up to 210 Mflop/s/Watt).

Rounding out the Top 10 systems are:

The No. 6 system is the top system outside the U.S., installed in Germany at the Forschungszentrum Juelich (FZJ). It is an IBM BlueGene/P system and was measured at 180 Tflop/s.
The No. 7 system is installed at a new center, the New Mexico Computing Applications Center (NMCAC) in Rio Rancho, NM. It is built by SGI and based on the Altix ICE 8200 model. It was measured at 133.2 Tflop/s.
For the second time, India placed a system in the top10. The Computational Research Laboratories, a wholly owned subsidiary of Tata Sons Ltd. in Pune, India, installed a Hewlett-Packard Cluster Platform 3000 BL460c system. They integrated this system with their own innovative routing technology and achieved a performance of 132.8 Tflop/s which was sufficient for No. 8.
The No. 9 system is a new BlueGene/P system installed at the Institut du Développement et des Ressources en Informatique Scientifique (IDRIS) in France, which was measured at 112.5 Tflop/s.
The last new system in the TOP10 – at No. 10 – is also an SGI Altix ICE 8200 system. It is the biggest system installed at an industrial customer, Total Exploration Production. It was ranked based on a Linpack performance of 106.1 Tflop/s.

The U.S. is clearly the leading consumer of HPC systems with 257 of the 500 systems. The European share (184 systems – up from 149) is still rising and is again larger then the Asian share (48 – down from 58 systems).

Dominant countries in Asia are Japan with 22 systems (up from 20), China with 12 systems (up from 10), India with 6 systems (down from 9), and Taiwan with 3 (down from 11).

In Europe, UK remains the No. 1 with 53 systems (48 six months ago). Germany improved but is still in the No. 2 spot with 46 systems (31 six months ago).

The TOP500 list is compiled by Hans Meuer of the University of Mannheim, Germany; Erich Strohmaier and Horst Simon of NERSC/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; and Jack Dongarra of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

"BLUEFIRE", Power 575 Hydro- Cluster, Delivered To The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)

2008-05-08T14:17:00.000-07:00

16 Dual Core POWER6 CPU's Planked By 64 DIMMs

BOULDER—The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) has taken delivery of a new IBM supercomputer that will advance research into severe weather and the future of Earth's climate. The supercomputer, known as a Power 575 Hydro- Cluster, is the first in a highly energy-efficient class of machines to be shipped anywhere in the world.

Scientists at NCAR and across the country will use the new system to accelerate research into climate change, including future patterns of precipitation and drought around the world, changes to agriculture and growing seasons, and the complex influence of global warming on hurricanes. Researchers also will use it to improve weather forecasting models so society can better anticipate where and when dangerous storms may strike.

Named "bluefire," the new supercomputer has a peak speed of more than 76 teraflops (76 trillion floating-point operations per second). When fully operational, it is expected to rank among the 25 most powerful supercomputers in the world and will more than triple NCAR's sustained computing capacity.

"Bluefire is on the leading edge of high-performance computing technology," says Tom Bettge, director of operations and services for NCAR's Computational and Information Systems Laboratory. "Increasingly fast machines are vital to research into such areas as climate change and the formation of hurricanes and other severe storms. Scientists will be able to conduct breakthrough calculations, study vital problems at much higher resolution and complexity, and get results more quickly than before."

Researchers will rely on bluefire to generate the climate simulations necessary for the next report on global warming by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which conducts detailed assessments under the auspices of the United Nations. The IPCC was a recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

"NCAR has a well-deserved reputation for excellence in deploying supercomputing resources to address really difficult challenges," says Dave Turek, vice president of deep computing at IBM. "Bluefire will substantially expand the organization's ability to investigate climate change, severe weather events, and other important subjects."

Bluefire by the numbers

Bluefire is the second phase of a system called the Integrated Computing Environment for Scientific Simulation (ICESS) at NCAR. After undergoing acceptance testing, it will begin full-scale operations in August. Bluefire, which replaces three supercomputers with an aggregate peak speed of 20 teraflops, will provide supercomputing support for researchers at NCAR and other organizations through 2011.

An IBM Power 575 supercomputer, bluefire houses the new POWER6 microprocessor, which has a clock speed of 4.7 gigahertz. The system consists of 4,064 processors, 12 terabytes of memory, and 150 terabytes of FAStT DS4800 disk storage.

Bluefire relies on a unique, water-based cooling system that is 33 percent more energy efficient than traditional air-cooled systems. Heat is removed from the electronics by water-chilled copper plates mounted in direct contact with each POWER6 microprocessor chip. As a result of this water-cooled system and POWER6 efficiencies, bluefire is three times more energy efficient per rack than its predecessor.

"We're especially pleased that bluefire provides dramatically increased performance with much greater energy efficiency," Bettge says.

The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research manages the National Center for Atmospheric Research under primary sponsorship by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this document are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation, NASA, or other funding agencies.

Related sites on the World Wide Web

Bluefire Home Page (includes fact sheets and additional images)

GridTags: The National Center for Atmospheric Research, NCAR, Power 575 Hydro- Cluster, bluefire, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, 2007 Nobel Peace Prize

Climate Computer To Consume less Than 4 Megawatts Of Power And Achieve A Peak Performance Of 200 Petaflops.

2008-05-08T12:00:00.000-07:00

BERKELEY, Calif. — Three researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have proposed an innovative way to improve global climate change predictions by using a supercomputer with low-power embedded microprocessors, an approach that would overcome limitations posed by today’s conventional supercomputers.

In a paper published in the May issue of the International Journal of High Performance Computing Applications, Michael Wehner and Lenny Oliker of Berkeley Lab’s Computational Research Division, and John Shalf of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) lay out the benefit of a new class of supercomputers for modeling climate conditions and understanding climate change. Using the embedded microprocessor technology used in cell phones, iPods, toaster ovens and most other modern day electronic conveniences, they propose designing a cost-effective machine for running these models and improving climate predictions.

In April, Berkeley Lab signed a collaboration agreement with Tensilica®, Inc. to explore such new design concepts for energy-efficient high-performance scientific computer systems. The joint effort is focused on novel processor and systems architectures using large numbers of small processor cores, connected together with optimized links, and tuned to the requirements of highly-parallel applications such as climate modeling.

Understanding how human activity is changing global climate is one of the great scientific challenges of our time. Scientists have tackled this issue by developing climate models that use the historical data of factors that shape the earth’s climate, such as rainfall, hurricanes, sea surface temperatures and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. One of the greatest challenges in creating these models, however, is to develop accurate cloud simulations.

Although cloud systems have been included in climate models in the past, they lack the details that could improve the accuracy of climate predictions. Wehner, Oliker and Shalf set out to establish a practical estimate for building a supercomputer capable of creating climate models at 1-kilometer (km) scale. A cloud system model at the 1-km scale would provide rich details that are not available from existing models.

To develop a 1-km cloud model, scientists would need a supercomputer that is 1,000 times more powerful than what is available today, the researchers say. But building a supercomputer powerful enough to tackle this problem is a huge challenge.

Historically, supercomputer makers build larger and more powerful systems by increasing the number of conventional microprocessors — usually the same kinds of microprocessors used to build personal computers. Although feasible for building computers large enough to solve many scientific problems, using this approach to build a system capable of modeling clouds at a 1-km scale would cost about $1 billion. The system also would require 200 megawatts of electricity to operate, enough energy to power a small city of 100,000 residents.

In their paper, “Towards Ultra-High Resolution models of Climate and Weather,” the researchers present a radical alternative that would cost less to build and require less electricity to operate. They conclude that a supercomputer using about 20 million embedded microprocessors would deliver the results and cost $75 million to construct. This “climate computer” would consume less than 4 megawatts of power and achieve a peak performance of 200 petaflops.

“Without such a paradigm shift, power will ultimately limit the scale and performance of future supercomputing systems, and therefore fail to meet the demanding computational needs of important scientific challenges like the climate modeling,” Shalf said.

The researchers arrive at their findings by extrapolating performance data from the Community Atmospheric Model (CAM). CAM, developed at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, is a series of global atmosphere models commonly used by weather and climate researchers.

The “climate computer” is not merely a concept. Wehner, Oliker and Shalf, along with researchers from UC Berkeley, are working with scientists from Colorado State University to build a prototype system in order to run a new global atmospheric model developed at Colorado State.

“What we have demonstrated is that in the exascale computing regime, it makes more sense to target machine design for specific applications,” Wehner said. “It will be impractical from a cost and power perspective to build general-purpose machines like today’s supercomputers.”

Under the agreement with Tensilica, the team will use Tensilica’s Xtensa LX extensible processor cores as the basic building blocks in a massively parallel system design. Each processor will dissipate a few hundred milliwatts of power, yet deliver billions of floating point operations per second and be programmable using standard programming languages and tools. This equates to an order-of-magnitude improvement in floating point operations per watt, compared to conventional desktop and server processor chips. The small size and low power of these processors allows tight integration at the chip, board and rack level and scaling to millions of processors within a power budget of a few megawatts.

Berkeley Lab is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory located in Berkeley, California. It conducts unclassified scientific research and is managed by the University of California. Visit our Website at www.lbl.gov.

The New IBM iDataplex Technology To Help WEB 2.0 Developers.

2008-04-24T00:44:00.000-07:00

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - 23 Apr 2008: Web 2.0 Expo – IBM Global Financing, the lending and leasing business segment of IBM today announced financing opportunities to help customers access an entire new category of servers uniquely designed to address the technology needs of companies that use Web 2.0-style computing to operate massive data centers with tens of thousands of servers.

The recently announced IBM “iDataPlex” system leverages IBM’s blade server heritage to build a completely new design point that:

More than doubles the number of systems that can run in a single rack,
Uses 40 percent less power while increasing the amount of computing that can be done on single system 5X,
Can be outfitted with a liquid cooling wall on the back of the system that enables it to run at “room temperature” -- no air conditioning required,
Uses all industry standard components as well as open source software such as Linux to lower costs.

“IBM Global Financing offers an end-to-end solution for customers looking to access the new IBM iDataplex technology,” said John Callies, general manager of IBM Global Financing. “From acquisition to disposal, IBM Global Financing can be there to help Web 2.0 customers and other segments with high performance environments access these benefits.”

IBM Global Financing is uniquely positioned to offer customers looking to access the IBM iDataPlex system attractive lease rates because of its ability to capture high residual value in the secondary market for these new servers. Customers in the US can also benefit from additional benefits received under the US Economic Stimulus Advantage offering developed by IBM Global Financing. Under this offering announced earlier this year, US customers acquiring the IBM iDataPlex system in 2008 can benefit from either enhanced rates or a free 3 month deferral on leases.

IBM Global Financing will also help clients accessing this technology spread the costs of these servers and the software and services needed to implement them flexibly over time. IBM Global Financing’s Project Financing offerings will help match costs to benefits, with low upfront payments during the install process, that will ramp as the benefits achieved from the new technology begins to be realized. This is a significant benefit for CEOs and CFOs looking to manage costs while simultaneously funding innovation.

Customers looking to replace their existing data center equipment with the new iDataPlex technology can also benefit from IBM Global Asset Recovery Services, which can manage the disposal of equipment in accordance with environmental regulations, paying special attention to the security of the data contained on the hard drive.
tag: WEB 2.0, IBM iDataplex technology, IBM Global Financing,

The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory celebrates the dedication of the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility

2008-04-21T13:44:00.000-07:00

ARGONNE, Ill. (April 21, 2008) – The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory today celebrated the dedication of the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF) during a ceremony attended by key federal, state and local officials.

The ALCF is a leadership-class computing facility that enables the research and development community to make innovative and high-impact science and engineering breakthroughs. Through the ALCF, researchers conduct computationally intensive projects on the largest possible scale. Argonne operates the ALCF for the DOE Office of Science as part of the larger DOE Leadership Computing Facility strategy. DOE leads the world in providing the most capable civilian supercomputers for science.

"I am delighted to see this realization of our vision to bring the power of the department's high performance computing to open scientific research," said DOE Under Secretary for Science Raymond L. Orbach. "This facility will not only strengthen our scientific capability but also advance the competitiveness of the region and our nation. The early results span the gamut from astrophysics to Parkinson's research, and are exciting examples of what's to come."

Orbach, Patricia Dehmer, DOE Office of Science Deputy Director for Science Programs, and Michael Strayer, DOE Associate Director of Science for Advanced Scientific Computing Research, attended the ALCF dedication, along with Congresswoman Judy Biggert.

DOE makes the computing power of the ALCF available to a highly select group of researchers at publicly and privately held research organizations, universities and industrial concerns in the United States and overseas. Major ALCF projects are chosen by DOE through a competitive peer review program known as Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE).

Earlier this year, DOE announced that 20 INCITE projects were awarded 111 million hours of computing time at the ALCF. The diverse array of awards includes projects led by Igor Tsigelny, San Diego Supercomputer Center, University of California, San Diego, to model the molecular basis of Parkinson's disease; William Tang, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, to conduct high-resolution global simulations of plasma microturbulence; and Jeffrey Fox, Gene Network Sciences, to simulate potentially dangerous rhythm disorders of the heart that will provide greater insight into these disorders and ideas for prevention and treatment. Academic institutions, including the University of Chicago, the University of California at Davis and Northwestern University, and large public companies such as Proctor & Gamble and Pratt & Whitney, also received computing time at the ALCF through INCITE.

Argonne has been a leading force in high-performance computers. Two years prior to the establishment of the ALCF in 2006, Argonne and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory began working closely with IBM to develop a series of computing systems based on IBM's BlueGene platform. Argonne and IBM jointly sponsor the international BlueGene Consortium to share expertise and software for the IBM BlueGene family of computers.

Since 2005, Argonne has taken delivery of a BlueGene/L and BlueGene/P that have a combined performance capability of 556 teraflops per second. Key strengths include a low-power system-on-a-chip architecture that dramatically improves reliability and power efficiency. The BlueGene systems also feature a scalable communications fabric that enables science applications to spend more time computing and less time moving data between CPUs. Together with DOE's other Leadership Computing Facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which has deployed a large Cray supercomputer, computational scientists have platforms that provide capabilities for breakthrough science.

"The ALCF has tremendous computing ability, making it one of the country's preeminent computing facilities," said Argonne Director Robert Rosner. "The research results generated by the ALCF will be used to develop technologies beneficial to the U.S. economy and address issues that range from the environment and clean and efficient energy to climate change and healthcare."

DOE selected a team composed of Argonne, PNNL and ORNL in 2004 to develop the DOE Office of Science (SC) Leadership Computing Facilities after a competitive peer review of four proposals. PNNL operates the Molecular Science Computing Facility, and LBNL runs the National Energy Research Science Computing Center. DOE SC's computational capabilities are expected to quadruple the current INCITE award allocations to nearly a billion processor hours in 2009.

For more information, please contact Angela Hardin (630/252-5501 or ahardin@anl.gov) at Argonne.

tag: DOE, Argonne National Laboratory, ALCF, INCITE, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, PNNL, ORNL, BlueGene/L, BlueGene/P, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Cray supercomputer,

OpenEdge 10.1c Released By Progress Software.

2008-04-15T21:36:00.000-07:00

BEDFORD, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 15, 2008--Progress Software Corporation (NASDAQ: PRGS), a global supplier of application infrastructure software used to develop, deploy, integrate and manage business applications, today announced the immediate availability of the Progress(R) OpenEdge(R) 10.1C business application development platform. With this release, OpenEdge becomes the first business application development platform to support IPv6(1) a next generation Internet protocol designed to bring superior reliability, flexibility and security to the Internet. Other large vendors have so far failed to reach this key government-regulated milestone, and in some cases have been forced to recall products that were originally billed as IPv6-compliant.

Additional enhancements include improved error handling capabilities, a next generation OpenEdge Sonic(TM) Enterprise ESB adapter, Unicode support for both the Oracle DataServer and MS SQL DataServer, plus support for Eclipse 3.2.2. OpenEdge is the first integrated platform optimized for the development and deployment of service-oriented business applications. It isolates developers from the complexities of today's computing environments, allowing them to concentrate on what really matters - creating the business logic of their application. Recently, IDC named Progress Software as the largest pure-play embedded database management system (DBMS) vendor in the IDC, "Worldwide Embedded DBMS 2007-2011 Forecast and 2006 Vendor Shares," Doc#209653, December 2007 report.

The independent software vendors that comprise Progress Software's network of ISVs (called Progress Application Partners) can continue to develop their software the way they have always done in order to gain IPv6 support. At the same time, applications using the IPv4 standard now have the option to upgrade at any time.

Erwin "Ray" Bender, Program Manager with GE Healthcare commented: "The limitless network addressing capability in IPv6 was essential to us in rolling out our Centricity pharmacy product for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). Within the DoD, we have 500 pharmacies located at 300 military facilities, each with label printing and robot prescription filling capabilities. With IPv4, routing and sub-netting were becoming untenable. Progress Software has been an invaluable partner working with us to meet the U.S government mandate to implement IPv6 and also achieve our corporate goal of moving towards a global pharmacy system."

IPv6 arose as the new network layer to replace the 20-year old IPv4 standard because the Internet is essentially "running out" of unique IP addresses. IPv6 provides a much larger address space that allows greater flexibility in assigning IP addresses. The standard is of particular interest to independent software developers now because the United States government set forth a mandate requiring all federal agencies to upgrade their network backbones to IPv6 by June 2008. As a result, if developers want their applications deployed by government or by government contractors, they must ensure their applications work properly in IPv6 environments.

In addition to IPv6 addressing capabilities, OpenEdge 10.1C also includes the following enhancements:

    --  Improved error handling capabilities

 --  A next generation OpenEdge Sonic(TM) Enterprise ESB adapter

 --  Unicode support added to the Oracle DataServer and MS SQL
     DataServer

 --  Additional 24x7 continuous database availability and problem
     resolution enhancements

 --  Support for Eclipse 3.2.2, enabling developers to seamlessly
     extend the OpenEdge development environment to the Windows
     Vista platform

 --  Enhanced object oriented programming capabilities to
     facilitate object reuse and improve developer productivity

 --  Improvements to OpenEdge Architect including new views and
     graphics tools, enhanced macro functionality, and new ABL
     editor wizards, dialogs, and UI features

 --  Database resiliency validations that minimize planned downtime
     for maintenance and upgrades and reduce unplanned downtime by
     identifying and correcting problems

 --  Installation enhancements that further automate the
     installation by using an electronic license addendum file to
     automatically enter serial numbers and product control codes

 --  64-bit JVM support for stored procedures and database triggers
     on all 64-bit platforms, including AIX64, Solaris64, Linux64,
     HP PA-RISC 64, and HP Itanium

More details on the OpenEdge 10.1C platform are available at: http://www.progress.com/openedge/products/openedge/

tag: Development software, Progress OpenEdge 10.1C, Enterprise ESB adapter, Oracle DataServer, MS SQL DataServer, Eclipse 3.2.2, IPv6 Development, AIX64, Solaris64, Linux64,

Charles Babbage Comes To Silicon Valley

2008-04-10T11:19:00.001-07:00

The difference engine arrived Wednesday at the Computer History Museum. Here it is being lifted off its delivery truck while still in its red shipping cover.(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)

I was there to see the unfolding of this fantastic masterpiece. But I will let the master story teller, Daniel Terdiman, tell the story. I also need to borrow one of his pictures as I left my camera in San Jose yesterday. You can see more photos at News.com, follow the link below. I will write more about the machine later.

But do not miss the 6 month window, go and see the machine, it is a wonder that will get wheels turning in your head!
Machine invented by Babbage and never built, and the only ones actually constructed were in the 19th century, the first one built in modern times was created in 1991 at London's Science Museum. Much more recently, tech millionaire Nathan Myhrvold visited the London museum and decided he wanted one for himself. So he commissioned the museum to build it for him.

Three-and-a-half years later, the machine was finished, but before it goes in Myhrvold's living room it is going to spend six months on proud display at the Computer History Museum here. And on Wednesday, it was expected to arrive at the Mountain View museum.

Daniel Terdiman's story

tag: Charles Babbage, difference engine, Nathan Myhrvold

Second Life Grid By LindenLab and IBM

2008-04-05T23:23:00.000-07:00

SAN JOSE, Calif. - 10 Oct 2007: IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Linden Lab®, creator of the virtual world Second Life® (www.secondlife.com), today announced the intent to develop new technologies and methodologies based on open standards that will help advance the future of 3D virtual worlds.

IBM in Second Life photo

IBM and Linden in Push for Open, Integrated 3-D 'Net: Two IBM employees -- represented by their 3-D avatars -- have a discussion prior to a business meeting at the IBM Open Source and Standards office in the virtual world Second Life. IBM and Linden Labs today announced they will work with a broad community of partners to drive open standards and interoperability to enable avatars -- the online persona of visitors to these online worlds -- to move from one virtual world to another with ease, much like you can move from one website to another on the Internet today. The companies see many applications of virtual world technology for business and society in commerce, collaboration, education, training and more.

As more enterprises and consumers explore the 3D Internet, the ecosystem of virtual world hosts, application providers, and IT vendors need to offer a variety of standards-based solutions in order to meet end user requirements. To support this, IBM and Linden Lab are committed to exploring the interoperability of virtual world platforms and technologies, and plan to work with industry-wide efforts to further expand the capabilities of virtual worlds.

"As the 3D Internet becomes more integrated with the current Web, we see users demanding more from these environments and desiring virtual worlds that are fit for business," said Colin Parris, vice president, Digital Convergence, IBM. "BM and Linden Lab's working together can help accelerate the use and further development of common standards and tools that will contribute to this new environment."

"We have built the Second Life Grid as part of the evolution of the Internet," said Ginsu Yoon, vice president, Business Affairs, Linden Lab. "Linden and IBM shares a vision that interoperability is key to the continued expansion of the 3D Internet, and that this tighter integration will benefit the entire industry. Our open source development of interoperable formats and protocols will accelerate the growth and adoption of all virtual worlds."

IBM and Linden Lab plan to work together on issues concerning the integration of virtual worlds with the current Web; driving security-rich transactions of virtual goods and services; working with the industry to enable interoperability between various virtual worlds; and building more stability and high quality of service into virtual world platforms. These are expected to be key characteristics facing organizations which want to take advantage of virtual worlds for commerce, collaboration, education and other business applications.

More specifically, IBM and Linden Lab plan to collaborate on:

* "Universal" Avatars: Exploring technology and standards for users of the 3D Internet to seamlessly travel between different virtual worlds. Users could maintain the same “avatar” name, appearance and other important attributes (digital assets, identity certificates, and more) for multiple worlds. The adoption of a universal “avatar” and associated services are a possible first step toward the creation of a truly interoperable 3D Internet.

* Security-rich Transactions: Collaborating on the requirements for standards-based software designed to enable the security-rich exchange of assets in and across virtual worlds. This could allow users to perform purchases or sales with other people in virtual worlds for digital assets including 3D models, music, and media, in an environment with robust security and reliability features.

* Platform stability: Making interfaces easier to use in order to accelerate user adoption, deliver faster response times for real-world interactions and provide for high-volume business use.

* Integration with existing Web and business processes: Allowing current business applications and data repositories – regardless of their source – to function in virtual worlds is anticipated to help enable widespread adoption and rapid dissemination of business capabilities for the 3D Internet.

* Open standards for interoperability with the current Web: Open source development of interoperable formats and protocols. Open standards in this area are expected to allow virtual worlds to connect together so that users can cross from one world to another, just like they can go from one web page to another on the Internet today.

IBM is actively working with a number of companies in the IT and virtual world community on the development of standards-based technologies. This week IBM hosted an industry wide meeting to discuss virtual world interoperability, the role of standards andthe potential of forming an industry wide consortium open to all. This meeting is expected to also begin to address the technical challenges of interoperability and required and recommended standards.

Linden Lab has formed an Architecture Working Group that describes the roadmap for the development of the Second Life Grid. This open collaboration with the community allows users of Second Life to help define the direction of an interoperable, Internet-scale architecture.

For more information about the Second Life Grid visit http://secondlifegrid.net/. The Second Life community maintains information about the Architecture Working Group at http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Architecture_Working_Group.

The Ninf-G5 is now available from APGRID.

2008-04-03T19:23:00.000-07:00

I recieved the following information from Ninf-G group. I have been working with Ninf-G for a long time now and the new features suggested about the Version 5.0, Ninf-G5 is making me wanting to upgrade. But because I am working with a bunch of other people, I need to plan out the upgrade. Thank you, Yoshio Tanaka.
The Ninf-G version 5.0.0 is now available for download at the Ninf project home page at: http://ninf.apgrid.org/ .

Ninf-G Version 5.0.0 (Ninf-G5) is a new version of Ninf-G which is a reference implementation of the GridRPC API.

Major functions of Ninf-G include (1) remote process invocation, (2) information services, and (3) communication between Ninf-G Client and Servers. Ninf-G4 is able to utilize various middleware for remote process invocation, however Ninf-G4 utilize the Globus Toolkit for information services and communication between Ninf-G Client and Servers.
On the other hand, Ninf-G5 does not assume specific Grid middleware as prerequisites, that is, unlike the past versions of Ninf-G (e.g. Ninf-G2, Ninf-G4), Ninf-G5 works in non Globus Toolkit
environments. Ninf-G5 is able to utilize various middleware not only for remote process invocation but also for information services and communication between Ninf-G Client and Servers. Ninf-G5 is appropriate for a single system as well as non-Globus Grid environments. It is expected to provide high performance for task parallel applications from a single system to Grid.

Here are compatibility issues between Ninf-G5 and Ninf-G4. The GridRPC API and Ninf-G API implemented by Ninf-G5 is compatible with Ninf-G4 except the two small issues (details are described in CHANGES file).
- Ninf-G Client configuration file for Ninf-G4 is not compatible with Ninf-G5.
- Due to protocol changes, Ninf-G4 client cannot communicate with
- Ninf-G5 executables and vice versa.

If you have any questions, comments, please send emails to
ninf@apgrid.org or ninf-users@apgrid.org .

http://ninf.apgrid.org/
http://www.apgrid.org/
tag: Grid Computing, Ninf-G, GridRPC API, Ninf-G API, Ninf-G4, Ninf-G5, apgrid.org, Grid middleware

OKI Develops World's First 160Gbps Optical 3R Regenerator for Ultra Long Distance Data Transmission

2008-04-01T19:35:00.000-07:00

Image From Paper Written By Kozo Fujii (PDF), Development of an Ultra High-Speed Optical Signal Processing Technology - For Practical Implementation of a 160Gbit/s Optical Communication System.
OKI Develops World's First 160Gbps Optical 3R Regenerator for Ultra Long Distance Data Transmission Enabling Ultra High Capacity Data to Be Transmitted to the Other Side of the Planet

TOKYO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd. announced it is the world’s first to achieve all optically regenerated transmission, which enables unlimited transmission of 160Gbps optical signals with single wavelength. To demonstrate the results of this project, OKI used an optical test-bed provided by the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT)’s Japan Gigabit Network II (JGN II)(1). The research that led to OKI’s achievement was conducted as part of the "Research and Development on Lambda Utility Technology,” under the auspices of NICT.

“This result proves that we can now transmit data at 160Gbps data, a speed equivalent to transmitting four movies, approximately 8 hours of data, in a single second. This amount of data at this speed can be sent over distances greater than the length of Japan, which is about 3,000km, and in fact to the other side of the planet, which is about 20,000km,” said Takeshi Kamijo, General Manager of Corporate R&D Center at OKI. “160Gbps data transmission uses an ultra high-speed optical communication technology that is expected to be commercialized in 2010 or after. OKI will analyze the findings from the field trial and develop a commercial-level 160Gbps optical 3R Regenerator.”

In a conventional optical communication system, an optical amplifier is placed every 50 to 100 km to compensate for propagation loss. Because signal distortion and timing jitter accumulate during transmission, the faster the speed of transmission, the shorter the transmission range. Therefore, to achieve longer distance, optical signals are converted into electric signals before the transmission limit is reached and converted back into optical signals and re-transmitted after the signal processing is completed. However, the speed for batch signal processing is currently limited to 40Gbps. Therefore, technologies to efficiently regenerate optical signals without converting them to electric signals are required in order to achieve a transmission speed of over 100Gbps.

To do this, OKI developed an all-optical 3R Regenerator, which uses a specialized optical-repeater technology with functions for re-amplification, re-shaping to remove optical signal wave distortion, and re-timing to avoid timing jitter accumulation. With these advances, in theory, it is possible to achieve signal processing speeds of over 200Gbps.

OKI also developed a Polarization Mode Dispersion Compensator (PMDC) that adaptively mitigates the impact of the changes in transmission line characteristics that are unique to optical fiber. Polarization mode dispersion is a phenomenon whereby wave distortion increases in an oval-shaped fiber core. The dispersion value changes depending on the temperature or transmission environment. Because the faster the transmission speed, the more sensitive it is to such changes, a PMDC is indispensable for transmission systems operating at over 40Gbps. OKI’s newly developed PMDC adopts a design to fully leverage the optical 3R Regenerator.

In the field trial using this equipment, in principle, OKI proved there was hardly any limit to transmission distance. Though 40Gbps and 80Gbps transmission using all-optical 3R Regenerators has been done in the past, OKI is the first in the world to conduct a field trial using 160Gbps optical signal regenerators.

By evaluating the performance of all-optical 3R regenerators while changing the regenerator spacing, OKI achieved a maximum regenerator spacing of 380km, which is equivalent to transmitting at 160Gbps between Tokyo and Osaka with just one optical 3R regenerator.

The findings from this trial were reported at the general conference held by The Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers on March 20.

[Glossary]

(1) Optical test-bed provided by Japan Gigabit Network II (JGN II)

Working together with JGN II, NICT provides a next generation optical network R&D environment to manufactures and institutions who do not have their own environment.
tag: Data Transmission, Oki Electric Industry Co., NICT, Japan Gigabit Network II, JGN II, 160Gbps data transmission, 3R Regenerator, PMDC, Polarization Mode Dispersion Compensator,

IBM Announces European Cloud Computing Hub in Dublin

2008-03-22T19:32:00.000-07:00

DUBLIN, IRELAND and ARMONK, NY - 19 Mar 2008: Today IBM (NYSE: IBM) and the Industrial Development Agency of Ireland (IDA Ireland) announced the establishment of Europe's first Cloud Computing Center. Located in Dublin, the new facility will serve as a hub that will deliver Cloud Computing research and services to a number of satellite facilities to be built in Europe, Middle East and Africa. IBM experts from these centers will work directly with clients in the region, helping them adopt cloud computing solutions that spur technology research and business development.

One of the Dublin center's first offerings for clients, called IBM Idea Factory for Cloud Computing, is a new service delivered directly to clients over a cloud computing environment. Using Web 2.0 technology, it allows communities of business professionals to be assembled into social networks to facilitate the development of new business ideas. IBM Idea Factory for Cloud Computing captures business processes -- from their beginnings as ideas to commercialization -- speeding up brainstorming among employees, partners, software developers and other third party participants.

"The selection of Ireland as the location for IBM's European hub for Cloud Computing highlights Ireland's role as an important contributor to IBM's global research, development and innovation strategy," said Micheál Martin TD, Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment for the Irish government. "The investment further establishes IBM Ireland's growing reputation as a high performance computing centre within IBM Corporation. IDA Ireland and IBM have a proactive long-standing relationship in advancing the Irish business and the implementation of strategic high value knowledge-based research and development investments."

"Our investments in cloud computing are a prime example of how IBM is seeking out emerging global market opportunities and new computing models that benefit IBM clients," said Steve Mills, Senior Vice President and Group Executive, IBM Software Group. "Through this new facility and the cloud computing model, the wealth of talent at IBM's software lab in Ireland will be accessible to not only the rest of Europe, but Africa and the Middle East as well."

Cloud computing is an information technology (IT) infrastructure in which dynamically shared computing resources are virtualized and accessed as a service. Cloud computing replaces the traditional data center model in which companies own and manage their own stand alone hardware and software systems. Cloud computing is an attractive proposition for small to large-sized companies. It also is a green technology model that reduces energy consumption by improving IT resource utilization, therefore requiring fewer servers to handle equivalent workloads.

The need for cloud computing is fueled by the dramatic growth in business collaboration, connected devices, real-time data streams, and Web 2.0 applications such as streaming media and entertainment, social networking and mobile commerce.

The first client of the center at Dublin will be the Sogeti Group, a specialist provider of Local Professional IT Services. Sogeti plans to use the IBM Idea Factory for Cloud Computing, providing its employees around the world with the technology to collectively brainstorm online and generate new ideas about building the "Sogeti of the Future."

"Innovation is at the heart of every successful company," said Michiel Boreel, CTO of Sogeti. "By utilizing IBM Cloud Computing Center resources, we expect to generate a wealth of real-world solutions for accelerating Sogeti's international growth and delivering step-change for our clients. Another positive benefit is increased interaction and collaboration between our consultants around the world, as well as hands-on experience with this leading-edge computing power."

"Responding to demand in the market, we are moving fast to build an integrated cloud computing operation. We are adding Europe's first Cloud Computing Center at Dublin and more facilities into a network of existing centers in China, Vietnam and the U.S. The centers can bring skills and expertise to serve our clients in building their own new enterprise data centers," said Dr. Willy Chiu, Vice President of High Performance On Demand Solutions, IBM Software Group. With such a network of centers, Dr. Chiu pointed out, "We will also address the need for open interoperability standards."

The IBM High Performance on Demand Solutions Lab will work with IDA Ireland to build this center using IBM's "Blue Cloud" technologies, a series of cloud computing offerings based on industry open standards and open source software. IBM Tivoli systems management software will manage the Cloud Computing environment.

The center will place a focus on innovation and research activities. As part of its ongoing educational initiatives, IBM has also agreed to facilitate cloud computing training for lecturers at the Dublin Institute of Technology's School of Computing. The training will help the school to foster new skills that meet the needs of this emerging computing model.

IBM Cloud Computing Milestones
IBM has been expanding its cloud computing capabilities around the world. Over the past year, IBM has provided cloud computing services to clients such as China Telecom, Wuxi Municipal Government of China, the Ministry of Science and Technology of Vietnam and others. IBM also launched "Blue Cloud," a series of cloud computing offerings, and entered into partnerships for cloud computing programs with a number of partners in Europe.

For more information about IBM cloud computing, please visit http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/zones/hipods/

tag: Cloud Computing, IBM Idea Factory, Web 2.0 technology, social networks, HPC centre, Tivoli, China Telecom, Wuxi Municipal Government of China, Blue Cloud,

CPU Core Wars Heat Up Again With AMD Quad Core Barcelona Release

2008-03-18T23:30:00.000-07:00

The Holland Computing Center at the University of Nebraska has tripled its computing power in a grid/cluster system just by replacing dual core CPUs with Quad Core CPUs.

Even after considerable delays, Advanced Micro Devices' (AMD) quad-core Barcelona chip becomes accessible to you and me after being released in April, it can not rest. It will have play catch up to Intel again as six-core processor was announced. (Intel revealed that a six-core processor, Dunnington will be available in the second half of this year.)

Although AMD initially planned to release the Barcelona at the end of 2007, AMD held back after discovering a problems at hig workloads. Instead of fixing or patching things at higher level, AMD decided to fix it at the Silicon level giving users a better performing trouble free computing.

tag: AMD Barcelona, The Holland Computing Center, quad-core Barcelona, Intel Dunnington

CERN Project Choses Supermicro SuperBlade™ Servers

2008-03-11T08:59:00.000-07:00

SAN JOSE, California, March 4, 2008 - Super Micro Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ: SMCI), a leader in application-optimized, high performance server solutions, today announced that its dual-processor (DP) SuperBlade™ servers were recently chosen by CERN (one of the world's largest research labs) for part of a significant upgrade of its computing capacity for the new LHC (Large Hadron Collider) project in Geneva. High computational performance, excellent scalability, superior energy efficiency and a competitive price/performance ratio were key factors in this prestigious selection process.

"Our success on previous CERN projects, coupled with Supermicro's industry-leading blade server technology, enabled us to distinguish ourselves from the competition," said Charles Liang, CEO and president of Supermicro. "Ideal for HPC clusters and data centers, Supermicro SuperBlade platforms deliver unsurpassed performance, computing density and energy efficiency, which saves operational costs (lower total cost of ownership) and also helps preserve our environment for future generations."

"As one of the world's leading international research centers, we are always looking to meet an ever-growing demand for computing performance, striving for maximum performance over total cost of ownership," said Helge Meinhard, coordinator for server and storage procurements, of CERN. "This is even more true this year when the LHC will start operating and producing an estimated 15 Petabytes of data each year that need to be processed. With these blade server platforms, we can efficiently realize a significant increase in computational power while minimizing our operational costs."

This latest CERN project deploys 210 Supermicro SuperBlade servers equipped with Intel® Xeon® Quad-Core processors. These servers feature Supermicro's industry-leading high-efficiency (93%*) power supplies, which help significantly increase overall system power savings.

As with some previous CERN projects, Supermicro worked closely with E4 Computer Engineering S.p.A., a highly respected supplier of major Italian and European computation and scientific research centers. Together with the supply of some storage systems, the monetary value of this order exceeds one million Euros, and it also means that E4 has now provided over 1500 total servers to CERN.

"We are proud to work with Supermicro to provide its SuperBlade solutions to CERN, one of the world's largest and most established centers for scientific research, " said Vincenzo Nuti, CEO of E4 Computer Engineering. "Supermicro's blade technology is among the best in the world, our partnership with them has already achieved great results and I am sure that, thanks to the combination of E4's know-how and Supermicro's technology, we will continue to obtain extraordinary outcomes."

Supermicro Server Building Block Solutions® offer exceptional flexibility and outstanding feature advantages. For more information on Supermicro's complete line of server and workstation solutions go to www.supermicro.com.

tag: Computational Performance, Scalability, CERN, HPC, Large Hadron Collider, SuperBlade,

Smart Grid applications Within The Grid, With BPL technology From DS2.

2008-03-04T18:43:00.000-08:00

BPL technology is used to deliver broadband services, including Internet access, VoIP, Muni WiFi, video surveillance, traffic monitoring and air quality monitoring. Smart Grid technology is used by electricity utilities for grid management applications such as outage prevision and management, advanced metering, preventive maintenance, asset management and optimisation and load management and control. Both BPL and Smart Grid applications share the same electrical network and benefit from DS2's new Alma 4.0, specifically the unique frequency translation and frequency division repeating to support network planning requirements for large networks. In addition, Alma 4.0 improves network manageability by extending SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) controls tailored for grid management.
Alma 4.0 improves network manageability by extending simple network management protocol controls tailored for grid management.

Valencia, Spain, 3rd, March, 2008 - DS2, the leading technology innovator and global supplier of high-speed powerline communications technology, today announced the availability of a new networking solution for Broadband Powerline Communications (BPL) and Smart Grid applications. The new Alma 4.0 firmware meets the network planning and manageability requirements for commercial BPL services and reliable Smart Grid applications.

The solution, available as a firmware upgrade, benefits from a new modular architecture that promotes code reuse and reduces the development cycle while allowing product developers greater access to advance on-chip features for customization and product differentiation. Performance is enhanced by up to 20 per cent which increases average throughput in the network for Broadband applications and provides unmatched resilience to impairments, such as noise on MV and LV overhead electricity lines to meet the stringent reliability requirements of Smart Grid applications.

BPL technology is used to deliver broadband services, including Internet access, VoIP, Muni WiFi, video surveillance, traffic monitoring and air quality monitoring. Smart Grid technology is used by electricity utilities for grid management applications such as outage prevision and management, advanced metering, preventive maintenance, asset management and optimisation and load management and control. Both BPL and Smart Grid applications share the same electrical network and benefit from DS2's new Alma 4.0, specifically the unique frequency translation and frequency division repeating to support network planning requirements for large networks. In addition, Alma 4.0 improves network manageability by extending SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) controls tailored for grid management.

Chano Gomez, VP Marketing DS2 stated: "Overhead, low-voltage powerlines are widely deployed because they are generally the cheapest means of delivering electricity. On the other hand, they present specific challenges when used for two-way digital communication as they are highly exposed to external interferences including noise sources due to poor connections and environmental factors like temperature and humidity. DS2 has worked extensively for the last year in close partnership with its customers to analyse and characterise the channel conditions and the other elements in the network to develop a solution that meets market requirements."

"The new Alma 4.0 firmware offers greater resilience to impairments enabling the roll out of robust, commercial grade BPL services and Smart Grid applications for powerline operators and utility applications, particularly in rural areas underserved by other broadband access technologies," stated, S.H. Kim, CTO, Kaicom.

"DS2's new firmware Alma 4.0 is the only robust solution for Smart Grid applications that offers electricity companies a solution to maximise the benefits offered by the capillarity of the electricity network to effectively manage the most dense network, and to significantly increase energy efficiency while simultaneously improving the way in which millions of users connect to the Internet. We believe that this solution positions DS2 technology to become the core of the Smart Grid revolution," said Scott E. Lee, President and CEO, IBEC.

tag: Broadband Powerline Communications, BPL, Smart Grid applications, DS2, Internet access, VoIP, Muni WiFi, video surveillance, traffic monitoring, air quality monitoring, Alma 4.0,

Opalis Wins “Products of the Year” Award for Data Center Automation

2008-01-23T05:33:00.001-08:00

Opalis Wins “Products of the Year” Award for Data Center Automation

Market Leader Recognized by SearchDataCenter.com for Innovation, Ease-of-Use, and Value in Data Center Automation Tools Category

TORONTO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Opalis Software, Inc., a market leader in IT process automation, today announced that SearchDataCenter.com, a popular TechTarget publication with a daily readership of 185,000, has named the Opalis Integration Server a Silver Award winner for its 2007 “Products of the Year” award in the category of data center automation tools. Opalis Integration Server provides orchestration, integration, and automation of IT processes across the enterprise, enabling companies to improve IT efficiency and increase business agility.

Judging for the awards was conducted by the editors of TechTarget’s SearchDataCenter.com, in conjunction with a team of users, industry experts, industry analysts, and consultants, on six criteria: innovation, performance, ease-of-integration into existing environments, ease-of-use and manageability, functionality, and value. Judges selected among data center products introduced, upgraded, and shipped between October 31, 2006 and November 1, 2007.

“We are honored to be recognized once again by industry experts for providing solutions that deliver value to our enterprise customers,” said Louise Johns, director of marketing for Opalis. “With more success in automating IT processes than any other independent vendor, we know automation is crucial for organizations that want to improve IT efficiency and reduce management costs. Acknowledgement as one of 2007’s best data center automation tools by SearchDataCenter.com is further proof of Opalis’ leadership and commitment to providing innovative and proven solutions for IT process automation to enterprise customers worldwide.”

Opalis delivers unique, out-of-the-box solutions that enable IT process automation inside and outside the data center for key IT initiatives and strategies, as well as across heterogeneous IT ecosystems. The Opalis solution automates workflow processes around critical IT initiatives, such as disaster recovery, security, provisioning, virtualization, consolidation, and ITIL. Through seamless integration with leading systems management tools from vendors including BladeLogic, BMC Software, CA, EMC, HP Software, IBM, Microsoft, and VMware, Opalis provides the integration bridge that allows IT management to orchestrate intelligent automation throughout the data center.

With Opalis, enterprises can quickly realize the benefits of IT process automation, driving down management costs and increasing productivity, while enforcing compliant best practices aimed at improving performance and availability of critical business applications.

tag: IT process automation, disaster recovery, security, provisioning, virtualization, consolidation, ITIL, Data Center Automation

Microsoft To Take On VMware With Calista, Citrix On Its Side

2008-01-21T13:09:00.000-08:00

In a move to push it's virtualization software efforts, Microsoft will announce series of of initiatives, the acquisition of privately held Calista Technologies, lowering of the price of Windows Vista used on virtualized computers, and an alliance with virtualization software company Citrix Systems. Microsoft will also permit, reversing its previous policy, all versions of Windows Vista, including the least expensive Vista Home Basic, to be virtualized.
Microsoft also confirmed its plans to deliver its Hyper-V virtualization software within six months of the launch of Windows Server 2008. The Hyper-V or hypervisor, a software layer that enables applications programs to run on virtualized hardware.
For years VMWare had the dominance of virtualization market with some minor players playing along in the windows platform. But the Linux and Unix where most virtualization happens has a few more competitors like XenSource, which I am using along side VMWare.
Before being bought by Citrix, XenSource already had a deal in place with Microsoft to work on sharing virtual machines across the companies' various virtualization products.
You can find more information at microsoft Virtualization summit

tag: virtualization, microsoft, Hyper-V, hypervisor, VMWare, XenSource, Vista Home Basic, Citrix, Calista Technologies,

Oracle BEA In A New Deal

2008-01-17T09:42:00.000-08:00

In the heels of Sun's announcement that it will acquire open source database company MySQL AB for about $1 billion, database giant Oracle said it had reached an agreement to acquire BEA for $8.5 billion.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Software giant Oracle Corp. reached a deal to buy rival BEA Systems Inc. for $8.5 billion Wednesday, just months after its initial offer was rebuffed.

Oracle agreed to pay $19.375 in cash for each share of BEA, representing a 24 percent premium to where BEA's shares closed Tuesday.

Oracle said the deal is worth $7.2 billion, since BEA has $1.3 billion in cash on hand. The deal is expected to close in mid-October.

"For Oracle, this deal is a very big step towards completing our [goal] of being a strategic software vendor of choice for our customers," Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said during a conference call with investors.

tag: oracle, BEA, SUN, MySQL

SUN Shines ON MySQL. (Sun Microsystems, Inc. to acquire MySQL AB)

2008-01-16T08:48:00.001-08:00

Sun Growth Strategy Accelerates With New Position in $15 Billion Database Market

SANTA CLARA, CA January 16, 2008 Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: JAVA) today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire MySQL AB, an open source icon and developer of one of the world's fastest growing open source databases for approximately $1 billion in total consideration. The acquisition accelerates Sun's position in enterprise IT to now include the $15 billion database market. Today's announcement reaffirms Sun's position as the leading provider of platforms for the Web economy and its role as the largest commercial open source contributor.

With millions of global deployments including Facebook, Google, Nokia, Baidu and China Mobile, MySQL will bring synergies to Sun that will change the landscape of the software industry by driving new adoption of MySQL's open source database in more traditional applications and enterprises. The integration with Sun will greatly extend the commercial appeal of MySQL's offerings and improve its value proposition with the addition of Sun's global services organization. MySQL will also gain new distribution through Sun's channels including its OEM relationships with Intel, IBM and Dell.

"Today's acquisition reaffirms Sun's position at the center of the global Web economy. Supporting our overall growth plan, acquiring MySQL amplifies our investments in the technologies demanded by those driving extreme growth and efficiency, from Internet media titans to the world's largest traditional enterprises," said Jonathan Schwartz, CEO and president, Sun Microsystems. "MySQL's employees and culture, along with its near ubiquity across the Web, make it an ideal fit with Sun's open approach to network innovation. And most importantly, this announcement boosts our investments into the communities at the heart of innovation on the Internet and of enterprises that rely on technology as a competitive weapon."

MySQL's open source database is widely deployed across all major operating systems, hardware vendors, geographies, industries and application types. The complementary product line-ups will extend MySQL's database reach and are expected to bring new markets for Sun's systems, virtualization, middleware and storage platforms.

"The combination of MySQL and Sun represents an enormous opportunity for users and organizations of all sizes seeking innovation, growth and choice," said Marten Mickos, CEO, MySQL. "Sun's culture and business model complements MySQL's own by sharing the same ideals that we have had since our foundation -- software freedom, online innovation and community and partner participation. We are tremendously excited to work with Sun and the millions of members of the MySQL open source ecosystem to continue to deliver the best database for powering the modern Web economy."

MySQL's open source database is the "M" in LAMP - the software platform comprised of Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP/Perl often viewed as the foundation of the Internet. Sun is committed to enhancing and optimizing the LAMP stack on GNU/Linux and Microsoft Windows along with OpenSolaris and MAC OS X. The database from MySQL, OpenSolaris and GlassFish, together with Sun's Java platform and NetBeans communities, will create a powerful Web application platform across a wide range of customers shifting their applications to the Web.

More than 100 million copies of MySQL's high-performance open source database software have been downloaded and distributed and an additional 50,000 copies are downloaded daily. This broad penetration coupled with MySQL's strength in Web 2.0, Software as a Service (SaaS), enterprise, telecom and the OEM embedded market make it an important fit for Sun. With MySQL, Sun will have the ability to deepen its existing customer relationships and create new opportunities with companies seeking the flexibility and ease-of-use of open source systems.

Following completion of the proposed transaction, MySQL will be integrated into Sun's Software, Sales and Service organizations and the company's CEO, Marten Mickos, will be joining Sun's senior executive leadership team. In the interim, a joint team with representatives from both companies will develop integration plans that build upon the technical, product and cultural synergies and the best business and product development practices of both companies. MySQL is headquartered in Cupertino, CA and Uppsala, Sweden and has 400 employees in 25 countries.

As part of the transaction, Sun will pay approximately $800 million in cash in exchange for all MySQL stock and assume approximately $200 million in options. The transaction is expected to close in late Q3 or early Q4 of Sun's fiscal 2008. Completion of the transaction is subject to regulatory approval and other customary closing conditions. The deal is expected to be accretive to FY10 operating income on a GAAP basis.

The management teams of both companies will host a media and analyst conference call today at 10:00 am EST, 7:00 am PST. The call can be accessed at http://www.sun.com/investors. For those unable to listen to the live conference call, a telephone replay will be available for one week following the call by dialing (888) 566-0103 or outside of the U.S. by dialing (402) 998-0958. No passcode is required to access the replay.

tag: MySQL AB, SUN, MySQL, GNU, Linux, LAMP, Sun Microsystems,

IBM is buys Israel-based storage company, XIV.

2008-01-04T11:37:00.001-08:00

IBM is buying an Israel-based storage company, XIV, for its grid-like storage product design, signaling Big Blue's interest in Web 2.0 storage technology.

The system with its NEXTRA architecture can scale up quickly and hugely, and self-tunes its performance as well as correcting data storage errors. The company said that this made management of Web 2.0 applications much easier. Changing or upgrading storage systems disruptively can cause significant data access and capture problems can adversely impact business growth when every piece of data and every second of uptime is vital.

Such applications can store petabytes of data, feature extremely rapid data growth, and very high access rates. These applications have been associated with the term 'cloud computing'.

Andy Monshaw, general manager for IBM system storage, said: "The acquisition of XIV will ... put IBM in the best position to address emerging storage opportunities like Web 2.0 applications, digital archives and digital media. The ability for almost anyone to create digital content at any time has accelerated the need for a whole new way of applying infrastructure solutions to the new world of digital information."

Continue to IBM buys grid storage company at Techworld

tag: Grid Storage, Grid Technology, IBM, cloud computing, XIV, Web 2.0, digital archives, digital media, NEXTRA,

Merry XMAS

2007-12-24T12:12:00.000-08:00

See How Santa Travel!
VOIP IP Telephony: Track Santa OnLine As NORAD Follows Santa,!
Tags: Track Santa, The Worlds Fastest Flying Object, XMAS,

Grid.org Open Source Community Shines

2007-12-21T09:26:00.001-08:00

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Grid.org, the online community for open-source cluster and grid software, grew to 481 members and recorded more than 900 downloads of the free open-source Cluster Express beta software in its first month of availability.

Grid.org was launched Nov. 12, 2007 to provide a single aggregation point for information and interaction by the community of users, developers and administrators interested in a complete grid and cluster software stack. The site’s primary open-source project, Cluster Express, provides comprehensive cluster scheduling and management by integrating proven, best-of-breed, open-source components into a seamless package that is easy to install and use.

"Response to the initial Grid.org launch and to our call for participation in the Cluster Express beta program has been gratifying,” said Steve Tuecke, co-founder and chief technology officer at Univa UD, the Grid.org site sponsor. “Obviously we tapped into pent-up demand for a complete, integrated, open-source approach to cluster and grid computing.”

Univa UD announced the initial beta program for Cluster Express last month as a way to let users positively impact and shape development of the software, expected to be generally available in early 2008. Today, the company announced availability of the second beta version of Cluster Express on Grid.org.

“We expect the release of the new beta version to drive more participation in the community, as more and more people begin to install and use the technology. With the excellent input we’re getting from users, administrators and developers, there is no doubt we will be able to integrate exactly the components and features this market wants in subsequent releases,” Tuecke said.

Grid.org is expanding to meet community requirements based on input from site visitors. Recently, the site added a Wiki that allows shared authoring of open-source grid and cluster content by the Grid.org community. Grid.org also plans to support code-sharing, allowing Cluster Express developers to contribute to the software and users to easily share enhancements and applications. This capability, along with access to the Cluster Express source repository and versioning control system, will be available to members in the first quarter of 2008. Other planned enhancements include an interactive map of cluster implementations worldwide, to visually display and provide metrics on the landscape of cluster users at a global level.

About Grid.org

Grid.org is an online community for open source cluster and grid software users, administrators and developers. The mission of the site has evolved to one focused on providing a single location where open-source cluster and grid information can be aggregated so that people with a similar range of interests can easily exchange information, experiences, and ideas related to the complete open source cluster software stack. Established in 2001, Grid.org operated as a public interest Internet research grid for over 6 years and has now broadened the reach of the site to encourage use of open source technologies for grid computing at large.

Tags: Grid technology, Grid.org, gridtoday, Cluster Express

A Real Life Death Star, A Blackhole Blasts A Galaxy

2007-12-18T12:40:00.000-08:00

A powerful jet from a super massive black hole is blasting a nearby galaxy, according to new findings from NASA observatories. This never-before witnessed galactic violence may have a profound effect on planets in the jet's path and trigger a burst of star formation in its destructive wake

Known as 3C321, the system contains two galaxies in orbit around each other. Data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory show both galaxies contain super massive black holes at their centers, but the larger galaxy has a jet emanating from the vicinity of its black hole. The smaller galaxy apparently has swung into the path of this jet.

This "death star" galaxy was discovered through the combined efforts of both space and ground-based telescopes. NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, Hubble Space Telescope, and Spitzer Space Telescope were part of the effort. The Very Large Array telescope, Socorro, N.M., and the Multi-Element Radio Linked Interferometer Network (MERLIN) telescopes in the United Kingdom also were needed for the finding.

"We've seen many jets produced by black holes, but this is the first time we've seen one punch into another galaxy like we're seeing here," said Dan Evans, a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and leader of the study. "This jet could be causing all sorts of problems for the smaller galaxy it is pummeling."

Jets from super massive black holes produce high amounts of radiation, especially high-energy X-rays and gamma-rays, which can be lethal in large quantities. The combined effects of this radiation and particles traveling at almost the speed of light could severely damage the atmospheres of planets lying in the path of the jet. For example, protective layers of ozone in the upper atmosphere of planets could be destroyed.

Jets produced by super massive black holes transport enormous amounts of energy far from black holes and enable them to affect matter on scales vastly larger than the size of the black hole. Learning more about jets is a key goal for astrophysical research.

"We see jets all over the Universe, but we're still struggling to understand some of their basic properties," said co-investigator Martin Hardcastle of the University of Hertfordshire, United Kingdom. "This system of 3C321 gives us a chance to learn how they're affected when they slam into something - like a galaxy - and what they do after that."

The effect of the jet on the companion galaxy is likely to be substantial, because the galaxies in 3C321 are extremely close at a distance of only about 20,000 light years apart. They lie approximately the same distance as Earth is from the center of the Milky Way galaxy.

A bright spot in the Very Large Array and MERLIN images shows where the jet has struck the side of the galaxy, dissipating some of the jet's energy. The collision disrupted and deflected the jet.

Another unique aspect of the discovery in 3C321 is how relatively short-lived this event is on a cosmic time scale. Features seen in the Very Large Array and Chandra images indicate that the jet began impacting the galaxy about one million years ago, a small fraction of the system's lifetime. This means such an alignment is quite rare in the nearby universe, making 3C321 an important opportunity to study such a phenomenon.

It is possible the event is not all bad news for the galaxy being struck by the jet. The massive influx of energy and radiation from the jet could induce the formation of large numbers of stars and planets after its initial wake of destruction is complete.

The results from Evans and his colleagues will appear in The Astrophysical Journal. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for the agency's Science Mission Directorate. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls science and flight operations from the Chandra X-ray Center in Cambridge, Mass.

Additional information and images are available at:
http://chandra.harvard.edu
and
http://chandra.nasa.gov
Tags: DeathStar, astronomy, Chandra X-Ray Center

Firewire (S3200) Reaches 3.2 Gigabit Transfer Rate

2007-12-17T09:41:00.000-08:00

Good News for those firewire based grids. I have a small experimental cluster running on firewire that I started years ago and so old that it is only firewire 400! May be things will change soon

Dallas, Dec. 12, 2007 -- The 1394 Trade Association today announced a new specification to quadruple the speed of FireWire to reach 3.2 gigabits per second.

The new electrical specification, known as S3200, builds upon the IEEE 1394b standard, preserving all the advantages of FireWire while offering a major and unprecedented boost in performance. The new speed uses the cables and connectors already deployed for FireWire 800 products, making the transition forward easy and convenient for 1394 product vendors and their customers. Because the 1394 arbitration, data, and service protocols were not modified for S3200, silicon and software vendors can deploy the faster speed FireWire quickly and with confidence that it will deliver its full potential performance. The S3200 specification is expected to be ratified by early February.

FireWire 800 products deployed since 2003 have proven that IEEE 1394b delivers outstanding performance. Operating without polling, without idle times, and without continuous software management, FireWire 800 efficiently delivers more than 97 percent of its bit rate as payload -- not overhead. FireWire 800 hard drives today can easily move over 90 megabytes per second. S3200 preserves 100 percent of the 1394b design efficiency and will deliver extremely high payload speeds reaching nearly 400 megabytes per second. Other interface technologies struggle to deliver half their advertised bit rate to the user, even under optimal conditions.

No Compromises to 1394’s Features

The S3200 specification brings FireWire to this new performance level without compromising existing features. For example, FireWire provides much more electrical power than any other interface, freeing users from inconvenient AC power adapters. FireWire products built using S3200 will directly connect to every previously released FireWire product. Alternative cable options are available to carry FireWire over long distances - 100 meters or more - even at high speeds.

Also, FireWire’s peer-to-peer architecture allows products to operate with a computer - or without one. This superior combination of features is not found in any other technology, which explains why over one billion FireWire ports have been shipped to date, on products as diverse as computers, cameras, televisions, hard drives, and musical instruments. IEEE 1394 also is deployed in vital applications in state-of-the-art aircraft and polar orbiting satellites.

S3200 Strengthens 1394’s Position in Storage, Consumer Electronics

One of the strongest markets today for FireWire is storage for computers. The best hard drives with FireWire 800 can move data almost three times as fast as the best hard drives with USB 2.0. Also, FireWire provides much more electrical power than USB, so FireWire-equipped hard drives can operate without an AC adapter, and at high rotational speeds. USB hard drives can fail to work from USB power, or require a second USB cable for power, or use the lowest-performance drive mechanisms because so little power is available.

With S3200 this power advantage for FireWire is fully preserved. S3200 also makes FireWire so fast that users will see no advantage from eSATA. Both interfaces are much faster than any modern hard drive mechanism, but eSATA does not provide electrical power to operate a drive. On a computer, an eSATA port is far less flexible than a FireWire port, because many more devices can connect to FireWire. For these reasons, S3200 makes FireWire the superior choice for future external storage products.

S3200 will also enhance FireWire’s strong position in consumer electronics A/V devices such as camcorders and televisions. Today, 100 percent of HD set top boxes provided by cable companies have FireWire ports. So do 100 models of HDTV. FireWire is the only separable interface today that can record HD programs in their full digital quality while also meeting the content protection requirements of copyright holders. Many companies are pursuing whole-home HD network solutions using FireWire - notably the HANA Alliance.

Technology development is also nearing completion to permit FireWire to operate over cable television coaxial cables, without disrupting the existing program content. With S3200, FireWire becomes fast enough to move even uncompressed HD signals over long distances at much lower cost than solutions such as HDMI.

"The S3200 standard will sustain the position of IEEE 1394 as the absolute performance leader in multi-purpose I/O ports for consumer applications in computer and CE devices," said James Snider, executive director, 1394 Trade Association. "There is a very clear migration path from 800 Megabits/second to 3.2 Gigabits/second, with no need for modifications to the standard and no requirement for new cables or connectors."

The Silicon Working Group developed the S3200 specification within the 1394 Trade Association, with participation by industry leaders including Symwave, Texas Instruments, LSI Corporation, and Oxford Semiconductor. S3200 specifies the electrical operation of the 3.2 Gigabit mode first specified by IEEE 1394b-2002, without changing any connector, cable, protocol, or software requirements. Based on the working group's progress, the Trade Association has set a January 2008 date for the specification to enter a ratification process.

The 1394 Trade Association is a worldwide organization dedicated to the advancement and enhancement of the IEEE 1394 audio video standard. For more information, visit www.1394ta.org

Contact:
Dick Davies
415 652 7515
ipra@mindspring.com

Tags: Firewire, S3200, IEEE 1394,

Microsoft challenges VMware with Early Release of Hyper-V

2007-12-15T21:02:00.000-08:00

Microsoft announced that a beta version of its Virtualization software is ready sooner than expected, a release that had been scheduled for early next year. On Thursday, the software maker made available a beta version of its Hyper-V hypervisor technology.
Virtualization is a technology that allows software applications and operating systems to be separated from their hardware systems and then shared over servers and storage infrastructure. Businesses then use virtualization technology to better manage large pools of data over fewer hardware systems.
New technology also allows for closer interoperability between Windows and Linux than seen in the past, and also puts it to compete with technology offered by VMware, whose virtualization technology has been the foremost player so far.

Tags: virtualization, VMWare, VMWare Fusion, Hyper-V

Getting Coherence: Free Data Grid Webinar

2007-12-13T21:55:00.000-08:00

If you work with Grids, then you know that it is not a simple matter. This year I completed two Grid Based projects. One was a Research Grid which was very large scale completely based on Linux and the other was a Data Grid, an Oracle running on Windows!.
The frist and the large was easier that at the latter stage we did not call it Grid Development or Grid Implementation. It was more like Rabbit Breading, easy and almost no effort.
Then there is this Oracle Data Grid running on Windows project. I would not say it is smooth but one thing I learned is that Gates and the group have put a lot of effort in to developing windows 2003 server. Still a way to go but acceptable. Oracle was one of my expertise so I had no issues there. But one big hardware vendor was a total disappointment. But we Goth through the project unscratched.
Now to the idea of this post. Oracle has prepared a webinar to introduce Oracle Coherence™ Data Grid. You will be able to learn;

How Oracle Coherence capabilities function, such as coherent in-memory caching, dynamic data partitioning, and parallel query and process execution, and how they are being mapped onto grid infrastructures.
How Data Grid capabilities function, how organizations are using them to solve complex computing problems and examples of how organizations are leveraging this on a global scale.
How easy it is to deploy Oracle Coherence, which is generally operational within hours.
How Oracle Coherence is fully configurable, providing total flexibility to change caching topology without code changes.

Topic: Getting Coherence: Free Data Grid Webinar
Date: Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Time: 11:00 a.m. EST
So if you are interested in Grid, Grid Technology, and or Oracle, Please follow this link and register. You for sure will learn a thing or two.
Tags: Grid technology, Oracle, gridtoday, oracle grid

Softlayer Continues to Better Itself

2007-12-10T10:05:00.000-08:00

December 5, 2007, Dallas, TX – Today SoftLayer, the industry’s fastest-growing web hosting provider, said that its string of significant product and service releases over the past months highlight the company’s vision and its course for the future. Since September, SoftLayer has announced a number of noteworthy launches and milestones.

“All of our recent additions are part of our overall strategy to automate managed services that have traditionally been performed manually and, as a result, have been labor intense and costly,” said Lance Crosby, SoftLayer Chief Executive Officer. “We firmly believe the only way to scale managed services is to automate installation, management, and monitoring.”

Mr. Crosby said that SoftLayer’s portfolio of services will continue to expand rapidly, and that the company has many other major growth opportunities on the way. “We’re well on track to have 15,000 servers deployed by the end of the first quarter in 2008. And I’m pleased to say that we’re launching a site in Seattle, our first additional geographic location,” he said.

SoftLayer has formed a 5-year, $16-million deal to deploy as many as 10,000 servers at Internap’s Seattle data center. The new site will give SoftLayer customers geographic diversity and allow them to locate their servers for optimal speed and performance. Softlayer will provide global load balancing between locations via two independent 10-gigabit high-performance IP network circuits connecting the Seattle and Dallas data centers.

SoftLayer’s latest automated services extend the flexibility and control its customers have over their systems. RescueLayer, a server recovery solution, restores failed servers by rebooting the systems into a RAM-disk rescue kernel with the server’s regular network access. A new automated, hardware-driven load-balancing solution can distribute work across servers, improving scalability and provisioning. Additionally, StorageLayer, a comprehensive storage and backup service, integrates multiple storage technologies including iSCSI and EVault. StorageLayer will soon be expanded with scalable virtualization technologies, disaster recovery options, and several enterprise services that take advantage of SoftLayer’s new Seattle site.

SoftLayer’s recent additions also have included relationships with best-in-class technologies and leaders. Softlayer released PassMark® BurnInTest™ hardware testing at no-charge to customers. They also began providing Urchin by Google Analytics, an enterprise-class website analysis package. The company also announced it became a Microsoft Gold Partner with certification in Networking Infrastructure Solutions, Advanced Infrastructure Solutions, Hosting Solutions Specialization and Storage Solutions Specialization.

“We’re proud of how much we’ve brought to market and how quickly,” said Mr. Crosby. “We’ve built an enormous amount of momentum. And we’re picking up more speed every day.”

FortressITX Selects 3Tera’s AppLogic Grid OS For Utility Computing/Grid Solutions

2007-11-30T19:08:00.000-08:00

CLIFTON, NJ--(BUSINESS WIRE)--FORTRESS ITX, the premier boutique Internet infrastructure outsourcing partner for the enterprise, announced today it has launched a new grid hosting platform Dynamic Grid and service plans based on 3Tera's award winning AppLogic Grid Operating System. FortressITX customers can now take advantage of a highly available, highly scalable grid infrastructure to host their online applications.

"With utility computing and virtualization taking hold as a viable IT solution, we see early adopters benefiting the most through shorter time to market and dramatic reduction of deployment and management costs," says Jason Silverglate, President and CEO of FortressITX. “Now, by partnering with 3Tera and leveraging their AppLogic grid OS, FortressITX solves all of that with a highly available and scalable way to deploy additional infrastructure in seconds to handle customer's demand for high traffic."

"We are happy to welcome FortressITX to the AppLogic family of partners, because we share the belief that online businesses should be able to easily manage, deploy and scale their applications without being constrained by the complexity and cost of owning and operating their own infrastructure," said Bert Armijo, Senior Vice President, Sales, Marketing and Product Management, 3Tera, Inc. "The new partnership enables FortressITX customers to run Web applications on demand to compete cost-effectively in today's online marketplace."

For more information, visit http://www.fortressITX.com/grid.

Rackable Systems, Inc. Passes $1 Billion Mark in Lifetime Sales

2007-11-30T18:59:00.000-08:00

FREMONT, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Rackable Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:RACK), a leading provider of servers and storage products for large-scale data centers, today announced that the corporation has reached the $1 billion mark in lifetime sales of products and services.

Founded in 1999, Rackable Systems has become the fastest growing x86 server provider among the top five providers in North America based on analyst firm Gartner’s comprehensive review of the market (“Servers Quarterly Statistics Worldwide: Database,” November 2007), having deployed hundreds of thousands of systems worldwide since its inception.

“Hitting the billion dollar mark is a true milestone and a tribute to Rackable Systems’ leadership in the markets we serve,” said Mark J. Barrenechea, president and CEO of Rackable Systems. “Our Eco-Logical^TM servers and storage have been deployed for hundreds of customers around the world, and our growth is a testament to the demand for our energy-efficient solutions.”

Rackable Systems award-winning server and storage products can help reduce data center operational costs and improve total cost of ownership. With patented innovations in rack density, DC Power distribution and cooling designs, Rackable Systems products help improve efficiency and performance in even the most complex data centers.

First Ever Green500 List Released at SC07

2007-11-16T06:58:00.000-08:00

Blue Gene/P Solution and eServer Blue Gene Solution top the list with nine out of first ten. Almost all the Supercomputers that I have access, made the list! Proud to be green and computing!

BLACKSBURG, Va., Nov. 15 -- Virginia Tech released the inaugural Green500 List this morning at the Supercomputing 2007 (SC07) conference in Reno, Nev.

"The Green500 List is intended to serve as a ranking of the most energy-efficient supercomputers in the world and as a complementary view to the Top500 List," said Wu Feng, associate professor in the Departments of Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech.

All systems on the Green500 List are ranked by MFLOPS/Watt (million floating-point operations per second per watt). The MFLOPS numerator is the reported LINPACK sustained (Rmax) value recorded by the Top500 List. (LINPACK is a linear algebra software package used to create equations to challenge computers.) The watts denominator is either a direct measurement of the system running the LINPACK benchmark at Rmax load or a peak power estimate based upon machine specifications.

For now, systems must first place in the current Top500 List in order to be considered for the Green500. Of the Top500 machines, more than 200 machines directly reported their measured power for the Green500 List. In cases where measured power was not provided, the Green500 List used peak power, as estimated by the Green500 team, based on the best available specifications for the systems in the Top500 List.

The November 2007 Green500 List is a combined ranking of all 500 machines based on the best (highest) MFLOPS/Watt rating available from either direct measurements or peak power estimations. Because peak power numbers do not necessarily reflect power consumption under load, the Green500 team specifically discourages direct comparisons of measured and peak values in the current Green500.

"As this list is the first attempt of its kind, the rankings are open to interpretation by the media, associated vendors, and the general community," said Kirk Cameron, associate professor of computer science at Virginia Tech. "The Green500 team encourages fair use of the list rankings to promote energy efficiency in high-performance systems. We discourage use of the list to disparage a particular vendor, system, or user," he concluded.

The list itself and the methodology used to rank the systems are works-in-progress, Feng said, adding that this will evolve over time to ensure accuracy and more closely reflect energy efficiency in the fast-paced, ever-changing, high-performance community.

HPCwire Readers and Editors Name Rackable Systems the “Best Price/Performance HPC Hardware Solution” in the Industry

2007-11-16T06:45:00.000-08:00

FREMONT, Calif., November 13, 2007 – Rackable Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: RACK), a leading provider of servers and storage for large-scale data centers, today announced that the company has been awarded a 2007 HPCwire Readers’ Choice Award in the category of Best Price/Performance HPC Hardware Solution. The award honors Rackable Systems’ broad range of high-performing Eco-Logical™ servers and storage, designed to reduce operational expenses and improve TCO in even the most demanding data center environments.

“Rackable Systems is honored to be recognized for delivering compelling x86 solutions to the HPC community,” said Mark J. Barrenechea, president and CEO of Rackable Systems. “Our build-to-order model allows us to tailor each solution to the price/performance needs of each customer, helping to enable the Eco-Logical data center.”

Rackable Systems’ innovative x86 server and storage designs help reduce power and cooling costs while maximizing performance, providing an ideal solution for HPC deployments. With products ranging from Eco-Logical rack-mount servers to the company’s RapidScale clustered storage and its award-winning ICE Cube modular data center, Rackable Systems continues to provide solutions that are customized and built to order to meet the unique needs of any data center. Carefully designed to reduce power consumption and increase reliability, Rackable Systems solutions enable data centers to “go green” without compromising application performance.

“At the University of Florida, we have been pleased with the power and space efficiency provided by our Rackable Systems servers and storage. With their high-density racks and dual-core servers, we were able to house a cluster that would have required three times the space and twice the power of competing solutions,” said Dr. Charles Taylor, senior HPC systems engineer and associate director of the University of Florida HPC Center. “We applaud Rackable Systems for bringing high-performance, environmentally-friendly solutions to HPC environments like our own.”

The coveted HPCwire Readers’ Choice Awards are determined through online polling of the global HPCwire audience, along with a rigorous selection process involving HPCwire editors and industry luminaries. The awards are an annual feature of the publication and constitute prestigious recognition from the HPC community. The 2007 Readers’ Choice awards generated a record number of responses from the several hundred thousand readers who access HPCwire each week.

More information on these awards can be found at the HPCwire website (http://www.HPCwire.com).
Rackable Systems.

SC07, The Super Computing Conference!

2007-11-16T06:29:00.001-08:00

I finally managed to sneak in to the SC07, Super Computing Conference that I attend every year, SC06, SC05, etc. I almost missed the opportunity due to prior commitments. But two days are better than nothing and I have a load of information to write about. As usual I learned a lot already there will be more by the end of the day.
SC07, sponsoredby ACM and IEEE Computer Society, will showcase how high-performance computing,networking, storage and analysis lead to advances in research, education andcommerce. This premiere international conference includes technical andeducation programs, workshops, tutorials, an exhibit area, demonstrations andhands-on learning. For moreinformation, please visit http://sc07.supercomputing.org/.

SUN Solaris on DELL PowerEdge servers.

2007-11-14T14:21:00.000-08:00

"We have 12 million (Solaris) licenses in the marketplace, and a majority of them aren't running on Sun hardware," Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's chief executive, said during a keynote speech at Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco.

The multi-year distribution agreement was announced live from Oracle OpenWorld, where Sun President and CEO, Jonathan Schwartz and Dell Chairman and CEO, Michael Dell, are keynote speakers. With this announcement, Dell is expanding the range of enterprise-class operating systems it offers to its customers and Sun is expanding the reach of its Solaris OS.

As part of the relationship, Dell and Sun will cooperate on system certification and the development of offerings based on Solaris and Dell solutions. In addition, Dell and Sun have agreed to work together to secure support from key ISVs for Solaris on Dell PowerEdge servers. Both companies will work to ensure the combination of Dell PowerEdge servers and the Solaris OS delivers customer choice and value for applications that demand reliability, security, scalability, performance and integrated virtualization.

"Dell's offering of Solaris redefines the market opportunity for both companies," said Jonathan Schwartz, president and CEO, Sun Microsystems. "The relationship gives Dell broader reach into the global free software community with Solaris and OpenSolaris and gives Sun access to channels and customers across the volume marketplace."

"Part of our focus to simplify IT means delivering customers choice and by adding Solaris to our solutions set we are able to do that," said Michael Dell, chairman and CEO, Dell.

Bittorrent Distribution System is expanded at ibiblio

2007-11-08T13:36:00.001-08:00

ibiblio has added four more open source Osprey bittorrent distribution system. Some of my favorite projects have been mirrored and gone are the speed problems we had on ibiblio. It makes a sense to get what you need without taxing the system a lot. If a lot of people are using the system, the benefits will rise. So grab you project files from ibiblio bittorrent syste.
The ibiblio-hosted or -mirrored projects now serving over torrent.ibiblio.org now include some of My favorites:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Available On Demand on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud

2007-11-08T07:51:00.000-08:00

on the heels of Redhat 5.1 announcement, Redhat and Amazon announced a new business deal between the two to provide better product offering to customers.

Raleigh NC - November 7, 2007 - Red Hat (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the beta availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), a web service that provides resizeable compute capacity in the cloud. This collaboration makes all the capabilities of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, including the Red Hat Network management service, world-class technical support and over 3,400 certified applications, available to customers on Amazon's proven network infrastructure and datacenters.

The combination of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Amazon EC2 changes the economics of computing by allowing customers to pay only for the infrastructure software services and capacity that they actually use. Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Amazon EC2 enables customers to increase or decrease capacity within minutes, removing the need to over-buy software and hardware capacity as a set of resources to handle periodic spikes in demand.

For more information on the offering, visit www.redhat.com/solutions/cloud.

Redhat 5.1 ready for standalone systems, virtualized systems, appliances and web-scale "cloud" computing environments.

2007-11-08T07:41:00.000-08:00

Raleigh NC - November 7, 2007 - Red Hat (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1, with integrated virtualization. This release provides the most compelling platform for customers and software developers ever, with its industry-leading virtualization capabilities complementing Red Hat's newly announced Linux Automation strategy. It offers the industry’s broadest deployment ecosystem, covering standalone systems, virtualized systems, appliances and web-scale "cloud" computing environments.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1 virtualization delivers considerably broader server support than proprietary virtualization products, and up to twice the performance. This allows greater server consolidation and eliminates a key obstacle to deploying virtualization more widely. And Red Hat Enterprise Linux customers benefit from one of the industry's largest and fastest-growing set of certified applications.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux's deployment flexibility uniquely allows customers to deploy a single platform, virtual or physical, small or large, throughout their enterprise. By providing one platform that spans the broadest range of x86, x86-64, POWER, Itanium and mainframe servers, regardless of size, core count or capacity, customers can gain dramatic operational and cost efficiencies when compared to proprietary solutions. And fully integrated virtualization, included at no additional cost, amplifies these benefits. Notably, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1 provides enhanced support for virtualization of Microsoft Windows guests, providing significant performance improvements for Windows XP, Windows Server 2000, 2003 and Windows 2008 beta guests.

Red Hat works closely with its hardware partners to lead the industry in providing support for new hardware features, an advantage unique to the open source development model. This is reflected in support for features such as Nested Page Tables in the new release.

"Our initial testing indicates that Red Hat Enterprise Linux virtualization delivers significant performance gains for our compute intensive applications and should provide an additional layer of abstraction that will help us manage multiple competing priorities," said Derek Chan, Head of Digital Operations for DreamWorks Animation.

"With Red Hat Enterprise Linux virtualization, customers can easily deploy any application, anywhere at anytime," said Paul Cormier, executive vice president, Worldwide Engineering at Red Hat. "Other virtualization products don't scale to support large numbers of cores or CPUs, which limit customers’ ability to utilize their infrastructure, or force customers to deploy multiple virtualization platforms. With Red Hat Enterprise Linux, customers enjoy a flexible yet consistent application environment for all of their virtualization requirements: from small servers to mainframe-class systems, for Linux and Windows servers and for even the most demanding workloads."

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1 is immediately available to customers via Red Hat Network, Red Hat's management and automation platform. Red Hat Network provides customers a common platform for managing both physical and virtual servers, eliminating the need for organizations to acquire, manage and train their staff on new tools to manage virtual servers. Red Hat Network allows customers to provision, monitor and manage their servers throughout the entire lifecycle.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux virtualization includes the ability to perform live migration, allowing customers to seamlessly move running applications from one server to another, maximizing resource utilization in the face of changing business requirements. Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform includes high-availability clustering, storage virtualization and failover software to provide enhanced levels of application availability, for both physical and virtual servers.

Utilizing multiple cores and CPUs is more important than ever with the release of Intel’s latest Quad-Core Intel^® Xeon^® processors and Itanium^® processors. Users deploying Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1 and utilizing Intel^® Virtualization Technology can experience even greater gains. "Red Hat and Intel have worked together in delivering a high-performance platform for virtualization," said Pat Gelsinger, senior vice president, general manager, Intel Digital Enterprise Group. "Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1 allows customers to scale up their virtual infrastructure to run high-performance virtual machines that utilize IntelÃ‚Â® Virtualization Technology and all the processing power of the Quad-Core Intel^® Xeon^® processors and high-end Itanium^® servers, without the overhead seen in traditional virtualization environments."

For more information about Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, visit www.redhat.com/rhel.

Record-Setting Fifth Planet Found Orbiting Nearby Star, 55 Cancri, in the constellation Cancer.

2007-11-07T06:58:00.001-08:00

55 Cancri, which is 41 light years away and can be seen with the unaided eye or binoculars

The newly discovered planet weighs about 45 times the mass of Earth and may be similar to Saturn in its composition and appearance. The planet is the fourth from 55 Cancri and completes one orbit every 260 days. Its location places the planet in the "habitable zone," a band around the star where the temperature would permit liquid water to pool on solid surfaces. The distance from its star is approximately 116.7 million kilometers (72.5 million miles), slightly closer than Earth to our sun, but it orbits a star that is slightly fainter.

"The gas-giant planets in our solar system all have large moons," said Debra Fischer, an astronomer at San Francisco State University and lead author of a paper that will appear in a future issue of the Astrophysical Journal. "If there is a moon orbiting this new, massive planet, it might have pools of liquid water on a rocky surface."

Fischer and University of California, Berkeley, astronomer Geoff Marcy, plus a team of collaborators discovered this planet after careful observation of 2,000 nearby stars with the Shane telescope at Lick Observatory located on Mt. Hamilton, east of San Jose, Calif., and the W.M. Keck Observatory in Mauna Kea, Hawaii. More than 320 velocity measurements were required to disentangle signals from each of the planets.

"This is the first quintuple-planet system," said Fischer. "This system has a dominant gas giant planet in an orbit similar to our Jupiter. Like the planets orbiting our sun, most of these planets reside in nearly circular orbits."

The first planet orbiting 55 Cancri was discovered by Marcy and Butler in 1996; the planet, the size of Jupiter, was the fourth-known star with an exo-planet ever discovered. It orbits its star every 14.6 days.

The second, third and fourth were discovered over the next eight years.

Continuous Data Protection for Linux with SteelEye Data Replication for Linux v6

2007-11-06T08:39:00.000-08:00

Palo Alto, CA - November 5, 2007 - SteelEye Technology® Inc., a leading provider of award-winning data protection, high availability and disaster recovery products for Linux and Windows, announced today the release of SteelEye Data Replication for Linux v6. The new product is the first on Linux to combine continuous data protection (CDP) features such as "any point in time rewind" with comprehensive data replication capabilities which support multiple replication targets and provide combining data mirrors across any combination of LANs and WANs. The combination of CDP with off-site replication assures businesses that critical data can be restored in case of data corruption, viruses, user errors, or in the face of large-scale physical disasters.

Any Point in Time Rewind
"Any Point in Time Rewind" is a vital CDP element that rewinds data back in time to any moment before data loss occurred. In minutes, data can be restored and business is back to normal. Adding such capabilities to an already robust data replication solution, SteelEye Data Replication also provides organizations with a CDP option that enhances protection of more than one backup of critical business data, whether on-site or remote. Immediately upon noticing data integrity issues, users can mount the replicated data on a backup volume and then move backward and forward through the data stream via time stamps or other user-defined bookmarks until the optimal set of data is constructed. That data are then placed into service and normal operations resume.

Integrated Data Recovery Wizard
The process of managing data recovery is handled through a built-in Data Recovery Wizard. This simple-to-use tool guides users through the building of a new temporary dataset. It validates the dataset for consistency via appropriate tools and then loops back through these steps as needed until the optimal dataset is built. An intelligent binary search technique speeds the rebuilding process to optimize recovery time. Once completed, the wizard places the dataset back into service, onto the production server, and resumes normal business operations.

Multiple Replication Targets
For companies who need the enhanced protection of more than one real-time backup of critical business data, SteelEye Data Replication supports multiple replication targets, which can span any combination of local and remote sites. Local data recovery is assured by continuous backup within the local data center, while asynchronous remote data replication protects against nearby disasters.

More About SteelEye Data Replication for Linux
Leveraging open source features contributed by SteelEye into the 2.6 kernel, SteelEye Data Replication for Linux provides both host-based volume replication and continuous data protection for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Novell SLES environments. An integrated compression engine along with a block-level change-only architecture reduces network bandwidth requirements and speeds replication.

Used by itself, SteelEye Data Replication delivers real-time backup of business-critical data across either a Wide or Local Area connection. When combined with LifeKeeper for Linux, cluster configurations can be built, ranging from low-cost two node shared nothing clusters to geographically-dispersed clusters for disaster recovery protection.

Dell Pland to Acqiure EqualLogic for $1.4 billion

2007-11-05T17:26:00.000-08:00

Round Rock, Texas, and NASHUA, N.H.

Dell has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire EqualLogic, a leading provider of high-performance iSCSI storage area network (SAN) solutions uniquely optimized for virtualization. The acquisition will strengthen Dell’s product and channel leadership in simplifying and virtualizing IT for customers globally. iSCSI SAN technology represents the fastest growing part of the storage business.

“Our customers will be dealing with the largest increase in data we have seen in our history over the next few years,” said Michael Dell, Chairman and CEO, Dell. “Leading the iSCSI revolution will help Dell accelerate IT simplification and virtualization and will drive the Dell value proposition into more areas of the enterprise storage business,” Mr. Dell said.

Under the terms of the agreement, Dell will purchase EqualLogic for approximately $1.4 billion in cash. The acquisition of EqualLogic is expected to close late in the fourth quarter of Dell's fiscal year 2008 or early in the first quarter of fiscal 2009. The company expects the acquisition to be dilutive to earnings per share, excluding the amortization of intangibles, by $0.02 to $0.05 in aggregate for Fiscal 2009 and Fiscal 2010. The acquisition has been approved by the board of directors of each company and is subject to regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions.

After completion of the transaction, Dell plans to grow EqualLogic’s successful channel-partner programs with current and future EqualLogic-branded products, and also plans to incorporate EqualLogic technology into future generations of its Dell PowerVault storage line available through the channel and direct from Dell.

Dell Inc

EqualLogic

Geemodo: AMD Quad Core Phenom X4, pricing revealed

2007-11-04T23:39:00.000-08:00

Whoa, multicore Grid is near!
Geemodo: AMD Quad Core Phenom X4, pricing revealed

massively multi-player Games (MMORPGs) on Grid

2007-11-01T12:17:00.001-07:00

Since I wrote about G-Cluster almost two years ago, I have not read too much about Grid and The Games. But a visit to ISGTW made me smile, I want to play Games on my Grid!

Cmputer games have gone hand-in-hand with IT innovation for more than 30 years, capturing the imagination and devotion of millions.

edutain@grid is bringing games to the grid, again.

edutain@grid (Contract No. 034601) is a project funded by the European Commission under the 6th Framework Programme. Its duration is 36 months and started on 1 September 2006.

edutainatgrid: massively multi-player "killer" grid applications

New World's Most Powerful Vector Supercomputer From NEC, SX-9

2007-10-29T08:05:00.000-07:00

Fujitsu and Hitachi in Japan and IBM, Cray in US were the teraflop giants and always competed with each other to be the most powerful computer manufacturing company.
So keeping up with the tradition, NEC Japan, on Thursday announced the launch of what it called the world's most powerful supercomputer on the market, SX-9.
SX-9, the fastest vector supercomputer with a peak processing performance of 839 TFLOPS(*1). The SX-9 features the world's first CPU capable of a peak vector performance of 102.4 GFLOPS(*2) per single core.

In addition to the newly developed CPU, the SX-9 combines large-scale shared memory of up to 1TB and ultra high-speed interconnects achieving speeds up to 128GB/second. Through these enhanced features, the SX-9 closes in on the PFLOPS(*3) range by realizing a processing performance of 839 TFLOPS. The SX-9 also achieves an approximate three-quarter reduction in space and power consumption over conventional models. This was achieved by applying advanced LSI design and high-density packaging technology.

In comparison to scalar parallel servers(*5) incorporating multiple general-purpose CPUs, the vector supercomputer(*4) offers superior operating performance for high-speed scientific computation and ultra high-speed processing of large-volume data. The enhanced effectiveness of the new product will be clearly demonstrated in fields such as weather forecasting, fluid dynamics and environmental simulation, as well as simulations for as-yet-unknown materials in nanotechnology and polymeric design. NEC has already sold more than 1,000 units of the SX series worldwide to organizations within these scientific fields.

The SX-9 is loaded with "SUPER-UX," basic software compliant with the UNIX System V operating system that can extract maximum performance from the SX series. SUPER-UX is equipped with flexible functions that can deliver more effective operational management compatible with large-scale multiple node systems.
The use of powerful compiler library groups and program development support functions to maximize SX performance makes the SX-9 a developer-friendly system. Application assets developed by users can also be integrated without modification, enabling full leverage of the ultra high-speed computing performance of the SX-9.

"The SX-9 has been developed to meet the need for ultra-fast simulations of advanced and complex large-capacity scientific computing," Yoshikazu Maruyama, senior vice president of NEC Corp., said in a statement.
NEC's supercomputers are used in fields including advanced weather forecasting, aerospace and in large research institutes and companies. The SX-9 will first go on display at a supercomputing convention next month in Reno, Nevada.

Specifications
	Multi-node	Single-node
	2 - 512 nodes*3	1 node
	SX-9	SX-9/A	SX-9/B
Central Processing Unit (CPU)
Number of CPUs	32 - 8,192	8-16	4-8
Logical Peak Performance*1	3.8T - 969.9TFLOPS	947.2G - 1,894.4GFLOPS	473.6G - 947.2GFLOPS
Peak Vector Performance*2	3.3T - 838.9TFLOPS	819.2G - 1,638.4GFLOPS	409.6G - 819.2GFLOPS
Main Memory Unit (MMU)
Memory Architecture	Shared and distributed memory	Shared memory
Capacity	1T - 512TB	512GB、1TB	256GB,512GB
Peak Data Transfer Rate	2048TB/s	4TB/s	2TB/s
Internode Crossbar Switch (IXS)
Peak Data Transfer Rate	128GB/s×2 bidirectional (per node)	-

(1) *TFLOPS:: one trillion floating point operations per second
(2) *GFLOPS:: one billion floating point operations per second
(3) *PFLOPS:: one quadrillion floating point operations per second
(4) Vector supercomputer:: A supercomputer with high-speed processor(s) called "vector processor(s)" that is used for scientific/technical computation. Vector supercomputers deliver high performance in complex, large-scale computation, such as climates, aeronautics / space, environmental simulations, fluid dynamics, through the processing of array-handling with a single vector instruction.
(5) Scalar parallel supercomputer:: A supercomputer with multiple general purpose processors suitable for simultaneous processing of multiple workloads such as genomic analysis or easily paralleled computations like particle computation. They deliver high performance by connecting many processors (also used for business applications) in parallel.

What has Betty Cooker and Gridka got in Common, They Both use " ... in box " solution

2007-10-28T12:11:00.000-07:00

Creating a cake became much easier in the late 40s when Betty Crocker released cake mix in a box.

Do you ever wish there was an equivalent for computing grids? Now there is, almost.

An approach known as “grid in a box” is making it possible to gather all the ingredients required to make grid computing more affordable and accessible for participating grid centers.

“The idea of ‘grid in a box’ is to put all needed grid services on one piece of hardware,” says Oliver Oberst, Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe. “Instead of having several machines working together to host the infrastructure of a grid site, there are several virtual machines working on one computer—the ‘box.’”

Traditionally, building a grid site with gLite—the middleware designed by Enabling Grids for E-sciencE and used predominately in Europe—required multiple different grid services to be installed, each on a different machine.
Continue reading at International Science Grid.....

VMWare Fusion 1.1 RC for Intel Macs released

2007-10-26T12:56:00.001-07:00

If you are virtualizing your computing on a Mac, VMWare is out to help you with new release of the VMWare fusion. The Fusion 1.1 RC is said to have fixed some of the problems the fusion had but these features should certainly get your attension;

VMware Fusion 1.1 now includes English, French, German, and Japanese versions
Unity improvements include:
- My Computer, My Documents, My Network Places, Control Panel, Run, and Search are now available in the Applications menu, Dock menu, and the Launch Applications window
- Improved support for Windows Vista 32 and 64-bit editions
- Improved Unity window dragging and resizing performance
Boot Camp improvements include:
- Support for Microsoft Vista in a virtual machine
- Improved support for preparing Boot Camp partitions
- Automatically remount Boot Camp partition after Boot Camp virtual machine is shut down
Improved support for Mac OS X Leopard hosts
Improved 2D drawing performance, especially on Santa Rosa MacBook Pros

Download the Fusion 1.1 RC and 30 day together with 30 day trial Key.

Wubi Super Easy Ubuntu Installer for Windows

2007-10-25T14:21:00.000-07:00

Wubi is a free Ubuntu installer for Windows users that will bring you into the Linux world with a single click. Wubi allows you to install and uninstall Ubuntu as any other Windows application. If you heard about Linux and Ubuntu, if you wanted to try them but you were afraid, this is for you.
Beauty is that if you find the Ubuntu to your liking, you can make your machine dual boot with another small utility.

Web Based Virtual Machine Creator for VMWare

2007-10-25T14:05:00.000-07:00

VMWare's virtualization technology allows you to run other operating systems within your native OS, but VMWare Player doesn't provide an easy way to create the disk images to host your guest OS. Enter the online service Virtual Machine Creator.
Via Wired, from a Reddit post.

Hiachi Quadruples Current Harddrives, To 4TB for Desktop and TO 1TB for Notebook Drives.

2007-10-15T09:17:00.001-07:00

2x Reduction of Nanometer Recording Technology Shows Promise for 1TB Notebook and 4TB Desktop PCs in 2011

TOKYO, Oct. 15, 2007 -- Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE: HIT / TSE: 6501) and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST), announced today they have developed the world's smallest read-head technology for hard disk drives, which is expected to quadruple current storage capacity limits to four terabytes (TB) on a desktop hard drive and one TB on a notebook hard drive.

Researchers at Hitachi have successfully reduced existing recording heads by more than a factor of two to achieve new heads in the 30-50 nanometer (nm) range, which is up to 2,000 times smaller than the width of an average human hair (approx. 70-100 microns). Called current perpendicular-to-the-plane giant magneto-resistive*1 (CPP-GMR) heads, Hitachi's new technology is expected to be implemented in shipping products in 2009 and reach its full potential in 2011.

Hitachi will present these achievements at the 8th Perpendicular Magnetic Recording Conference (PMRC 2007), to be held 15th -17th October 2007, at the Tokyo International Forum in Japan.

"Hitachi continues to invest in deep research for the advancement of hard disk drives as we believe there is no other technology capable of providing the hard drive's high-capacity, low-cost value for the foreseeable future," said Hiroaki Odawara, Research Director, Storage Technology Research Center, Central Research Laboratory, Hitachi, Ltd. "This is an achievement for consumers as much as it is for Hitachi. It allows Hitachi to fuel the growth of the ‘Terabyte Era’ of storage, which we started, and gives consumers virtually limitless ability for storing their digital content."

Hitachi believes CPP-GMR heads will enable hard disk drive (HDD) recording density of 500 gigabits per square inch (Gb/in²) to one terabit per square inch (Tb/in²), a quadrupling of today's highest areal densities. Earlier this year, Hitachi GST delivered the industry's first terabyte hard drive with 148 Gb/in², while the highest areal density Hitachi GST products shipping today are in the 200 Gb/in² range. These products use existing head technology, called TMR*2 (tunnel-magneto-resistive) heads. The recording head and media are the two key technologies controlling the miniaturization evolution and the exponential capacity-growth of the hard disk drive.

Cutting Through the Noise - The Strongest Signal-to-Noise Ratio

The continued advancements of hard disk drives requires the ability to squeeze more and more, and thus, smaller and smaller data bits onto the recording the media, necessitating the continued miniaturization of the recording heads to read those bits. However, as the head becomes smaller, electrical resistance increases, which in turn also increases the noise output and compromises the head's ability to correctly read the data signal.
High signal output and low noise is what is desired in hard drive read operations, thus, researchers try to achieve a high signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio in developing effective read-head technology. Using TMR head technology, researchers predict that accurate read operations would not be conducted with confidence as recording densities begin to surpass 500 Gb/in².

The CPP-GMR device, compared to the TMR device, exhibits less of an electrical resistance, resulting in lower electrical noise but also a smaller output signal. Therefore, issues such as producing a high output signal while maintaining a reduced noise to increase the S/N ratio needed to be resolved before the CPP-GMR technology became practical

In response to this challenge, Hitachi, Ltd. and Hitachi GST have co-developed high-output technology and noise-reduction technology for the CPP-GMR head. A high electron-spin-scattering magnetic film material was used in the CPP-GMR layer to increase the signal output from the head, and new technology for damage-free fine patterning and noise suppression were developed. As a result, the signal-to-noise ratio, an important factor in determining the performance of a head, was drastically improved. For heads with track widths of 30nm to 50nm, optimal and industry-leading S/N ratios of 30 decibel (dB) and 40 dB, respectively, were recently achieved with the heads co-developed at Hitachi GST's San Jose Research Center and Hitachi, Ltd.'s Central Research Laboratory in Japan.

Recording heads with 50 nm track-widths are expected to debut in commercial products in 2009, while those with 30 nm track-widths will be implemented in products in 2011. Current TMR heads, shipping in products today, have track-widths of 70 nm.

The Incredible Shrinking Head

The discovery of the GMR effect occurred in 1988, and that body of work was recognized just last week with a Nobel Prize for physics. Nearly two decades after its discovery, the effects of GMR technology are felt more strongly than ever with Hitachi's demonstration of the CPP-GMR head today.

In 1997, nine years after the initial discovery of GMR technology, IBM implemented the industry's first GMR heads in the Deskstar 16GXP. GMR heads allowed the HDD industry to continue its capacity growth and enabled the fastest growth period in history, when capacity doubled every year in the early 2000s. Today, although areal density growth has slowed, advancements to recording head technology, along with other HDD innovations, are enabling HDD capacity to double every two years.

In the past 51 years of the HDD industry, recording head technology has seen monumental decreases in size as areal density and storage capacity achieved dizzying heights. The first HDD recording head, called the inductive head, debuted in 1956 in the RAMAC - the very first hard drive - with a track width of 1/20th of an inch or 1.2 million nm. Today, the CPP-GMR head, with a track-width of about one-millionth of an inch or 30 nm, represents a size reduction by a factor of 40,000 over the inductive head used in the RAMAC in 1956.

Notes

*1: CPP-GMR: As an alternative to existing TMR heads, CPP-GMR head technology has a lower electrical resistance level, due to its reliance on metallic rather than tunneling conductance, and is thus suited to high-speed operation and scaling to small dimensions.
*2: TMR head: Tunnel Magneto-Resistance head
A tunnel magneto-resistance device is composed of a three layer structure of an insulating film sandwiched between ferromagnetic films. The change in current resistance which occurs when the magnetization direction of the upper and lower ferromagnetic layers change (parallel or anti parallel) is known as the TMR effect, and ratio of electrical resistance between the two states is known as the magneto-resistance ratio.

Hitachi News release.

Patent Infringement Law suit againt Linux (Is RedHat and Novell Linux?)

2007-10-12T14:44:00.000-07:00

Well, it was bound to happen: Linux vendors Red Hat and Novell have been sued for patent infringement. Groklaw is reporting that on Tuesday, the two companies were sued by IP Innovation LLC and Technology Licensing Corp. for violating three patents having to do with windowing user interfaces.

The lawsuit represents the first test of what happens when open source collides with patents, and it's interesting for a couple reasons. First, notice that all the other Linux vendors are missing from the defendants list, most notably IBM. That could be because IBM has already licensed the patents in a different context. (In June, Apple settled a patent infringement lawsuit with the same plaintiffs over at least one of the patents involved here.)

Stollen from Frank Hayes Blog

UNIVA UD Unveils blueprint for the world’s first industrial strength open source cluster and grid product suite

2007-10-12T13:39:00.001-07:00

Taking aim squarely at vendors who offer only costly, confusing and limiting proprietary grid and cluster products, Tuecke and Venkat will lead a discussion about key issues raised by customers opting for open source implementations.

“Increasingly, businesses are embracing open source software models in many areas, but until now there has been no complete, integrated open source stack for cluster and grid,” says Tuecke, Univa UD’s chief technology officer. “Given Univa’s open-source pedigree and United Devices’ commercially proven technology, we believe that gap can now be filled and expect the resulting merged solution set will drive many more cluster and grid operators to open source implementations. There is no longer any reason to tie up cluster and grid systems with costly and limiting proprietary software.”

Univa and United Devices, pioneers and leaders in cluster and grid technology, announced the merger of the two companies last month, becoming Univa UD. At that time, the company promised it would outline an “open source industrial strength” product roadmap at the Open Grid Forum.

Based on a free, downloadable open source cluster management product, Univa UD has said its end-to-end High Performance Computing (HPC) open source product suite will also include a fully supported pro version with rich functionality and an enterprise-class grid solution growing out of UD's award-winning Grid MP™ technology.

“Our vision is to emulate and improve on the open source models of software companies who have gone before us,” said Tuecke, “companies like Red Hat and SugarCRM.”

Tuecke, along with Dr. Ian Foster and Dr. Carl Kesselman, founded Univa in 2004, as well as the Globus Project almost a decade earlier. They are known as the father’s of grid computing for their pioneering efforts in developing open grid software and standards.

Prior to founding Univa, serving as its initial CEO and subsequently becoming its CTO, Tuecke was responsible for managing the architecture, design, and development of Globus software, as well as the Grid and Web Services standards that underlie it such as OGSA and WSRF.

In 2002, Tuecke received Technology Review magazine’s TR100 award, which recognized him as one of the world’s top 100 young innovators. In 2003, he was named (with Foster and Kesselman) by InfoWorld magazine as one of its “Top 10 Technology Innovators” of the year.

“There continues to be a tremendous growth in the cluster market in terms of revenues and number of units,” said Venkat, a co-founder of United Devices in 1999. “The open source grid and HPC expertise from Univa and the commercial technology and experience from United Devices put Univa UD in a unique position to serve this market. End-to-end, we can now offer the world’s best-of-breed open source technologies backed with commercially proven solutions and world-class services and support.”

Univa UD’s session at OGF21 will be 1:30 p.m. to 3 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 16, in the Portland Room at the Grand Hyatt Seattle. Univa UD said details of its new product roadmap also will be available at the company’s exhibit during the conference.

We Need another Sputnik

2007-10-04T10:43:00.000-07:00

Although I was not born yet, the launch of Sputnik had a large impact on my life. Being in a family that were scientists for a few generations make you see and think differently. The Sputnik has floored the accelerator on my families. They were so busy they forgot to make me. I was born seven years after my brother! My big event was the moon landing, even though I could barely understand it, I was feeling sorry for Micheal Collins and his son (why? you tell me!). So here is almost exact my take on sputnik affair!

8. Speaking of General Medaris, in the final chapter of your book, “Sputnik’s Legacy,” you quote him: “If I could get ahold of that thing, I would kiss it on both cheeks.” What did he mean?

Sputnik galvanized America. We put billions of dollars into education. We began producing 1,500 PhDs a week. Teachers were going to special summer institutes, Middlebury to study language, MIT to study technology. It brought the middle classes back into education, which was drifting toward elitism. It showed us at our best.

We get Dr. Spock, Dr. Seuss. Rote learning starts to be abandoned. Dick and Jane are skewered on a plate. There’s less Latin and Greek, more Spanish and Russian.

Betty Friedan is working on a book about Smith College, and she said Sputnik got her thinking. Stephen King is in a theater, watching a movie called “Earth vs. the Flying Saucer,” about Martians coming down to Malibu and taking women back to Mars. They stopped the movie in the middle to announce Sputnik. That was the beginning of his dread. The world had been reality versus fantasy, and now the two had come together.

Sputnik changed a lot of people.

9. What you’re saying flies in the face of the people who say that too much money has been spent on the space program, that in more recent times it could have been used for other things...

It got us all the things we now rely on, laptop computers, cellphones. Countries that don’t have the copper to string phonelines? Cellphones. The space race has given the world a whole boost at every level. The space guys were the first guys to learn to do biometric readings of people’s bodies. There was a large technology transfer.

At its highpoint, it was four percent of our economy, now it’s only seven-tenths of one percent. And there’s an $8 billion positive balance of payments in the aerospace industry, meaning you take all the money coming into this country—other countries paying Boeing to build their planes, hiring American pilots, for instance—and it’s more than other segments of industry.

Sputnik resulted in the creation of DARPA, the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency. That was hundreds of millions of dollars into a think tank that was supposed to come up with those things that would prevent us from being surprised. There were these huge computers bulk processing, at MIT, at Cal Tech. And these huge computers could talk to each other.

When the government was finished with the ARPA net, they said, Let’s give it to the world. Think what would have happened if they had decided to auction it off. So it’s because of Sputnik that we’ve got the internet.

10. We were talking earlier in the conversation about how because of Sputnik we had more scientists, more engineers, better education. Somehow it feels as if today we’ve gone back to pre-Sputnik days. Now you hear about how we need more scientists, more engineers, better education because that sector of our society all seems to be going overseas...

Well, that’s the argument everybody’s making, we may need another Sputnik moment, something to galvanize us and get us going again. Katrina could have been that moment, but it wasn’t. I thought that bridge collapse in Minneapolis might have been it, that we might have recognized we’re letting the country deteriorate while we sit in corners with our ipods.

The above are three of the 10 questions and answers published by CBS News after interviewing Paul Dickson, who wrote Sputnik: The Shock of the Century. Published in 2001, it’s just been re-released; he’s also the co-writer on a new documentary, Sputnik Mania.
Visit CBS and read the rest. I am very sure we need another sputnik. I don't want to be another beatnik.

Embedded VMWare called ESX Lite

2007-09-10T10:06:00.001-07:00

VMware is launching a new, embedded version of its flagship ESX Server hypervisor, along with a disaster recovery tool and an update for its virtual desktop broker.
The news aritcle

Quad Core AMD Opteron released

2007-09-10T09:58:00.001-07:00

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Advanced Micro Devices Inc. launched its highly publicized new server chip Monday, delivering the biggest jolt to its product lineup in four years.

The company's redesigned Opteron processor is the first from AMD to feature four computing engines on a single chip instead of just one or two.

AMD's belated entry into the "quad-core" market is a critical element in the financially strapped company's offensive against Intel Corp., the world's largest semiconductor company, whose market value of $148 billion makes it 21 times bigger than AMD.

Intel has outspent its smaller rival on new technologies and better absorbed the pain of a brutal price battle that has led to embarrassing market-share losses AMD hopes its new chip will reverse.

Also Monday, Intel raised its third-quarter revenue outlook on stronger-than expected demand for its microprocessors. The company now expects revenue between $9.4 billion and $9.8 billion, up from its previous range of $9 billion to $9.6 billion.

AMD says the newly redesigned Opteron chip is an important improvement in high-performance computing. It's using a different engineering strategy than Intel.

Intel's four-core chips are actually a package of two chips with two cores each. In AMD's four-core chips, all the cores are placed on a single piece of silicon.

Industry observers have debated whether either strategy matters in terms of performance.

Adding more processors allows chips to handle multiple task at once, a crucial ability, particularly in corporate data centers.

AMD was not a player in the server processor market until it released its first Opteron chip in 2003. Demand soared because of its energy efficiency and other technological features, and by last year, Sunnyvale-based AMD had grown to capture about a quarter of the worldwide market, according to Mercury Research.

But Santa Clara-based Intel fought back last year with a strong new lineup of chips based on a new design, and it also beat AMD to market with its first four-core chips.

Compared with Intel's new products, AMD's product line began to look dated, and its market share plunged. AMD now controls only about 13 percent of the server market.

"What is key about this product is really getting back some of that lost share," said Dean McCarron, Mercury Research's president and principal analyst.

AMD's path toward Monday's launch has been rocky, with AMD Chief Executive Hector Ruiz saying the chips are launching about six months behind schedule. Some analysts and investors expressed disappointment that the chips available at launch are slower than expected — operating at 1.9 gigahertz to 2.3 gigahertz, depending on the model.

AMD said it will boost their speed later this year. By comparison, Intel's fastest Xeon server processors operate at 3.0 gigahertz, which measures processing cycles per second.

Lenovo ready to give you Linux on ThinkPads, Go Vote for your Distro

2007-09-08T18:06:00.000-07:00

If you were following the Lenovo blogs, inside the box, they have posted a follow up to the post,
Linux On a Mobile PC and you can vote for your favorite distro that you would like on your ThinkPad. I have had Ubuntu on my Thinkpad(s). I have tried many other distributions but Ubuntu gave me the least trouble and of course that is what I voted for!
If you have been shouting about manufacturers not providing Linux with computers, then this is the chance for influencing one of the largest notebook manufacturers in the world!.
Here is the link to the article,Linux Follow Up by Matt Kohut

3Tera is showcases the AppLogic 2.1 release at the Office 2.0 Conference 2007

2007-09-07T18:12:00.000-07:00

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--3Tera, Inc., the leading innovator of grid computing and utility computing services for web applications, announced today at the Office 2.0 Conference in San Francisco, CA the commercial availability of AppLogic 2.1. The new 2.1 release of the award winning AppLogic grid operating system adds comprehensive Application Monitoring and support for multiple CPUs per appliance. SaaS and Web 2.0 companies can benefit from greater scalability, improved resource utilization, unprecedented visibility and control over application performance.

“Utility Computing or Cloud Computing is quickly gaining popularity with online service companies,” said Peter Nickolov, president and COO of 3Tera. “Our latest version provides unprecedented control of applications and virtual private data center management for production environments, allowing Web 2.0 and SaaS companies to grow and self manage their services using only a browser.”

“The product we are announcing today has undergone more testing in beta then any previous release of AppLogic,” said Bert Armijo, VP of Marketing and Product Development at 3Tera. “AppLogic 2.1 allows for greater scalability and control of the infrastructure, assuring users of their ability to grow.”

“We’ve been using the new AppLogic for a month. It had a huge impact on enhancing the manageability of our application, especially for scaling Apache and MySQL,” said Joost Schreve, founder and CEO of EveryTrail, Inc., a Web 2.0 startup building an online platform for visualizing travel experiences by mapping and describing geographical locations. “Taking advantage of the monitoring capabilities in the new release helped us easily identify elements that needed more resources. We were able to increase the performance and scale our applications easily.”

3Tera is showcasing the AppLogic 2.1 release at the Office 2.0 Conference in San Francisco, CA. Office 2.0 is held at the St. Regis Hotel, September 5 – 7. For more information on Office 2.0, including the conference agenda, visit www.o2con.com/index.jspa.

Network Appliance sues SUN over ZFS

2007-09-06T09:39:00.000-07:00

The storage supplier's suit alleges that Sun's ZFS file system, which is available as open source code, infringes seven NetApp patents. The suit seeks damages and a court injunction that would force Sun to take ZFS off the market - or much more likely, make some sort of settlement with NetApp.
In a blog article posted yesterday, Hitz accused Sun of "using its patent portfolio as a profit center." Sun fired back with an email statement alleging that NetApp's action will not succeed, and is a "direct attack on the open source community," and "an attempt to inhibit the meteoric rise of open source technologies."
While NetApp stressed that it would not be chasing down non-commercial use of ZFS users, it said during a teleconference yesterday that it has not decided its answer to the "complex and subtle" question of whether to extend its legal action to third-party ZFS licensees that might be competing with NetApp.
The storage supplier said it is aware that ZFS is already part of some commercial products, and said that it has put in a courtesy call to Apple, which is beta testing an operating system, Leopard, that includes ZFS.
I found this comment and answer on Dave's Blog interesting.
"

Hi Dave,

Is the second part of NetApp's suit retaliatory, or had NetApp planned to pursue legal action all along? This is the first I've heard of NetApp's intent to sue for WAFL infringement - in the 5-plus years since the inception of ZFS - despite the existence of NetApp patents dating back to the mid-90s. It is a fair question given the context and timing of NetApp's suit.

Even if NetApp demonstrates a legal basis, cynics such as myself might see this as a SCO-like attempt to, at the very least, hang a cloud of legal uncertainty over a competing technology in an attempt to stifle its adoption.

Certainly, a company is obligated to protect its IP. I simply found it interesting that NetApp took so long to respond.

-- joseph martins

--------------------------------------------------------------
You asked whether NetApp planned pursue legal action all along, independent of Sun’s action. I think the most accurate answer is that Sun goaded us into paying attention. In our 15 years of existence, we have only filed one other IP lawsuit, so it’s not like we have an aggressive track record, or teams of people standing by, ready to sue.

On the other hand, I won’t pretend that we would never have sued if Sun hadn’t approached us first. We focus on innovation as a company, and we do intend to defend our intellectual property.

-- Dave Hitz"

Acer to acquire Gateway to counter Lenavo's moves

2007-08-27T09:27:00.000-07:00

TAIPEI, Taiwan -

Acer Inc. plans to acquire U.S. computer maker Gateway Inc. for $710 million in a deal that will push the Taiwanese company past China's Lenovo Group as the world's third largest vendor of personal computers.

Acer said Monday it is offering to buy Gateway for $1.90 per share in a deal expected to close by December, pending regulatory approvals in Taiwan and the U.S.

The offer price amounts to a premium of 57 percent to Gateway's Friday closing price of $1.21. Gateway traded at $81.50 in 1999.

Gateway shares jumped nearly 49 percent, or 59 cents, to $1.80 Monday.

The acquisition has been unanimously approved by the boards of directors of both Gateway and Acer and is subject to standard closing conditions, it said.

With Gateway, Acer Foils Lenovo

White Open Wireless Grid

2007-08-18T19:22:00.000-07:00

It will be great to run a dynamic grid using white spaces that are unused by anyone and are unlicensed at the moment. I was wondering about this more after reading a post on Washington Post "The white open spaces". We are already working on a Wireless mesh based grid application. Hey com on FCC, I don't watch transmitted TV anyway, Cable and Satellite are sucking my purse dry!
There are much talk about White space within the TV bands. White space within the TV band is unlicensed, like WiFi, but is physically better suited than WiFi for broadband transmission. Given the innovation that WiFi access has spurred, as well as the potential for broader coverage both in rural areas and in urban community wireless networks (such as the free WiFi network in Dupont Circle), the FCC has already decided to allow WSDs that are fixed in one location starting after TV's digital transition in 2009. The more controversial issue the commission is considering is whether to also allow portable WSDs, which could be used in products such as laptops or personal digital assistants. Portable WSDs are more difficult to design because they'd need to instantaneously identify which channels are being used in different regions.
To test the feasibility of such devices, last year the FCC started soliciting designs for devices that can identify unoccupied channels and then transmit wireless signals that don't interfere with licensed broadcasts. Two prototypes, submitted by Microsoft and Philips, recently failed to meet the proposed sensing and non-interference requirements, the FCC says. Microsoft is disputing the test results for its prototype.

Certainly the FCC shouldn't approve WSDs that will obliterate TV. But just because these prototypes fell short doesn't mean the technology can never work. The limited success of these devices and another designed at the University of Kansas certainly gives hope that someday a non-interfering product could exist. After all, low-power wireless microphone operators often already use white spaces for similar short-distance broadcasts without a license -- although they're supposed to get licenses -- and they coexist peacefully with TV stations. (Wireless microphone operators also oppose sharing white spaces with unlicensed Internet service providers.)
Read the complete report at washington post

Interactive Linux Kernel Map

2007-08-15T19:37:00.000-07:00

Constantine Shulyupin, Freelance Embedded Linux Engineer has created an interactive Linux Kernel map. I was happy to be having clicked through it. I will certainly return there to garner more knowledge when for various reasons I have to DIGG kernel. I am very sure a visit is worth it!, if you are interested in Linux Kernel.

Interactive Linux Kernel Map

Citrix enters Virtualization Market, Acquires XenSource

2007-08-15T19:08:00.000-07:00

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Aug. 15, 2007 — Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:CTXS), the global leader in application delivery infrastructure, today announced a definitive agreement to acquire XenSource, Inc. of , a privately held leader in enterprise-grade virtual infrastructure solutions, for approximately $500 million in a combination of cash and stock, which includes the assumption of approximately $107 million in unvested stock options. This acquisition moves Citrix into adjacent server and desktop virtualization markets, expected by Citrix to grow to nearly $5 billion over the next four years.¹ The combination of Citrix and XenSource brings together significant customer, technical, channel and go-to-market synergies. This will allow Citrix to extend its leadership in the broader Application Delivery Infrastructure market by adding key enabling technologies that make the end-to-end computing environment far more flexible, dynamic and responsive to business change. The acquisition will also strengthen each company’s strong partnership with Microsoft and commitment to the Windows platform.

The acquisition is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2007 subject to the satisfaction of closing conditions.

Leveraging the Power of Xen

XenSource is the leading provider of enterprise-class virtual infrastructure solutions built on the open source Xen® hypervisor. Originally created by the founders of XenSource at the University of Cambridge, the Xen virtualization “engine” is now developed collaboratively by an active open source community of senior engineers at many of the industry’s most innovative infrastructure companies, including leading hardware vendors like Intel, IBM, HP and AMD. This open collaborative approach significantly accelerates the innovation of the Xen engine, leading to continual state-of-the-art improvements in performance, scalability and cross-platform support. The next-generation Xen architecture is widely acknowledged for its industry-leading performance, efficiency, security and native support for the latest hardware-assisted virtualization features from Intel, AMD and leading device vendors.

Today’s acquisition announcement comes on the heels of a substantial new release of XenEnterprise™, the company’s flagship commercial product line powered by the Xen engine. XenEnterprise v4 marks a significant milestone in XenSource’s transition from a next-generation technology company into a leading provider of comprehensive enterprise-class virtual infrastructure solutions. With powerful new management, availability and ease-of-use features, XenEnterprise v4 raises the bar as the most open, scalable, high performance virtualization platform on the market. In a recent head-to-head product comparison published this week in CRN, the industry’s leading publication for channel resellers and integrators, reviewers praised XenEnterprise v4 as an “easy-to-use, feature rich offering that is quickly catching up to its main rival”. Channel partner and customer enthusiasm over the XenEnterprise product line has lead to a rapid increase in customer demand. Version 4 will further accelerate an installed base that has more than doubled in the last 90 days to over 650 customers.

“The combination of Citrix and XenSource brings together both presentation and server virtualization to deliver more choice and flexibility to the market, particularly Citrix's strong installed base,” said John Humphreys, program vice president of Enterprise Virtualization for IDC. “By adding mobility, monitoring and storage integration in the recently introduced XenEnterprise v4, XenSource has narrowed the capability gap and delivered a viable virtualization solution for server consolidation.”

Upon close of the acquisition, the XenSource team and products will form the core of the new Virtualization & Management Division of Citrix dedicated to building and growing these important new businesses. Peter J. Levine, XenSource CEO, will lead the new division, reporting directly to Mark Templeton, Citrix president and CEO. Under Peter’s leadership, Citrix is also committed to maintaining and growing its support for the Xen open source community, led by XenSource co-founder and Xen project leader, Ian Pratt. Between now and the close of the acquisition, XenSource will work with the key contributors to the Xen project to develop procedures for independent oversight of the project, ensuring that it continues to operate with full transparency, fairness and vendor neutrality – principles that are critical to the continued role of Xen as a freely available open source industry standard for virtualization.

“Today is a great day for the virtualization market because customers will now have a strong alternative that is open, proven and backed by one of the most successful end-to-end software infrastructure leaders in the entire industry,” said Peter J. Levine, CEO of XenSource. “This move is not about competing for the five percent of the market that is already being served. It’s about steering into the 90 percent white space that is wide open, both at the server and in new emerging opportunities at the desktop.”

“This announcement represents a key milestone for the Xen project,” said Ian Pratt, leader of the Xen project and co-founder of XenSource. “Citrix is committed to our community and the principles of transparency and neutrality that allow us to work together on the reference standard for virtualization, promoting the rapid, ubiquitous adoption of virtualization.”

Strong Alignment with Microsoft

The acquisition will also strengthen each company’s strong partnership with Microsoft and commitment to the Windows platform. As an independent company, XenSource has built a strategic relationship with Microsoft designed to ensure broad interoperability between XenSource products and the upcoming Microsoft Windows hypervisor, code named “Viridian”. This relationship complements and broadens the successful partnership between Citrix and Microsoft in the Windows application delivery, application networking and branch office infrastructure markets.

“Although the market is still in the earliest phase, virtualization already offers significant opportunities for cost savings and innovation,” said Bob Muglia, senior vice president, Microsoft Server & Tools Business. “Citrix and XenSource have long been strong partners for Microsoft and it is exciting to see them team up to help move the market forward.”

Extending Application Delivery Infrastructure from the Datacenter to the Desktop

Virtualization has become one of the most talked-about technologies in recent years because it breaks the “hard-coded” link between hardware and software, allowing individual computing components to be dynamically combined and reassembled for maximum efficiency and agility. Citrix has long been the leading provider of virtualization technologies at the user tier of computing with products that deliver mission-critical applications to end users with the best performance, security and cost savings. This acquisition will allow Citrix to extend its use of virtualization into the logic and data tier of applications, improving overall customer value and enhancing its position as a market leader in end-to-end application delivery infrastructure.

In the datacenter, this means extending virtualization to the servers that run the business logic of applications and the storage systems that manage application data. Citrix customers and partners are increasingly requesting non-proprietary, easy-to-use server virtualization solutions that are optimized to work best on the Microsoft Windows platform. Citrix currently intends to distribute the XenEnterprise product line through more than 5,000 channel partners with proven expertise in enterprise datacenter solutions built on the Windows Server platform. The company also plans to leverage its strong relationships with leading server and datacenter infrastructure partners to create additional routes to market through OEM sales channels.

In the storage market, Citrix will continue the XenSource strategy of leveraging key industry partners to ensure that the open-architecture XenEnterprise product line fully supports leading storage management and infrastructure solutions and a robust ecosystem of storage software vendors. The two companies share a strong belief that customers should be able to manage their virtual environments with the same proven storage management solutions they use for their physical environments. This strategy is exemplified by the recently announced partnership between Symantec and XenSource which ensures that XenEnterprise works transparently with Symantec’s Veritas Storage Foundation and Veritas NetBackup solutions.

"Symantec and XenSource share a common belief that customers want unified server and storage virtualization," said Rob Soderbery, senior vice president, Data Center Management Group at Symantec. "Incorporation of Symantec's Veritas Storage Foundation solution into XenSource open-architecture virtualization technology delivers that capability. We look forward to continuing our collaboration with Citrix and XenSource to help customers simplify data center operations and dramatically reduce costs."

At the desktop, the combination of Citrix and XenSource will help make the emerging market for virtual desktop delivery a mainstream reality. Industry experts estimate that up to 30 million office workers will move to virtual desktops over the next five years, creating a new $1 billion market for desktop virtualization.² While much of the underlying technology to realize this vision exists today, the available solutions are still far too complex and expensive for most customers to assemble, integrate and manage. By combining the capabilities of XenEnterprise v4 with the newly-released Citrix Desktop Server™, Citrix will be able to provide customers with a comprehensive set of desktop delivery solutions that offer unparalleled economics, ease-of-use and end user experience. Citrix further intends to enhance this strategy by incorporating other relevant application delivery infrastructure technologies such as Citrix EdgeSight™ end user experience monitoring, Citrix Access Gateway™ for secure application access, Citrix WANScaler™ for accelerated delivery to branch office users, Citrix® GoToAssist™ for remote desktop support and the OS-streaming and provisioning capabilities from its recent Ardence acquisition.

“We are tremendously excited about the opportunity to add the XenSource products, team and culture to the Citrix family," said Mark Templeton, president and chief executive officer for Citrix. "Incorporating XenSource’s dynamic virtualization services into our market-leading application delivery infrastructure will enable our entire product line to be more flexible, agile and dynamic, qualities that have never been more important than they are today. We believe application delivery will be a defining issue for IT over the next decade because applications are the language of business. Companies that are fluent with application delivery will be the winners, while those who do not will lag behind, struggling with the pace of change in an increasingly dynamic world.”

Terms of the Agreement

Under terms of the definitive agreement, Citrix will acquire XenSource for approximately $500 million in a combination of cash and stock, which includes the assumption of approximately $107 million in unvested stock options.

The acquisition has been approved by the board of directors of each company and is expected to close during the fourth quarter of 2007. The acquisition is subject to various closing conditions, including regulatory review and approval under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976, approval by the stockholders of XenSource, Citrix becoming current in its periodic reporting obligations and other customary conditions.

Assuming the transaction closes as expected, the acquisition is expected to add approximately $1 million in revenue and $3 million in cost of revenues and operating expenses to fiscal year 2007. The acquisition is expected to add approximately $50 million in revenue and $60 to $70 million in total cost of revenues and operating expenses to fiscal year 2008. The transaction will also result in approximately an $8 to $10 million non-cash expense charge for the write-off of in-process research and development in the quarter in which the acquisition closes.

These estimates of cost of revenues and operating expenses do not take into account any stock-based compensation expense, amortization expense, or other charges resulting from the closing of the acquisition.

Conference Call Information

Citrix will host a conference call today at 8:30 a.m. ET to discuss the financial aspects of this transaction. The call will include a slide presentation, and participants are encouraged to listen to and view the presentation via webcast at http://www.citrix.com/investors.

The conference call may also be accessed by dialing: (888) 799-0519 or (706) 634-0155, using passcode: CITRIX. A replay of the webcast can be viewed by visiting the Investor Relations section of the Citrix corporate Web site at http://www.citrix.com/investors for approximately 30 days. In addition, an audio replay of the conference call will be available through August 17, 2007, by dialing (800) 642-1687 or (706) 645-9291 (passcode required: 13525141).

Grid Computing Term may fade?, Long Live Grid

2007-08-15T00:40:00.000-07:00

I read an interesting article on computerworld today. I understand what it is trying to say but I don't by the theme of the article. But it is a good article, extensive, I think you should read it too, if you are interested in Grid computing. Let the author know what you think. Link is at the end.
August 14, 2007 (Computerworld) -- Depending on who describes it, grid computing has grown from its roots in high-performance computing into an enterprise technology that provides for shared resources. Or it's an overhyped, meaningless term that will soon disappear in the wake of advances in virtualization and utility computing.

Arguments abound on what constitutes grid computing. But at its core, grid is really an enabling technology that provides on-demand access to computing resources -- including systems, storage and networking -- and data, regardless of location. And because that sounds so similar to how most vendors currently define virtualization, some analysts say the term grid computing may not stick.

The concept behind the technology will likely live on, though, as customers tap into compute power available on underutilized servers, primarily through virtualization. William Fellows, an analyst at The 451 Group and author of a report entitled "Grid Computing: State of the Market" (download PDF), maintains that the term will likely be both more significant and less used in 2007. "Grid computing will be more relevant as grids are used to support far more than high-performance computing tasks, but less used as vendors seek to be associated with far more activity, far higher up the stack, than grid computing."

Grid computing: Term may fade, but features will live on

'Google of Image Searching' with a little help from Grid!

2007-08-12T21:58:00.000-07:00

Imense Using Grid to Become 'Google of Image Searching'

Looking for images on the Internet can be a frustrating business. Whether you want the perfect sunset over the sea or the London skyline by night, you’re dependent on people to describe the images on their Web pages. Now, Imense Ltd, a high-tech Cambridge start-up, has announced new investment to help them become the "Google of image searching," using Imense's revolutionary technology. To test its software, they’ve made an unexpected partnership with a group of particle physicists using a massive computer grid.

Cambridge Ontology's technology makes content-based retrieval of images as easy and powerful as the search for text documents on the Internet. Our technology combines state-of-the-art computer vision with machine learning, natural language processing, and information retrieval methods to give an incomparable search experience.

The system automatically labels semantic visual content in images. Our cutting edge computer vision and visual classifiers allow the system to recognise a wide range of visual categories (e.g. grass, sky, sunset, beach etc.), as well as to spot and interpret faces.

Our technology allows a user to type a plain text query to search large image collections for images with matching visual content.