Guardocs - Gridtech: September 2007

Monday, September 10, 2007

Embedded VMWare called ESX Lite

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

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.

Saturday, September 08, 2007

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

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

Friday, September 07, 2007

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

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.

Thursday, September 06, 2007

Network Appliance sues SUN over ZFS

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"