Hasta La Gadget!

ARM CEO Warren East already has a tendency to be more than a bit outspoken on the future of computing, and he just escalated the war of words with an assault on the industry’s sacred cow: Moore’s Law. After some prompting by MIT Technology Review during a chat, East argued that power efficiency is “actually what matters,” whether it’s a phone or a server farm. Making ever more complex and power-hungry processors to obey Moore’s Law just limits how many chips you can fit in a given space, he said. Not that the executive is about to accept Intel’s position that ARM isn’t meant for performance, as he saw the architecture scaling to high speeds whenever there was a large enough power supply to back it up. East’s talk is a bit long on theory and short on practice as of today — a Samsung Chromebook isn’t going to make Gordon Moore have second thoughts — but it’s food for thought in an era where ARM is growing fast, and even Microsoft isn’t convinced that speed rules everything.

Filed under: Cellphones, Desktops, Laptops, Tablets, Intel

ARM chief tosses Moore’s Law out with the trash, says efficiency rules all originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 09 Nov 2012 20:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Cray has just fired a nuclear salvo in the supercomputer wars with the launch of its XC30, a 100 petaflop-capable brute that can scale up to one million cores. Developed in conjunction with DARPA, the Cascade-codenamed system uses a new type of architecture called Aries interconnect and Intel Xeon E5-2600 processors to easily leapfrog its recent Titan sibling, the previous speed champ. That puts Cray well ahead of rivals like China’s Tianhe-2, and the company will aim to keep that edge by supercharging future versions with Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors and NVIDIA Tesla GPUs. High-end research centers have placed $100 million worth of orders so far (though oddly, DARPA isn’t one of them yet), and units are already shipping in limited numbers — likely by the eighteen-wheeler-full, from the looks of it.

Continue reading Cray unleashes 100 petaflop XC30 supercomputer with up to a million Intel Xeon cores

Filed under: Misc, Science

Cray unleashes 100 petaflop XC30 supercomputer with up to a million Intel Xeon cores originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 08 Nov 2012 10:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Apple rumor-mill is cyclical, and one tale refuses to die: Apple ousting Intel from its MacBooks, and replacing x86 chips with ARM-based alternatives. The story surfaces periodically, just as it has done today, with titters of increasing “confidence” within Apple’s engineering teams that Intel will be eventually ditched in favor of the company’s own A-series SoCs as currently found within the iPad and iPhone. Not today, so the whispers go, but eventually, and what’s most interesting is that we’re likely already seeing the signs of the transition in Apple’s newest models.

Apple has arguably pushed tablet processors as far as they need to go, at least for today’s market. There’s a sense that the Apple A6X chipset in the latest, fourth-generation iPad with Retina display was a near-meaningless improvement on the A6 its predecessor sported; far more important was the change from old-style Dock Connector to new Lightning port. Sure, the newest iPad is faster in benchmarks, but in day to day use there’s hardly a noticeable difference.

Those benchmarks give some hints, however, as to where ARM chips might make sense on the desktop. The iPad 4 did particularly well in SunSpider, a browser-based test of JavaScript performance that gives a good indication of how fast the web experience will be. Considering most of us live online when we’re using our computers, that’s an increasingly important metric.

The iPad 4 scored under 880ms in our SunSpider testing (the lower the number, the better), making it one of the fastest tablets around in that particular benchmark. Now, admittedly, a current-gen MacBook Pro is capable of scores a quarter of that. But, more importantly, the iPad 4 can run for more than ten hours of active use delivering its level of performance, on a 43 Whr battery. Inside the new 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina, in contrast, Apple finds room for a 74 Whr pack.

“Intel may make a fast processor but it’s behind the curve in efficiency”

The allure of an ARM-based MacBook, then, is the combination of that growing performance and the power frugality of the chips that deliver it. Intel may make a fast processor, but it’s behind the curve when it comes to efficiency compared to ARM; the company’s struggles with Atom in the mobile market are evidence of that. And, while there’ll always be a cadre of performance-demanding Mac users, the regular cohort with more everyday needs might be more than wiling to sacrifice a little top-end grunt for the longevity to make it through a transatlantic flight with plenty of juice to spare.

In the end, though, Apple is notoriously self-reliant. The company has bought or invested in specialists in chip components, displays, aluminum casing production, optically-laminated displays, component assembly, and more. Anything, in short, that contributes to Apple’s supply chain or its competitive advantage in the market place (or preferably both). Sometimes the fruits of those investments go relatively unused for years, at least as far as the public can see; Apple’s perpetual and exclusive license to use Liquidmetal in its range – something so far mostly limited to a SIM-removal tool – is a good example of that.

We’ve also seen how it won’t shy from distancing itself from vendors when they either won’t toe the line or let the company down. NVIDIA’s time in the doghouse after the faulty MacBook GPU saga is good evidence of that, while AMD has long been tipped as attempting to curry Apple’s favor but never quite delivering the goods in internal testing.

If Apple can rid itself of reliance on another third party – and further extend the distance between its range and Windows-based PCs, blurring the lines of direct comparison – then it will undoubtedly jump at that chance. It’s unlikely to be shy in flexing its checkbook to do so, either, betting on long-term investment over short-term gains.

Apple, if time has taught us anything, will do what’s best for Apple: that means it demands the biggest advantage from those it works with, and isn’t afraid of taking a hit if it needs to change in order to achieve greater returns. In the past, Intel has given it early access to new processors, as well as the collaborative spoils of Thunderbolt ahead of PC rivals. If Intel can’t meet the grade on the sort of processors Apple sees as pivotal to its vision of future computing, however, all that shared history will be for naught. As far as Apple goes, it’s the Cupertino way or the highway.

If Apple can ditch Intel, it will is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Intel has announced a new high-performance SSD aimed at next-generation data centers. The drive is called the SSD DC S3700 series solid-state drive. Intel is aiming the new SSDs at big data centers, HPCs, and cloud-computing applications.

The SSD line promises low latencies and consistent performance along with strong data protection and high endurance. The SSD line will be offered in 100 GB, 200 GB, 400 GB, and 800 GB capacities. The performance of the drive is rated at up to 75,000 IOPS for 4 kB random read performance and up to 36,000 IOPS for random write 4 kB performance. Intel promises that typical sequential write latency is 65 µs.

Intel also promises that Quality of Service latency is under 500 µs 99.9% of the time. The SSD uses accelerated storage performance to provide parallel multithreaded computing allowing the drive to keep multiple core CPUs more active. That feature helps the drive reduce lapses in response time for a smoother computing experience to the end user.

The drive also features 256-bit AES encryption, and the drive has an array of surplus flash memory used for data redundancy to minimize any potential data loss. The SSD uses 6 W of power when active and 650 mW when at idle. Pricing for the SSD line ranges from $235 up to $1880 in 1000 unit quantities.

Intel unveils new SSD DC S3700 series solid-state storage drives is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Apple has used three different processor brands for its Mac line ever since the first Macintosh debuted in 1984. They first used Motorola’s 68000, then switched to Power PC chips, and finally made the transition to Intel processors in 2005. However, it’s rumored that Apple may be working on its own chip that will see the company ditch Intel in the coming years.

According to Bloomberg, several sources have said that Apple is beginning to grow confident enough to one day use a variant of the company’s mobile chip designs in future Mac desktops and laptops, meaning that we could see Apple’s own A-series chips — like the A6X — inside of a MacBook Pro at some point.

However, Apple is still committed to Intel, and even though they wouldn’t ditch the chip maker for at least a few more years, the sources say that it’s inevitable that Apple will eventually use their own chips in Macs. This also could mean that Apple will ditch the x86 architecture all-together and use ARM-based chip designs in Mac products, which would essentially cut down on power consumption and save on battery life.

Then again, as the gap between mobile and desktop is quickly closing, and products begin to shrink, it would make sense that Apple would look to using its own chips inside its computers, and it would bring the company one step closer to relying only on themselves for major components, and we don’t think Apple would hesitate to do that if it could.

[via Bloomberg]

Apple rumored to be ditching Intel in future Macs is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.