Hasta La Gadget!

Someone ought to gift these IBM researchers a better camera, because their latest General Parallel File System is a back-slapping 37 times faster than their last effort back in 2007. The rig combines ten IBM System xSeries servers with Violin Memory SSDs that hold 6.5 terabytes of metadata relating to 10 billion separate files. Every single one of those files can be analyzed and managed using policy-guided rules in under three quarters of an hour. That kind of performance might seem like overkill, but it’s only just barely in step with what IBM’s Doug Balog describes as a “rapidly growing, multi-zettabyte world.” No prizes for guessing who their top customer is likely to be. Full details in the PR after the break.

Continue reading IBM rig doesn’t look like much, scans 10 billion files in 43 minutes

IBM rig doesn’t look like much, scans 10 billion files in 43 minutes originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 22 Jul 2011 03:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You’ve got to hand it to IBM’s engineers. They drag themselves into work after their company’s 100th birthday party, pop a few Alka-Seltzers and then promptly announce yet another seismic invention. This time it’s a new kind of phase change memory (PCM) that reads and writes 100 times faster than flash, stays reliable for millions of write-cycles (as opposed to just thousands with flash), and is cheap enough to be used in anything from enterprise-level servers all the way down to mobile phones. PCM is based on a special alloy that can be nudged into different physical states, or phases, by controlled bursts of electricity. In the past, the technology suffered from the tendency of one of the states to relax and increase its electrical resistance over time, leading to read errors. Another limitation was that each alloy cell could only store a single bit of data. But IBM employees burn through problems like these on their cigarette breaks: not only is their latest variant more reliable, it can also store four data bits per cell, which means we can expect a data storage “paradigm shift” within the next five years. Combine this with Intel’s promised 50Gbps interconnect, which has a similar ETA, and data will start flowing faster than booze from an open bar on the boss’s tab. There’s more detailed science in the PR after the break, if you have a clear head.

Continue reading IBM develops ‘instantaneous’ memory, 100x faster than flash

IBM develops ‘instantaneous’ memory, 100x faster than flash originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 00:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Imagine you can insert a memory card in your brain and go all Keanu Wow, I know Jiu-Jitsu! Reeves. It’s actually not that far away: Scientists have created a chip that allows rats to instantly know things. It’s amazing. More »

Desire owners who believed HTC’s promise to bring Gingerbread to the handset can stop waiting now

[UPDATE: HTC has now changed its mind again. A new Facebook post reads “Contrary to what we said earlier, we are going to bring Gingerbread to HTC Desire.” ]

Those who bought the HTC Desire because of a promised future upgrade to Android 2.3 Gingerbread can put there heads in their hands and begin to softly weep. HTC has announced — via Facebook — that it has officially given up on the project. The problem? The phone doesn’t have enough memory for both Gingerbread and HTC’s own Sense user interface. To save you entering the seething morass of Facebook, here’s the announcement in full.

Our engineering teams have been working hard for the past few months to find a way to bring Gingerbread to the HTC Desire without compromising the HTC Sense experience you’ve come to expect from our phones.

However, we’re sorry to announce that we’ve been forced to accept there isn’t enough memory to allow us both to bring Gingerbread and keep the HTC Sense experience on the HTC Desire. We’re sincerely sorry for the disappointment that this news may bring to some of you

This isn’t really a surprise. We got our first look at the Desire at the Mobile World Congress, Barcelona, in February 2010. But as recently as this year’s MWC HTC was promising that the upgrade was on its way.

What this news really highlights is the way Android works. Instead of being a single OS that can be sent out to users, it’s more of a platform that is taken by phone makers and bent to their will before being passed on to you. And it seems that now we can’t even trust the manufacturers to tell us the truth.

Desire and Gingerbread Update [Facebook via ★]

See Also:

• Hands-On With HTC Desire, Legend, HD Mini
• HTC Desire
• What You Need to Know About Android 2.3 Gingerbread

Wouldn’t it be great if system memory was super speedy like RAM and non-volatile like flash? Well, NEC and Tohoku University’s new content addressable memory (CAM) has accomplished the trick — it promises five-nanosecond retrieval speeds equal to sticks of DDR3 1600 and can store data even when the power’s off. Spintronics logic is what makes the magic happen by setting the spin direction of electrons and using their interaction with magnetic forces to store bits of data. Those spinning attributes are then kept on the circuit even when there’s no electricity flowing. The catch? This new CAM big — 90nm compared to the 30nm DRAM currently available — despite the fact it’s half the size of previous CAM chips, and NEC’s not telling how quickly it can write data. Of course, the tech is still in its developmental stages, so we won’t getting its zero-power standby mode and instant-on capabilities in our gadgets for some time. PR after the break.

Continue reading NEC makes content addressable memory that takes data deposits sans power, RAM green with envy

NEC makes content addressable memory that takes data deposits sans power, RAM green with envy originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 13 Jun 2011 16:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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