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Intel Makes Changes To Haswell
Intel has started dividing its mobile market segments into processors lines, where the Y processor line goes up to 11.5W TDP, U line covers chips in the 15W to 25W range, while the M line covers 37W, 47W as well as 57W TDP space, with two to four cores and graphics up to GT2.
The high performance H processor line is yet another BGA package processor line that also aims for 37W, 47W and 57W TDPs, with quad-core processors and up to GT3 graphics with on-package cache memory.
Intel expects that high performing gaming and workstation PCs will go use these processors and they fit some thick clamshell designs, no Ultrabooks with 57W unless you would want to use one for welding.
Intel currently doesn’t detail the processor number and the number of SKUs but it is obvious that they will end up with quad-core Core i7 branding for QC1+ and QC2+ market segments.
FTC Defends Google Decision
January 25, 2013 by admin
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The FTC defended its decision to let Google carry on with its anti-trust-like antics, while other regulations in civilized nations are planning to put the boot in.
The US Federal Trade Commission reached a settlement with Google which really did little to stop the company using its dominance to push down search results from its competitors. The move attracted considerable criticism because it followed a letter from US senators to go easy on the search engine because it was good for US jobs. We guess they mean the jobs of US senators who Google paid campaign contributions.
Google promised to change the ways it presents some search results and runs search advertising, but was exonerated of the results bias claims. Rivals including Yelp and Microsoft claimed that Google had favored its own product results over those of its competitors and called for the anti-trust case. What makes the case look more suspect is that the EU is less frightened of actually fining Google or forcing it to behave. Indeed indications from Brussels are that it has not only agreed with the rival’s complaints but will do something about it if Google does not pull finger.
But FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz told Talking Points Memo that the agency’s decision was legally sound and would be beneficial to competition and consumers. Under facts we found, all five of us, from liberal Democrat to conservative Republican, agreed that the evidence militated against an anti-trust case,” Leibowitz told TPM.
The fact that we managed to have both Google and Google’s rivals unhappy, in an odd way that’s maybe unique to Washington, that puts us in the right place substantively, he claimed. When asked if Google’s $25 million lobbying budget for the duration FTC’s investigation helped, he said that lobbying makes the companies feel good and lobbyists feel good.
“At the end of the day, whether you want to say lobbying had any influence, or cancelled itself out because there was lobbying on both sides, if you’re going to do what lobbyists want you to do in a regulatory agency, you’re not doing your job.”
Energy Star Goes To Tablets
January 24, 2013 by admin
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Coming to a tablet near you soon, Energy Star ratings.
The specification will be part of the Energy Star version 6.1, according to documents posted on the U.S. Energy Star website. But a date for ratings on tablets has not yet been established, said Robert Meyers, product manager at Energy Star computers. Energy Star is a joint effort between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy.
The Energy Star specification helps shoppers identify the most power-efficient products when making purchases. The Energy Star program already covers laptops, desktops, monitors, light bulbs, servers, household appliances and other products that are identified with a label. The use of Energy Star-labeled products helped cut close to US$18 billion from U.S. utility bills in 2010, according to the organization.
The EPA and DOE originally floated the idea of including tablets as part of Energy Star version 6.0 for products like laptops, desktops, displays, thin clients and networking equipment, which goes into effect on June 1. Some IT vendors that participate in the Energy Star program argued against the immediate inclusion of tablets, saying that those devices are more like smartphones than PCs and have different assembly and equipment. They argued that tablets and laptops differ on components such as batteries and networking equipment, and thus cannot be grouped together with PCs. The EPA and those stakeholders are now trying to gather a consensus on the definition of tablets and how to rate the devices.
Ericcson Transfers Patents
January 21, 2013 by admin
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Ericsson has agreed to transfer 1,922 patents and 263 patent applications to Unwired Planet in exchange for a share in ongoing revenue that they will generate.
The transfer includes 753 U.S. patents related to 2G, 3G and LTE technologies, Unwired Planet said Thursday. Four months ago, the company owned just 200 U.S. and foreign patents, and around 75 pending patent applications.
“Our patent portfolio now extends to all layers of the telecom handset and infrastructure stack,” said Unwired Planet’s CEO Mike Mulica during a conference call. The patents cover application stores, location-based services, mobile search and mobile advertising as well as network protocols, antennas and many more topics, Mulica said.
The portfolio will continue to grow, as Ericsson has also committed to transfer a further 100 patents each year from 2014 through 2018.
Mulica said the company wants everyone who uses the patented technologies to pay a license fee. “We will use litigation when necessary,” he said.
Bonets Attack U.S. Banks
January 18, 2013 by admin
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Evidence collected from a website that was recently used to flood U.S. banks with junk traffic suggests that the responsible parties behind the ongoing DDoS attack campaign against U.S. financial institutions — thought by some to be the work of Iran — are using botnets for hire.
The compromised website contained a PHP-based backdoor script that was regularly instructed to send numerous HTTP and UDP (User Datagram Protocol) requests to the websites of several U.S. banks, including PNC Bank, HSBC and Fifth Third Bank, Ronen Atias, a security analyst at Web security services provider Incapsula, said Tuesday in a blog post.
Atias described the compromised site as a “small and seemingly harmless general interest UK website” that recently signed up for Incapsula’s services.
An analysis of the site and the server logs revealed that attackers were instructing the rogue script to send junk traffic to U.S. banking sites for limited periods of time varying between seven minutes and one hour. The commands were being renewed as soon as the banking sites showed signs of recovery, Atias said.
During breaks from attacking financial websites the backdoor script was being instructed to attack unrelated commercial and e-commerce sites. “This all led us to believe that we were monitoring the activities of a Botnet for hire,” Atias said.
“The use of a Web Site as a Botnet zombie for hire did not surprise us,” the security analyst wrote. “After all, this is just a part of a growing trend we’re seeing in our DDoS prevention work.”
Kingston Goes 1TB
January 17, 2013 by admin
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Kingston Technology is claiming the world’s highest capacity USB 3.0 flash drive with the one terabyte (1TB) Datatraveler HyperX Predator 3.0.
Announced by the company’s Kingston Digital Europe affiliate, the Datatraveler HyperX Predator 3.0 is shipping now in a 512GB model, with the 1TB capacity set to be available later in the first quarter.
The new drive is also slated as the fastest USB 3.0 flash drive in the Kingston storage line, with read speeds of up to 240MB/s and write speeds of 160MB/s, according to the firm.
“The large capacity and fast USB 3.0 transfer speeds allow users to save time as they can access, edit and transfer applications or files such as HD movies directly from the drive without any performance lag,” said Ann Keefe, Kingston regional director for the UK and Ireland.
Featuring a casing made of zinc alloy for shock resistance and high-end design, the Datatraveler HyperX Predator 3.0 also comes with a custom Kingston key ring and a HyperX valet keychain.
The new drive is fully certified for Superspeed USB 3.0 operation, while keeping backwards compatibility with USB 2.0 to allow it to be used with older computer hardware.
Will Tegra 4 Launch In Q2?
Tegra 4 was supposed to be production ready in Q4 2012 and the general expectation was that CES 2013 would be marked by the launch of phones and tablets based on the new chipset.
It turns out that the chip needed another re-spin, something that usually creates a delay of roughly a quarter. We don’t know which part of the chip was to blame but our sources claim that Tegra 4 is a complex chip with a lot of components where many things can go wrong.
Nvidia dared to move to 28nm, change the core from A9 to A15 and find a way to make its LTE work. There were a lot of things that could go wrong and obviously some did.
This is why Intel first shrinks the core, for example from 32nm to 22nm, and then in its “tock” cycle goes for a newly designed core. Nvidia doesn’t have that luxury, as making a 28nm version of Tegra 3 would not be enough for the SoC market in 2013.
A few people at Nvidia have been telling us that the chip has been sampled to accounts and Nvidia is planning to have some designs announced at the Mobile World Congress. We managed to confirm this schedule with some Nvidia partners.
Sharp Says No To Intel
January 15, 2013 by admin
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While Sharp is desperately looking for more cash, it appears that it will try busking outside CES with a dog on a string before it takes money from Intel.
A senior senior executive from the Japanese company told the Mercury News denied that the company was looking for money from Intel. Industry analysts had speculated that Intel and Sharp, which supplies screens to Apple (AAPL) for its latest iPhonem, were in investment discussions.
Sharp is fighting for survival after years of losses. In November, it said it may not be able to survive on its own after full-year net losses to doubled to $5.6 billion. Sharp Vice President Kozo Takahashi told reporters at a roundtable briefing on the sidelines of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that the company’s finances have been weakened considerably and we are considering ways to deal with that.
Passwords Continue As The Weakest Link
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Passwords aren’t the only failure point in many recent widely publicized intrusions by hackers.
But passwords played a part in the perfect storm of users, service providers and technology failures that can result in epic network disasters. Password-based security mechanisms — which can be cracked, reset and socially engineered — no longer suffice in the era of cloud computing.
The problem is this: The more complex a password is, the harder it is to guess and the more secure it is. But the more complex a password is, the more likely it is to be written down or otherwise stored in an easily accessible location, and therefore the less secure it is. And the killer corollary: If a password is stolen, its relative simplicity or complexity becomes irrelevant.
Password security is the common cold of our technological age, a persistent problem that we can’t seem to solve. The technologies that promised to reduce our dependence on passwords — biometrics, smart cards, key fobs, tokens — have all thus far fallen short in terms of cost, reliability or other attributes. And yet, as ongoing news reports about password breaches show, password management is now more important than ever.
All of which makes password management a nightmare for IT shops. “IT faces competing interests,” says Forrester analyst Eve Maler. “They want to be compliant and secure, but they also want to be fast and expedient when it comes to synchronizing user accounts.”
Was The Prize Stock For 2012?
If you wanted to know the IT company which was a rotten investment this year, you might be thinking Facebook, HP or RIM.
However according to Business Insider is starting to look like the so-called industry leader, Apple might have caused its investors the biggest headaches. More money has been lost in the past three months in Apple stock than has ever been lost in the tech disasters known as Hewlett-Packard and Research In Motion combined.
HP’s stock price peaked above $50 a few years ago, and now it’s trading at $14 and RIM peaked above $140 a few years ago, and it’s trading for $11. However Jobs Mob’s share price peaked above $700 three months ago and is now trading just above $500. This means that on a percentage basis, therefore, Apple’s stock is down much less than either Hewlett-Packard RIM but has cost shareholders a lot more money.
When HP investors have lost about $100 billion since the 2000 peak and RIM has lost $65 billion since the 2000 peak. Apple has cost its shareholders value in three months. What is more amusing is that about four months ago, I was lectured by an Apple fanboy who told me that the company is going to be worth a trillion dollars by the end of the year and he just invested more than $100,000 in the company. Looks like he would have been better off putting it on a horse.