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Enterprise Needs Driving Cloud Sales Boom
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The cloud continues to gain major ground, driven by enterprise storage needs.
Sales are way up for little-known manufacturers that sell directly to big cloud companies like Google and Facebook, while the market for traditional external storage systems is shrinking, according to research company IDC.
Internet giants and service providers typically don’t use specialized storage platforms in their sprawling data centers. Instead, they buy vast amounts of capacity in the form of generic hardware that’s controlled by software. As users flock to cloud-based services, that’s a growing business.
Revenue for original design manufacturers that sell directly to hyperscale data-center operators grew by 25.8 percent to more than US$1 billion in the second quarter, according to the latest global IDC report on enterprise storage systems. Overall industry revenue rose just 2.1 percent from last year’s second quarter, reaching $8.8 billion.
These so-called ODMs are low-profile vendors, many of them based in Taiwan, that do a lot of their business manufacturing hardware that’s sold under better known brand names. Examples include Quanta Computer and Wistron.
General enterprises aren’t buying many systems from these vendors, but the trends at work in hyperscale deployments are growing across the industry. Increasingly, the platform of choice for storage is a standard x86 server dedicated to storing data, according to IDC analyst Eric Sheppard. Sales of server-based storage rose 10 percent in the quarter to reach $2.1 billion.
Traditional external systems like SANs (storage area networks) are still the biggest part of the enterprise storage business, logging $5.7 billion in revenue for the quarter. But sales in this segment were down 3.9 percent.
Overall demand for storage capacity continued to grow strongly, with 37 percent more capacity shipped in the quarter compared with a year earlier.
Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/aroundnet-category/enterprise-storage-needs-driving-cloud-sales-boom.html
Qualcomm To Wirelessly Charge BMWs
Qualcomm has launched its new Official Safety Car for season two of the FIA’s Formula E Championship.
For those not in the know, the Formula E Championship is for electric cars, and they are no longer the milk floats that English people get stuck behind in narrow streets.
The new Official Qualcomm Safety Car is the BMW i8 but it will be charged wirelessly with an advanced Qualcomm Halo 7.2kW wireless charging system.
The Qualcomm Halo 7.2kW wireless charging system delivers twice the amount of energy to the BMW i8′s batteries per hour as compared to last year’s 3.6kW system.
This halves the full charge time, enabling the vehicle to fully charge in one hour. Employing Qualcomm Halo DD technology, with magnetic architecture optimization, ensures higher coupling coefficients and drives lower system currents, higher inefficiencies and the ability to support higher power levels.
A Qualcomm spokesman said that an open championship has encouraged teams to develop their own powertrain tech.
This ensures that the racing remains highly competitive, and it supports the goal of Formula E to advance the development of new technologies for electric vehicles and to bring those technologies, vital to sustainable mobility, to the attention of millions of people around the globe, a spokesman said.
Qualcomm’s general manager of wireless charging, Steve Pazol said Qualcomm was excited to continue its support of Formula E in this second season.
Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/computing-category/qualcomm-to-wirelessly-charge-bmws.html
Both AMD And nVidia Preparing For 14nm
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AMD and Nvidia both appear to be certain to get their “14 nm” out next year.
According to TweakTown Nvidia is apparently dotting the “I” and working out where to put in the semi-colons for its Pascal GPU using TSMC’s 16nm FinFet node. AMD rumored has been wining and dining its old chums at GlobalFoundries to use its 14nm process for its Greenland GPU.
Although these sound like different technologies the “14nm and 16nm” is difference how you measure a transistor. The outcome of both 14 and 16 should be a fairly same sized transistor with similar power features. TSMC calls its process 16nm FinFet, while Samsung and GloFo insist on calling it 14nm FinFet.
The dark satanic rumor mill suggests that the Greenland GPU, which has new Arctic Islands family micro-architecture, will have HBM2 memory. There will be up to 32GB of memory available for enthusiast and professional users. Consumer-oriented cards will have eight to 16GB of HBM2 memory. It will also have a new ISA (instruction set architecture).
It makes sense, AMD moved to HBM with its Fury line this year. Nvidia is expected to follow suit in 2016 with cards offering up to 32GB HBM2 as well.
Both Nvidia and AMD are drawn to FinFET which offers 90 percent more density than 28nm. Both will boost the transistors on offer with their next-generation GPUs, with 17 to 18 billion transistors currently being rumored.
Source- http://www.thegurureview.net/computing-category/are-both-amd-and-nvidia-readying-to-release-a-14nm-gpu.html
Is HP’s Forthcoming Split A Good Idea?
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HP Has released its financial results for the third quarter and they make for somewhat grim reading.
The company has seen drops in key parts of the business and an overall drop in GAAP net revenue of eight percent year on year to $25.3bn, compared with $27.6bn in 2014.
The company failed to meet its projected net earnings per share, which it had put at $0.50-$0.52, with an actual figure of $0.47.
The figures reflect a time of deep uncertainty at the company as it moves ever closer to its demerger into HP and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. The latter began filing registration documents in July to assert its existence as a separate entity, while the boards of both companies were announced two weeks ago.
Dell CEO Michael Dell slammed the move in an exclusive interview with The INQUIRER, saying he would never do the same to his company.
The big boss at HP remained upbeat, despite the drop in dividend against expectations. “HP delivered results in the third quarter that reflect very strong performance in our Enterprise Group and substantial progress in turning around Enterprise Services,” said Meg Whitman, chairman, president and chief executive of HP.
“I am very pleased that we have continued to deliver the results we said we would, while remaining on track to execute one of the largest and most complex separations ever undertaken.”
To which we have to ask: “Which figures were you looking at, lady?”
Breaking down the figures by business unit, Personal Systems revenue was down 13 percent year on year, while notebook sales fell three percent and desktops 20 percent.
Printing was down nine percent, but with a 17.8 percent operating margin. HP has been looking at initiatives to create loyalty among print users such as ink subscriptions.
The Enterprise Group, soon to be spun off, was up two percent year on year, but Business Critical system revenue dropped by 21 percent, cancelled out by networking revenue which climbed 22 percent.
Enterprise Services revenue dropped 11 percent with a six percent margin, while software dropped six percent with a 20.6 percent margin. Software-as-a-service revenue dropped by four percent.
HP Financial Services was down six percent, despite a two percent decrease in net portfolio assets and a two percent decrease in financing volume.
Source- http://www.thegurureview.net/computing-category/is-hps-forthcoming-split-a-good-idea.html
Is NVidia King Of The GPU Arena?
Nvidia’s desktop GPUs accounted for nearly 80 percent of all sales in the segment in Q2 2015, its highest market share ever.
According to beancounters at the market research firm Mercury Research the GPU market is slowly dying.
The latest quarter was a decrease of 11 percent from Q1 2015 and a year-on-year decline of 21.7 percent so Nvidia is the undisputed king of a much smaller kingdom.
Mercury Research notes that the notebook GPU segment also witnessed a decrease to the tune of 34.1 percent year-on-year, mainly due to the continued improvements in the iGPU segment.
However when comparing both number of GPUs sold to partners and a four-quarter average of sales, Nvidia is the Windows and AMD is the FreeBSD.
AMD is dependent on its latest Radeon 300 series of cards to claw back something but at the moment it is looking like Nvidia is unstoppable.
Nvidia has continued to amass more sales over the course of the last year, and with its Maxwell-generation cards now available across all price tiers, it is unlikely has much to worry about from AMD.
Source- http://www.thegurureview.net/computing-category/is-nvidia-king-of-the-gpu-arena.html
Microsoft Updates Yammer
August 28, 2015 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
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Microsoft unveiled a bevy of improvements to its Yammer enterprise social network, focused on helping people connect more easily with their teams.
By default, people who access Yammer via their web browser will be taken to a new “Discovery” feed on the service’s home page that is supposed to better show them relevant content from their groups along with other public teams across their company’s network. It’s supposed to help keep people in closer touch with important discussions they may be missing on Yammer.
After users finish reviewing new content in one group, Yammer will display a pop up banner with a link to the next group they’re subscribed to that has new content. Yammer’s mobile apps will get similar functionality through a new Group Updates feed that lets users see a list of different conversations in various groups all on one screen. That way, they won’t have to look through individual groups to get the same information. That feature will begin rolling out on Android first before making it to Yammer’s iOS app.
In addition, Yammer is also tweaking the design of individual groups’ pages. Now, each group will have a full-width banner at the top of its page, and discussions within the group can now take up a wider space on the page to aid in lengthier discussions. The whole page has also been redesigned to focus users’ attention on important content.
Icons in the left-hand sidebar will show the users that are active in groups they are a part of, so they can stay up-to-date on where conversations are happening in real time. It’s a move that could make Yammer more competitive with popular chat solutions like Slack, which has been growing incredibly rapidly and was recently valued at $2.8 billion.
Yammer’s mobile app also gained support for attaching files from external storage services like OneDrive and Dropbox, inviting coworkers to a user’s network by email and mentioning people in comments.
There’s even more up Yammer’s sleeve on top of all these updates. The social network’s iPhone app will soon have a companion version for the Apple Watch that will let people interact with content from their coworkers.
The updates come at a time when Microsoft is putting more effort into improving its workplace collaboration tools.
More Details Uncovered On AMD’s ZEN Cores
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Our well informed industry sources have shared a few more details about the AMD’s 2016 Zen cores and now it appears that the architecture won’t use the shared FPU like Bulldozer.
The new Zen uses a SMT Hyperthreading just like Intel. They can process two threads at once with a Hyperthreaded core. AMD has told a special few that they are dropping the “core pair” approach that was a foundation of Bulldozer. This means that there will not be a shared FPU anymore.
Zen will use a scheduling model that is similar to Intel’s and it will use competitive hardware and simulation to define any needed scheduling or NUMA changes.
Two cores will still share the L3 cache but not the FPU. This because in 14nm there is enough space for the FPU inside of the Zen core and this approach might be faster.
We mentioned this in late April where we released a few details about the 16 core, 32 thread Zen based processor with Greenland based graphics stream processor.
Zen will apparently be ISA compatible with Haswell/Broadwell style of compute and the existing software will be compatible without requiring any programming changes.
Zen also focuses on a various compiler optimisation including GCC with target of SPECint v6 based score at common compiler settings and Microsoft Visual studio with target of parity of supported ISA features with Intel.
Benchmarking and performance compiler LLVM targets SPECint v6 rate score at performance compiler settings.
We cannot predict any instruction per clock (IPC improvement) over Intel Skylake, but it helps that Intel replaced Skylake with another 14nm processor in later part of 2016. If Zen makes to the market in 2016 AMD might have a fighting chance to narrow the performance gap between Intel greatest offerings.
Courtesy-Fud
Apple TV Service Delayed Again
August 26, 2015 by admin
Filed under Consumer Electronics
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Apple Inc will push back rolling out its live TV service to at least next year, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the iPhone maker’s plans.
The company had planned to introduce the service, which is delivered over the Internet, this year.
Discussions with broadcasters such as CBS Corp and Twenty-First Century Fox Inc to license programming are progressing slowly, and lack of content has led Apple to scrap plans to announce the service at a Sept. 9 event, Bloomberg said.
Apple also lacked the computer network capacity to ensure a good viewing experience, Bloomberg said.
The company still plans to introduce a more powerful version of its Apple TV set-top box at the event, which will be held in San Francisco.
Apple was aiming to price the new service at about $30 to $40 a month, media reports have said.
Has The iPhone Peaked in The U.S.?
August 21, 2015 by admin
Filed under Smartphones
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Apple’s vice like grip in the US smartphone market is falling off as sales of the overpriced gadgets slump.
Research outfit Kantar Worldpanel ComTech said the 2.3 per cent drop in US sales had been covered by rises in China, Japan and Australia.
But the fact that Apple’s home ground is the US and that it has become increasingly dependent on its iPhone, this statistic does not bode well, particularly as the company depends on continual growth to maintain its share price the whole lot is starting become unstuck.
For the second quarter of 2015, iPhone sales grew by 2.1 percent from the same quarter last year across Europe’s five biggest markets, namely the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain. Growth was strongest in the UK at 5.5 percent and weakest in Italy at only 0.1 percent. Beyond Europe, iPhone sales surged by 9.1 per cent in Australia, 7.3 percent in China and 2.7 percent in Japan.
It is worthwhile pointing that the European growth outside the UK, Australia and China is more indicative of a flat market rather than actual growth.
A possible reason for the fall in the US is better competition from Android where Apple’s Android rivals provided a tougher fight.
Carolina Milanesi, chief of research at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, said in a press release. “In the U.S., as we forecasted last month, Android’s growth continued in the quarter ending June 30, with both Samsung and LG increasing their share sequentially. Forty-three percent of all Android buyers mentioned a ‘good deal on the price of the phone’ as the main purchase driver for their new device.”
“Android in the U.S. is undergoing its strongest consolidation yet, with Samsung and LG now accounting for 78 percent of all Android sales,” Milanesi added. “LG is the real success story of the quarter. Not only did it double its share of the US smartphone market once again, but it was also able, for the first time, to acquire more first-time smartphone buyers than Samsung.”
Screen size was the main driver for Android buyers across Europe, according to Dominic Sunnebo, business unit director at Kantar. Samsung and LG both sell big-screen “phablet” phones. Samsung’s Galaxy Note 4 sports a 5.7-inch screen, while LG’s G4 packs in a 5.5-inch screen.
Though the iPhone 6 Plus also uses a 5.5-inch display, iOS buyers are driven by a wider range of factors, Sunnebo said, including “phone reliability and durability, as well as the quality of the materials.”
Of course if you are member of Tame Apple Press you will forget to report the news and say the opposite and claim that the iPhone’s wonderful sales are a problem.
AMD Coherent Data Reaches 100 GBs
After a lot of asking around, we can give you some actual numbers about the AMD’s coherent fabric.
The inter-connecting technology already sounded very promising, but now we have the actual number. The HSA, Heterogeneous System Architecture MCM (Multi Chip Module) that AMD is working on can give you almost seven times faster score than the traditional PCIe interface.
Our industry sources have confirmed that with 4 GMI (Global Memory Interconnect) links AMD’s CPU and GPU can talk at 100GB/s. the traditional PCIe 16X provides 15GB/s at about 500 ns latency. Data Fabric eliminates PCIe latency too.
AMD will be using this technology with the next gen Multi Chip module that packs a Zeppelin CPU (most likely packed with a bunch of ZEN cores) and a Greenland GPU that of course comes with super fast HBM (High Bandwidth Memory). The Greenland and HBM can communicate at 500 GB/s and can provide highest performance GPU with 4+ teraflops.
This new MCM package based chip will also talk with DDR4 3200 memory at 100GB/s speed making it quite attractive for the HSA computation oriented customers.