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GM Adds IT Jobs
General Motors Co said on Monday it will add 1,500 jobs at a new software development center in Michigan as part of the U.S. automaker’s previously announced plan to move information technology work back into the company.
GM said it will hire the software developers, database experts, analysts and other IT positions over the next four years for the office in Warren, Michigan. It is the second of four software development centers GM plans to open, following one it announced last month in Austin, Texas.
In July, the Detroit automaker said it would reverse years of outsourcing IT work. GM now outsources about 90 percent of its IT services and provides the rest in-house, but it wants to flip those figures in the next three to five years.
The IT overhaul is spearheaded by GM Chief Information Officer Randy Mott, who outlined the plan to GM’s 1,500 IT employees in June. The former Hewlett-Packard Co executive believes the moves will make GM more efficient and productive.
GM, which has not disclosed the cost or savings of its strategy, plans to cut the automaker’s sprawling list of IT applications by at least 40 percent and move to a more standardized platform. GM will also simplify the way it transmits data.
Are Microsoft and Intel Having Issues?
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Intel’s delayed software that conserves battery life is holding up development of some tablets running the latest version of Microsoft Windows.
Bloomberg said that Mirosoft hasn’t yet approved any tablets featuring an Intel processor codenamed Clover Trail because the chipmaker hasn’t produced necessary power-management software. This sort of news follows a statement by Intel Chief Executive Officer Paul Otellini that Windows 8 was not really ready to ship.
Alex Gauna, an analyst at JMP Securities LLC in San Francisco said that the PC channel is in chaos right now with no one knowing what to do. He said that the people don’t know what to design for, as they don’t know what the consumers are going to buy. Tablets have stolen their growth trajectory, plus the macro situation, plus Wintel has made a mess of their ecosystem.
PC makers, including HP, Dell and Lenovo Group Ltd. (992), are counting on the new version of Windows to help them compete in the $63.2 billion tablet market.
Oracle Agrees To Support Itanium
Oracle has committed to supporting the Intel Itanium processor on servers, ending what has been a long running feud with HP.
Oracle’s announcement is well timed because it was just a few weeks ago that a court ordered it to do just that. It did say however, that it will appeal the court’s judgment.
This should put an end to what has been a rather grubby row between Oracle and HP that centered around whether or not the two firms have an agreement about developing software for the IA-64 architecture.
The row, which was not helped by former HP CEO Mark Hurd’s abrupt firing from HP and hiring at Oracle, pulled in Intel and saw Oracle force HP into admitting that it had a secretive deal with Intel for development.
Upon hearing the court’s decision in August, Oracle couldn’t resist taking another dig at HP and its insistence that Oracle continue supporting a processor that as far as it was concerned could die.
“We know that Oracle did not give up its fundamental right to make platform engineering decisions in the 27 words HP cites from the settlement of an unrelated employment agreement. HP’s argument turns the concept of Silicon Valley ‘partnerships’ upside down,” said Oracle spokeswoman Deborah Hellinger then. “We plan to appeal the Court’s ruling while fully litigating our cross claims that HP misled both its partners and customers.”
It looks like Oracle has no choice however, and in a statement it said that it will abide by the decision of the court.
“Previously, Oracle announced that it would stop developing new versions of its software on Itanium microprocessors. For example, that meant version 12c of the Oracle database due out in early 2013 would not be available on Itanium,” it said.
Dell Names Chief As Sales Tank
Dell has snagged a former Hewlett-Packard executive to head up its server, networking and storage division, a critical area for Dell as it tries to expand its data center business and reduce its dependence on PCs.
Marius Haas was head of HP’s networking business before leaving two years ago to join an investment firm. On Tuesday he was named president of Dell’s enterprise solutions business, where he’ll oversee the engineering, development and marketing of Dell’s enterprise products.
Haas replaces Brad Anderson, who ran Dell’s enterprise division since 2005 and is now leaving the company.
Dell announced the news on the same day it reported financial results for its second quarter, which closed Aug. 3. Its profit for the period declined 18 percent from a year earlier, to US$732 million, while revenue fell 8 percent to $14.48 billion, Dell said.
Its server and networking sales were among the highlights for the quarter, up 14 percent from last year, while sales of storage products were down 13 percent. Together, the three product categories account for about one-fifth of Dell’s overall business.
Will Qualcomm Buy AMD?
This wild rumor is not completely without merit, as Qualcomm did acquire a piece of AMD, or AMD’s handheld graphics business to be precise, and it would not be too surprising to see Qualcomm after the whole company sometime in the future.
Samsung on the other hand is not an entirely impossible choice, but at this point it won’t be acquiring AMD either.
It looks like market players want to see the acceptance of Windows RT that will finally prove how important ARM processors really are and knowing AMD, the worst is behind them, as 2012 was the year of many chances, cancelation and anything but good execution for them.
Meanwhile Qualcomm is doing great in the ARM market, although its Snapdragon S4 line suffers from insufficient 28nm production, but due to its on-chip LTE implementation the chips are sought after, especially in the United States market.
Is Acer Threatened By The Surface?
Taiwanese computer manufacturer Acer has suggested that Microsoft Corp should reconsider its planned venture into the tablet market, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday.
Acer Chairman and Chief Executive J.T. Wang, said Microsoft’s plans to launch its own “Surface” tablet in October would be “negative for the worldwide ecosystem” in computing.
Microsoft’s “Surface” tablet would enter the market in direct competition with Acer’s “Iconia” or Hewlett-Packard Co’s “TouchPad” tablets.
“We have said think it over. Think twice. It will create a huge negative impact for the ecosystem and other brands may take a negative reaction. It is not something you are good at so please think twice,” Wang is quoted as saying.
For the past two decades, Microsoft and personal computer makers have enjoyed a symbiotic relationship.
Campbell Kan, Acer’s president for personal computer global operations, said the company was debating internally how to respond to the Surface.
Lenovo Launches The IdeaPad
Although it was introduced six months ago at CES, Lenovo’s new IdeaTab has finally showed up at Lenovo’s site with a pretty decent price around $343.20. The IdeaPad comes with a 10.1-inch screen, Qualcomm’s dual-core Snapdragon S4 CPU, Android 4.0 ICS and optional keyboard dock, it certainly sounds like a good deal.
The specification list for the Ideatab S2110 kicks off with a 10.1-inch IPS 1280×800 display, Qualcomm’s 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 CPU, 1GB of RAM and Android 4.0 ICS OS. The rest of the specs include back 5MP and front 1.3MP cameras, 802.11bgn WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, and a battery capable of up to 9-10 hours of WiFi web browsing, according to Lenovo.
Same as the Asus Transformer line of tablets, Lenovo’s Ideatab S2110 also features an optional keyboard dock that gives you an extra ten hours of battery life and adds two USB ports and a card reader.
HP Wants The Court To Bully Oracle
HP has asked California Superior Court Judge James Kleinberg to order Oracle to continue developing software for its Itanium servers.
HP and Oracle have been locked in a bitter legal dispute over Oracle’s decision to stop supporting Intel’s IA-64 architecture used in Itanium processors. Now HP has asked Judge Kleinberg to order Oracle to continue developing software for its Itanium servers until it stops selling them or the contract term expires.
Oracle claims its decision to stop developing for Intel’s IA-64 architecture was spurred on by Intel having made it clear that it intended to focus on its x86 Xeon processors. Intel has said that its Xeon processors are being edged into the market presently occupied by its Itanic chips.
HP disputed Oracle’s claims of Itanium reaching the end of its life and it emerged that HP had a contract with Intel to support the chip. However, and perhaps most damaging for HP, was a release of emails between Intel and HP that seemed to suggest that Intel had enough of Itanium and that HP was having to all but strong-arm Intel into continuing to produce Itanium processors.
U.S. Takes Back Supercomputing Crown
The U.S., once again, is home to the world’s most powerful supercomputer after being kicked off the list by China two years ago and then again by Japan last year.
The top computer, an IBM system at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, is capable of 16.32 sustained petaflops, according to the Top 500 list, a global, twice a year ranking, released Monday.
This system, named Sequoia, has more than 1.57 million compute cores and relies on architecture and parallelism, and not Moore’s Law, to achieve its speeds.
“We’re at the point where the processors themselves aren’t really getting any faster,” said Michael Papka, Argonne National Laboratory deputy associate director for computing, environment and life sciences.
The Argonne lab installed a similar IBM system, which ranks third on the new Top 500 list. “Moore’s Law is generally slowing down and we’re doing it (getting faster speeds) by parallelism,” Papka said.
U.S. high performance computing technology dominates the world market. IBM systems claimed five of the top ten spots in the list, and 213 systems out the 500.
Hewlett-Packard is number two, with 141 systems on the list. Nearly 75% of the systems on this list run Intel processors, and 13% use AMD chips.
Qualcomm Chip Issues Should End By December
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Qualcomm said it believes TSMC’s 28nm supply issues will continue until year end.
Qualcomm, which relies solely on TSMC for its 28nm chips, said it believes the supply of chips will improve, but the firm expects its 28nm supply not to be back to normal until the end of 2012.
Previously Qualcomm had poured scorn on TSMC by telling investors it is looking at rival wafer fabs to avoid supply issues in the future. Qualcomm’s CEO Paul Jacobs told Reuters once again that the firm is looking to other foundries for extra capacity, adding, “The goal is to get enough supply for everyone.”
TSMC’s 28nm process node has been tapped by a number of big name customers including AMD, Nvidia and Qualcomm, with the chip fab unable to meet demand. Since Qualcomm made the rare public admission that it wasn’t happy with the state of TSMC’s 28nm chip supply, the smart money has been on Globalfoundries picking up the slack, however nothing specific has been announced by either firm.