Oracle Goes After SAP’s HANA

Oracle has upped its game in its fight against SAP HANA, having added in-memory processing to its Oracle 12c database management system, which it claims will speed up queries by 100 times.

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison revealed the update on Sunday evening during his opening keynote at the Oracle Openworld show in San Francisco.

The in-memory option for Oracle Database 12c is designed to ramp up the speeds of data queries – and will also give Oracle a new weapon in the fight against SAP’s rival HANA in-memory system.

“When you put data in memory, one of the reasons you do that is to make the system go faster,” Ellison said. “It will make queries go faster, 100 times faster. You can load the same data into the identical machines, and it’s 100 times faster, you get results at the speed of thought.”

Ellison was keen to allay concerns that these faster query times would have a negative impact on transactions.

“We didn’t want to make transactions go slower with adding and changing data in the database. We figured out a way to speed up query processing and at least double your transaction processing rates,” he said.

In traditional databases, data is stored in rows, for example a row of sales orders, Ellison explained. These types of row format databases were designed to operate at high speeds when processing a few rows that each contain lots of columns. More recently, a new format was proposed to store data in columns rather than rows to speed up query processing.

Oracle plans to store the data in both formats simultaneously, according to Ellison, so transactions run faster in the row format and analytics run faster in column format.

“We can process data at ungodly speeds,” Ellison claimed. As evidence of this, Oracle demoed the technology, showing seven billion rows could be queried per second via in-memory compared to five million rows per second in a traditional database.

The new approach also allows database administrators to speed up their workloads by removing the requirement for analytics indexes.

“If you create a table in Oracle today, you create the table but also decide which columns of the table you’ll create indexes for,” Ellison explained. “We’re replacing the analytics indexes with the in-memory option. Let’s get rid of analytic indexes and replace them with the column store.”

Ellison added that firms can choose to have just part of the database for in-memory querying. “Hot data can be in DRAM, you can have some in flash, some on disk,” he noted. “Data automatically migrates from disk into flash into DRAM based on your access patterns. You only have to pay by capacity at the cost of disk.”

Firms wanting to take advantage of this new in-memory option can do so straightaway, according to Ellison, with no need for changes to functions, no loading or reloading of data, and no data migration. Costs were not disclosed.

And for those firms keen to rush out and invest in new hardware to take advantage of this new in-memory option, Ellison took the wraps off the M6-32, dubbed the Big Memory Machine. According to Ellison, the M6-32 has twice the memory, can process data much faster and costs less than a third of IBM’s biggest comparable machine, making it ideal for in-memory databases.

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More OEM’s Seeking nVidia

As expected and announced, Zotac has now “joined the mobile gaming revolution” with the new Tegra Note 7 tablet and will be one of a handful of Nvidia partners that will sell it in both Europe and Asia-Pacific region for US $199.

In case you missed it yesterday when it was officially unveiled by Nvidia, the Nvidia Tegra Note 7 is based around a 7-inch 1280×800 IPS display and powered by Nvidia’s own Tegra 4 SoC with quad-core Cortex-A15 CPU and 72-core Geforce GPU paired up with 1GB of memory. It also packs some neat features exclusive to Nvidia, including a stylus with Nvidia DirectStylus technology as well as the 5-megapixel rear main camera backed by Chimera computational photography architecture revealed earlier by Nvidia. The camera will have support for both HDR as well as slow-motion video.

Unfortunately, Zotac did not announce the precise launch date so we are still stuck with Nvidia’s October time-frame and we are still to see the price of the new Tegra Note 7 in Europe.

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HP To Support The iPad

Is your iPad out of warranty? Hewlett-Packard to the rescue.

HP updated its SmartFriend support service and will now troubleshoot problems with Windows, Android, Chrome OS, OS X and iOS products, according to a fact sheet describing the service.

“HP is expanding its HP SmartFriend service to provide 1:1 expert support for any brand of PC or tablet,” the company said. The plan previously supported PCs from HP and other vendors, as well as Macs.

Users can avail of the service to address general hardware, software and malware issues. HP says its agents can “remove viruses, improve PC performance, solve software errors, and connect devices to a wireless network with enhanced security.” The support is provided by phone or over the Internet, so don’t expect a technician to trot in and fix your iPad in person. But HP notes it can save you from driving to a store.

Unlike Best Buy’s Geek Squad service, HP’s service does not include hardware repairs. It can be tricky to change the battery or storage in tablets, so for iPads, the Genius Bars at Apple Stores may still be the best option for some repairs.

HP didn’t immediately comment on exactly what support it will provide for the iPad. HP printers offer wireless printing from iPads and iPhones. HP sells primarily Windows PCs and Android tablets, though on last Thursday it announced the Pavilion 14 laptop with Google’s Chrome OS.

While SmartFriend includes support for iOS devices, the service seems focused mainly on Windows products. Its technicians include “Microsoft Application Trainers, Microsoft Product Specialists, A+/MCP/MCSE Certified Professionals, Network Administrators and HTML Developers,” according to the fact sheet.

The service starts at US$9.99 per month and users can sign up for a pre-paid, monthly or yearly support plan. A “Complete Plan” supports two devices, while a “Family Plan” supports up to four devices.

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Intel Goes AI

Intel has written a check for the Spanish artificial intelligence technology startup Indisys.

The outfit focuses on natural language recognition and the deal is worth $26 million. It follows Intel’s recent acquisition of Omek, an Israeli startup with specialties in gesture-based interfaces. Indisys employees have joined Intel already. Apparently the deal was signed on May 31 and the deal has been completed.

Intel would not confirm how they are using the tech: “Indisys has a deep background in computational linguistics, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and machine learning. We are not disclosing any details about how Intel might use the Indisys technologies at this time.”

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Are More Firms Moving To Tegra 4?

A curious rumor is coming out of Taiwan this morning. Nvidia is reportedly seeing more Tegra 4 orders, boosted by the Xiaomi Mi3 smartphone, Surface RT 2 and new tablets from Asus, Toshiba and HP. The source is Digitimes, or its moles in the “upstream supply chain” to be specific. Specific is not the word usually associated with such sources and we have no specific numbers to report.

However, while Nvidia is seeing a bit more interest for Tegra 4 it simply has no high-volume design wins and shipments will remain low until it is eventually phased out in favour of the Tegra 5. We wrote about Nvidia’s Tegra 4 volume woes last month, here.

The Tegra 4 still has just a handful of design wins and the fact that most of them are high-end tablets is not encouraging at all. Not much has changed since our previous report, although Nvidia did manage to land a single smartphone design win, albeit not a major one.

We still believe Tegra 4 shipments will be modest at best and new Android tablet design wins will not help much. Neither will the Shield and Tegra Note tablets.

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Dell Bets On Windows 8

Demand for Windows 8 may be still somewhat lukewarm, but Dell is maintaining its stance that it is the best operating system for business tablets and plans to roll out more Windows 8-based products later this year, according to a senior executive at the computer maker.

“Our Windows tablets are more secure and easier to manage than Android-based products and iOS-based products [because Windows is] on our tablets,” said Jeff Clarke, vice chairman and president of global operations at Dell. “And we are not going to change that.”

Windows-based devices accounted for just 4.5% of tablet sales in this year’s second quarter, according to research firm IDC. In comparison, Android-based devices had 62.6% of the tablet market and Apple’s iPad had 32.5%.

The slow adoption of Windows 8 tablets is partly due to their high prices, and to the operating system’s lack of mobile apps, analysts say. Windows 8 has also received mixed reviews, with some people citing its lack of a Start button in the desktop mode as a major problem.

But Dell expects demand for Windows 8 devices to pick up with the availability of Windows 8.1, which Microsoft will release in October.

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Is The Tesla Hackable?

It’s the curse of the connected car once it’s linked to the Internet, it’s, well, on the Internet. In the case of the Tesla Model S, this means that mischievous hackers could, in theory, control some functions of the vehicle and even snoop without the owner’s knowledge.

Tesla offers Android and iPhone apps for Model S owners, which can be used to check the vehicle’s battery, track its location and status, and tweak several other settings, like climate control and the sunroof. It can also be used to unlock the doors on the Model S.

Dell senior engineer George Reese says the REST API used by Tesla to provide access for Android and iPhone apps has several fairly serious security flaws, which could offer a way in for unscrupulous hackers.

According to an article written by Reese for O’Reilly, Tesla appears to have broken from accepted best practice when designing the API for the Model S.

“It’s flawed in a way that makes no sense. Tesla ignored most conventions around API authentication and wrote their own. As much as I talk about the downsides to OAuth (a standard for authenticating consumers of REST APIs–Twitter uses it), this scenario is one that screams for its use,” he wrote.

However, Reese notes, this is merely a potential attack vector, not one that could be immediately exploited. That said, a compromised website particularly one designed to provide “value-added services” via the API to Tesla drivers could prove highly damaging.

“I can … honk their horns, flash their lights, and open and close the sunroof. While none of this is catastrophic, it can certainly be surprising and distracting while someone is driving,” Reese wrote.

Automotive hacking has been posited by experts for some time, and several presentations at this year’s Defcon detailed fairly comprehensive methods of compromising some models.

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Marvell Loses In Court

A federal judge denied Marvell’s request to declare a mistrial in a patent infringement case in which a jury awarded $1.17 billion in damages to Carnegie Mellon University.

Carnegie Mellon sued Marvell in March 2009 over patents issued in 2001 and 2002 related to how accurately hard disk-drive circuits read data from high-speed magnetic disks. The suit involved nine Marvell circuits which incorporated the patents, and that the infringement let the Bermuda outfit blog billions of chips with its tech on board.

The damages award in December 2012 was one of the largest by a US jury in a patent infringement case. Marvell asked the judge to declare a mistrial and it claimed that Carnegie Mellon’s lawyer made improper, misleading and prejudicial comments during closing arguments that “inflamed” the jury.

US District Judge Nora Barry Fischer in Pittsburgh federal court disagreed and said that Marvell was trying to do what it could not do at trial convince the court to throw out this case and have another crack at it. Marvel has said that it will appeal so this case will run and run.

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Apple To Acquire Embark

Apple is reportedly purchasing mapping app developer Embark, in a move that could lend more real-time navigation features for public transit to Apple’s own Maps app.

The acquisition, which was first reported by tech journalist Jessica Lessin, follows other recent mapping purchases for Apple: HopStop, another maker of apps for public transit directions; and Locationary, which provides data about local businesses; and WifiSLAM, an indoor location and mapping company.

Apple did not directly confirm its acquisition of Embark, but in an emailed statement said, “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.”

Apple declined to comment further on the deal.

Apple has faced some serious challenges over the past year in providing a consistently solid mapping product with its Maps app. Last September Apple CEO Tim Cook was forced to publicly apologize for a series of issues plaguing the company’s Maps app in Apple’s iOS 6 operating system.

Embark is a company based in the San Francisco Bay Area that makes a mobile mapping app designed to help people navigate mass transit systems. The company’s app provides “tailored trips” specific to the user’s region, along with notifications for late-running trains and other advisories and closures.

Embark’s technology, if it does find its way into a future Apple product, could enhance Apple’s mapping products and make the company a stronger competitor to rivals like Google. Google’s Maps app already offers real-time public transit navigation features, as do some smaller players like iTransitBuddy.

Embark’s app is available for free on the iPhone for 10 transit systems including Boston’s MBTA, Chicago’s L, the New York City Subway and San Francisco’s Bart and Caltrain systems, with more on the way, according to Embark’s website.

It is not clear whether Embark’s app will be shut down as part of the acquisition. The app was still available in Apple’s App Store at the time of this article’s posting.

Embark’s team could not be immediately reached to comment on the deal.

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Will The Tegra Processor Pay Off?

Last year Nvidia’s Tegra gamble seemed to be paying off nicely, but the insanely competitive SoC market moves fast and all it takes for things to go badly wrong is one botched generation. The Tegra 4 was late to the party and Nvidia eventually ended up with a big and relatively powerful chip that nobody wanted.

In its latest earnings call Nvidia made it clear that revenues from Tegra are expected to decline $200 to $300 million this year from about $750 million last year. Even this seems like a relatively optimistic forecast. Tegra 3 ended up in quite a few high-volume products, such as the Nexus 7, HTC One X, LG Optimus X4 and a bunch of other phones and tablets. On paper, Tegra 4 will end up with a similar number of design wins, maybe even more, but nearly all of them are low-volume products.

At the moment there are only a handful of Tegra 4 products out there. These include HP’s Slatebook 10, Toshiba eXcite Pro and eXcite Write tablets and Nvidia’s own Shield console. Nvidia’s 7-inch Tegra Tab is also on the way, along with the Surface RT 2. Some Chinese vendors like ZTE are also expected to roll out a Tegra 4 phone here and there, but the chip won’t end up in any big brand phones.

Nvidia does not release any Tegra unit shipment info, so we can only guess how many Tegra 3 and Tegra 4 chips are out there, but it doesn’t take much to realise Tegra 4 is a flop. Shipments of the original Nexus 7, powered by the Tegra 3, are estimated just north of six million units. Surface RT shipments were abysmal. Earlier this year analysts put the figure at just 900,000 units after a full quarter of sales. Microsoft eventually took a massive write-down on its Surface RT stock. LG and HTC didn’t reveal any shipment figures for the Optimus 4X and HTC One X, either. HTC shipped about 40 million phones last year, while LG managed about 27 million. We can’t even begin to estimate how many of them were flagship products powered by Tegra, but the number was clearly in the millions.

This time around Nvidia can’t count on strong smartphone sales, let alone the Nexus 7 and Surface RT. Even if it scores high-end tablet design wins, the truth is that high-end Android tablets just aren’t selling well. Nvidia needed high-volume design wins and Android tablets just won’t do the trick. Qualcomm is in the new Nexus 7 and the HTC One. Back in May analysts reported that HTC One sales hit the 5 million mark in the first two months of sales, although shipments have slowed down since then. Millions of Snapdragons found a home in the HTC One and millions more will end up in the new Nexus 7.

Nvidia’s talk of a $200 to $300 million hit this year doesn’t exactly paint the full picture. Tegra 3 shipments in the first two quarters of 2013 were modest, but relatively good. However, nothing took its place and the true extent of the Tegra 4 flop will only become visible in the first quarter of 2014 and beyond. The big hope is that the Tegra 4i and Tegra 5 will start to come online by then, so the numbers for the full year won’t be as terrible, but it is abundantly clear that Nvidia cannot afford another Tegra 4.

As for Nvidia’s Tegra Tab and Shield, they might do well. Nvidia knows a thing or two about hardware, but even if they prove successful, they just won’t be enough, at least not in this cycle.

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