Can ARM wrestle its way into the server market? Calxeda and HP think so. On Tuesday Calxeda launched its EnergyCore ARM server-on-a-chip (SoC), and the world’s largest server maker committed to building EnergyCore-based servers that will consume as little as 5 watts total. Read more »
Today there are two primary players making the brains inside servers. But that’s about to change if ARM adding 64-bit processing to it’s cores has the impact the chip IP licensing firm is hoping for. It usher in more innovation, and chips that cost less. Read more »
Cell phone chips just became more appropriate for server workloads, as ARM released a 64-bit version of its low energy processor. And the first company to take advantage of the new design looks to be AppliedMicro, which will build servers for webscale environments. Read more »
ARM said its next generation architecture will offer cores capable of 64-bit computing. The boost from 32-bits to 64-bits will push ARM-based processors over the last big hurdle keeping the chip IP company outside the enterprise and corporate computing market, and pit it squarely against Intel. Read more »
On Wednesday, processor licensing company ARM announced that it has designed an ultra efficient processor core, the Cortex-A7, as well as an energy-efficient method of processing that jumps back and forth between two processors to minimize the energy use of the phone. Read more »
The BBC played a huge part in the British computer boom of the 1980s by supporting local manufacturer Acorn. Now, with the U.K.’s computer education under criticism, it is considering whether to take on a similar role in the 21st century. Read more »
Intel won’t be making any chipsets for smart TVs in the foreseeable future: The company has shut down its Digital Home Group, which was behind the chip that powers the Boxee Box and Google TV devices. However, Boxee and Google aren’t too worried. Read more »
Did you hear the iPhone 4S saw pre-bookings of a million devices on day one? That’s not only good news for Apple, but also for its carrier partners: AT&T, Verizon and Sprint. And they aren’t the only ones cashing in on the iPhone 4S bonanza. Read more »
Both mobile and high performance computing are placing huge power efficiency and performance demands on chips, but the real $64,000 question is how long until such extreme computing use cases hit the server mainstream. Asked another way, how long till Amazon adopts ARM-based servers? Read more »
Apple has another patent-related lawsuit on its hands, reports Bloomberg. VIA Technologies Inc., a Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturer, filed suit against Apple on Wednesday with the U.S. District Court in Wilmington, Del. over the alleged misuse of three of its microprocessor-related patents. Read more »
Intel is very serious about low power chips, although it won’t have them until 2013. The company showed off the long-rumored Haswell chips at its developer forum on Tuesday, which it says can can run all day and offer a 20x reduction in power. Read more »
Microsoft and Intel unveiled initiatives Tuesday that show how the Wintel partners are trying to separately navigate a new post-PC world. Microsoft unveiled Windows 8, which will work on ARM-based tablets and computers while Intel announced a partnership with Google to optimize its chips for Android. Read more »
Last week Google disclosed the details of its energy consumption, and its data center engineers argued that the leading figure cited to assess how energy-efficient a data center is, power usage effectiveness (PUE), must be continuously measured and averaged over a twelve-month period. This was a ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
With power accounting for between 30 and 50 percent of functional operating costs in a data center, power consumption is on everyone’s mind. So much so that at semiconductor conference Hotchips on Friday, Intel and AMD, two companies that have long competed around processor performance, spent hours discussing ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
ARM Holdings is trying to quiet speculation again that the UK chip designer might be acquired, this time by Intel or Oracle. The company has been the focus of rumors before, and with the rise of mobile devices and the slow growth of computers, it’s understandable. Read more »
We’re still a long ways from an ARM-based low power server world, but the idea is making baby steps. Here’s the Today in Green IT, brought to you by the curator of our Green IT section for our subscription service GigaOM Pro. Read more »
Big data and Platform-as-a-Service offerings highlighted the second quarter, suggesting that we can expect to see a shift in enterprise IT practices around application development and analytics very soon. On the PaaS front, we saw new projects like DotCloud and Cloud Foundry gain incredible momentum in just a few short months. The big-data activity ranged from major new Hadoop vendors to heavy investment in flash storage that will speed the serving of data to processing engines. In other areas, we saw an uptick in cloud-computing plans from large vendors, OpenStack continued to mature and pick up both contributors and users, and Facebook caught our eye by launching an open-source project around the designs for its specialized servers and data centers. Additional companies mentioned in this report include VMware, Salesforce.com, IBM, Heroku and Calxeda. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
SeaMicro, a low-power server maker, has managed to increase the amount of computing power under its hood by 50 percent while decreasing the power consumption of its machines by a quarter. But perhaps most interesting, it has managed three new products in the last year. Read more »
A motion to accelerate Apple’s suit against Samsung was denied, allowing Samsung more time to prepare for the briefing process. The likely reason? Apple’s business isn’t harmed much right now, based on the fact that the two companies worked for a year to resolve the situation. Read more »
We give Intel a lot of flack here at GigaOM for not being mobile enough or low power enough for scale out computing, but the chipmaker is doing all right in the server category. We discussed how well and the future for servers in this video. Read more »
Big processors or little processors, scale-up or scale-out, on-premise or in the cloud: the answers might not be as easy as one would think. Web-style, scale-out architectures, low-power server processors and cloud computing are getting more attention by the day, but they have their limits. Read more »
For decades, innovation in the chip industry has largely been governed by the needs of personal computers. But thanks to the proliferation of connected mobile devices, the growth of the consumer web and services available online and on-demand, the PC’s influence on chip design is fading. Read more »
Calxeda, the startup building servers using the same kind of ARM chips used in cell phones, has launched its partner program. Companies such as Eucalyptus, Gluster, Canonical and Opscode lined up Tuesday behind the server company to show their willingness to work with its specialized hardware. Read more »
Stealthy startup SuVolta has pioneered an improvement in the chip-manufacturing process that will help cut the power usage of semiconductors by half while maintaining their performance. The process, which it plans to license, changes a few of the ingredients used to make chips. Read more »
Texas Instruments has ceded much of the mobile chip market to Qualcomm and Nvidia, but is ready to challenge with a new OMAP 4 chip. The dual-core processor paired with a PowerVR graphics core can power smartphones, tablets and even notebook computers running Linux or Windows. Read more »
Facing a growing challenge from mobile chips based on ARM architecture, Intel is coining a new name for old devices. Ultrabooks will be sub-$1,000 notebooks that are thin, light and more capable than netbooks. Is this a rehash of the failed CULV experiment from 2009? Read more »
The first dual-core Android tablets only arrived in February, but Nvidia is already showing off an improved quad-core chip it expects in tablets by August. A video demo of the chip, codenamed “Kal-El,” shows impressive performance: enough that some consumers may wait to buy a tablet. Read more »
In five short years, cloud computing has gone from being a quaint technology to a major catchphrase. Amazon and others are now moving at Internet speed, trying to offer better security, faster networking, more compliance and a host of other products that are attempting to meet the demands of startups, consumers and enterprises alike. On GigaOM’s Structure channel, we cover the gear and software that comprises the cloud, the services and the people who are changing the industry. Now for the first time, we’ve decided to condense that knowledge into the Structure 50, a list of the 50 companies that are influencing how the cloud and infrastructure evolves. All of these players, big or small, have people, technology or strategies that will help shape the way the cloud market is developing and where it will eventually end up. Companies mentioned in this report include Amazon, Rackspace, Cloudera, China Telecom and SeaMicro. For a full list of companies, and to see the Structure 50 as one full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Apple “helps shape” Intel’s road map, according to Intel SVP Tom Kilroy. Kilroy told Reuters that the iPad and Apple’s other successes play a big role in Intel’s future planning. There are also new signs the company might become a foundry partner for Apple. Read more »
Startup Calxeda has a big idea: use cell phone chips to create low-power servers. Reducing energy consumption is something that data center operators are increasingly paying attention to as a way to lower costs and Calxeda will be rolling out its product in 2012. Read more »
Tech blog SemiAccurate sped up a slow news Friday with a so-crazy-it-might-be-true rumor that Apple will be switching CPU architecture. Again. Right now, it seems impossible, but given time, could Apple really use in-house designed ARM-based chips to provide the processing power behind Mac computers? Read more »
Intel has managed to keep pushing Moore’s Law by developing a 3-D transistor that allows the chipmaker to deliver ever smaller chips that will be more powerful, yet consume less energy. The new chip moves Intel ahead of the industry and positions it competitively against ARM. Read more »
Is Intel about to announce a foundry deal to make Apple chips today? Intel is losing the mobile chip war to ARM. A foundry deal would benefit both Apple and Intel, by keeping Intel in the mobile game and helping Apple diversify its suppliers. Read more »
LG, the South Korean makers of phones televisions, household appliances and a variety of other consumer devices has licensed the ARM-based chip cores that can be found in devices from handsets to set-top-boxes. Once again, a vendor has forgotten to invite Intel to the party. Read more »
Intel plans to power Google Android tablets in the future, which might be the chip-maker’s last, best shot at the fast-growing mobile market. But this isn’t the safest bet in town. For the moment, hardware has outpaced the capabilities of Google’s Honeycomb operating system. Read more »
Facebook has shared the details of its server and data center design, taking its commitment to openness to a new level for the industry by sharing its infrastructure secrets like it has shared its software code.And that data center? It has a PUE of 1.07. Read more »
As the needs for performance and power efficiency become more important, figuring out how to get the best hardware on the job without having to rewrite all your code becomes a problem computer science must solve. Is abstraction the answer? Read more »
As smartphone adoption surpasses traditional computer sales, Intel’s time to crack the mobile market continues to expire. Losing Nokia’s focus on MeeGo hasn’t helped, so at this point, Google’s Android platform may be the chipmaker’s best bet, even though that solution is a long shot too. Read more »
Intel isn’t letting ARM, VIA, or a bunch of startups run away with its server business. Today it outlined its plans for the micro server category and said it would create server chips with power consumptions as low as 10 watts per processor by 2012. Read more »
Calxeda, the company building servers out of clusters of cell phone chips, to optimize power efficiency, has briefed analysts about its upcoming products. The results look compelling according to Forrester analyst Richard Fichera, who recommends that IT pros consider ARM servers in their strategic technology plans. Read more »
