VMware sharpens its focus — and its knife
Hybrid cloud, software-defined data center, and end-user computing are all in. Other VMware efforts will be out in the upcoming year as the company seeks to regain focus. Read more »
The market for traditional servers is being enveloped by the cloud
photo: Shutterstock / Oleksiy Mark
No wonder Dell and HP are exploring drastic options — Dell reportedly looking to go private and HP re-evaluating plans to sell of business units: More of their bread-and-butter server business is disappearing into the ether. Read more »
Sorry Windows RT, Windows 8 on an Atom has your number
Microsoft’s Windows RT software had an opportunity to bring limited Windows 8 functionality to low-cost tablets, but that window may already be closing. Intel Atom-based slates with full Windows 8 and long run-times on a single charge have fewer restrictions and cost about the same. Read more »
The fourth quarter of 2012 in cleantech
The fourth quarter in cleantech saw attention paid to two prominent, publicly traded companies: EV maker Tesla and newly minted public listing SolarCity. It remains a transitional period for the sector as investment declines, with a shift toward those companies able to scale with little additional capital. Read more »
One less Windows RT choice in US: So long Samsung Ativ Tab
U.S. consumers have one less Windows RT tablet to choose: Samsung has decided not to sell its Ativ Tab, citing weak demand for Windows RT and a lack of product understanding by consumers. That’s OK, the Ativ with full Windows 8 and Intel’s Atom is $599. Read more »
CES 2013 Live-blog: Intel’s press event
Intel has a packed room for its major press event at the International Consumer Electronics Show and I squeezed in with a few thousand of my closest friends to experience it. Follow along as I live blog the event and hear the news. Read more »
CES 2013: Will your next tablet be made of plastic paper?
Tablets keep getting thinner, but how thin can they realistically get? Perhaps no thicker than a few pieces of paper. Plastic Logic is demonstrating its PaperTab project, which is powered by an Intel Core i5 and uses a bendable e-ink display. Read more »
All computing isn’t equal: Here are the four types
photo: Flickr user Keith Ellwood
Despite the idea that a server is a server, the needs of different computing customers differ widely. For those thinking about selling infrastructure, software or even services understanding the difference in computing and IT styles will help you hone your pitch and find your buyer. Read more »
Grading 2012 mobile predictions: mostly hits but a few misses
As the year comes to a close, its time to look back at predictions for 2012. I made 16 of them last December and while I got a fair number right, there were a few clunkers. It’s time to dust off the crystal ball for 2013. Read more »
Subscriber Content
How tomorrow’s mobile-centric data centers will look
photo: Facebook
The “mobile first” philosophy is under way today. That means a new generation of mobile-centric data centers will arise over the next three years, with chips, servers, and power architectures customized for mobile workloads. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Facebook happy to endorse, but not use, Intel’s newest chip
photo: Pinar Ozger
Facebook’s Frank Frankovsky was onstage at today’s launch of Intel’s first low-power system on a chip for the data center, but it turns out that the social networking doesn’t plan on using the chips. Instead Frankovsky’s role could be seen as validating the microserver market. Read more »
Intel’s new microserver chips and how it is beating its innovator’s dilemma
Intel has released its first Atom system on a chip aimed at the data center. The new SoC consumes 6 watts and has many enterprise-class features. But with ARM taking aim at the same market Intel has a totally different type of competition to worry about. Read more »
Why greentech startups need to renew their focus on volume manufacturing
![MiaSole_0876[1]](http://earth2tech.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/miasole_08761.jpg?w=210&h=140&crop=1)
The lack of greentech hardware success stories points to a potentially missing piece of the puzzle: a Samsung-style intense focus on manufacturing. Read more »
Gamers rejoice: New screen-shifting tech coming to high-end phones
photo: Silicon Image
Silicon Image has developed a new, smaller WirelessHD chip to let mobile gamers project their games from their smartphones or gaming devices onto their TVs. Will the same company that pushed HDMI be able to popularize a new wireless standard? Read more »
Intel: We’ve always been serious about microservers. No, really
Intel almost can’t bring itself to call the market for wimpy cores a real market, but since its customers seem to really want them the chip giant is trying to offer products for microservers. But the strain is clear, as is the looming competition from ARM. Read more »
Chip sales are down, but Qualcomm is up. Waaaay up!
Sales of semiconductors are expected to fall this year. The only sector that didn’t see a decline year-over-year is the wireless business, and in that sector Qualcomm has seen sales grow by 27.2 percent. More proof of the upheaval occurring in the chip biz. Read more »
Mobile mess: Surface Pro has bigger battery, half run time of Surface RT
Microsoft’s Surface Pro arrives in January with a full-featured version of Windows and an $899 price tag. That costs more than the Windows RT version but adds more app compatibility. It also brings half the run-time even though the battery is 30 percent bigger. Read more »
End of an era: Intel CEO Paul Otellini to retire in May
photo: Flickr user huangjiahui
Intel’s CEO Paul Otellini will step down in May. So far no successor has been named, but the transition in leadership will occur as the entire chip industry deals with a transition from high performance general purpose computing to more special-purpose, efficient chips. Read more »
10gen gets more dough for MongoDB, this time from Intel and Red Hat
photo: Flickr/401(K) 2012
The company behind the popular MongoDB NoSQL database has some big, new backers in Intel and Red Hat. 10gen CEO Dwight Merriman said that shows that NoSQL in general, and MongoDB in particular, are here to stay. Read more »
Guess who else wants to build ARM-based servers? Texas Instruments
photo: Shutterstock / Oleksiy Mark
Texas Instruments will join the slew of chipmakers using cell-phone cores in servers. But it has two twists with its KeyStone architecture — integrated 10 gigabit Ethernet networking and TI’s digital signal processing cores to aid in performing complex math. Read more »
MIPS sale and patent deal show how weird the chip world has become
photo: MIPS
MIPS Technologies has sold it’s business to Imagination, the graphics IP company, while selling more than 500 of its remaining patents to a consortium led by ARM Holdings, a onetime rival. The deals are an example of the huge shifts taking place in the semiconductor world. Read more »
Apple switch from Intel chips? The real question may be when, not if
Will Apple replace the Intel processors in its Macbooks with ARM-based chips? In the last week new processor designs from ARM as well as Apple’s desire to merge the iOS and OS X experience have driven a new cycle of rumors. Here’s why they make sense. Read more »
Why Apple could be getting closer to building its own Mac chips
photo: Om Malik
Yet another report indicates that Apple might be aiming to move away from Intel chips in its Mac lineup. Bloomberg says the company wants to get its mobile and PC products on the same chip architecture. Here’s why that could actually happen. Read more »
AT&T offers Samsung’s Smart PC Windows 8 tablet for $799
As Windows computers morph into tablets, expect more such devices to be found in network operator stores. Case in point: AT&T will sell Samsung’s Smart PC with mobile broadband radio for $799 without contract. Is the price too high for what you’re getting? Read more »
Facebook, AMD, HP and others team up to plan the ARM data center takeover
Building an ARM-based server is actually not the hardest part of getting ARM into the data center. The real challenge will be getting software that runs on the alternative architecture, and making that software something that enterprises want to use. Here are two effort to help. Read more »
As data gets bigger, what comes after a yottabyte?
photo: Flickr user Denise Chan
Forget what comes after infinity, we at GigaOm were worried about a smaller problem, namely what comes after a yottabyte. Well now we know the answer to that problem — a 1 followed by 27 zeros (a yottabyte only has 24 zeros), otherwise known as a brontobyte. Read more »
Meet ARM’s two newest cores for faster phones and greener servers
ARM has introduced two next-generation processor cores aimed at spanning the continuum of compute needs today — from mobile clients to the racks of servers supporting our web services. The new A-50 family of cores will appear in devices in 2014 and 2015. Read more »
AMD will challenge Intel with ARM-based server chips. In 2014.
photo: AMD
AMD, which has fallen behind its chief rival Intel in the x86 processor business, announced on Monday plans to make new 64-bit chips based on ARM’s chip technology that will target data center and cloud computing companies. AMD will continue to make x86 processors as well. Read more »
Red Hat-Applied Micro deal is another vote for ARM in the data center
Everyone is jumping on the ARM server bandwagon with Red Hat and Applied Micro the latest vendors to hitch a ride. Cell phone chips in the the data center is a hotly anticipated trend and we’re going to see a lot of ecosystem announcements next week. Read more »
Why AMD must embrace ARM to stay alive
photo: AMD
AMD said last week it would lay off 15 percent of its workers, but we hope next week it will announce an ARM license for use in servers. Such a move looks like AMD’s last chance for relevance as the chip world experiences a huge upheaval. Read more »
Intel v. ARM: The Chromebook performance battle
Google surprised many last week by launching a new $249 Chromebook, which is $200 lower than the prior model. One part of the cost savings is replacing the Intel processor with a new Samsung chip designed for phones and tablets. So how’s the performance? Read more »
After Google debacle, Microsoft’s so-so Q1 earnings look pretty perky
Microsoft’s lackluster first quarter earnings news actually came as a relief after a raft of bad tech sector news from IBM, Intel and Google this week. The software giant missed expectations but not by all that much for the quarter ending September 30. Read more »
Take a peek at the secret upheaval in the chip world
There has been a lot of bad news from the chip giants this quarter, but it’s not the decline of the PC or even merely economic worries pressing on the sector. No, there’s a systemic change in the market and the industry giants are reacting. Read more »
Doctor’s dream: Jason Hoffman’s quest to build the new web machine
Jason Hoffman is familiar to many in the computing industry as the CTO of Joyent and a leader of the movement to build distributed systems. But before that, he was a doctor who helped his mom beat cancer. Here’s how the past and present connect. Read more »
Calxeda gets $55M as ARM-based servers near reality
Calxeda, a company making dense, low-power servers using the same ARM chip architecture found in cell phones, has raised $55 million to take on Intel as well as the myriad other vendors that want to take ARM’s low power chips and cram them into servers, Read more »
Acer’s first Windows 8 tablet: $799 with case and keyboard
Here come the Windows 8 device announcements: Acer’s first Windows 8 tablet, the Iconia W700, hits the market on Oct. 26 with a starting price of $799. That price includes a keyboard and unique case / cradle, giving hints on Windows 8 RT pricing. Read more »
Subscriber Content
Mobile 2012 and beyond
Whether it’s the iPhone 5, the importance of LTE, or BYOD trends disrupting the enterprise, there are always technologies, trends, and companies changing the way we define mobile. Here are some noteworthy segments to watch in the coming months, from location-based shopping to apps to wireless networks. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
New Motorola Razr i: Intel Inside and 20 hours of battery life
As expected, Motorola announced a new smartphone that uses an Intel Atom chip. A surprise, however, is the phone’s battery life: At 20 hours of mixed use, it’s the same as a similar Razr using Qualcomm’s chip. Will Intel be inside your next phone? Read more »
Android this week: Google kills Android rival; Jelly Bean for Intel; 500M Androids globally
Open Handset Alliance partners have to follow the rules, else face the wrath of Google: The company effectively shut down a press event for a new Acer phone for China. Meanwhile, it looks like Intel is about to redouble its Android smartphone efforts. Read more »
IBM’s new imaging technique could lead to new and better chips
IBM has developed a microscopy technique that lets it see the bonds between molecules. While that’s pretty esoteric for most of us, the tool could help develop graphene-based semiconductors that would result in better batteries, faster chips, nicer displays and more efficient solar panels. Read more »
