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 »
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’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 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 »
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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 »
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 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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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, 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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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, 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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 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 »
After watching the mobile market pass it by, Intel is aggressively moving forward. Its newest chips for smartphones and tablets run longer on a single charge and the company now has the latest version of Google Android, known as Jelly Bean, running on those chips. Read more »
After weeks of back and forth and considerable anxiety, VMware, Intel and NEC are now Gold members of the OpenStack Foundation. The news comes out of Friday afternoon’s OpenStack board meeting. Read more »
A survey of mobile and online manners by Intel found that most people think we are getting ruder and sharing too much information. Yet most of those same people agree that sharing makes them feel connected. Read more »
Mellanox, a maker of Infiniband interconnects and switches, has doubled its sales in the last two quarters. What is behind its recent success and what does that say about Mellanox, Infiniband and the current state of scale out data center networking? Read more »
A handful of Intel servers just emerged from a yearlong bath in an oil-based coolant, and the results were remarkable. The servers ran at a PUE just above 1.0, and showed no ill effects from the oil. Is oil immersion coming to a rack near you? Read more »
ZTE and Motorola indicated that they are making Intel-powered smartphones. Samsung announced the Microsoft Windows 8 powered ATIV-S phones, beating Nokia to the punch. These are first signs of PC-business behemoths trying hard to find relevance in a mobile-first world of Apple, Google and Qualcomm. Read more »
SUSE’s Alan Clark and Cisco’s Lew Tucker are the chairman and vice chairman of the fledgling OpenStack Foundation. They’ve got a lot on their plate as the foundation has to wean itself from Rackspace and set its own course. Read more »
John McCain and Ron Wyden are among the dozens of congresspeople people from Oregon, Arizona and New Mexico lobbying the ITC against harming the economy by banning the import of computers containing some of Intel’s most-popular processors. But saving the IT economy goes beyond patents. Read more »
