In 2013 cleantech investing will move toward companies serving unsubsidized markets where software plays a role in reducing power consumption. In many ways this is a return to plays for energy efficiency, and there’s still money to be made from business models built around saving energy. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Cloud computing is changing the world of microprocessor-chip design. Soon we will see a division between the traditional players (typified by Intel and AMD) and a group of new incumbents (Tilera and others) that offer fresh solutions to make the world’s microprocessor chips as efficient as possible. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Facebook has made waves by detailing its plans to use what an executive calls chips that have a cell-phone architecture in its future data centers. The social network plans to test such chips now and next year and will likely have them in production in 2014. Read more »
Discussions about the cloud now involve more than just the IT department. New developments in hardware architectures, more-energy-efficient data centers, regulatory concerns and simplifying analytics are all discussions currently circling through the industry. Here’s what to consider when thinking about your business in the cloud. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
This quarter the EV market struggled to find its footing. Meanwhile, the smart-grid sector solidified and low-power technology proved itself important in the data center. Read more to learn what these news pieces and others mean for the larger space over the next few months. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Now that AMD has confirmed its purchase of low-power server maker SeaMicro, I bet its next move will be an announcement around licensing the ARM architecture. That’s right: AMD will do a deal with the company that provides the architecture for chips inside your cell phone. Read more »
If we’re going to create an Internet of things that connects back to a cloud powered by millions of servers, the chip world will have to change to reduce power consumption, shrink in size and embrace new architectures. Here are three startups that showcase these shifts. Read more »
The compute and server world is changing rapidly, with webscale companies such as Facebook and Amazon dominating the web and creating new lines of business. With that comes change to the value chain of server and silicon companies, and we now stand at an inflection point ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Last quarter we highlighted the fast maturation of the Platform-as-a-Service and big data spaces. Those two trends only picked up speed during the third quarter of 2011. Joining them on the cusp of IT greatness, though, are the OpenStack project and flash storage. The former gathered serious validation from big-name companies, while the latter saw less funding than last quarter but a significant number of product launches. Of course, the third quarter wasn’t all lollipops and rose petals. We saw new computing technologies and delivery models such as tablets wreak havoc on both HP and Cisco, and there are concerns (aren’t there always?) about how the Internet will handle our increased use of streaming video and cloud computing. Unfortunately for HP and Cisco, the latter problem might be an easier fix than the strategic woes facing them. Additional companies mentioned in this report include CloudBees, Rackspace, Engine Yard and Joyent. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
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 »
We are moving from the information age to the insight age. So the computer industry is building chip with more cores to keep up with influx of data and the need to process it faster. But more cores means new ways of programming. Read more »
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 »
The future of data centers is not about performance. It’s about performance per watt. It’s about building a data center that uses less power, lowers operating costs and leaves a smaller carbon footprint. Read more »
Facebook engineers have tested a 64-core chip from Tilera and found it ideal for grabbing data quickly from key value stores. This may galvanize the creation of new benchmarks as the debate of which architecture works best for webscale and cloud computing rages. Read more »
Intel has purchased an Ethernet silicon company in a move that mimics the industry trend toward viewing the data center as the computer as computing becomes more distributed. Intel said on Tuesday it would buy Fulcrum Microsystems, a venture-backed company that’s 11 years old. 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 »
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 »
In the debate over the future of server hardware, it comes down to the need for highly efficient hardware using up a fraction of the space and a fraction of the power of legacy hardware solutions, versus the desire for more powerful options from existing manufacturers. 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 »
We are moving from the Information Age to the Insight Age, and as part of that shift we need a compute architecture that will handle the storage and processing required all without requiring a power plant hooked up to every data center. What architecture will win? Read more »
Two markets stand out above all else when looking at the first quarter of 2011: infrastructure as a service (IaaS) — the epitome of cloud computing — and big data. Amazon Web Services continues to lead the IaaS space in terms of customers and innovation, while Rackspace, buoyed by momentum around OpenStack, will be its primary competitor for mainstream customers. In the big data space, there are so many players and terms floating about it’s difficult for outsiders to get a handle on who’s who and what’s what, though such activity validates the technologies. Other developments this quarter included HP’s impending presence in the cloud computing and big data spaces and the realization that Intel won’t be left to die if low-power servers based on x86 processors catch on like the buzz late last year suggests they will. Additional companies mentioned in this report include VMware, Microsoft, Cloudera, SeaMicro and Facebook. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Tilera, a chip design firm that’s building a 100-core processor for hugely parallel compute problems, has raised $45 million in funding from investors that include Artis Capital Management, WestSummit Capital Management and Comerica Bank. The company has raised a total of $109 million. Read more »
If there’s one thing certain in IT, it’s that users are always searching for the next big thing, but that legacy vendors and equipment, as well as national technology policy, can slow down progress in immeasurable ways. Here we highlight several happenings and trends in cloud ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The second quarter of 2010 belonged to the little guys and the new guys. Almost across the board, from processors to virtualization to cloud services, relatively small vendors and startups had the market cornered on innovation and mindshare. And where there’s tinder in the forms of customer demand, products, funding and a greater societal movement toward environmentalism, something is bound to catch fire. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Last year, the Structure conference confirmed my beliefs that the community had moved beyond asking what cloud computing is, and was moving toward asking how users can best leverage it. This year, I learned even ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Soon, cloud providers will be struggling to squeeze more computing out of the power they have on hand. Let’s look at two themes to emerge from Structure 2010 that can help IT vendors cater to their data center energy efficiency ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Tilera, the maker of a massively multicore chip, has signed a deal with hardware manufacturer Quanta to offer a server designed especially for the cloud, becoming one of several startups aiming to meet worldwide demand for compute-based services and amid concerns about energy efficiency. Read more »
Tilera, one of many companies trying to build specialty chips or systems for cloud and web-scale computing, received a strategic investment today from Broadcom. But even as the investment validates Tilera, does the cloud need its own specialty chips and gear? Read more »
Anant Agarwal, co-founder and CTO of Tilera, is tackling the Mount Everest of chips. His goal for decades has been to figure out how to build a general-purpose chip that offers better performance and power efficiency. Those are goals that many startups have shot for and […] Read more »
[qi:gigaom_icon_chip] Microsoft and Intel this summer both snapped up companies with technology that helps software developers build programs that take advantage of multicore chips. Last July I pulled together a list of five startups to watch in the multicore programming space, and prompted by Microsoft announcing on […] Read more »
