AMD details 3 new server chips, including its first ARM design
AMD has released its new server roadmap, which includes its first ARM-based chip aimed at the data center. This is big for AMD and an evolution of the data center. Read more »
Applied Micro’s cloud chip is an ARM-based, switch-killing machine
photo: Stacey Higginbotham
Applied Micro, a chip company with a market cap of $500 million, is set to take on Intel and AMD with the first 64-bit, ARM-based server part that mimics an entire rack on a chip. 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 »
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The role of converged infrastructure in the data center
Cloud computing’s increased performance cannot be sustained if the corresponding cost to the service provider (SP) for delivering this performance also increases. What service providers need is a way of delivering low latency, fast response, and increasing performance while minimizing the cost of the network. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
There’s still money in old-school tech, and maybe a lesson for startups too
photo: Shutterstock / mangostock
As startups race to become the next big thing, they often downplay the successes and sales of those they hope to replace. But large companies spend billions on old technology because they don’t have the resources to try something new. Read more »
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Cleantech and investment in 2013
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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Cloud computing’s impact on chip and hardware design
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 »
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Cloud computing infrastructure: 2012 and beyond
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 »
Microsoft Surface: a new tablet and a bold strategy
Microsoft did what many would consider unthinkable by introducing Surface, a slick 10.6-inch tablet with two different models designed and built by Microsoft. There’s a key strategic difference, however: Surface tablets place Microsoft in direct competition with its licensees for both tablets and PCs. Read more »
See what cloud can do! Dell unveils ARM servers
Dell showed off a box that contains 48 ARM-based servers, joining others making boxes with processors that uses the same architecture as the chips inside your cell phone. The server consumes less power and could find a home in web servers and Hadoop clusters. Read more »
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Ups and downs for cleantech in Q1
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 »
Meet Cyclos, a startup that cuts chip power-consumption
When building chips, designers have to trade energy efficiency for performance. But Cyclos can help designers boost clock speeds while shaving 10 to 30 percent off the power required by the chip. As mobile devices need more gigahertz, this will be a big deal. Read more »
Intel’s Atom chip debuts in Orange smartphone
Mobile World Congress just became Intel’s mobile coming out party. On Monday Orange will debut the first smartphone powered by Intel’s Atom processor at the show, giving Intel a key foothold in the European market as well as a critical endorsement from a major carrier. Read more »
Intel talking to Apple about mobile chips, but Apple probably isn’t listening
The big buzz out of CES on Thursday is that Intel has been “talking” to Apple, among other manufacturers, about using its new line of Medfield chips in upcoming mobile devices. But the discussions are clearly very preliminary, and Apple has good reason to remain aloof. Read more »
CES Video: Intel impresses in Android 4.0 tablet
Just like every prior CES in the past few years, Intel is touting how its chips are ready for mobiles. The only difference in 2012 is that I’m starting to believe the company after seeing Intel’s Medfield chip power an Android tablet that runs all day. Read more »
Intel’s Atom gets 2 phone customers, but that’s not enough
Motorola and Lenovo have agreed to embed Intel’s Medfield applications chips in forthcoming Android phones. But for Intel to call Atom a success, it needs to make headway with the big handset makers, a difficult task considering how cozy many of them are with ARM. Read more »
Intel’s dilemma: Whose problem do Ultrabooks solve?
At Intel’s CES press event, Ultrabooks were the focus, as were the six “experiences” these thin and light notebooks bring. But consumers are getting such experiences from smartphones and tablets, so who has a problem that could be solved by Ultrabooks? Intel itself comes to mind. Read more »
3 startups that showcase the future of chips
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 »
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Webscale and cloud are changing the server value chain. Who wins?
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 »
How the cloud is reshaping supercomputers
In the past decade supercomputers were dressed-up versions of Intel’s x86 machines, but increasingly supercomputers are borrowing innovations (and silicon in the form of ARM-based chips or DSPs) from the mobile and big data realms to add speed without guzzling too much power. Read more »
ARM vs Intel: Just starting or already over?
Notebook makers are reportedly bidding on chip supplies from both Intel and those provided by vendors using the ARM architecture, presumably to compete better on pricing with Apple. The real story is that the next round of chip wars between Intel and ARM licensees is here. Read more »
The ARM v. Intel fight just got good
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 »
How long until clouds adopt extreme computing chips?
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 »
Microsoft, Intel chart separate paths in the post-PC era
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 »
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OpenFlow and beyond: future opportunities in networking
The world of networking is changing, thanks to shifting traffic patterns, more widely distributed webscale systems and the economic need for the networking world to catch up to where the computing and server world is today. This trend toward networking virtualization has huge implications for vendors such as Cisco, Juniper, Arista, Dell and Intel, but it also could become the foundation for an entire new ecosystem of startups and value creation, much like what the creation of the hypervisor did for computing. In this research note we look at what network virtualization is, why we’re moving toward it, what OpenFlow is and what the opportunities are for companies, both large and small, beyond that technology. Additional companies mentioned in this report include Facebook, SeaMicro and Zynga. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Facebook sides with Tilera in the server architecture debate
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 »
SeaMicro’s new servers keep on coming
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 »
Servers are like money, you’ll always need 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 »
The server architecture debate rages on
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 »
Stealthy chip startup’s technology is a big power play
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 »
HP Pairs With Nvidia for New GPU Servers
Compute giant Hewlett-Packard has teamed up with Nvidia to make a server containing up to eight graphics processors designed for the high performance computing market. The two have built the world’s “Greenest Production Supercomputer” together, and the machine using Nvidia’s latest GPUs offers more performance. Read more »
Question Everything: A New Processor For Big Data
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 »
ARM-Based Macs: A Real Possibility?
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 »
With 3-D Transistors, Intel Keeps Moore’s Law Ticking
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 »
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Infrastructure Q1: IaaS Comes Down to Earth; Big Data Takes Flight
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 »
Can Android Save Intel in a World of ARM Devices?
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 »
