Oak Ridge lab to deploy fast Titan supercomputer

A government research lab in Tennessee will deploy a new supercomputer later this year that could put the U.S. back in contention for the top spot on the list of the world's fastest supercomputers.

The Titan supercomputer at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory is on track for completion by autumn, and will deliver between 10 petaflops (10,000 trillion operations per second) and 20 petaflops of peak performance, the ORNL said Wednesday. The initial phase of its development has just been completed, the lab said.

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Titan, which is a Cray XK6 system, will be the result of hardware upgrades to ORNL's existing Jaguar supercomputer, which delivers 3.3 petaflops peak performance.

The world's fastest supercomputer today, the K Computer in Japan, delivers a peak performance of 10.51 petaflops, according to the most recent Top500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers. The lists are issued each June and November, and the last U.S. supercomputer to hold the top spot was ORNL's Jaguar in November 2009.

Lately, the U.S. has been playing catch-up in the supercomputing race to China and Japan, which have had the fastest systems since early 2010. Russia is building a 10-petaflop supercomputer that will be deployed by the end of 2013, and another supercomputer in the U.S., the 10-petaflop Stampede system, will be operational at the University of Texas in early 2013.

The next big milestone for supercomputers is to reach exaflop performance, which would be about 100 times as fast as today's fastest supercomputers, by 2018.

Titan will combine Advanced Micro Devices' latest 16-core Opteron 6200 CPUs with Nvidia's Tesla graphics processors. The 16-core CPUs replace two existing six-core Opteron chips to provide more general-purpose computing power, while the Nvidia processors will boost specific scientific and math calculations. The system's interconnect and memory are also being upgraded.

Titan will have 299,008 cores and 600 terabytes of memory when completed. Titan was originally announced in October 2011.

Supercomputers allow chip makers to show off the performance of their microprocessors. While AMD may have an edge after Titan is up and running, the Stampede supercomputer will use Intel's upcoming Xeon E5 processors and a co-processor named Knights Corner to accelerate specialized applications.

ORNL is managed by University of Tennessee at Battelle for the U.S. Department of Energy.

iPhone Cases Featured in CES 2012

CES 2012 is one of the main technology exhibitions for gadgets such as iPhone, iPad and other electronic gadgets. CES 2012 was held this year in January in Las Vegas, USA. Apple accessories and products including iPhone cases, iPad cases, etc featured extensively at the show this year along with other gadgets and accessories. Some electronic gadgets and accessories featured at the show were still in the conceptual stage of development while some were to be launched in the market at the show or soon after the show.

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Tens of thousands of technology enthusiasts from all over the world attended the show including designers, businesses, Apple and other gadget accessory distributors, customers as well as end users. Among all the products iPhone and iPad accessories really stood out. There was an extensive range of iPad and iPhone cases on display at many of the stalls at the show.

Here are 5 innovative cases that stood out and deserve a mention

1. Self-Healing Case by Nissan
This has been a much talked about case in blogs and forums in recent months.

The so called 'self-healing' iPhone case has received rave reviews. Nissan hope this case will appeal to a large audience as most phones are prone to minor scratches as part of general wear and tear. The case is built from a specialist type of paint where a chemical reaction is initiated to repair any scratches on the surface. It takes approximately one hour for minor scratches to be repaired by this process although the process can continue for more serious damages for up to a week. Nissan calls it the Scratch Shield iPhone case.

2. Skech Trax iPhone 4 case
This iPhone 4 case is unique as it is made from recycled bicycle tires. They are made by a company called Skech. This is a flip style case with a nice soft interior and the exterior is made from recycled tires. The design is cool and the tyres give it a unique texture and a coarse, rugged look. There is easy access to power or the headphone jack.
The flap above the screen also includes a few extra sleeves for storing business cards or bank cards. The magnetic clasp offers a very easy way to secure the case. Additionally, it also includes support for camera strap.


3.Thermo Snap Case
The thermo snap case 4 was on display by Incase who are no strangers to this market. This is a fund to use case with a heat-activated finish that changes colour on contact. This unique design is inspired from thermocramatic clothing that you may have already come across. The case is made from strong hard material. It is user-friendly and provides easy access to all controls and buttons. Available in pink at Incase, It is competitively prices at under $35 USD which should appeal to a wide audience. The case fits the iPhone 4 and 4S models perfectly. The shade can change from dark to light when it comes into contact with your hand. It changes colour whenever it is exposed to temperature changes.

4. SolMate iPhone Solar Charger And Battery Case
It was not surprising to see a number of Solar powered accessories on display at the CES show. General iPhone users looking for a well-designed solar charger and battery pack case for their Smartphone. It was a display as a concept at the exhibition however it is expected to go into production soon. The case includes a 1600mAH slim line battery. This should double the battery life of your iPhone. Additionally, it is supported by a small solar panel. The solar panel will charge your iPhone even in the shade or away from direct sunlight.

5. iPhone battery case with infrared keyboard
This case was on display by Celluon Prodigy. This is one of the most innovative models on display that gives an indication of things to come. The case boasts of an infrared keyboard similar to the ones that existed for some of the Palm models. It can be a good extension to your phone's standard touch screen display. The new Prodigy iPhone 4S battery case basically projects an interactive infrared keyboard onto any flat surface which you can then use for typing. There are some small limitations however. Your iPhone should be stable on preferably a flat surface. It will be rolled out in the market for just under 200 USD.

HTC reveals One X and S with Snapdragon S4 CPU at MWC 2012

Get the HTC One X from AT&T or the One S from T-Mobile, but you will have to wait until at last April.

HTC just made its flagship superphone lineup, the HTC One, official at Mobile World Congress 2012.

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Although HTC CEO Peter Chou cheekily kicked things off by declaring, “I’ve never been so excited by a phone like HTC One,” he eventually revealed there are three siblings in this family: the One X, One S and One V.

HTC One X

Photos: A closer look at the HTC One X

AT&T will be carrying the 4G/LTE HTC One X with Qualcomm’s new dual-core, 1.5 GHz Snapdragon S4 processor with Krait architecture under the hood, in a polycarbonate body like the Nokia Lumia/N9. (According to AnandTech, the dual-core S4 would actually out-duel an identical device powered by the quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 CPU.) Contrary to earlier rumors published by various tech sites, only the HTC One V will be using the Tegra 3 processor.

HTC One S

The One S manages to cram everything its more high-end brother has into a 7.95mm thin, scratch resistant unibody design, albeit with a slightly smaller 4.3-inch qHD Super AMOLED display. This is the model T-Mobile will be offering customers this Spring (see below, right). Not only will the One S be the sleekest phone in T-Mobile’s portfolio, it will also be among the fastest 4G (HSPA +42) phones available as it is capable of 42 Mbps that can be faster than some home broadband speeds.

Otherwise, all the HTC One brothers share the same DNA, including: (For a more detailed breakdown, check out Matthew Miller’s post.)

OS: Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich
UI: HTC Sense 4 with ImageSense

Wi-Fi Sync means you will be able to update your media content library automatically and wirelessly after hooking the phone up to a computer for the first transfer
Lock screen offers a shortcut to launch the camera quickly
Every HTC device with Sense 4 will get 25 GB of free storage from Dropbox for two-years
Audio: Beats Audio is integrated into all apps (games, music services like Pandora); AT&T will be carrying Beats Audio accessories beginning this Spring
Camera: 8-megapixel rear camera with a f/2.0 lens and back illuminated sensor; 1080p HD video capable of 60 fps for slow motion videos

The One series’ camera actually offer some sophisticated features normally reserved for higher-end cameras. All three models allow users to take still photos while recording videos and during playback, with a fast 0.7 second shutter speed, a 0.2 second auto-focus, as well as auto-burst mode for continuous shots. Videos are also said to automatically remove jitters so they will look more sharp and focused. It’s hard to say whether the camera in these HTC phones will live up to its billing, but who would say no to a phone that happens to have a reliable camera embedded into it?

No exact price or release date for the HTC One X was announced at the press conference or by either carriers, but Chou did conclude the event by saying the One portfolio will launch globally starting in April, so HTC fans have some time to save up for this superphone.

Arrival Of iPhone 6 In 2012 - iPhone 5 To Receive A Spec Bump

The 5th generation of iPhone is on verge of being released and there are thousands of speculations, suggestions, and rumours spreading throughout the internet. IPhone development, iPad application development and iPhone apps development is increasing immensely by passing time and new inventions of iPhone smartphones. People are desperately waiting for the launch of iPhone 5 and also fans are wondering what features this phone is about to bring. As per accurate reports let’s see an article of what it says about this awaited smartphone.

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A new report comes from Ming-Chi Kuo, a security analyst who has been providing very sensible and accurate reports from a long time. If you are the one who have read his reports in the past then you must be well aware that his reports actually do make good sense. His reports are similar to rumours regarding iPhone 5 that is expected to go into production in the month of September. Further the report states that the phone will be identical to the earlier iPhone4 and will be having only few internal changes to set it apart. Kuo has information from his well-informed sources that iPhone 5 will be having A5 processor during the supply chain. This change was certain and expected by most of the people. It would also include a better 8 megapixel camera and this something that was already reckoned to find its way in this next generation iPhone.

iPhone developers expect that after its release iPhone development and iPhone apps development would be boosted. Further as per Kuo’s talks Apple is expected to switch to a Qualcomm baseband for both its models including GSM and CDMA in addition to an improved antenna design. His all suggestions make sense and are not different from previous rumours that we have reported on. Now the interesting part is the release dates as per Ming-Chi Kuo. He has been told by his sources that the phone will be going into trial production in the month of August and in the month of September for mass production. The turnover is expected with an estimated figure of 28 million and 32 million units this year.

The missing thing sticking out of Kuo’s report is his belief about Apple’s announcement regarding iPhone 5 at WWDC even after the fact that it is 3 months earlier than iPhone 5 is expected to be in production by Apple. As per his suggestion that main selling point of the iPhone 5 will be revamped by iOS 5 although the new operating system be more than likely support to older iPhone 4 as well.

The final piece of information from Ming-Chi Kuo is about his claims about Apple that it is still planning to introduce a new iPhone 6 in the first half of year 2012 probably at WWDC 2012. This phone would be a significant redesign by the company and more than just a spec boost by Apple. Even after knowing the fact of Apple releasing iPhone 5 later after the period expected he still reckons the iPhone 6 plan that Apple follows. Let us see whether these claims prove to be true and are seen but as we have mentioned earlier in this article that Ming-Chi Kuo is famous for getting things right. But suddenly iPhone developers will be busy for iPhone users in order to provide them with iPhone apps development for new apps that would be introduced in the phone.

Analyst: Microsoft won't copy Apple's online-only sales for Windows 8

Microsoft will probably trim the number of Windows 8 editions it will sell later this year, but won't mimic Apple's online-only approach to OS upgrades, a retail sales analyst said today.

In developed countries, including the U.S., Microsoft offers Windows 7 in four SKUs, or editions: Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate. All but Enterprise -- available only to volume licensees such as major corporations -- are sold to the general public.

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Evidence uncovered by ZDNet blogger Stephen Chapman -- who found a list of Windows 8 SKUs on a pair of Hewlett-Packard support documents -- hints at just three editions of the upcoming OS: a generic "Windows 8," Professional and Enterprise.

Missing from that list: Ultimate.

"There had been interest in Windows 7 Ultimate," said Stephen Baker, an analyst with the NPD Group, but sales were skimpy and vastly outnumbered by Home Premium and Professional.

Baker expects that, if Microsoft does produce a Windows 8 Ultimate edition, it would be an OEM-only SKU. In other words, Microsoft would drop it from retail and offer it only to computer makers to pre-install on high-end PCs.

The two retail editions for Windows 8 will most likely be Home Premium -- perhaps renamed -- for consumers, and Professional for businesses or consumers who need to connect to their workplace network, said Baker.

Enterprise would remain as the upgrade SKU dealt to volume license customers.

Dropping Ultimate from the Windows 8 list would fit with Microsoft's demotion of that edition in Windows 7. Three years ago and several months before Windows 7 launched, Microsoft confirmed that it was dropping the heavily-criticized "Ultimate Extras" from the version.

Microsoft first pitched Ultimate Extras in the Ultimate edition of Windows Vista, but buyers blasted the company for a sluggish release pace of the add-ons that Extras had promised.

Windows 7 came in two other editions -- Starter and Home Basic -- but both were exiled to emerging markets as part of Microsoft's strategy to offer lower-priced versions that could better compete with the rampant piracy in some countries. The company could retain those developing-markets-only SKUs for Windows 8.

Microsoft has not yet disclosed how many versions of Windows 8 for PCs it will sell, and today declined to share more information about its plans.

An announcement of the Windows 8 lineup could come next week. Microsoft will host a Windows 8 launch event in Barcelona, Spain, on Wednesday, Feb. 29, when it's also expected to release the Consumer Preview.

Although Microsoft revealed the names of its Windows 7 SKUs in early February 2009, nearly nine months before launching the operating system in late October, the company is on a slower pace for Windows 8 than it used then. For example, Windows 8's Consumer Preview will appear almost two months later than the early January 2009 ship date of Windows 7's first public beta.

One thing Microsoft won't do, said Baker, is follow Apple's lead and sell Windows 8 upgrades only online. Last year, Apple sold OS X Lion almost exclusively through the Mac App Store, and recently said it would use the e-market later this year to distribute the Mountain Lion upgrade.

"The [Windows] ecosystem is very different from Apple's, so no, I don't think they would go to that extent," said Baker.

Windows 8 will include Microsoft's new Windows Store mart as the sole channel for Metro-style apps -- and some traditional x86/64 Windows software -- but the firm hasn't said whether Windows 7 users will be able to access the store, and thus make it a destination for upgrade downloads.

With the new store's emphasis on Metro apps, Baker doubted that Microsoft would use that channel to sell Windows 8 upgrades -- people with access to the store would, by definition, already be using the operating system -- but acknowledged that the e-store could be used to deliver future upgrades to Windows 8 users.

Instead, Baker said, Microsoft will continue to include brick-and-mortar retail stores in its delivery mix.

"Microsoft wants to be where the customers want to buy," Baker said. "And the key card approach they used [with Office] cut a lot of the costs of being in stores."

Microsoft sold some upgrades of Office 2010 at retail minus installation media, instead including a small credit card-sized piece of plastic -- called "Product Key Cards" -- that unlocked downloaded versions of the suite or added features to the OEM-preloaded Office Starter 2010.

Windows 8 upgrades could be sold using Product Key Cards to activate downloaded trials, or Microsoft could continue to sell electronic editions through its current e-store, where it now sells Windows 7.

Microsoft has not set definitive system requirements for Windows 8 upgrades -- much less prices -- but has indicated that the new OS will run on PCs now powered by either Vista or Windows 7.

Windows Server 8 to be storage-focused OS

Microsoft executives said Windows Server 8, the beta of which is expected out in the next several weeks, is the most storage-focused OS release to date.

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The new OS will support Hyper-V and SQL Server running over the Samba file sharing protocol Server Message Block (SMB) v2.2, including remote direct memory access (RDMA) over Ethernet and InfiniBand.

The new file-sharing capability allows a virtualized server infrastructure to utilize shared JBOD storage through the use of RDMA-enabled network interface cards (RNICs). To date, Microsoft has qualified one 10GbE NIC from Intel and a 10GbE and InfiniBand NIC from Mellanox Technologies.

RDMA allows servers, through special NICs, to access the memory of other servers without the use of the operating system, offering very high throughput, low latency networking for server clusters.

Jim Pinkerton, a partner architect in Microsoft's File Server Technologies development group, compared the ability to use RDMA over Ethernet or InfiniBand to that of the high-speed storage protocol Fibre Channel, in that a network interface card is used to offload network protocol traffic from a server's CPU.

"Think about going over the network for storage to get better performance, but your CPU [use] doesn't go up," said Pinkerton said.

SMB 2.2 has a multi-channel feature that enables the use of multiple physical network interfaces in an SMB 2.2 client and server. For example, Microsoft has tested a SQL database running across four 10GbE channels. Pinkerton said a SQL database his team ran achieved 6.5GB/sec total throughput or 280,000 I/Os per second using 8K writes with SMB 2.2.

Windows Server 8, which will replace Windows Server 2008, will also feature Live Migration, a tool that allows administrators to move stored copies of virtual machines from one storage server to another without taking down the virtual machine. The migration feature could allow data to be moved while a bad hard drive or array is replaced, or it could be used for SAN upgrades or just to migrate data from one storage platform to another.

Pinkerton said the Live Migration upgrade will also remove downtime on Patch Tuesdays by allowing admins to migrate virtual machines and applications onto another server node, upgrade the original server and then migrate the applications back.

Additionally, Windows operations such as Check Disk or Check Sum can be used to prepopulate a list of data errors -- in a database, for example -- without having to take a server or application offline, Pinkerson said.

Windows Server 8 allows admins to take a snapshot of data to create a list of errors that can then be used to take a volume offline only long enough to correct the data problems.

"The time to perform Check Disk today is proportionate to the number of files in a storage system. So if you want to check 100 million files, you have to take the whole cluster off line to check it, and that could take hours or days," Pinkerson said. "That operation can now be measured in seconds."

Additional management tools will allow adminstrators to oversee up to 200 hard drives or SSDs, allowing the disks to be seen as a single pool of capacity that can be carved up into logial unit numbers (LUNs) and volumes to be shared among physical servers.

"It's a lot harder to find guys to mange a Fibre Channel fabric than an Ethernet fabric. A lot of this stuff becomes more self service or doable by people in the data center," said SW Worth, a senior program manager at Microsoft.

Data deduplication and thin provisioning, or the ability to expand storage volumes on an as-needed basis, is also native to Windows Server 8. "Think of us as a new entry in the enterprise storage space. We're competing for some of that business," Worth said.

"The path we're going down is file-based access, so you don't need storage rocket scientists to administer your environment. And, we're also using SSDs to get performance without having to tune the disks," Pinkerton said, referring to the practice of short-stroking Fibre Channel hard drives to achieve peak performance, which also greatly reduces available storage capacity.

Microsoft also upgraded its access list control (ALC) to enable users to specify who can read and write to documents based on their business unit or the sensitivity of the data itself. For example, documents can be classified as business critical, as containing personal employee data, or they can be classified by business, such as legal, finance or marketing.

Pinkerton said Windows Server 8 will help companies with regulatory compliance and civil litigation by offering document classification.

Avaya may hold share offering in April

Private equity companies planning IPO of equipment maker Avaya in April to raise $1bn

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Equipment maker Avaya could hold its initial public offering of shares as early as April, reported Bloomberg citing sources. While the company had filed for an IPO in June 2011, it had delayed the sale due to volatility in stock markets which kept investors at bay, the report added.
The company, which separated from Lucent in 2000, is owned by private-equity firms Silver Lake and TPG Capital.
The firm is hoping to raise $1 billion from the IPO and has appointed Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase to lead the IPO. Avaya has not revealed a price range or the number of shares to be offered. GTB