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********************************************************* Intel proves once and for all that PCs are not coming back IDF 2013: Rant - Dead and gone because that is what Intel wants for some reason I went to IDF this year hoping to find a reason that PCs weren’t doomed and came away knowing all key players are actively making things worse. The PC isn’t just in trouble, it is actively being destroyed because no one involved is interested in changing.Lets face it, the modern Windows 8 PC is a miserable experience, it is not a step forward from its predecessors in any measurable way but...

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. has released three silicon-validated reference flows within the open innovation platform (OIP) that enable 16 FinFET systems-on-chip (SoC) designs and 3D chip stacking packages. Leading electronic design automation (EDA) vendors collaborated with TSMC to develop and validate all these flows through multiple silicon test vehicles. There are three reference flows.

Last month, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration charted the 11,967 tropical cyclones that have occurred on Earth since records began. By colouring how many times any storm track overlapped another, certain patterns arise in the density of storms affecting a given area. Cyclone tracks overlapped the most in the western Pacific and Bay of Bengal. The frequency of track overlaps is much lower in the Western Hemisphere

Crucial Rolls-Out Mammoth 64GB DDR3 1333MHz Crucial on Thursday announced the 64GB LRDIMM (load-reduced dual-inline memory module) for new-generation servers. Load-reduced DIMMs enable users to populate more DIMMs per channel for up to twice the installed memory capacity of a server, which is crucial for new-generation servers that can feature twelve or more microprocessor cores per socket.The 64GB Crucial DDR3L LRDIMMs operates using 1.35V, unlike the 1.5V common in DDR3 RDIMMs, making the new module more energy-efficient and cost-effective, especially in large deployments. The modules work at 1333MHz clock-rate with CAS latency 9. These modules offer up to a 35%...

PengPod, a low-quantity Linux tablet vendor, released the PengPod 1040 tablet today that they claim will "transform the PC and Tablet world by merging both elegantly together to fit any lifestyle." But will it really pan out? The company claims their latest tablet will transform the PC and tablet worlds since it can effectively dual-boot between Android and Linaro/Ubuntu on ARM. This way, you can enjoy Android apps and then reboot and gain access to your normal Ubuntu (desktop-focused) apps -- not too different from Canonical's failed Ubuntu Edge campaign with a smart-phone dual-booting Ubuntu and Android. PengPod also...

IDF 2013: One tenth of power Intel has just announced Quark, a new SoC family that is just one fifth of Atom in size and uses one tenth of the power. This subatomic chip is intended for ubiquitous computing, from watches to washing machines and many medical devices that people can wear. Essentially companies such Intel wants to have as many computers possible in just about anything including headlights in your car. It creates new market and expands existing ones, hence all that hype about the internet of things.This might be Intel’s solution to a wearable computing like smart glasses,...

64-bit chip for iPhone 5S and iOS 7 In addition to the new 64-bit kernel iOS 7 as well as the iPhone 5S and the iPhone 5C, Apple has unveiled its new A7 SoC, which is actually the first consumer ARM-based SoC with 64-bit support.According to Apple, the new A7 SoC consists of over 1 billion transistors on a 102mm2 die, which is actually twice what they had in the A6 chip. The chip will feature 64-bit desktop-class architecture with a modern instruction set, twice the amount of general-purpose and floating-point registers.According to Apple, the new chip will be twice...

While the investing community this morning is focused squarely on the very disappointing iPhone 5 relaunch and the lack of a cemented China Mobile deal, which has resulted in a $20 billion loss in market cap in early trading for the second most widely held hedge fund stock, a thing that we find more curious in the aftermath of the latest revalations of an implicit, if not explicitly voluntary, joint venture between Apple and the US government and specifically its NSA uberspies, is just how much of Apple's product suite is derived thanks to developments by the US government....

Samsung unveiled its highly anticipated digital wristwatch Wednesday, beating Apple to what could become this year's must-have holiday gift item. So-called smartwatches, which can perform tasks such as displaying email and Twitter messages on a device worn around the wrist, have been around for several years but have failed so far to inspire great interest among ordinary consumers. But with smartphone behemoths Samsung Electronics Co. and Apple Inc. joining the fray—and Google pushing its Google Glass gadget—experts see a chance of wearable computers breaking into the mainstream. That is, if consumers can get used to talking to their watch, secret...

How to fight 21st century financial crime with 19th century tools A US House of Representatives committee is investigating whether federal securities regulators are using last century's tools to review corporations' books. House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa penned a stiff missive to Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Mary Jo White asking for an explanation of why the regulator has been so slow to embrace the use of eXtensible Business Reporting Language, or XBRL. White has been wanting more funds to hire additional staff but apparently is less interested in moving to XBRL. Issa pointed out that interactive data in financial...

Wearable technology seems to be a hot topic these days. Most of the major technology players have some form of wearable device in the works. Samsung is calling its product line, Galaxy Gear, which they say will encourage “a smarter life.” The hope is that Internet technology will move from being something that is some-what independent of us to something that is literally woven into our daily existence. From your shoes to your shirt, stove to your toilet, the future may be found in connecting every part of our lives. This is sometimes referred to as the “Internet of Things.”...

Seagate First to Utilize Next-Gen SMR Tech for Hard DrivesSeagate Technology, a leading maker of hard disk drives and storage solutions, has announced it has shipped over one million drives using shingled magnetic recording (SMR). SMR is the next generation in storage technology and is critical for continued improvement in areal density to support global growth in cloud and mobile usage. The SMR generation of storage technology is expected to power gains of up to 25%. “With nearly 7 billion inhabitants on earth we are creating an astounding 2.7 Zettabytes of data a year and as such are rapidly approaching...

Military planes as well AMD just said that the huge Airbus A380 uses AMD embedded chips, as well as some military planes. Arun Iyengar, General Manager of Embedded Solutions Group, mentioned that AMD has been used in submarines, rescue vehicles as well as some other markets that you don’t really expect it to be. This is a market that likes to buy these chips for a number of years and expect support for least 7 years for these parts to be available. AMD embedded is in the heads up display market and it’s interesting to mention that the next generation...

Hierofalcon A57, up to 8 cores As expected, AMD’s first ARM based product won’t go after phones and tablets. Arun Iyengar, General Manager of Embedded Solutions Group, AMD, has just announced the company’s first ARM product codenamed Hierofalcon.It is based on up to eight ARM 64-bit A57 cores and it is a 28nm chip. It is mainly targeting the network and communications market rather than anything else.The product comes with 10Gb network support, ECC support, PCI gen 3 and ARM trusted zone. It comes in second half of 2014 and since there is still plenty of growth potential in the...

Deep analytical talent: Where are they now? Analyzing large data sets—so called big data—will become a key basis of competition, underpinning new waves of productivity growth, innovation, and consumer surplus as long as the right policies and enablers are in place. Research by MGI and McKinsey's Business Technology Office examines the state of digital data and documents the significant value that can potentially be unlocked. However, companies and policy makers must tackle significant hurdles to fully capture big data's potential - including a shortage of skilled analysts and managers.

Intel Corp. on Wednesday for the first time demonstrated a Rack Scale Architecture-based system with high-speed Intel Silicon Photonics components including a new MXC connector and ClearCurve optical fiber developed in collaboration with Corning, enabling data transfers speeds up to 1.6Tb/s at distances up to 300 meters for greater rack density. Maximum datacenter efficiency requires innovation at the silicon, system and rack level. Intel's RSA design helps industry partners to re-architect datacenters for modularity of components (storage, CPU, memory, network) at the rack level. It provides the ability to provision or logically compose resources based on application specific workload requirements....

There are literally hundreds of Linux desktop distributions. Here's how to find one that's right for you. On a regular basis I use five different Linux different distributions. Over the decades, I've used pretty every much every major Linux distribution out there... and I haven't even touched more than 10% of all available Linux distributions. If I, who've made something of a career of tracking Linux, can't keep up with all the distros how can you? Honestly, you can't. No one can. So how can you find the right Linux for you? This handy, dandy guide will help. But before...

Samsung Begins Mass Production of DDR4 MemorySamsung is taking the cue from ‘Field of Dreams’: If you build it, they will come. Samsung is beginning to ramp up its production of DDR4 for enterprise servers without clear cut demand for the DDR4 standard. A successor to the DDR3 (Double Data Rate 3), DDR4 memories are expected to offer higher performance, reliability and lower power consumption than its predecessor. Comments

Given the recent revelations about mass data slurping by the NSA, we were relieved to hear that a Chinese company has begun offering a whopping 10TB of free hosting to privacy-conscious punters.After Chinese rivals Baidu and Qihoo 360 served up a terabyte of free cloud storage to punters, rival Tencent this week floated a 10TB giveaway, reports TheNextWeb. The data bonanza requires users download an iOS or Android App, which gives them access to a terabyte of storage. As they use more data, Tencent will extend the amount of storage given away up to a whopping 10 terabytes.This compares with...

From time to time various experts come up with predictions regarding the end of Moore’s law, economical and technological viability to double the number of transistors per chip every two years. Some companies believe that economical efficiencies of Moore’s law are going to drastically decrease on 20nm node. But a DARPA expert believes that the law will lose its feasibility in 2020 – 2022, or at 5nm or 7nm nodes.