I did not have time to post my computer technologies predictions t the ends of 2016. Because I missed the year end deadline, I though that there is no point on posting anything before the news from CES 2017 have been published. Here are some of myck picks on the current computer technologies trends:
CES 2017 had 3 significant technology trends: deep learning goes deep, Alexa everywhere and Wi-Fi gets meshy. The PC sector seemed to be pretty boring.
Gartner expects that IT sales will growth (2.7%) but hardware sales will not have any growth – can drop this year. TEKsystems 2017 IT forecast shows IT budgets rebounding from a slump in 2016, and IT leaders’ confidence high going into the new year. But challenges around talent acquisition and organizational alignment will persist. Programming and software development continue to be among the most crucial and hard-to-find IT skill sets.
Smart phones sales (expected to be 1.89 billion) and PC sales (expected to be 432 million) do not grow in 2017. According to IDC PC shipments declined for a fifth consecutive year in 2016 as the industry continued to suffer from stagnation and lack of compelling drivers for upgrades. Both Gartner and IDC estimated that PC shipments declined about 6% in 2016.Revenue in the traditional (non-cloud) IT infrastructure segment decreased 10.8 per cent year over year in the third quarter of 2016. Only PC category that has potential for growth is ultramobile (includes Microsoft Surface ja Apple MacBook Air). Need for memory chips is increasing.
Browser suffers from JavaScript-creep disease: This causes that the browing experience seems to be become slower even though computer and broadband connections are getting faster all the time. Bloat on web pages has been going on for ages, and this trend seems to continue.
Microsoft tries all it can to make people to switch from older Windows versions to Windows 10. Microsoft says that continued usage of Windows 7 increases maintenance and operating costs for businesses as malware attacks that could have been avoided by upgrading to Windows 10. Microsoft says that continued usage of Windows 7 increases maintenance and operating costs for businesses. Microsoft: Windows 7 Does Not Meet the Demands of Modern Technology; Recommends Windows 10. On February 2017 Microsoft stops the 20 year long tradition of monthly security updates. Windows 10 “Creators Update” coming early 2017 for free, featuring 3D and mixed reality, 4K gaming, more.
Microsoft plans to emulate x86 instructions on ARM chips, throwing a compatibility lifeline to future Windows tablets and phones. Microsoft’s x86 on ARM64 Emulation is coming in 2017. This capability is coming to Windows 10, though not until “Redstone 3″ in the Fall of 2017.
Parents should worry less about the amount of time their children spend using smartphones, computers and playing video games because screen time is actually beneficial, the University of Oxford has concluded. 257 minutes is the time teens can spend on computers each day before harming wellbeing.
Outsourcing IT operations to foreign countries is not trendy anymore and companied live at uncertain times. India’s $150 billion outsourcing industry stares at an uncertain future. In the past five years, revenue and profit growth for the top five companies listed on the BSE have halved. Industry leader TCS too felt the impact as it made a shift in business model towards software platforms and chased digital contacts.
Containers will become hot this year and cloud will stay hot. Research firm 451 Research predicts this year containerization will be US $ 762 million business and that Containers will become 2.6 billion worth of software business in 2020. (40 per cent a year growth rate).
Cloud services are expected to have 22 percent annual growth rate. By 2020, the sector would grow from the current 22.2 billion to $ 46 billion. In Finland 30% of companies now prefer to buy cloud services when buying IT (20 per cent of IT budget goes to cloud).Cloud spend to make up over a third of IT budgets by 2017. Cloud and hosting services will be responsible for 34% of IT budgets by 2017, up from 28% by the end of 2016, according to 451 Research. Cloud services have many advantages, but cloud services have also disadvantages. In five years, SaaS will be the cloud that matters.
When cloud is growing, so is the spending on cloud hardware by the cloud companies. Cloud hardware spend hits US$8.4bn/quarter, as traditional kit sinks – 2017 forecast to see cloud kit clock $11bn every 90 days. In 2016′s third quarter vendor revenue from sales of infrastructure products (server, storage, and Ethernet switch) for cloud IT, including public and private cloud, grew by 8.1 per cent year over year to $8.4 billion. Private cloud accounted for $3.3 billion with the rest going to public clouds. Data centers need lower latency components so Google Searches for Better Silicon.
The first signs of the decline and fall of the 20+ year x86 hegemony will appear in 2017. The availability of industry leading fab processes will allow other processor architectures (including AMD x86, ARM, Open Power and even the new RISC-V architecture) to compete with Intel on a level playing field.
USB-C will now come to screens – C-type USB connector promises to really become the only all equipment for the physical interface.The HDMI connection will be lost from laptops in the future. Thunderbolt 3 is arranged to work with USB Type-C, but it’s not the same thing (Thunderbolt is four times faster than USB 3.1).
World’s first ‘exascale’ supercomputer prototype will be ready by the end of 2017, says China
It seems that Oracle Begins Aggressively Pursuing Java Licensing Fees in 2017. Java SE is free, but Java SE Suite and various flavors of Java SE Advanced are not. Oracle is massively ramping up audits of Java customers it claims are in breach of its licences – six years after it bought Sun Microsystems. Huge sums of money are at stake. The version of Java in contention is Java SE, with three paid flavours that range from $40 to $300 per named user and from $5,000 to $15,000 for a processor licence. If you download Java, you get everything – and you need to make sure you are installing only the components you are entitled to and you need to remove the bits you aren’t using.
Your Year in Review, Unsung Hero article sees the following trends in 2017:
- A battle between ASICs, GPUs, and FPGAs to run emerging workloads in artificial intelligence
- A race to create the first generation of 5G silicon
- Continued efforts to define new memories that have meaningful impact
- New players trying to take share in the huge market for smartphones
- An emerging market for VR gaining critical mass
Virtual Reality Will Stay Hot on both PC and mobile.“VR is the heaviest heterogeneous workload we encounter in mobile—there’s a lot going on, much more than in a standard app,” said Tim Leland, a vice president for graphics and imaging at Qualcomm. The challenges are in the needs to calculate data from multiple sensors and respond to it with updated visuals in less than 18 ms to keep up with the viewer’s head motions so the CPUs, GPUs, DSPs, sensor fusion core, display engine, and video-decoding block are all running at close to full tilt.
932 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
We’ve suspected it all along, and now it’s been confirmed: the Nintendo Switch runs on Linux. More specifically, the Linux Free BSD Kernel.
http://nintendotoday.com/nintendo-switch-linux/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Munich gives up Linux for political reasons
Munich is known as the first isoana as a public organization, which became a full Linux users over 10 years ago. Now the city is switching back to Windows, but the movement is made to German data, for purely political reasons.
German Heise magazine, responsible for the Munich IT services IT @ M-now, according to Windows for the exchange, there is no technical justification.
Linux was – and still is, of course – the official authorities operating in Munich for 10 years. This is a sharpened version of Ubuntu, which is even called LiMux. Old Windows PC was transferred to the city-linux machine a total of 15 thousand.
According to data from the German turning point came in 2014, when the city got a new mayor. Dieter Reiter wanted the city to exchange back to Windows. The matter was investigated by means of consultants. One of the researchers was Microsoft’s long-term partner, Accenture.
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php/13-news/5989-m-nchen-luopuu-linuxista-poliittisista-syista
Tomi Engdahl says:
The world’s fastest memory to storage systems
MRAM memories already developed for a long time.
NvNITRO product family is its first memory product intended for systems. In the past, MRAM circuits is mostly a question of beer automotive electronics discrete memories.
NvNITRO is one or two gigabyte module suitable for the PCIe bus technology based on magnetoresistive ST-type (Spin-Torque). Its advantage is above all speed.
Whatever the spin, its technology reached 1.5 million IOPS operation per second. Data Search ie latency (end-to-end) is only six microseconds. compared to Flash speeds of up to one hundred thousand times. In addition, the memory is non-volatile, does not need any card into the side of supercapacitors due to power outages.
nvNITRO family scalable 4 to 16 gigabyte modules
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5983&via=n&datum=2017-03-10_15:20:02&mottagare=30929
Tomi Engdahl says:
Pan Kwan Yuk / Financial Times:
Yext, maker of a “knowledge engine” that helps businesses sync their data across services like Google Maps, Instagram, and Siri, has filed for $100M IPO
https://www.ft.com/content/b6b18f61-fc29-36ff-9f3b-bcc75f74961d
Tomi Engdahl says:
In 2012 China vowed ‘OpenStack will smash the monopoly of western cloud providers!’
And in 2017 Huawei replaced HPE as a Platinum Member of OpenStack Foundation
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/14/huawei_become_platinum_openstack_member/
“There’s an obvious trend to use OpenStack in China, especially in telcos.” Goode told The Register. He also sees upside in Huawei becoming a Platinum member because the company is the first Asian entity to achieve the status and “seems serious about growing the thing.”
It’s not hard to see why Huawei sought and won Platinum status: its FusionSphere and FusionSphere Cloud rest on OpenStack. The company has also decided its enterprise business will boom, an ambition China’s government will do its best to realise with friendly purchasing policies.
And HPE? We know its killed its Helion OpenStack cloud and pledged its public cloud future to Microsoft, as an Azure-first cloud partner and day one supplier of Azure Stack boxen.
We also know that Cisco has killed off its “Intercloud” OpenStack public cloud effort, and that Azure, AWS, Google and Bluemix all have data centres in China. So perhaps OpenStack hasn’t quite managed to “smash the monopoly of the western cloud providers” just yet.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Online job sites may block older workers
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/10/online-job-sites-may-block-older-workers.html
Older Americans struggling to overcome age discrimination while looking for work face a new enemy: their computers.
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan recently opened a probe into allegations that ageism is built right into the online software tools that millions of Americans use to job hunt.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google steps over AWS, Microsoft Azure cloud data centers as first with Intel’s Xeon Skylake chips
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/pt/2017/02/google-steps-over-aws-microsoft-azure-cloud-data-centers-as-first-with-intel-s-xeon-skylake-chips.html?cmpid=enl_cim_cimdatacenternewsletter_2017-03-14
Google Inc. has stolen a march on public cloud rivals Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure by becoming the first provider to bring Intel Corp’s next-generation Xeon Skylake chips to its data centers. The move comes following Google’s announcement last November that it was planning to incorporate Intel’s next line of server chips into its public cloud infrastructure.
Google Cloud Platform is the first cloud provider to offer Intel Skylake
Friday, February 24, 2017
https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2017/02/Google-Cloud-Platform-is-the-first-cloud-provider-to-offer-Intel-Skylake.html
I’m excited to announce that Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is the first cloud provider to offer the next generation Intel Xeon processor, codenamed Skylake.
Customers across a range of industries, including healthcare, media and entertainment and financial services ask for the best performance and efficiency for their high-performance compute workloads. With Skylake processors, GCP customers are the first to benefit from the next level of performance.
Skylake includes Intel Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX-512), which make it ideal for scientific modeling, genomic research, 3D rendering, data analytics and engineering simulations. When compared to previous generations, Skylake’s AVX-512 doubles the floating-point performance for the heaviest calculations.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The 5 most pressing data center trends
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/pt/2017/02/the-5-most-pressing-data-center-trends.html?cmpid=enl_cim_cimdatacenternewsletter_2017-03-14
The following are the five most current trends Baxter and his data center engineering team at Page see emerging:
1. The cloud – “More enterprise-level users are migrating their information technology (IT) portfolios to the cloud,” says Baxter. “Even functions such as high-performance computing (HPC), which owners previously were adamant about keeping in-house, are moving to cloud vendors specializing in HPC applications.”
2. Edge data centers – “Latency concerns can be overcome by building data centers closer to the end user, or the edge of the network,” notes Baxter. “The facilities are much more compact, repeatable and cost-efficient—sometimes, they are as small as a single rack.”
3. PUEs leveling out – Baxter asserts how “in a never-ending quest to reduce electricity operating costs through more efficient mechanical design, owners are focusing more than ever on innovative solutions. But it is becoming a cycle of diminishing returns: Facility designs below 1.5 power usage effectiveness (PUE) are common…”
4. Smart reliability – “If there is an equipment failure, today’s resilient networks and software provide much of the reliability by rolling over data to another server or to a geographically isolated facility,” notes Baxter. “Also, clients now make more informed decisions about how much reliability they really need. They are no longer building one-size-fits-all facilities and are opting to have varying levels of reliability within the same facility.”
5. EMP/IEMI – Page’s Baxter explains, “Electromagnetic pulse (EMP) and/or intentional electromagnetic interference (IEMI) attacks are discussed more and more. This has been especially true on facilities that are deemed critical to public safety and health, either by the government or other regulatory agencies.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Machine Learning Made Simple(r)
http://hackaday.com/2017/03/14/google-machine-learning-made-simpler/
If you’ve looked at machine learning, you may have noticed that a lot of the examples are interesting but hard to follow. That’s why [Jostmey] created Naked Tensor, a bare-minimum example of using TensorFlow. The example is simple, just doing some straight line fits on some data points. One example shows how it is done in series, one in parallel, and another for an 8-million point dataset. All the code is in Python.
Bare bone examples of machine learning in TensorFlow
https://github.com/jostmey/NakedTensor?bare
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hands-On Nvidia Jetson TX2: Fast Processing for Embedded Devices
http://hackaday.com/2017/03/14/hands-on-nvidia-jetson-tx2-fast-processing-for-embedded-devices/
Tomi Engdahl says:
These technologies to use – two years in
Intelligent deep analytics.
Cloud services.
Machine intelligence.
Source: http://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2017/03/10/nama-teknologiat-kayttoon-kahden-vuoden-sisaan/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Deloitte Tech Trends 2017
https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/global/Documents/Technology/gx-tech-trends-the-kinetic-enterprise.pdf
Tomi Engdahl says:
Canonical preps security lifeboat, yells: Ubuntu 12.04 hold-outs, get in
Window XP moment for penguins
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/15/ubuntu_12_04_extended_security_maintenance/
Canonical is extending the deadline for security updates for paying users of its five-year-old Ubuntu 12.04 LTS – a first.
Ubuntu 12.04 LTS will become the first Long Term Support release of Canonical’s Linux to get Extended Security Maintenance (ESM). There are six LTS editions.
All others have been end-of-lifed – and given no security reprieve.
LTS editions of Ubuntu Linux are released every two years. Desktop support runs for three years and the server edition receives security patches and updates for a period of five years. LTS editions also set the theme – the look and feel, the UI tweaks and the big features – for the intervening, non-LTS editions of Ubuntu.
Security updates for 12.04 were scheduled to run out on April 28, 2017 but that now won’t happen for those on Canonical’s Ubuntu Advantage programme.
Tomi Engdahl says:
NetBSD adds RPi Zero support with 7.1 release
And you can now use Google Compute Engine storage as a disk, you lucky people
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/16/netbsd_adds_rpi_zero_support_with_71_release/
Raspberry Pi Zero users have another operating system to choose from, with the release of NetBSD 7.1.
The Pi Zero isn’t the only development board added in the release: the ARM-based ODROID-C1 quad-core single board computer also gets its moment in the spotlight.
Google Compute Engine users will be happy: the release adds support for vioscsi, which among other things supports GCE disks.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft kills Windows Vista on April 11: No security patches, no hot fixes, no support, nadda
Not even if you’ve got lots of cash…
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/17/microsoft_to_kill_windows_vista_april_11/
One of Microsoft’s most hated operating systems (Windows ME is difficult to beat on that front) is destined to die in less than a month.
Windows Vista, launched to a less-than-stellar reception on January 30, 2007, saw most of its support stopped back in 2012. On April 11 this year the hammer finally falls. Microsoft warned Vista users that their systems could be compromised by an attacker in the future, especially as Security Essentials support has also now ended for the operating system.
“Windows Vista customers will no longer receive new security updates, non-security hotfixes, free or paid assisted support options, or online technical content updates from Microsoft,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Paul Alcorn / Tom’s Hardware:
Intel launches its first product with 3D XPoint technology: the $1520, 375GB Optane SSD DC P4800X, for data centers
3D XPoint Debuts, Intel Announces Optane SSD DC P4800X And Pricing
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-3d-xpoint-optane-dc-p4800x,33938.html
The NVMe DC P4800X marks Intel’s 3D XPoint-powered Optane SSD debut–but it’s aimed directly at the enterprise market. Optane is Intel’s all-encompassing brand name for the collection of technologies, including 3D XPoint media, memory, storage controller, interconnects, and drivers, that power the new SSD. If Intel sticks to its established trend of releasing consumer versions of its enterprise SSDs, such as the Intel SSD 750, then we might see a similar version come to market one day for desktop PC users, as well.
Word first filtered out about the DC P4800X ‘Cold Stream’ SSD in February via a leak in several Chinese-language media outlets. We were able to find a conformance document on Intel’s website that listed the device and that it employed 3D XPoint media, so we already know a few of the key details.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel’s new memory is super fast, but grossly expensive
data center DC P4800X module is very fast NAND-based SSD compared to the plates, but the price is almost three times.
According to Intel, Optane memory is 5-8 times faster than the typical individual data searches to NAND-based SSD discs. Latency, or delay will always be less than 30 microseconds. A typical delay data section and SCRIPT is less than 10 microseconds.
The first commercial disk size is 375 GB.
And it’s the price? 375-gigabyte version will cost $ 1520. The price is almost three times heavier than the corresponding NAND circuits based solid state disk.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6029&via=n&datum=2017-03-20_16:48:53&mottagare=30929
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel’s first Optane SSD: 375GB that you can also use as RAM
3D XPoint finally has (limited) commercial availability.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/03/intels-first-optane-ssd-375gb-that-you-can-also-use-as-ram/
Intel announced today the first Optane-branded product using its new 3D XPoint memory: the catchily named Intel Optane SSD DC P4800X. It’s a 375GB SSD on a PCIe card. Initial limited availability starts today, for $1520, with broad availability in the second half of the year. In the second quarter, a 750GB PCIe model, and a 375GB model in the U.2 form factor will be released, and in the second half of the year, a 1.5TB PCIe card, and 750GB and 1.5TB U.2 stick, are planned.
3D XPoint is a new kind of persistent solid state memory devised by Intel and Micron. Details on how the memory actually works remain scarce—it’s generally believed to use some kind of change in resistance to record data—but its performance characteristics and technical capabilities make it appealing for a wide range of applications.
When it was first announced in 2015, Intel claimed it would be 1,000 times faster than NAND flash, 10 times denser than DRAM, and 1,000 times better endurance than NAND,
Tomi Engdahl says:
Linux, not Microsoft, the real winner of Windows Server on ARM
It’s a real Peng… win
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/20/microsoft_on_arm/
Microsoft now runs a bunch of Windows servers on ARM processors. Apparently, these ARM chips are quite good at their jobs and Microsoft might try converting entire categories of workloads over. All around the world the tech press has speculated on whether or not Windows on ARM will be showing up in on-premises datacenters. In doing so, they’ve completely missed the point.
Cutting to the heart of it, it doesn’t actually matter if Microsoft releases Windows Server for ARM. Windows isn’t the future and even Microsoft knows it. The upcoming availability of SQL server on Linux is all the proof we need that the game is over and, in the data centre at least, Microsoft didn’t win.
Quite frankly, there’s nothing wrong with that. Legacy x86 Windows applications have been a millstone around the neck of the entire industry for ages now and its long past time they were relegated to a niche and left to quietly slip away into the night. What’s interesting here isn’t that Microsoft managed to take its existing code base, strip out some of the cruft and compile it on ARM. What’s interesting is what Microsoft’s experiment unlocks outside the Windows ecosystem.
If a large enough market for these chips develops to keep chip-makers iterating designs and cranking out wafers then we’re off to the races. Windows on ARM in our data centres is simply not required for this SBSA-based ARM chips to be a success. In fact, it may hinder more than it helps.
Windows on ARM failed miserably when Microsoft tried to use it with Windows 8.
By naming their first go at modern ARM clients “Windows”, however, end users expected all their old applications to work as they did on their x86 PCs.
Microsoft’s embrace of ARM servers is its opportunity to break from all that. Maybe all it does is release “Windows Server for ARM” and name it something else. Maybe it takes the time to get truly radical and pull one of its experimental post-windows OSes out of mothballs and give the world something worth using.
Microsoft’s choices regarding Windows 10 have ruined the brand name, and there’s no need to carry any baggage or expectations forward to this new platform.
Tomi Engdahl says:
What 2017 holds for AI: Will you fear or embrace our machine overlords?
GPU engines are out and AI translators will help you pull
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/21/whats_next_in_ai/
From voice translation to self-driving automobile, AI’s impact in everyday life will become more and more apparent this year. The AI and deep learning market will experience even more rapid technological advancement, very rapid growth and adoption, and increasing competition for both hardware and software platforms. While AI fears will remain, the public will become more cognisant and comfortable with social media AI applications.
Deep learning training: GPUs and more
Deep learning training lends itself to what we call “High Density Processing”. High density processing applies when algorithms are computationally intensive, having higher ratios of compute operations per byte of memory bandwidth.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Popular Open-Source Audio Editor Audacity Adds Windows 10 Support, More Improvements
https://apple.slashdot.org/story/17/03/20/1852246/popular-open-source-audio-editor-audacity-adds-windows-10-support-more-improvements?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot%2Fto+%28%28Title%29Slashdot+%28rdf%29%29
http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Release_Notes_2.1.3
Tomi Engdahl says:
ARM unveils Dynamiq multicore chip designs for faster AI and cloud computing
http://venturebeat.com/2017/03/20/arm-unveils-dynamiq-multicore-chip-designs-for-faster-ai-and-cloud-computing/
Chip design firm ARM has unveiled its Dynamiq technology to make better multicore processors that can handle artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and new kinds of devices.
Cambridge, England-based ARM said in a press call that the new designs (ARM designs chips and its partners incorporate them into their own manufactured chips) will be available in ARM Cortex-A processors coming to market later this year in automotive, networking, server, and “primary compute devices.”
The new processors will enable flexible multicore processing — in which a computing device has to juggle many different tasks of varying sizes at once. It will also emphasize “heterogeneous compute,” or using different kinds of cores or processors in the same machine
ARM considers Dynamiq to be the biggest micro-architectural shift since ARM announced its 64-bit computing architecture in 2011. In the next five years, ARM estimates that its chip partners will ship 100 billion chips, compared to 50 billion chips shipped in the past five years.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft Just Showed Off Exactly What Salesforce Was Worried About
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/17/03/21/1618241/microsoft-just-showed-off-exactly-what-salesforce-was-worried-about
Microsoft just took a direct swipe at Salesforce with a new enterprise-ready version of LinkedIn’s customer relationship management product called Sales Navigator.
Microsoft just showed off exactly what Salesforce was worried about
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/17/microsoft-new-linkedin-sales-tool-salesforce-killer.html
Microsoft just took a direct swipe at Salesforce with a new enterprise-ready version of LinkedIn’s product for sales professionals, Sales Navigator.
“Today’s announcements take Sales Navigator to the next level,” Doug Camplejohn, LinkedIn sales solutions head of product, said in a blog.
The new product steps up competition with arch rival Salesforce.
Microsoft beat out Salesforce to acquire Linkedin for $26.2 billion — by far the company’s largest acquisition to date — in June.
Flash-forward less than a year and Microsoft’s new Sales Navigator Enterprise Edition incorporates many features aimed at turning LinkedIn into a must-have tool for sales teams at big companies.
The Sales Navigator tool does integrate with Salesforce’s CRM system, as well as Microsoft’s competing Dynamics CRM.
But it’s also a clear indication of the synergies between LinkedIn, which has a massive database of information about professionals and their business relationships, and Microsoft’s ambitions to target company sales forces with its products.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel is number one in SSD discs
Forward Insights Research Institute has published statistics last year sold to consumers SSD disks. All in all, sold 63 million discs. Intel was number one for 30 percent market share before Samsung, which achieved a 21 per cent market share.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6039&via=n&datum=2017-03-21_15:16:53&mottagare=30929
Tomi Engdahl says:
AMD Announces Ryzen 5 Processors With 4 and 6-Core Chips Starting At $169
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/17/03/16/051204/amd-announces-ryzen-5-processors-with-4-and-6-core-chips-starting-at-169?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot%2Fto+%28%28Title%29Slashdot+%28rdf%29%29
Today, AMD unveiled additional details with respect to the entire Ryzen 5 processor line-up. Unlike the Ryzen 7 series, which consists entirely of 8-core/16-thread processors, the Ryzen 5 family has two tiers consisting of 6-core/12-thread and 4-core/8-thread processors. The entry-level part is the Ryzen 5 1400, a 4-core/8-thread CPU with base and turbo clocks of 3.2GHz and 3.4GHz, respectively.
AMD Ryzen 5 Processors Unveiled, 4 and 6-Core Chips As Low As $169 Target Intel Core i5 And i3
http://hothardware.com/news/amd-unveils-ryzen-5-line-up-4-and-6-core-processors-arrive-in-april-for-as-low-as-169
Tomi Engdahl says:
NSA, DOE Say China’s Supercomputing Advances Put US At Risk
https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/03/15/220247/nsa-doe-say-chinas-supercomputing-advances-put-us-at-risk
Advanced computing experts at the National Security Agency and the Department of Energy are warning that China is “extremely likely” to take leadership in supercomputing as early as 2020, unless the U.S. acts quickly to increase spending. China’s supercomputing advances are not only putting national security at risk, but also U.S. leadership in high-tech manufacturing. If China succeeds, it may “undermine profitable parts of the U.S. economy,”
NSA, DOE say China’s supercomputing advances put U.S. at risk
China’s computing efforts are a threat to U.S. national security and may undermine profitable parts of the U.S. economy, a new report warns
http://computerworld.com/article/3180984/high-performance-computing/spy-agency-doe-see-china-nearing-supercomputing-leadership.html
Advanced computing experts at the National Security Agency and the Department of Energy are warning that China is “extremely likely” to take leadership in supercomputing as early as 2020, unless the U.S. acts quickly to increase spending.
“To maintain U.S. leadership in HPC,” the report says, “a surge” of U.S. “investment and action is needed to address HPC priorities.”
Concern about China’s technical advances have been raised before by U.S. scientists and industry groups, but never in such striking terms — or by representatives of a spy agency.
The threat from China is so acute that “absent aggressive action by the U.S. — the U.S. will lose leadership and not control its own future in HPC,” the report states.
Something to keep in mind is that this report was written at a time when many assumed that supercomputing funding was not under threat. The report calls for more spending while the Trump administration, along with the Republican-controlled Congress, is planning major cuts in the federal budget.
Tomi Engdahl says:
NetBSD 7.1 Released
https://bsd.slashdot.org/story/17/03/15/2033244/netbsd-71-released
The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 7.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 7 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements.
-Support for Raspberry Pi Zero.
-Initial DRM/KMS support for NVIDIA graphics cards via nouveau (Disabled by default. Uncomment nouveau and nouveaufb in your kernel config to test).
The addition of vioscsi, a driver for the Google Compute Engine disk.
-Linux compatibility improvements, allowing, e.g., the use of Adobe Flash Player 24.
-wm(4): C2000 KX and 2.5G support; Wake On Lan support; 82575 and newer SERDES based systems now work.
-ODROID-C1 Ethernet now works.
-Numerous bug fixes and stability improvements.
NetBSD 7.1 released (March 11, 2017)
https://www.netbsd.org/releases/formal-7/NetBSD-7.1.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel creates AI group, aims for more focus
Intel artificial intelligence unit will be led by former Nervana CEO Naveen Rao.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/intel-creates-ai-group-aims-for-more-focus/
Intel has put its artificial intelligence efforts under one group led by Naveen Rao, former CEO of Nervana, which was acquired by the chip giant.
The company has been repositioning via acquisitions to focus on Internet of Things to autonomous vehicles. The upshot is that Intel is trying to build a data center to IoT stack powered by its processors.
Making the Future Starts with Focus on AI
https://newsroom.intel.com/editorials/making-future-starts-with-focus-ai/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Open source: The new normal in enterprise software
http://www.ciodive.com/news/open-source-the-new-normal-in-enterprise-software/438671/
Open source is “no longer about people in t-shirts and sandals railing against the corporate machine and trying to do something different.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
W3C Erects DRM As Web Standard
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/17/03/22/2131235/w3c-erects-drm-as-web-standard
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has formally put forward highly controversial digital rights management as a new web standard. “Dubbed Encrypted Media Extensions (EME), this anti-piracy mechanism was crafted by engineers from Google, Microsoft, and Netflix, and has been in development for some time,” reports The Register. “The DRM is supposed to thwart copyright infringement by stopping people from ripping video and other content from encrypted high-quality streams.”
It’s happening! It’s happening! W3C erects DRM as web standard
World has until April 19 to make its views known on latest draft
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/22/w3c_drm_web_standard/
Tomi Engdahl says:
CERT publishes deep-dive ‘don’t be stupid’ list for C++ coders
Your hefty guide to avoiding the mistakes everyone makes
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/23/cert_c_plus_plus_coding_standard/
CERT has followed last year’s release of its secure C coding standard with a similar set of rules for C++.
Carnegie-Mellon University’s announcement says the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) has put ten years into researching secure coding. The resulting SEI CERT C++ Coding Standard has 83 rules specific to features of C++ that aren’t in C.
“This newly released C++ standard adds to our previously released C standard secure coding guidance for features that are unique to the C++ language. For example, this standard has guidance for object oriented programming and containers,” said CERT’s Robert Schiela, technical manager, Secure Coding, in the canned release. “It also contains guidance for features that were added to C++14, like lambda objects.”
While specific to C++14, the guidelines in the standard can be applied to older versions, back to C++11.
SEI CERT C++ Coding Standard
https://www.securecoding.cert.org/confluence/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=637
The C++ rules and recommendations in this wiki are a work in progress and reflect the current thinking of the secure coding community. Because this is a development website, many pages are incomplete or contain errors. As rules and recommendations mature, they are published in report or book form as official releases. These releases are issued as dictated by the needs and interests of the secure software development community.
The CERT C++ Coding Standard does not currently expose any recommendations
Tomi Engdahl says:
Kim Hart / Axios:
Tech community “dumbfounded” by Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin’s remark that AI won’t supplant US jobs for “50-100 more years”
Tech community “dumbfounded” by Mnuchin’s dismissal of AI impact on jobs
https://www.axios.com/tech-reacts-to-mnuchins-dismissal-of-ai-impact-on-jobs-2328061287.html
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin riled the tech community this morning when he told Axios’ Mike Allen that displacement of jobs by artificial intelligence and automation is “not even on my radar screen” because the technology is “50-100 more years” away. Mnuchin also said he is “not worried at all” about robots displacing humans in the near future. “In fact, I’m optimistic.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft loves Linux so much, its OneDrive web app runs like a dog on Windows OS rivals
Aw, your Office 365 storage is crippled? How convenient
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/23/microsoft_onedrive_linux_slow/
Ever since Satya Nadella took over the reins at Microsoft, the Windows giant has been talking up how much it loves Linux – but it appears this hasn’t trickled down to its OneDrive team.
Plenty of Linux users are up in arms about the performance of the OneDrive web app. They say that when accessing Microsoft’s cloudy storage system in a browser on a non-Windows system – such as on Linux or ChromeOS – the service grinds to a barely usable crawl. But when they use a Windows machine on the same internet connection, speedy access resumes.
Crucially, when they change their browser’s user-agent string – a snippet of text the browser sends to websites describing itself – to Internet Explorer or Edge, magically their OneDrive access speeds up to normal on their non-Windows PCs.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Three EU Industries That Need HPC Now
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/three-eu-industries-need-hpc-now?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+linuxjournalcom+%28Linux+Journal+-+The+Original+Magazine+of+the+Linux+Community%29
The success of High Performance Computing (HPC) relies in no small part on the OpenPOWER Foundation, which was founded in 2013. The reason this open ecosystem is so important is that it provided members open access to the IBM POWER8 technology, which resulted in huge advances in innovation. One of those innovations came in the form of the NVIDIA GPU accelerator
Auto Industry Product Design and Testing
The EU auto industry faces increasing pressures to provide more fuel-efficient and safer vehicles, while at the same time providing new products like reliable, electric vehicles and even self-driving vehicles. Although the European Automobile Manufacturer’s Association (ACEA) continues to predict growth in the EU market, margins of 1-3% keep EU auto manufacturers looking for ways to gain efficiencies and cut costs.
Pharmaceutical Trials
With pharmaceutical industry growth expected from emerging markets in Brazil, Russia, India, China, Mexico and Turkey (the BRIC-MT countries), EU pharmaceutical companies have to focus more than ever on making sure they produce safe, effective drugs more quickly. This translates into a need to analyze highly complex molecular data efficiently and accurately, as well as matching new medicines to compatible patients.
Oil and Gas
The UK oil and gas industry continues to face increasing pressures in the form of risks and operational challenges stemming from creating more creative methods for discovering sources that are only becoming more elusive, while at the same time dealing with increasingly stringent regulatory controls being implemented to improve safety and protect the environment. A 60% drop in per barrel prices have led many enterprises to refocus on cutting costs while becoming more efficient at discovering new sources of oil and gas.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Supporting CPUs Plus FPGAs
http://semiengineering.com/supporting-cpus-plus-fpgas/
Experts at the table, part 1: What the toolchain looks like today and the different mindsets within those flows.
SE: Until recently, the CPU and the FPGA have been considered as two different application areas with two different flows, two different teams and almost a different thought process. Now we are seeing many applications where these two devices are coming together. What kinds of applications are we seeing this happen in?
Orthner: We are seeing a tremendous amount of acceleration in this area. Consider Amazon cloud, and Microsoft with Azure. I am seeing a lot of people getting interested in convolutional neural networks (CNN). That comes up again and again. At the recent FPGA conference in Monterey, probably half the conference was about that. I see applications such as SQL acceleration for people doing database applications, where you run the SQL through an FPGA on the way to your hard drive and you can do all kinds of filtering.
Allan: FPGA and ASIC technologies are overlapping increasingly in their design flows. There is less and less reliance on a technology-centric flow having one side for FPGAs and the traditional ASIC flow.
Burns: We see that too. We see a lot of experimentation, people looking for very high performance, very low power. They will measure power on the CPU, a GPU, and they may need to move to an FPGA or an ASIC. Deep learning, machine vision – all of these kinds of things need to have improved performance per Joule, and are looking for the most effective way to do that. On the FPGA you have much lower power than a GPU or CPU, so you can ask if you need to go to an ASIC and what does that look like.
Burns: This is a key measurement. How many Gigaflops per Joule does this algorithm consume? How many does it need to take? And what is my budget?
SE: What about design problems for this combination?
Schirrmeister: The design problems surface when you put together an FPGA and the rest of the SoC, which essentially may be an array of processors. You have two issues. First, how do you design that itself, which is one area of focus for our tools. And second, if you have a monolithic thing all on the chip, how do you balance the function you put into the processor system versus what you put into the FPGA fabric?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Firefox Quantum: BIG browser project, huh? I share your concern
What Mozilla’s browser rewrite means to… Mozilla
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/28/open_source_insider_firefox_upheaval/
Open source insider Mozilla has been rolling out a major change to Firefox during the last year, the results of what the company calls its Electrolysis project. Electrolysis gives Firefox something Chrome has had for years now – multiple processes (in the best case scenario that’s per tab). The change is a boon for speed – somewhere Firefox has been lagging lately – and it improves stability and security.
The problem with per-tab processes in Firefox is that it’s not exactly groundbreaking. In fact this is a case of Firefox just now catching up to where Chrome was when it launched in 2008 – welcome to the future, Mozilla.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How to Calculate Flash Storage TCO
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/how-calculate-flash-storage-tco
Across a wide range of consumer devices, from cameras to smartphones to laptops, flash storage has become the de facto standard for digital data storage. Because of its relative compactness, speed and low power consumption, flash storage also has experienced dramatic growth in enterprise data storage solutions. While initial use cases were somewhat limited, flash storage in the enterprise has expanded in many areas, which in no small way is related to the cost of flash storage dropping more than 80% in the past five years.
Compared to spinning disk systems (HDDs), enterprise systems using flash can use fewer storage devices to deliver comparable performance levels and require less cooling, simply because they have fewer moving parts. Consolidating storage like this allows enterprises to reduce power usage costs, maintenance costs and other costs as well.
Unfortunately, many enterprises miss out on these savings because they still rely on acquisition cost as the deciding factor when looking at storage solutions. Even with the incredible drops in acquisition costs of flash storage, it still can run five times more than HDD solutions, which can seem attractive when acquisition cost is the only consideration.
However, if you look at the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) as a sum of the initial capital layout for a storage solution, plus all the other costs associated with the full lifecycle of the storage solution, industry studies agree that acquisition costs account for only about 20% of TCO.
Maintenance and repair costs are probably the most obvious in your TCO. HDDs have a failure rate of anywhere from 2-8%, meaning that every year, you can expect to lose one drive for every 12 deployed. That is significant, especially when you consider that the cost to replace a failed drive includes system down-time and labor to replace the drive, in addition to the cost of the replacement drive itself.
When it comes to power costs
no moving parts, they not only draw less power, but they also create less heat, which translates into lower cooling costs. In fact, in some storage solutions, flash is up to 80% more energy-efficient than comparable HDD solutions.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Scientists Hack a Human Cell and Reprogram It Like a Computer
https://www.wired.com/2017/03/biologists-made-logic-gates-dna/
Cells are basically tiny computers: They send and receive inputs and output accordingly. If you chug a Frappuccino, your blood sugar spikes, and your pancreatic cells get the message. Output: more insulin.
But cellular computing is more than just a convenient metaphor. In the last couple of decades, biologists have been working to hack the cells’ algorithm in an effort to control their processes. They’ve upended nature’s role as life’s software engineer, incrementally editing a cell’s algorithm—its DNA—over generations. In a paper published today in Nature Biotechnology, researchers programmed human cells to obey 109 different sets of logical instructions. With further development, this could lead to cells capable of responding to specific directions or environmental cues in order to fight disease or manufacture important chemicals.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Elon Musk’s Billion-Dollar Crusade to Stop the A.I. Apocalypse
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/03/elon-musk-billion-dollar-crusade-to-stop-ai-space-x
Elon Musk is famous for his futuristic gambles, but Silicon Valley’s latest rush to embrace artificial intelligence scares him. And he thinks you should be frightened too. Inside his efforts to influence the rapidly advancing field and its proponents, and to save humanity from machine-learning overlords.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Is Intel’s data center dominance really coming to an end?
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/pt/2017/03/is-intel-s-data-center-dominance-really-coming-to-an-end.html?cmpid=enl_cim_cimdatacenternewsletter_2017-03-28
Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) has enjoyed a near-monopoly in the server chip market in recent years, with a market share of roughly 99%. Its x86 chips are the standard, and without any real competition from Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ: AMD) , the only other x86 chip maker, Intel has been free to enjoy its dominance. AMD will make its return to the server chip market later this year when it launches Naples, server chips built on its Zen architecture.
Operating margin in Intel’s data center segment has routinely topped 50%, and the growth of cloud computing has driven both revenue and profits higher. During 2016, the data center segment generated $17.2 billion of revenue and a whopping $7.5 billion of operating income.
The company is now warning that data center growth will slow and margins will contract, reflecting a return of competition to the server chip market and its plan to bring server chips to new process nodes before PC chips. Intel expects sales of its server CPUs to grow by just 6% annually through 2021, and for its data center operating margin to drop to the low- to mid- 40% range.
These lower estimates may not be pessimistic enough.
Intel’s Data Center Monopoly Is Coming to an End
http://www.nasdaq.com/article/intels-data-center-monopoly-is-coming-to-an-end-cm764734
Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) has enjoyed a near-monopoly in the server chip market in recent years, with a market share of roughly 99%. Its x86 chips are the standard, and without any real competition from Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ: AMD) , the only other x86 chip maker, Intel has been free to enjoy its dominance.
Operating margin in Intel’s data center segment has routinely topped 50%, and the growth of cloud computing has driven both revenue and profits higher. During 2016, the data center segment generated $17.2 billion of revenue and a whopping $7.5 billion of operating income.
The return of AMD
AMD’s server chip business has been insignificant for quite some time. The company was once a major force , with a roughly 26% unit share of the x86 server chip market in 2006. But it has been outclassed by Intel ever since, driving its market share down near zero.
AMD will make its return to the server chip market later this year when it launches Naples, server chips built on its Zen architecture. AMD has already launched Ryzen, the PC version of Zen, and while reviews have been mixed , AMD has significantly closed its performance gap with Intel. AMD still can’t compete when it comes to single-threaded performance, but Ryzen’s copious cores and competitive pricing make the chips a clear winner for certain workloads.
Naples will come with up to 32 cores, and AMD is touting memory bandwidth and input/output capacity as the key selling points. Compared to a comparable Intel Xeon chip, AMD claims that Naples will have 45% more cores, 60% more I/O capacity, and 122% more memory bandwidth. If Ryzen is any indication, Naples will certainly be superior for some workloads, but it’s unlikely to best Intel in general.
Still, Naples should make AMD a player in the server chip market once again, forcing Intel to compete for the first time in years. Exactly how much market share AMD will be able to win is anyone’s guess, but it’s all downside for Intel.
The push toward an architecture-agnostic cloud
Beyond AMD and x86 chips, there are two other threats to Intel’s server chip monopoly. ARM chips are finally making their way to the data center, with Microsoft recently announcing that its Project Olympus server design now supports both x86 and ARM chips. The company is already testing ARM chips from Qualcomm and Cavium for search, storage, and machine learning, and it has created a version of Windows Server for ARM processors.
Microsoft isn’t the only cloud computing company looking to lower its dependence on Intel. Alphabet ‘s Google announced last year that it was developing an open server architecture that supports the upcoming POWER9 processor from IBM
The push from the major cloud infrastructure providers to support different architectures isn’t surprising. Shifting from a world where Intel is the only option to a world where there are a multitude of options will surely bring server chip prices down, allowing cloud computing to get cheaper and further eat into the traditional server market.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How to Upgrade to Windows 10 Creators Update RTM Right Now
The RTM build is already available for retail users
http://news.softpedia.com/news/how-to-upgrade-to-windows-10-creators-update-rtm-right-now-514335.shtml
Step #1: Download the Windows 10 Update Assistant
Step #2: Complete the setup wizard
Step #3: Wait and… wait
Step #4: Adjust privacy settings and complete setup
Tomi Engdahl says:
OPNFV
https://www.opnfv.org/
Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV) facilitates the development and evolution of NFV components across various open source ecosystems. Through system level integration, deployment and testing, OPNFV creates a reference NFV platform to accelerate the transformation of enterprise and service provider networks. Participation is open to anyone, whether you are an employee of a member company or just passionate about network transformation.
Technical Overview
Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV) facilitates the development and evolution of NFV components across various open source ecosystems. Through system level integration, deployment and testing, OPNFV constructs a reference NFV platform to accelerate the transformation of enterprise and service provider networks. Goals include accelerating time to market for NFV solutions, ensuring the platform meets the industry’s needs, and enabling end user choice in specific technology components based on their use cases and deployment architectures.
As a testing and integration project, OPNFV brings together upstream components across compute, storage and network virtualization in order create an end-to-end platform. Activities within OPNFV focus on integration of components and automated build and deployment of the integrated environment. Continuous integration and automated testing of the platform for key NFV use cases is key to ensure that the platform meets NFV industry needs.
Use Cases
Virtual network functions range from mobile deployments, where mobile gateways (e.g. SGW, PGW, etc.) and related functions (e.g. MME, HLR, PCRF, etc.) are deployed as VNFs, to deployments with “virtual” customer premise equipment (CPE), tunneling gateways (e.g. VPN gateways), firewalls or application level gateways and filters (e.g. web and email traffic filters) to test and diagnostic equipment (e.g. SLA monitoring).
These VNF deployments need to be easy to operate, scale, and evolve – independently from the type of VNF being deployed.
OPNFV integrates components from upstream projects [insert link to upstream projects page], such as OpenStack [insert link to OpenStack page], OpenDaylight [insert link to OpenDaylight page], FD.io [insert link to FD.io page], ONOS, OpenContrail, OVS, Open-O,Ceph, DPDK, ODP, OpenBaton, KVM, and the Linux kernel community. OPNFV will continue working with these and other relevant upstream communities for future releases.
Tomi Engdahl says:
What Killed Adobe Flash?
https://apple.slashdot.org/story/17/03/29/1414243/what-killed-adobe-flash
What Killed Adobe Flash
http://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/03/28/what-killed-adobe-flash
To be clear, I don’t think Jobs’s letter killed Flash. But I don’t think Adobe did either. Eventually Adobe accepted Flash’s demise. What killed Flash was Apple’s decision not to support it on iOS, combined with iOS’s immense popularity and the lucrative demographics of iOS users. If Jobs had never published “Thoughts on Flash”, Flash would still be dead. The letter explained the decision, but the decision that mattered was never to support it on iOS in the first place.
It’s possible that Flash would have died even if Apple had decided to allow it on iOS. Android tried that, and the results were abysmal.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Yusuf Mehdi / Windows Blog:
Microsoft announces Windows 10 Creators Update will roll out on April 11 as a free update; Surface devices will arrive in more countries on April 20 — Creativity has led the inspiration of our world’s greatest inventors, architects, educators, entrepreneurs, developers, and students …
Windows 10 Creators Update coming April 11, Surface expands to more markets
https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2017/03/29/windows-10-creators-update-coming-april-11-surface-expands-markets/#CgUyh156q318JXBh.97
The Windows 10 Creators Update will begin to roll out to customers around the world on April 11 as a free update and Surface Book, Surface Studio are coming to new markets.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Oracle doing due diligence on Accenture. Yep, you read that right
Big Red hires consultancies to eye up consultancy
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/28/oracle_doing_due_diligence_on_accenture_yep_you_heard_that_right/
Oracle has hired global specialists to explore the feasibility of buying multi-billion dollar consultancy Accenture, sources have told us.
The database giant has engaged a team of consultants to conduct due diligence to “explore the synergies that could be created if they [Oracle] bought Accenture lock stock and barrel,” one source claimed.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Welcome to the Age of Continuous Innovation
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1331529&
Modern applications now are comprised of pre-fab code snippets representing atomized functions delivered as microservices packaged within containers.
Technology stories regularly focus on macro trends including the Internet of Things, Big Data, Mobile, Cloud Computing, and Artificial Intelligence. On their own, each of these trends leads to massive changes in how fast information flows and brings about new applications and services. Taken together, they constitute radical changes in information technology — we are witnessing a new information age.
These trends and their underlying technologies are all a part of the Third Wave of Computing and the Fourth Industrial Revolution, both of which will fundamentally alter how we experience technology in our work and play, governance, and even our relationships. Information change has never been faster as exemplified by the practice of Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery for new or updated applications that are developed and introduced at high velocity. Basically, this means that applications are constantly updated to meet new requirements. The days of Waterfall Development have long vanished, and even Agile Development techniques are dramatically morphing to meet new age needs. The emphasis is all about speed, agility, and digital transformation to improve a company’s performance through harnessing digital technologies.
Modern applications now are comprised of pre-fab code snippets representing atomized functions delivered as microservices packaged within containers. These containers are deployed across “server-less” clusters using orchestration platforms that automate the capacity, scaling, patching, and administration of the infrastructure.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Windows 10 Creators Update: Clearing the mines with livestock (that’s you by the way)
First look at this iteration’s more grown-up aspects
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/29/windows10_creators_update_overview/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Samizdat no more: Old Unix source code opened for study
Nokia Bell Labs, Alcatel-Lucent pack away the sueball gun
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/30/old_unix_source_code_opened_for_study/
After years of lobbying by computer science luminaries, Bell Labs and Alcatel-Lucent (both owned by Nokia) have relented and will allow non-commercial study of the source code for Unix Research Editions 8, 9, and 10.
It might sound like merely a historical artifact, but it’s more than that. Unix source is an important computer science teaching tool, and has been ever since its earliest days.
The joint statement by Alcatel-Lucent USA and Nokia Bell Laboratories makes it clear this isn’t “open-sourcing the source code.” Rather, it’s a promise not to assert “copyright rights with respect to any non-commercial copying, distribution, performance, display or creation of derivative works of Research Unix Editions 8, 9, and 10.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
The 1980s Research Unix Editions Are Now Available for Study
https://www.spinellis.gr/blog/20170328/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Creators Update gives Windows 10 a bit of an Edge, but some old annoyances remain
Looking at all the new features and highlighting the best of ‘em
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/30/windows_10_creators_update_improvements_and_annoyances/