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.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Vlad Savov / The Verge:
ARM announces next-generation CPUs and GPUs focused on efficient machine learning; ARM Cortex-A75 is new flagship mobile chip, now with 22% better performance
ARM’s new processors are designed to power the machine-learning machines
ML plus AI, AR, and VR — ARM is taking on the full set of trendy initialisms
https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/29/15707606/arm-cortex-a75-a55-mali-g72-specs-announced
On the eve of Computex, Taiwan’s big showpiece event where PC makers roll out the latest and best implementations of Intel CPUs, mobile rival ARM is announcing its own big news with the unveiling of a new generation of ARM CPUs and GPUs. Official today, the ARM Cortex-A75 is the new flagship-tier mobile processor design, with a claimed 22 percent improvement in performance over the incumbent A73. It’s joined by the new Cortex-A55, which has the highest power efficiency of any mid-range CPU ARM’s ever designed, and the Mali-G72 graphics processor, which also comes with a 25 percent improvement in efficiency relative to its predecessor G71.
The efficiency improvements are evolutionary and predictable, but the revolutionary aspects of this new lineup relate to artificial intelligence: this is the first set of processing components designed specifically to tackle the challenges of onboard AI and machine learning. Plus, last year’s updates to improve performance in the power-hugry tasks of augmented and virtual reality are being extended and elaborated.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Peter Bright / Ars Technica:
Intel unveils Core X-series of high-end processors, with up to 18 cores and 36 threads, from $242 to $2000 — The new X299 platform replaces X99, and scales both lower and higher. — AMD announced its new high-end desktop (HEDT) platform, the 16-core 32-thread ThreadRipper a couple of weeks ago.
Intel unveils X-series platform: Up to 18 cores and 36 threads, from $242 to $2,000
The new X299 platform replaces X99, and scales both lower and higher.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/05/intels-new-high-end-desktop-platform-up-to-18-cores-36-threads-2000/
AMD announced its new high-end desktop (HEDT) platform, the 16-core 32-thread ThreadRipper a couple of weeks ago. At Computex in Taipei, it is Intel’s turn to update its HEDT platform, and it is one-upping AMD in the process. The Intel platform, consisting of the new X299 chipset and new X-series processors, will go all the way up to 18 cores and 36 threads.
The HEDT segment is aimed at gamers, video streamers, and content creators with deep pockets or an insatiable desire for more concurrent threads than the mainstream processor segment has to offer. The value proposition for this segment is always a little skewed, with the chips being as much prestige parts as anything else. Straightforward gaming workloads may struggled to make full use of the chips’ resources, but serious Twitch streamers, for example, can make good use of the extra cores. Software developers are another group that can make good use of all those cores.
The new platform has wider range and greater complexity than the X99 platform it replaces. At the low end are “Kaby Lake-X” processors: the i5-7640X and the i7-7740X. These chips are very similar to the existing mainstream Kaby Lake processors that came to market earlier this year; four cores with either four (for the i5) or eight (for the i7) threads, two memory channels, and 16 PCIe 3 lanes from the CPU itself. The chips have a higher power envelope—up to 112W, instead of the 91W of non-X parts—and use X299′s new Socket 2066. Their clock speeds are a little higher, too; the $339 i7-7740X has a base clock of 4.3GHz and a turbo of 4.5GHz, compared to the 4.2/4.5GHz of the $339 i7-7700K.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bloomberg:
In printer cartridge case, US Supreme Court curbs patent-holders’ power to block resale of items — Ruling is blow to printer companies, pharmaceutical industry — Patent rights end once company sells product, Roberts says — The U.S. Supreme Court said companies give up their patent rights …
U.S. Supreme Court Curbs Patent-Holder Power to Block Resale
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-30/u-s-supreme-court-curbs-patent-holders-power-to-block-resale
The U.S. Supreme Court said companies give up their patent rights when they sell an item, in a ruling that puts new limits on businesses’ ability to prevent their products from being resold at a discount.
The ruling is a defeat for Lexmark International Inc., which was trying to stop refurbished versions of its printer cartridges from undercutting its U.S. sales. It’s also a blow to companies like HP Inc. and Canon Inc. that sell their printers for a relatively low cost with the idea that they will recoup money on sales of replacement cartridges. The decision was 8-0 in some respects and 7-1 in others.
Writing for the court, Chief Justice John Roberts said sellers give up their patent rights even when the purchaser agrees not to resell the product to anyone else. He said that rule applies regardless of whether the sale happens domestically or overseas.
“Extending the patent rights beyond the first sale would clog the channels of commerce, with little benefit from the extra control that the patentees retain,” Roberts wrote.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft: x86 Apps Will Run On ARM Chips At Near-Native Performance
http://windows-arm.com/index.php/1075-microsoft-x86-apps-will-run-on-arm-chips-at-near-native-performance
Earlier this year, Qualcomm announced that its next-generation chips will be the first to fully support Windows 10, including all the programs built for the x86 architecture. In a recent video, Microsoft demonstrated how both x86 and Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps would run on ARM chips. It also talked about the underlying technology enabling x86 apps to run on ARM chips with near-native performance.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Peter Han / Windows Blog:
Microsoft says “Always Connected” Windows 10 ARM PCs are coming from Asus, HP, and Lenovo, and shows Asus and Dell Windows Mixed Reality headsets
Microsoft shows partner innovation with Always-Connected PCs, MR and IoT at Computex 2017
https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2017/05/31/microsoft-shows-partner-innovation-always-connected-pcs-mr-iot-computex-2017/
Our announcements included:
Debut of numerous modern devices from top partners,
OEM and Operator commitments to deliver Always Connected PCs,
Windows Mixed Reality progress on the road to launch later this year, and
Windows and Azure IoT solutions in key verticals like manufacturing and utilities.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft Says ‘Mixed Reality’ Is the Future, Not VR and AR
https://www.designnews.com/design-hardware-software/microsoft-says-mixed-reality-future-not-vr-and-ar/148821410256869?cid=nl.x.dn14.edt.aud.dn.20170531.tst004t
It’s not VR or AR. Microsoft wants immersive headsets to be as common as a keyboard and mouse and the company is betting on a new concept, Mixed Reality (MR), to get there.
If Microsoft has its way reality won’t be virtual or augmented, it’ll be mixed. Whereas virtual reality (VR) creates entirely computer-generated environments and augmented reality (AR) overlays computer-generated imagery onto the real world, mixed reality (MR), a term dating all the way back to a 1994 whitepaper
With so many competitors ranging from Google, HTC, and Facebook-owned Oculus already tackling VR and AR from all sides, Microsoft is introducing a new strategy to position itself as a key player in bringing these technologies into the enterprise and consumer space. At its Build conference earlier this month Microsoft announced it would begin taking preorders on Mixed Reality Development Kits targeted at letting OEMs develop their own MR headsets. This all comes in conjunction with MR capabilities already built into Windows 10 as well as Microsoft’s already available HoloLens AR headset that has been specifically targeted at enterprise. The first of these MR head-mounted displays (HMDs), is being developed by Acer.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Oracle asks for more time to finish Java 9
Eight weeks needed to sort out missing pieces of Jigsaw platform module system
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/01/oracle_asks_for_more_time_to_finish_java_9/
Oracle’s asked for more time to sort out Java 9 in light of the community’s rejection of the proposed Java Platform Module System.
The chief architect of Big Red’s Java Platform Group, Mark Reinhold, has hit the openjdk mailing list to address the vote against JPMS (JSR 376 , aka “Jigsaw”) due to land with JDK 9
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel gives the world a Core i9 desktop CPU to play with
Chipzilla’s Compute Card also comes into focus in four models
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/31/intel_gives_the_world_a_core_i9_desktop_cpu_to_play_with/
Intel’s Core range of CPUs now comes in a new “family” and has a new upper limit.
Unveiled at the Computex trade show in Taiwan, the new family is dubbed the “Intel Core X-series processors family”. One member of the family is a the Core i9 Extreme Edition, which takes the Core range’s upper limit from a “7” to a “9”. The Register imagines the next step might be a Core 11 and Spinal Tap jokes.
But we digress. The new Skylake-based X-series starts at the i5, compared to the i3 at the bottom of the barrel for plain old Core CPUs.
But wait, there’s more! Intel says before too much time has passed it will add models with 18, 16, 14, and 12 cores.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Infosys co-founder NR Narayana Murthy suggests ways to stop job losses
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/ites/infosys-co-founder-nr-narayana-murthy-suggests-ways-to-stop-job-losses/articleshow/58939662.cms
Amid fears of large-scale job losses and unionisation in India’s software services sector, Infosys co-founder NR Narayana Murthy, one of the tallest leaders in the industry, has expressed his views on the contentious issue for the first time.
“We have gone through these troughs in business several times, there is no need for us to become extremely anxious. It is possible to protect jobs of youngsters if seniors make minor adjustments, like senior people taking salary cuts based on disposable income. This is what we did after the dot com crisis. Industry leaders need to identify new areas of opportunity, Mount training programs and give them time to train. Give youngsters enough time to pick up new skills and technologies.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
ARM Cores Target AI-powered Future
Plans to be in all 1 trillion IoT devices by 2035
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1331795
ARM plc Monday (May 29) announced its two new application processor cores, the high-end Cortex-A75 and the mid-range Cortex-A55, as part of an ambitious goal to accelerate AI adoption and get an ARM processor core into every IoT device by 2035.
The Cortex-A75 offers performance increases versus previous generations, while the Cortex-A55 delivers both performance and efficiency increases. Both cores come with a level of configurability which makes them suitable for all the Cortex-A family’s markets, in contrast to previous cores which have been optimized for specific applications (for example, the A73 for mobile applications or the A72 for servers).
Both cores are based on ARM’s brand new DynamIQ technology, which the company is heralding as a way to redefine multi-core processing.
“DynamIQ is a fundamental change to the way we build Cortex-A clusters,”
DynamIQ allows a more mix-and-match approach, with heterogeneous core types in the same cluster, that can be configured or optimized differently. It also includes an upgraded memory subsystem to deal with data flowing between the different cores, and a new specific instruction set for AI tasks.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Pythonic Science in the Browser
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/pythonic-science-browser
In the past, if you wanted a friendly environment for doing Python programming, you would use Ipython. The Ipython project actually consists of three parts: the standard console interface, a Qt-based GUI interface and a web server interface that you can connect to with a web browser. The web browser interface, especially, has become the de facto way of doing scientific programming with Python. It has become so popular in fact, it has spun off as its own project, named Jupyter. In this article, I take a look at how to get the latest version up and running, and I discuss the kinds of things you can do with it once it is set up.
To start Jupyter, open a terminal window and enter the command:
jupyter notebook –no-browser
This will start a web server, listening on port 8888, that will accept connections from the local machine.
Once Jupyter is up and running, open a browser and point it to http://localhost:8888. Across the top, you will see a series of tabs for each section of the workspace. Most people will see only three: Files, Running and Clusters. If you are using the Anaconda Python distribution, you will get a fourth tab named Conda.
Tomi Engdahl says:
DRAM Price Surge Continues
Dylan McGrath
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1331796&
Global DRAM sales reached a record high of $14.1 billion in the first quarter, driven by a roughly 30 percent increase in the average contract price of PC DRAM modules, according to memory chip price tracking firm DRAMeXchange.
First quarter DRAM revenue was up by more than 13 percent compared with the fourth quarter of 2016, the firm said.
According to DRAMeXchange, most PC OEMs negotiated first quarter DRAM contracts at the end of 2016, when DRAM was in tight supply. Not only did these price increases affect PC DRAM, but they also spilled over into the server and mobile DRAM markets, increasing the price of mobile DRAM products by nearly 10 percent on average, according to the firm.
Tomi Engdahl says:
3DXP’s Memory Role Unclear
Mixed views on outlook for DIMMs
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1331826
Opinions are mixed on whether Intel’s 3D XPoint will open a door to disruptive server designs next year. Some believe the chips cannot hit the latency levels needed for main memory, some believe they will, and others are sitting on the fence.
3DXP is the first of a half-dozen storage-class memories (SCM) expected to emerge over the next three years. They will enable a range of new options in memory capacity and speed. Engineers are working on interfaces for the new chips, but they are largely unfinished and their future somewhat unclear.
Flash-memory analyst Jim Handy is bullish on SCM in general and 3DXP in particular. At its 2015 launch, he predicted that Intel could reap $2 billion in the first two years of 3DXP revenues.
It’s taken Intel and Micron longer to ramp the co-developed design, which uses novel and still-undisclosed materials. Nevertheless, Handy believes that Intel still has some chance to reach that high watermark.
“3D NAND was three years late on conventional silicon processes; 3DXP is only a couple of quarters late, but it’s using materials never before in production,” he said, noting that 3DXP in DIMMs “could be a very large market.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
NAND Shortage Drives Price Surge
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1331838&
Contract pricing for NAND flash memory surged by 20 to 25 percent in the first quarter, a strong testament to the undersupply condition that persists in the market, according to DRAMeXchange, a firm that tracks memory chip pricing.
NAND revenue typically falls off considerably between the seasonally strong fourth quarter and the the first quarter of the year, traditionally a slow season for end device shipments. However, in the first quarter of this year, global NAND revenue declined by just 0.4 percent, as the reduction of two-dimensional NAND capacity was severe enough to create tight demand, DRAMeXchange said.
Prices of mobile storage products such as embedded multi-chip package (eMCP), embedded multi-media card (eMMC) and universal flash storage (UFS) also continue climbing, DRAMeXchange said.
http://www.dramexchange.com/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Transforming Customer Service in the Cloud
http://www.tivi.fi/Kumppaniblogit/wipro/transforming-customer-service-in-the-cloud-6651918
A Gartner survey revealed that 89 percent of companies report that they are competing primarily on customer experience, making this the new battleground for businesses operating in an increasingly competitive and global marketplace.
The new era is the “age of the customer” – a new mantra for companies looking to move away from traditional ways of working to more customer-centric methods. The key question for businesses then becomes – ‘in today’s digital-first culture, what does it mean to be customer-centric and how can businesses incorporate cloud technology to deliver on this customer-centric promise?’
Ultimately, a world-class customer service experience derives from an important combination of people and technology. No business can provide the vital customer service that drives experience without the confluence of an outstanding digital presence allowing anytime, anywhere access across all devices, and an engaged workforce to deliver on the customer’s needs. Customer-centric employees are essential to delivering an exceptional service
Consistency in performance and in the technology with which customers interact are key. The website, mobile applications, and in-person service must all say the same things and react the same way in order to build trust so consistent responsiveness and communication are essential. Cloud is vital in this respect, providing the ability for all agents to gain instant access to a customer’s previous interactions – no matter the channel – and details on previous issues and resolutions. For example, a cloud based CRM tool can display all customer information from all channels to a call centre agent, who is then in a better place to improve the customer experience.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Supreme Court Just Handed Consumers and Small Tech Companies a Big Win
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2017/05/31/the_supreme_court_says_third_parties_can_sell_printer_cartridge_ink.html
In what legal scholars are already calling a precedent-setting ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court handed consumers and tech companies a big win on Tuesday in a hackles-raising, pulse-pounding case about the juiciest of judicial issues: patent law.
The case, called Impression Products, Inc. v. Lexmark International, Inc., hinged on the question of how much control companies maintain over their products after they sell them, both domestically and abroad. It bubbled up to the highest court in the land about a year ago after Lexmark, a Chinese-owned printer company headquartered in Kentucky, sued Impression, a West Virginia-based “remanufacturer” company that refilled and resold Lexmark ink cartridges both in the U.S. and abroad.
The Supreme Court decided 7-1 in favor of Impression on both counts, ruling that once a company has sold a product, it can’t dictate how the product is used—meaning that consumers have free rein to refurbish, repair, or resell items they’ve lawfully bought. “The purchaser and all subsequent owners are free to use or resell the product just like any other item of personal property, without fear of an infringement lawsuit,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority opinion. The court also found that this so-called “first sale” doctrine—which holds that companies forfeit their patent rights once they sell a specific product to a consumer—applies to purchases made outside U.S. territory.
“An authorized sale outside the United States, just as one within the United States, exhausts all rights under the Patent Act,” the majority opinion went on to say.
The decision is a boon for consumers, the New York Times wrote late Tuesday, because it protects those who repair or resell products from being sued for patent infringement. In loosening corporate giants’ iron grip on the products they make, it may also inject greater competition into resale markets, giving consumers a wider array of purchase options and bringing down prices.
By targeting the pillars of Lexmark’s patent-hawkish business model, the Impression case predictably polarized the private sector, Ars Technica reported Wednesday. Smaller, more user-friendly outfits like Vizio, Dell, Intel, LG Electronics, HTC, Western Digital, and Costco Wholesale supported Impression while corporate giants including Qualcomm, IBM, Nokia, and Dolby—along with biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies—backed Lexmark.
Supreme Court overturns Lexmark’s patent win on used printer cartridges
Since the 17th century, restricting resale has been “against Trade and Traffique.”
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/05/supreme-court-strikes-down-federal-circuit-again-limits-lexmark-patent-rights/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Qualcomm names its Windows 10 ARM PC partners
HP, Asus, Lenovo ring in brown trouser time for Intel
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/01/qualcomm_names_arm_pc_partners/
Qualcomm has named HP, Asus and Lenovo as its first partners to sell ARM-based Windows 10 PCs.
The chipmaker says the three vendors will be making PCs that will sport its Snapdragon 835 SoC (system-on-chip) and its X16 LTE chipset for wireless broadband connectivity. Qualcomm says all of the models will be fanless and will offer all-day battery life.
No other specs were given, nor an update on availability. Qualcomm has previously said it expects the ARM PCs to hit the market by the end of the year.
“Today’s consumers experience mobility in nearly every aspect of their lives and they’ve come to expect more from their PCs than legacy computing models are able to provide,” Qualcomm executive VP Cristiano Amon said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Virtual reality headsets even less popular than wearable devices
The market’s growing fast, but only the cheap stuff with no strings attached is selling
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/02/idc_augmented_and_virtual_reality_headset_tracker_q1_2017/
Virtual reality headsets are moving at a rate of 2.3 million a quarter, but cheap and simple devices dominate the market.
So says analyst firm IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Augmented and Virtual Reality Headset Tracker for 2017′s first quarter. The firm says “bout two-thirds of all headset shipments were viewers like as Samsung’s Gear VR and Google’s Daydream View that rely on external screens. More expensive tethered headsets make up the rest of the market.
There’s good news in the market’s rapid growth – IDC says shipments are up 77.4 per cent year over year – but that number represents broad a shallow demand “as new products began shipping and existing headsets expanded distribution to additional countries.”
By way of contrast, consider the wearable devices market, a field widely considered to be stalled despite lots of initial enthusiasm.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Java is delayed again
Oracle’s principal architect, Mark Reinhold, has announced the release of the final Java 9 SDK release. Now the release is scheduled for 21 September.
As a reason for this late delay, Reinhold appoints that the JSR 376 section, the new Java module system, has not been approved by the committee for the completion of the platform. This so-called ” However, modularity developed under the jigsaw is one of the key reforms of the new Java.
The eight-week lag will no longer have a bearing on it, as originally the Java 9 was supposed to be in the hands of developers by the end of 2015.
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php/13-news/6415-java-myohastyy-taas
Tomi Engdahl says:
The IT industry has always been disruptive, but emerging technologies, new ideas, practices and vendors are driving immense changes that your organization may not be prepared for.
Tomi Engdahl says:
In a job interview, placing difficult code angles on the boardworm or paper can expel a competent IT expert.
In Silicon Valley, software developers are already tired of doing big business like barbecuing job seekers in an interview with difficult technical issues. The same phenomenon has also been noted in Finland.
“Grilling has declined in five years in coding, especially when it has been noted that it may expel a good expert,” says recruiting manager Outi Mäkinen high-skilled experts in the recruitment of specialized aTalent.
Mäkinen sees grilling as an old-fashioned custom that still worked on the market when the employer had a choice.
As a result of the shortage of expertise, companies should now no longer sell their jobs to the most sought after people. Finding a common melody and finding a suitable person for a team is more important than a trickle-stick puzzle.
“If the interview situation is overwhelming, it will affect the image of the company and its culture. When it comes to falling into the shelf, it may become an image to the applicant that she is not appreciated or wanted to join the party,” says Mäkinen.
In ATalent’s studies, the suitability of the company and the applicant to each other has risen to the top-tier selection criteria both for companies and for applicants.
“It’s a good idea to think about your own know-how and what you can do for a business. Code tests are done much with the technologies used by the company,”
The search process may also include pre-homework assignments at home.
“The companies have renewed their homework on a regular basis, many employing a friend or acquaintance, and at the same time have been hinted at how to get there, but the coding test is only one part of the search process and very soon the level of knowledge is revealed.”
On-site testing can not look at online help, which is certainly one of the reasons why hacked paper and stroke tests are still being done.
Choosing key criteria in addition to competence is that it comes with a variety of people and that is the business’s business understanding.
Employers also appreciate learning toys when technology changes rapidly.
“it is a big plus if there is social and business understanding, but skills can not be fought”.
Instead of a traditional job search process, some IT experts have been interested in meeting more relaxed companies even before deciding whether to seriously switch employers.
ATalent has developed a coding factory for networking, where five software companies meet 50 experts. Professionals have been selected from among 250 codecs, including code test or GitHub profiles. The event combines speed dating and workshops. The feedback has been positive and, according to Mäkinen, there were also dozens of new recruits.
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/Kaikki_uutiset/koodaajien-grillaaminen-ei-enaa-toimi-saattaa-karkottaa-hyvan-osaajan-6654020
Programmers are confessing their coding sins to protest a broken job interview process
https://theoutline.com/post/1166/programmers-are-confessing-their-coding-sins-to-protest-a-broken-job-interview-process
“Whiteboard” interviews are widely hated. They also discriminate against people who are already underrepresented in the field.
Tomi Engdahl says:
An export product can grow from the culture of Finnish IT houses
Self-managing organizations every worker has the autonomy to decide on the content and tekemistavoista work as well as opportunities to influence company policies and strategy. Information transparency and work-coordinated information systems enable employees to work autonomously towards a common goal.
In Finland, the tales of Reaktor, Futurice and Vincit have, thanks to self-management, not only grown up and succeeded by economic indicators, but also won the Finnish and European Best Employers titles.
Self-directedness is the answer to two challenges set by the transition from work to work: the bureaucratic organization led by the top is often too slow and stiff to handle rapidly changing industries. Organic self-organization through employee experiments is more responsive to changes and faster to adopt new business practices or business areas.
Automation remains left by jobs require more and more creative expertise and independent decisions. It’s stupid to strike the expertise of piqued experts from top-down roles and rules. It results in worse results and frustration among the best.
In many cultures, the deep hierarchical gulf between leaders and subordinates is a key obstacle to self-guidance breakthrough. It’s when you need to challenge your boss and dare to make independent decisions. Fortunately, global value development goes hand in hand with self-realization, tolerance, equality and individual freedoms.
Equality and autonomy with regard to we Scandinavians are there, what is the rest of the world only way. That is why Reaktor and Futurice can set up branches in Berlin, London and New York, disturbing their culture.
Self-directedness can grow a Nordic export product that business leaders around the world are coming to admire. At the same time, self-management can be one of the most important foreign startup companies and attractive promises to investors in Finland.
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/blogit/suomalaisten-it-talojen-kulttuurista-voi-kasvaa-vientituote-6654507
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wall Street Journal:
To compete with tech firms like Google and Facebook for data and computer science talent, hedge funds offer lavish perks
Talent Battle: Hedge Funds vs. Silicon Valley
By Laurence Fletcher and Sarah E. Needleman
https://www.wsj.com/articles/battle-royale-hedge-funds-vs-silicon-valley-1495637466?mod=e2twd
The battle for quantitative talent has turned some of the richest money managers into underdogs. Why? Because they are up against the likes of Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Facebook Inc. for hiring the world’s top minds.
“Google is trying to hoover up every data scientist in the world,” said Luke Ellis, chief executive of Man Group PLC, the world’s largest publicly traded hedge-fund manager based in London. “Google has got more money than I have. I can’t compete with Google just on that.”
Man Group attempts to get these data scientists at their source. The firm has donated millions to Oxford University to put its name on a quantitative research laboratory, hoping that prospective employees get acclimated with the firm and its culture early in their career.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Terry Crowley / Hacker Noon:
How Microsoft’s desire to build a bigger moat led to the over-engineered, poorly executed Windows Vista release and led to Microsoft’s mobile irrelevance
What Really Happened with Vista
https://hackernoon.com/what-really-happened-with-vista-4ca7ffb5a1a
In this post I am taking a different tack to write about my perspective on the underlying causes of the Windows Vista (codename Longhorn) debacle. While this happened over a decade ago, this was a crucial period in the shift to mobile and had long-running consequences internally to Microsoft. I have found many of the descriptions of Microsoft’s problems, especially around the shift to mobile, to be unconvincing and not to mesh with my understanding or experience of what went wrong.
Microsoft badly misjudged the underlying trends in computer hardware, in particular the right turn that occurred in 2003 to the trend of rapid improvements in single-threaded processor speed and matching improvements in other core elements of the PC. Vista was planned for and built for hardware that did not exist. This was bad for desktops, worse for laptops and disastrous for mobile.
The bet on C# and managed code was poorly motivated and poorly executed.
Vista was a disaster but was just the culmination of a series of near-catastrophes in the core executive mission of complex project execution.
This evolution of higher-level functionality is driven by the virtuous cycle and multi-sided network effects inherent in the OS business. More and more users of an OS attract more developers. More developers create more applications that make the OS more attractive to users. That results in a cycle of still more users leading to still more developers.
If you look at Windows, iOS and Android, they all operate with this same dynamic despite the fact that Microsoft, Apple and Google all monetize differently. Microsoft classically charged a per-device licensing fee that was paid by OEMs that sold Windows devices. This was a horizontal business strategy with lots of OEMs all paying Microsoft for the devices they built and sold. Apple monetizes by building and selling devices directly. Google does not charge OEMs an OS license but rather depends on post-sale monetization primarily through search.
Cross-platform middleware disrupts the network effects driven by exclusive applications tightly bound to an OS through exclusive OS-specific APIs.
The browser as an application-delivery platform is probably the most stable example of middleware that disrupts the OS API dynamic. Looking back on 35 years of PC history, other approaches have existed for a time but ultimately collapsed
A Windows release generally had a key theme and rough timeline.
The history of the Windows team was that the release generally slipped significantly from the initial target date (Windows 95 was initially Windows 93) and important target functionality was either dropped or shipped well short of the original functional target. The drive to shipping was often a “death march” that involved long nights and weekends of bug fixing to make the new dates.
This process contrasts significantly with modern engineering practices. Independent of whether individual feature ideas are driven top-down from a broad consistent vision or bottom-up from individual engineers and teams, modern practices generally involve maintaining continuous ship-level quality and actually shipping to customers on a very frequent basis.
Windows XP was a massive release that followed this pattern.
an equally large organization was focusing on building the next generation of Windows on top of a “managed” C# platform.
C# is a “managed” language which mostly means that developers do not need to manage allocating and freeing memory “by hand”. The language and its runtime component use garbage collection to automatically recover any memory no longer in use.
Part of the bet on C# was also a bet on a rich base class library and then building new client technology as a set of class libraries on top of this base.
There was virtually no migration strategy for existing applications built on top of the unmanaged Win32.
The combination of rich storage and rich presentation was Bill’s Holy Grail. Built on a consistent managed C# infrastructure
So what went wrong? In a word, everything.
Some problems were due to short-term execution failures and some were longer term strategic failures.
As the core team came off the security effort and the 64-bit Windows product, they re-evaluated the status of the overall Longhorn project.
As detailed in a Wall Street Journal article from 2005, Allchin made the decision to push these major components out of the release while continuing development on them.
All these managed features would be pushed out of the core OS and would ship separately. Pulling them out was clearly the right decision, but both revealed and introduced problems that would last for more than a decade.
Also catastrophically, the bet on Avalon had been paired with a major disinvestment in IE.
This was a huge strategic mistake and opened up a gap for the rise of Firefox and then the Chrome browser from Google.
while Avalon shipped independently and some key concepts were used as the basis for the UI components that shipped in Windows 8 and 10, WinFS was ultimately abandoned.
When Sinofsky reorganized the Windows organization for the Windows 7 product cycle, he pushed all of the managed code efforts out of Windows and into the developer division
He would later fight the battle of what was the core Windows runtime for the Windows 8 product
This had long-running consequences. It continued the internal investments and costs. It continued the public perception that the managed runtimes were the future of Windows. It created a “scorched earth”
These managed libraries and runtimes became “pure middleware”. In fact, in an aborted effort to compete with Flash, these teams packaged core components together into Silverlight and even delivered it across different OS platforms.
The other major impact to Vista’s reputation for stability was due to the problematic nature of the drivers
Vista made an important change to the driver model
The changes made to the driver model required large code changes by all the vast landscape of hardware providers
Vista was shipping into an environment where the shift to mobility was gaining more and more speed. Revenue totals for laptops passed desktops in 2003; by 2005 laptops also passed desktops in total units sold. Because Vista ran so poorly on newer cheap laptops (“netbooks”), Microsoft was forced to let OEMs continue selling Windows XP for those lower end machines.
The basic use cases
had mostly stabilized by 2000 and have not changed much since then.
The improvements desired by users — better manageability, stability, performance, security on the software side and longer battery life, lighter weight, faster processors, faster communications, bigger screens on the hardware side in many cases needed less software, not more.
Overall computing requirements across the economy have continued to grow explosively. But faster and more pervasive communications enable more flexibility in how an application allocates its computing requirements (data and processing) between different nodes in the system. Many influences push to place more of that processing in the server or cloud and have for the last two decades.
Continuing improvements to wireless communication (and end-to-end communication bandwidth overall) make this an extremely stable state for device computing.
The tablet probably blasted to form factor sufficiency faster than any broad consumer computing device we have ever seen.
Yes, people want better screens, faster processors and longer battery life. But mostly the device does what people need it to do — which significantly explains the rapid leveling off of tablet sales. Smartphones seem to be going through a similar transition.
Is there a broad lesson to draw from this story?
One is so fundamental as to be trite. Execution matters. There is no innovation without execution.
The second is one that I took greatly to heart in my subsequent career. If you want to do broad ambitious things, you need to be accountable to articulate why it is the right thing to do. You need to be able to write down your basic thesis and the evidence behind it and then defend it.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Now it happened: Intel has a big challenger in PC hardware
For more than three decades, Intel has owned over half of the PC market. Now analysts believe that Intel is facing its biggest challenge. Qualcomm presented a platform in Taiwan’s Computex to build ARM-based PCs.
The platform is called the Snapdragon 835 Mobile PC Platform. It consists of a Kryo 280 processor, an Adreno 540 graphics processor, and a Hexagon 682 signal processor. The platform supports all Windows 10 applications, including Office tools.
The entry of ARM-based PCs into the market is breaking the dominance of the Wintel platform, which has long been perceived by many people.
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php/13-news/6417-nyt-se-tapahtui-intelille-iso-haastaja-pc-raudassa
Tomi Engdahl says:
WSJ: There’s An ‘Inexorable’ Trend Towards Working Remotely
https://it.slashdot.org/story/17/06/05/0439246/wsj-theres-an-inexorable-trend-towards-working-remotely
The Wall Street Journal reports that the trend towards remote working “is inexorable” in America’s labor force, with 43% of workers now doing at least some of their work from home (up from 39% in 2012), and 20% now working entirely from home (up from 15%).
Besides lowering an employer’s rent, telecommuting also makes employees happier, which helps with both recruiting and retention according to the Journal. Automattic, maker of WordPress, is able to have an almost entirely remote workforce of 558 employees spread across more than 50 countries.
Why Remote Work Can’t Be Stopped
http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2017/06/04/why-remote-work-cant-be-stopped.html
When Dell recently surveyed its 110,000 employees about their work habits, it discovered something surprising: While only 17% of Dell’s employees were formally authorized to work wherever they prefer, 58% were already working remotely at least one day a week. That’s good news, says Steve Price, chief human resources officer at Dell. In 2013, the company had said it wanted half its employees to work remotely for at least part of their week… by 2020.
In contrast, International Business Machines recently gave thousands of its home-based employees a choice: Start working at one of IBM’s regional offices or take a hike. IBM once boasted that 40% of its employees work outside traditional offices, it has its own in-house tools to facilitate remote work, and it regularly promotes telework to its clients. Other companies that have reversed course on remote work include Yahoo, Bank of America and Aetna.
Despite these moves by big companies, data indicates that the remote-work trend in the U.S. labor force is inexorable, aided by ever-better tools for getting work done anywhere.
IBM has said it hasn’t found remote work saves money. It also said the shift away from remote work isn’t aimed at cutting costs — though inevitably some employees leave as a result. Other companies, though, cite saving on rent among a variety of reasons for letting employees work remotely. They say it also improves employee satisfaction, helping retention and recruiting.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft leak reveals Windows 10 Pro for Advanced PCs, a workstation edition supporting the new ReFS file system, large data transfers, and expanded hardware — It’s been more than 20 years since Microsoft used the Workstation branding in its Windows 4.0 Workstation edition, but it appears the company is ready to bring it back.
Microsoft leak reveals new Windows 10 Workstation edition for power users
https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/5/15739192/microsoft-windows-10-pro-for-workstations-advanced-pcs-features
It’s been more than 20 years since Microsoft used the Workstation branding in its Windows 4.0 Workstation edition, but it appears the company is ready to bring it back. Twitter users @AndItsTito and @GrandMofongo have discovered references to a new edition of Windows 10 in a build Microsoft accidentally released to testers last week. Described as “Windows 10 Pro for Advanced PCs,” the new version appears to cater for significant hardware demands
In a leaked slide, Microsoft describes the edition as “Windows 10 Pro for Workstation” with four main capabilities:
Workstation mode: Microsoft plans to optimize the OS by identifying “typical compute and graphics intensive workloads”
Resilient file system: Microsoft’s file system successor to NTFS, dubbed ReFS, is enabled in this new version, with support for fault-tolerance
Faster file handling: Microsoft is including the SMBDirect protocol for file sharing
Expanded hardware support: Microsoft is also planning to allow Windows 10 Pro for Workstation on machines with up to 4 CPUs and a memory limit of 6TB. Windows 10 Pro currently only supports 2 CPUs.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple:
Apple announces macOS High Sierra, available to developers today, public beta later this month, release this fall — Refinements Made to Popular Apps Like Photos, Safari, Mail and More — San Jose, California — Apple today previewed macOS High Sierra, the latest version of the world’s …
macOS High Sierra delivers advanced technologies for storage, video and graphics
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2017/06/macos-high-sierra-delivers-advanced-technologies-for-storage-video-and-graphics/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Windows 7 is more popular than ever
Microsoft would like users to speed up the new Windows 10 operating system, but users do not seem to listen. In the last year, Win10′s market share has indeed increased by 8 percentage points, but Windows 7 is more popular than ever before.
According to netmarketshare statistics, Windows 7′s market share was 49.46% in May, up from just one last year. At the same time, the share of Windows 10 grew from just 17 per cent to 26.8 per cent.
Old market share of XP has fallen to 5.66 percent.
Windows 10 is now clearly the second most popular PC operating system.
Taking all versions into account, Windows manages PCs with a 91.6% market share.
Apple Macintosh takes 6.4 percent.
inux machines account for only 1.8 percent.
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php/13-news/6426-windows-7-suositumpi-kuin-koskaan
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Women Devs Are Hard To Recruit and Even Harder To Keep
https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/06/06/014228/why-women-devs-are-hard-to-recruit-and-even-harder-to-keep
The results of a recent survey conducted by GitHub sheds light on the issue of why women developers are hard to recruit and keep in the business of tech.
Although the survey focused on open source and asked 50 questions on a wide range of topics that were in no way focused on gender issues alone, some of the data collected offers insight into why the developer industry as a whole has trouble recruiting and keeping female devs. Indeed, the severity of the gender gap in open source is substantial. In the survey, 95 percent of respondents were men, with the response rate from women at only 3 percent
The problems that women in tech face are pretty much what you might expect. Twenty-five percent of the women surveyed report ‘encountering language or content that makes them feel unwelcome,’
Open Source Survey
http://opensourcesurvey.org/2017/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Women Devs Are Hard to Recruit and Even Harder to Keep
http://windowsitpro.com/development/why-women-devs-are-hard-recruit-and-even-harder-keep
It’s no secret that the tech industry has long had a problem attracting women employees. Oddly, this has been even more of a problem in open source (I know, you’d think with all that sharing we’d be a bunch of kumbaya tree huggers), where the problem is compounded by the fact that women who do join projects tend leave very quickly.
Not only is this not good for career minded women, it’s not good for the business of tech. Good developers are in short supply — and since women make up somewhere around 50 percent of the population, they represent a huge demographic that’s not being properly leveraged.
The results of a recent survey conducted by GitHub sheds light on this problem, by putting some numbers on already known issues.
The problems that women in tech face are pretty much what you might expect. Twenty-five percent of the women surveyed report “encountering language or content that makes them feel unwelcome,” compared with 15 percent of men. Women are six times more likely to encounter stereotyping than men (25 versus 15 percent), and twice as likely to be subjected to unsolicited sexual advances (6 vs 3 percent).
This pretty much mirrors what we’ve been hearing from women — as well as men — working in open source for years: that the work environment at many open source projects is not comfortable for women, with some going so far as to call it “toxic.”
Under the headings “responsive maintainers,” “license,” “active development” and “widespread use,” men and women seem to be of the same mind. There are great differences, however, in how the two sexes view the importance of a “contributing guide,” “Contributor License Agreement,” “welcoming community” and “code of conduct,” with women placing much more importance on all of these than their male counterparts.
Even men who are supportive of their women coworkers (the majority of men in most cases) might not see the harm done by “little” transgressions by coworkers, and might fall into agreement with the often repeated notion that the women are overreacting.
In many cases, management has a good handle on the problems being faced by new female hires, and have implemented good policies in an attempt to deal with them. Unfortunately, it appears this sort of top down only approach isn’t working.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Zac Bowden / Windows Central:
Leaked internal Windows build reveals new Windows shell that allows the same adaptive UI across all device types, including PCs, tablets, phones, Xbox, HoloLens
Microsoft’s Windows 10 ‘CShell’ adaptable UI in images and video (exclusive)
https://www.windowscentral.com/windows-cshell
We have exclusive screenshots and video of Microsoft’s upcoming “CShell” adaptive UI for Windows 10!
First Look at CShell on a Windows phone (Exclusive)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNxtMtlrm6U
This is CShell, Microsoft’s new adaptable Windows Shell currently in the works for Windows 10.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Joshua Brustein / Bloomberg:
How some Silicon Valley firms like Cisco rely heavily on Indian IT firms to staff up; Cisco lobbied for H-1B expansion amid several rounds of layoffs
Silicon Valley’s H-1B Secret
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-06/silicon-valley-s-h-1b-secret
Indian companies are applying for a lot of visas for workers to fill jobs at the headquarters of American tech companies
Cisco Systems Inc. applied for about 3,000 H-1B visas in fiscal 2016, intending to hire people to work at its sprawling, utilitarian campus in suburban San Jose. These were good jobs — many of them for management-level logisticians and operations research analysts — and they paid well. The average annual salary was about $120,000. At the upper end, the company planned to pay a “senior corporate strategy director” $197,000 a year.
But these applications don’t tell the whole story of how Cisco planned to use the controversial visa program to supplement its workforce.
Cisco’s use of the visa program has been the subject of public attention over the years, as its executives have lobbied for its expansion even while conducting multiple rounds of layoffs. The company eliminated 940 jobs at its headquarters in 2016, and 390 more so far this year.
Not every application resulted in a new job at Cisco — fewer than a third of the applications for all industries in 2016 were accepted. Still, taken as a whole, the applications show that Cisco is both more reliant on the H-1B program than previously acknowledged, and that the company uses it in a way that has not been fully understood. The contractors were not applying for visas covering the type of senior-level positions that Cisco sought for itself. Instead, almost all of these visa requests were for jobs requiring little or no specialized knowledge. The average salaries for those positions were about 25 percent lower than the jobs Cisco applied for directly.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Qualcomm Enters Intel PC Stronghold
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1331839&
With Qualcomm’s announcement of its Snapdragon 835 Mobile PC platform, the company is entering Intel’s CPU turf, where the world’s biggest chipmaker has held more than half of the market for more than three decades.
The new Snapdragon draws on ARM’s processor portfolio, fulfilling a plan that Microsoft announced for Windows 10 with Qualcomm at a Shenzhen, China event late last year. For the first time, Windows will work with all the usual apps, peripherals and enterprise capabilities on a mobile, power efficient, always-connected cellular PC, Microsoft said at the time.
Windows 10, released in 2015, introduces what Microsoft calls “universal apps” that can run on multiple Microsoft product families with nearly identical code, including platforms such as PCs, tablets, smartphones, embedded systems and Xbox One.
While Qualcomm rolled out endorsements from a number of PC OEMs, including Asus and Lenovo at this week’s Computex show in Taipei, some analysts had reserved praise for the new Snapdragon chip.
“On paper, it’s quite promising if it can really achieve such long battery life and always-on connectivity that x86-based systems might struggle with,” said Bryan Ma, vice president of devices research with market researcher IDC. “The trick, though, is in the emulation. I actually just got a demo this morning, and it was better than I thought it would be, but wasn’t perfect.”
In the meantime, Intel can count on strong OEM marketing programs that Qualcomm isn’t accustomed to. Intel is likely to dominate the hardcore desktop space that Qualcomm isn’t touching with this solution.
The world’s largest PC maker, Lenovo, also endorsed the new Qualcomm chip.
“We’re excited to work with Microsoft and Qualcomm Technologies to bring a whole new class of devices to consumers that will change the future of personal computing,” said Jeff Meredith, a Lenovo senior vice president.
The Snapdragon 835 SoC built into the Mobile PC Platform features the Qualcomm Kryo 280 CPU, the Adreno 540 GPU and the Hexagon 682 DSP to manage separate heterogenous workloads.
The 10nm Snapdragon 835 provides devices with superior thermal handling and greater power efficiency, enabling fanless designs with longer battery life, according to Qualcomm. With an integrated Snapdragon X16 Gigabit LTE modem, devices will be able to support peak download speeds of up to 1Gbps. The Snapdragon 835 Mobile PC Platform will also feature 2×2 802.11ac MU-MIMO for optimal Wi-Fi connectivity on the go, Qualcomm said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nvidia CEO Says Moore’s Law Is Dead
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1331836&
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has become the first head of a major semiconductor company to say what academics have been suggesting for some time: Moore’s Law is dead.
The enablers of an architectural advance every generation — increasing the size of pipelines, using superscalar tweaks and speculative execution — are among the techniques that are now lagging in the effort to keep pace with the expected 50 percent increase in transistor density each year, Huang told a gathering of reporters and analysts at the Computex show in Taipei.
“Microprocessors no longer scale at the level of performance they used to — the end of what you would call Moore’s Law,” Huang said. “Semiconductor physics prevents us from taking Dennard scaling any further.”
Dennard scaling, also known as MOSFET scaling, is based on a 1974 paper co-authored by Robert H. Dennard, after whom it is named. Originally formulated for MOSFETs, it states, roughly, that as transistors get smaller their power density stays constant, so that power use stays in proportion with area.
The diminishing returns from Moore’s Law and Dennard scaling have seen the semiconductor industry enter a mature stage in which just a handful of chipmakers can afford the multibillion dollar investments required to push the process technology forward. By now, only a few chip designers have the deep pockets to double down on fabricating silicon at the 16nm and 14nm nodes, design rules where the distinction has become increasingly blurred.
That stagnation in the progress of technology has also led to rapid industry consolidation in recent years that’s resulted in a flurry of multi-billion dollar mergers and acquisitions.
Even so, Huang suggested a modus vivendi for the semiconductor industry that plays into graphics processors, the products that Nvidia expects will enable continuing advances for years to come. Deep learning will use the processing power of GPUs that Nvidia makes as part of a new architecture that will take the company into artificial intelligence, outside the computer gaming business Nvidia has dominated, according to Huang.
Nvidia has highlighted its Volta GPU on 12nm at an 815mm die size, taking up the same surface area as 7 iPhone processors, and connected to 16GB of high bandwidth memory using Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.’s (TSMC) silicon interposer technology. A configuration of eight of these chips in Nvidia’s DGX-1 deep learning / high performance computing machine sells for $149,000.
Tomi Engdahl says:
In January-March 2017, servers were sold for $ 12.5 billion.
According to Gartner, the sum is 4.5 per cent lower than before.
Manufacturers’ income fell by half a billion dollars in a year.
HPE continued to be the market leader with a 24.1 per cent stake. Dell – or now, Dell EMC – captured a $ 19.3 billion market share of $ 2.3 billion. IBM and Cisco were on a par with the 6.6% market share.
Server deliveries grew only in the Asian market in the first half of the year.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6435&via=n&datum=2017-06-07_14:09:32&mottagare=31202
Tomi Engdahl says:
HPE pushes for greater hybrid IT innovation
https://thestack.com/cloud/2017/06/06/hpe-pushes-for-greater-hybrid-it-innovation/
As HPE Discover 2017 opens in Las Vegas, the tech giant is looking to win over customers to its Gen10 suite of hybrid cloud solutions.
The servers and storage arm of the now-split HP is standing by the argument that the majority of businesses are approaching their hybrid cloud infrastructure strategies in the wrong way.
According to a report from The Register, Ric Lewis, SVP and general manager at HPE’s software-defined and cloud unit claims that most private clouds are simply virtual machine (VM) farms – ‘It is not really a private cloud that seems like the public cloud where you have available services and you are maximizing on that.’
HPE: You’re rubbish at hybrid cloud – so we’ll cook a NüStack to fix it
Spinning up VMs is so 2010. What you need now are services
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/06/hpe_youre_all_terrible_at_hybrid_it_and_were_the_only_ones_that_can_help/
HPE Discover 2017 HPE is looking to win customers for its Gen10 suite of hybrid cloud enterprise IT platform by first offering them some tough love.
The servers and storage half of the broken-up HP says most enterprises simply aren’t doing hybrid cloud infrastructure right.
“If you look at the state of most private clouds, they are just VM farms,” said Ric Lewis, SVP and general manager of HPE’s software defined and cloud group.
“It is not really a private cloud that seems like the public cloud where you have available services and you are maximizing on that.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tom Krazit / GeekWire:
Google announces release of Spinnaker 1.0, an open-source multi-cloud continuous delivery platform
Spinnaker, an open-source project for continuous delivery, hits the 1.0 milestone
https://www.geekwire.com/2017/spinnaker-open-source-project-continuous-delivery-hits-1-0-milestone/
Spinnaker, an open-source project that lets companies improve the speed and stability of their application deployment processes, reached the 1.0 release milestone Tuesday.
Google announced the 1.0 release of Spinnaker, which was originally developed inside Netflix and enhanced by Google and a few other companies. The software is used by companies like Target and Cloudera to enable continuous delivery, a modern software development concept that holds application updates should be delivered when they are ready, instead of on a fixed schedule.
Spinnaker is just another one of the open-source projects that are at the heart of modern cloud computing
Spinnaker is probably still best for early adopters, but continuous delivery in general is one of the many advances in software development enabled by cloud computing that will likely be an industry best practice in a few years.
In an interesting move, Google took pains to highlight the cross-platform nature of Spinnaker, noting that will run across several different cloud providers and application development environments. Google is chasing cloud workloads that tend to go to Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure, and noted “whether you’re releasing to multiple clouds or preventing vendor lock-in, Spinnaker helps you deploy your application based on what’s best for your business.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Big Data Makes Big Waves
Efforts expand tools and data sets
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1331733&
You could say that big data got its start when Sergy Brin and Larry Page helped develop an algorithm that found more relevant results on the web than the search engines of their rivals. The lesson of Google continues to ripple through all businesses seeking competitive insights from their data pools, however large or small.
Today, the Internet of Things is opening vast new data sources, expanding big data’s promise to reshape business, technology, and the job of the technologist. Along the way, big data is inspiring new kinds of processor and systems architectures, as well as evolving algorithms and programming techniques.
“The concept of being overwhelmed by data is the new normal,” said Anthony Scriffignano, chief data scientist of Dun & Bradstreet, at a recent event hosted by the Churchill Club.
Inderpal Bhandari, the first chief data officer of IBM, also spoke at the event. The goal of the new role is to “change major processes an enterprise has so that their outcomes are better, so faster and better decisions get made,” said Bhandari.
Some of the largest recent IPOs in tech are being fueled by big data. They include Cloudera and Hortonworks, who helped drive Hadoop, an open-source equivalent of Google’s core MapReduce algorithm.
“Machine learning is impressive but really hard to use. Even the most sophisticated companies might only have a couple of people that can apply those techniques optimally,”
The IEEE Big Data Initiative is taking a different approach, making large data sets freely available for research through its Dataport service. So far, they include examples as diverse as real-time feeds of New York City traffic and neuron movements in a human brain.
The rise of big data has made the data scientist the sexiest job in tech, according to the Harvard Business Review.
“The demand currently outstrips supply by a wide margin,” said Eglash of Stanford. “It feels like every company on the planet has discovered that they are sitting on a trove of valuable data and trying to figure out how to unlock it.”
Eglash suggests that the trend is not just a passing fad but a new level of technical literacy.
“Just like every educated person should be able to write a paragraph and do arithmetic, it feels like we’re entering a time when, as a society, we feel that a well-educated person needs a basic proficiency in data science. It probably doesn’t mean that everyone needs to be able to write a program, but they do need to be a critical consumer of the inferences of data analytics.”
Smart companies will learn what they can outsource and what expertise they need to have in-house. The ability to pose focused questions is key, said Eglash.
http://bigdata.ieee.org/
Tomi Engdahl says:
DARPA Funds Development of New Type of Processor
Worlds 1st Non-Von-Neumann
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1331871&
A completely new kind of non-von-Neumann processor called a HIVE — Hierarchical Identify Verify Exploit — is being funded by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) to the tune of $80 million over four-and-a-half years. Chipmakers Intel and Qualcomm are participating in the project, along with a national laboratory, a university and a defense contractor North Grumman.
“When we look at computer architectures today, they use the same [John] von Neumann architecture invented in the 1940s. CPUs and GPUs have gone parallel, but each core is still a von Neumann processor,” Trung Tran, a program manager in DARPA’s Microsystems Technology Office (MTO), told EE Times in an exclusive interview.
“HIVE is not von Neumann because of the sparseness of its data and its ability to simultaneously perform different processes on different areas of memory simultaneously,” Trung said. “This non-von-Neumann approach allows one big map that can be accessed by many processors at the same time, each using its own local scratch-pad memory while simultaneously performing scatter-and-gather operations across global memory.”
Graph analytic processors do not exist today, but they theoretically differ from CPUs and GPUs in key ways. First of all, they are optimized for processing sparse graph primitives. Because the items they process are sparsely located in global memory, they also involve a new memory architecture that can access randomly placed memory locations at ultra-high speeds (up to terabytes per second).
Today’s memory chips are optimized to access long sequential locations (to fill their caches) at their highest speeds, which are in the much slower gigabytes per second range. HIVEs, on the other hand, will access random eight-byte data points from global memory at its highest speed, then process them independently using their private scratch-pad memory. The architecture is also specified to be scalable to up to however many HIVE processors are needed to perform a specific graph algorithm.
The graph analytics processor is needed, according to DARPA, for Big Data problems, which typically involve many-to-many rather than many-to-one or one-to-one relationships for which today’s processors are optimized. A military example, according to DARPA, might be the the first digital missives of a cyberattack.
Besides the HIVE chip, the DARPA mandate calls for the development of software tools to help programming the new architecture, which goes beyond today’s parallel processing paradigm by also allowing simultaneous parallel access to random memory locations. If successful, DARPA claims that the graph analytics processor will be able to recognize and identify all types of situations that are intractable for conventional CPUs and GPUs.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Revs Faster TPU
Machine-learning ASIC doubles performance
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1331753&
Google has designed and deployed a second generation of its TensorFlow Processor Unit (TPU) and is giving access to the machine-learning ASIC as a cloud service for commercial customers and researchers. A server with four of the so-called Cloud TPUs delivers 180 TFlops that will be used both for training and inference tasks.
The effort aims to harness rising interest in machine learning to drive use of Google’s cloud services. It also aims to rally more users around its open-source TensorFlow framework, the only software interface that the new chip supports.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Big Data Makes Big Waves
Efforts expand tools and data sets
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1331733&
You could say that big data got its start when Sergy Brin and Larry Page helped develop an algorithm that found more relevant results on the web than the search engines of their rivals. The lesson of Google continues to ripple through all businesses seeking competitive insights from their data pools, however large or small.
Today, the Internet of Things is opening vast new data sources, expanding big data’s promise to reshape business, technology, and the job of the technologist. Along the way, big data is inspiring new kinds of processor and systems architectures, as well as evolving algorithms and programming techniques.
“The concept of being overwhelmed by data is the new normal,” said Anthony Scriffignano, chief data scientist of Dun & Bradstreet, at a recent event hosted by the Churchill Club.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nick Summers / Engadget:
What to expect from Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, EA, Ubisoft, and Bethesda at E3 2017 — Dazzling press conferences. Heart-stopping trailers. A convention center packed with video games large and small. E3 is a magical week for anyone who likes to spend their free time pushing buttons on plastic gamepads.
https://www.engadget.com/2017/06/09/what-to-expect-e3-2017/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Peter Bright / Ars Technica:
As vendors prepare to ship Windows laptops with Qualcomm CPUs, Intel warns x86 emulation is a patent minefield
Intel fires warning shots at Microsoft, claims x86 emulation is a patent minefield
Intel doesn’t name names, but Windows 10 on ARM is surely the target of its ire.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/06/intel-fires-warning-shots-at-microsoft-claims-x86-emulation-is-a-patent-minefield/
In celebrating the x86 architecture’s 39th birthday yesterday—the 8086 processor first came to market on June 8, 1978—Intel took the rather uncelebratory step of threatening any company working on x86 emulator technology.
Intel’s blog post offers a rundown of all the investments that the company has made in extending and improving the x86 instruction set, with features such as SSE, AVX, TSX transactional memory, and SGX secure enclaves acting as a demonstration of how the company has transformed this ancient instruction set into something cutting edge and forward-looking. But the second part of the post takes a more sour note: Intel notes that many of these developments are patented and that it has a history of using patents to protect its x86 innovations AMD, Cyrix, VIA, and Transmeta are all named as victims of this defence.
The post doesn’t name any names, but it’s not too hard to figure out who it’s likely to be aimed at: Microsoft, perhaps with a hint of Qualcomm. Later in the year, companies including Asus, HP, and Lenovo will be releasing Windows laptops using Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 processor. This is not the first time that Windows has been released on ARM processors—Microsoft’s first attempt to bring Windows to ARM was the ill-fated Windows 8-era Windows RT in 2012—but this time around there’s a key difference. Windows RT systems could not run any x86 applications. Windows 10 for ARM machines, however, will include a software-based x86 emulator that will provide compatibility with most or all 32-bit x86 applications.
Tomi Engdahl says:
x86 emulation rumored to be coming to Windows for ARM in late 2017
This would enable the use of real Windows applications in Continuum docking mode.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/11/x86-emulation-rumored-to-be-coming-to-windows-for-arm-in-late-2017/
Microsoft is working on an emulator enabling systems with ARM processors to run x86 applications, according to sources speaking to Mary Jo Foley, and the capability will ship in the update codenamed “Redstone 3,” currently due for fall 2017. This will be the third Minecraft-inspired Redstone codename; this year’s Anniversary Update was Redstone 1, and the Creators Update coming in spring next year is Redstone 2.
Ever since Microsoft announced Windows on ARM in 2012, there’s been an immediate problem that prevents the port of the operating system from having mainstream appeal: it doesn’t run Windows applications, because almost all Windows applications are compiled for x86 processors.
This isn’t such a big deal for Windows on phones because phone applications have to be purpose-built to include a phone user interface, but it was one of the things that made Windows RT tablets, including Microsoft’s own Surface, broadly undesirable. And even while it isn’t an issue for phone apps per se, it limits Microsoft’s ambitions somewhat with Windows Mobile’s Continuum feature. With Continuum, a Windows Mobile phone can connect to a keyboard, mouse, and screen, and the phone can run desktop-style applications. Currently, Continuum is limited to running UWP applications; these apps can offer dual user interfaces, adapting to whether being used in phone mode or Continuum mode. It would be logical and obvious to extend this to allow true Windows desktop applications to run in Continuum mode—but that raises the x86/ARM incompatibility issue once more.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Windows 10 Creators Update preview: Lovin’ for Edge and pen users, nowt much else
What about the rest of us?
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/09/microsoft_pushes_out_window_10_preview_with_host_of_new_features/
Microsoft has released a new preview of Windows 10′s Fall Creators Update, showing off elements of its new Fluent Design System and introducing a host of features.
At the Build developer event last month, the company announced the Fluent Design System as a move away from the flat design language which characterised the “Metro” approach of Windows 8 and carried forward into the Windows 10 Universal Windows Platform (UWP). Now there’s depth, lighting and motion effects, translucent backgrounds and, of course, smooth scaling across different screen sizes.
The Windows Subsystem for Linux is still in beta, but no longer requires Developer Mode if you want to enable it. More significant is that Microsoft promises to enable multiple distributions “very soon”, which will enable use of SUSE and Fedora alongside the existing Ubuntu option, and to run them side by side.
This new preview shows that Microsoft is executing on the promise of regular new features in Windows, part of its “Windows-as-a-service” concept. How many of these features will matter to most users is another question
Tomi Engdahl says:
Project Scorpio might be the Xbox’s final form: a Windows PC
The case for the convergence of Xbox and Windows
https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/8/15764828/project-scorpio-rumors-microsoft-xbox-10-s
A small comment from Head of Xbox Phil Spencer was the final bit of news necessary to convince me Microsoft’s Project Scorpio will be named Xbox 10 S, and it will serve as a Windows 10 gaming PC built for the living room. I know, that’s a big claim — and I don’t encourage anyone to gamble on it. But ahead of Microsoft’s E3 event on Sunday, I’d like to collect the evidence that Microsoft is eager to put a computer beneath your television.
First and foremost, Microsoft has been talking about the convergence of living room entertainment and Windows software since before the original Xbox existed. Its video game consoles have always been something of a Trojan horse. And with the company’s reveal for the Xbox One, that thinly concealed strategy went public. The notorious presentation largely overlooked games and favored lengthy explanations of HDMI-pass through, professional sports partnerships, and grand media plans.
Microsoft has slowly laid the foundation for Xbox One’s pseudo follow-up, Project Scorpio, building hype for the hardware over the past year by promising the most powerful console on the market. All of the messaging has been zeroed in on how Scorpio will play games better.
But I wonder if it will also do something else — because playing the same games at 4K isn’t enough.
As a fully functional PC, Project Scorpio could be an Xbox, an Apple TV, and an Amazon Echo all rolled into one. Would Microsoft really pass up that opportunity?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft announces Xbox One X gaming console, formerly known as “Project Scorpio”, which can run games natively at 4K, shipping November 7 worldwide
Xbox One X is Microsoft’s next game console, available November 7th
The smallest Xbox ever
https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/11/15774918/microsoft-xbox-one-x-release-date-price-new-console-announced-e3-2017
After months of speculation, Microsoft is unveiling its “Project Scorpio” games console today, and it’s officially named Xbox One X. Microsoft’s Xbox One X naming comes just days after the company trademarked a mysterious S logo, and started dropping Scorpio hints in its E3 teaser videos. Microsoft is planning to launch the Xbox One X on November 7th worldwide.
All existing Xbox One accessories will work on the new Xbox One X, alongside all existing Xbox 360 backwards compatible titles and Xbox One games.
The new console will ship with 6 teraflops of graphical power, more than its main competitor, the PS4 Pro, with 4.2 teraflops. Microsoft is using a custom GPU engine on Scorpio that runs at 1172MHz, a big increase over the Xbox One’s 853MHz and even Sony’s 911MHz found on the PS4 Pro.
Microsoft has previously promised that 900p and 1080p Xbox One games should be able to run at native 4K on the Xbox One X, and that existing Xbox One and 360 games will see a noticeable performance boost.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The speed of the PCI bus quadruples
Machine training, artificial intelligence, and gameplay will in the future require more performance from PC equipment data transfer. The PCI SIG, which manages the PCI bus, has now revealed that PCIe 4.0 will be twice as fast as PCIe 5.0. Compared to the current PCIe 3.0, the pace is quadrupled.
The 4th standard is currently 0.9 version, or close to finished. It reaches 16 gigabytes (GT, gigatransfers) per second. The organization estimates that the Gen4 version will enter the market more widely in 2019.
The 5 version will be launched faster, perhaps already in 2020. This is primarily due to new requirements for applications and networking devices. For example, in ethernet connections, we will start switching to 400 gigabytes in the next few years.
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php/13-news/6447-pci-vaylan-nopeus-nelinkertaistuu
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel May Sue M’soft over Emulation
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1331874&
In a recent blog, Intel suggests it may sue Microsoft over plans to run Windows 10 on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon with x86 emulation.
Intel published a recent blog on its x86 that on the surface celebrates “nearly four decades of consistent investment and improvement.” But the text, attributed to Intel’s general counsel and an Intel fellow, includes a much more important and potentially market-shifting message on competition and the legality of emulation.
The blog details the advances in the x86 instruction set since Intel released the 8086 processor in 1978. It describes everything from MMX for multimedia to AVX-512, part of the upcoming Skylake-X architecture and more. Nearly every one of these advances has evolved the computing ecosystem unlike any company has been able to do in the same time frame.
“enforcement actions have been unnecessary in recent years because other companies have respected Intel’s intellectual property rights.”
Here’s where it gets interesting:
However, there have been reports that some companies may try to emulate Intel’s proprietary x86 ISA without Intel’s authorization. Emulation is not a new technology, and Transmeta was notably the last company to claim to have produced a compatible x86 processor using emulation (“code morphing”) techniques. Intel enforced patents relating to SIMD instruction set enhancements against Transmeta’s x86 implementation even though it used emulation.
X86: Approaching 40 and Still Going Strong
Nearly Four Decades of Consistent Investment and Improvement
https://newsroom.intel.com/editorials/x86-approaching-40-still-going-strong/