Clipmarks | microblues's clips

3-D TV?

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 03:51:54 GMT

clipped by: microblues

3-D TV not ready for prime time

"There are three characteristics that mark the 3-D experience: distance from the display; the resolution of the display, which are directly proportional to the experience; and the [interpupilary distance], which is inversely proportional to the experience."

Medical applications for 3-D were shown at Siggraph by TrueVision Systems Inc. It focuses on visualization during microsurgery, and has patented digital, real-time 3-D HD vision technology. The company has released a next-generation image capture module that fits most surgical microscopes and provides 1,280x1,024 pixel images.

The optical image is converted to a digital video stream, which is fed to a 3-D display in real-time. The camera processes at nearly 2 Gb/s, providing live video at 60 frames per second for each eye and recorded video at 30 f/s for each eye. The proprietary electronics design stitches together two high-definition views into a single synchronized stereo data stream.

Intel Nehalem in Aug. IDF

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 02:43:33 GMT

clipped by: microblues

Clip Source: www.eetimes.com

Intel Core i7 CPUs sport energy saving feature

The San Francisco event will mark a coming out party for the Core i7 devices. The chips are Intel's first to integrate a memory controller and high-speed, cache-coherent interconnect, following in the footsteps of archrival Advanced Micro Devices.

In other news, Intel is expected to talk about several system-on-chip products, mainly targeted at consumer markets. The company recently rolled out the first such x86-based SoCs for embedded systems.

At IDF, Intel will also discuss software plans for Larrabee, a multi-core x86 chip geared for graphics and expected to ship by 2010. In addition, it will describe new dimensions of its partnership with Dreamworks Animation related to Larrabee.

Bridging the CE-PC gap

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 05:02:05 GMT

clipped by: microblues

Clip Source: www.eetimes.com

Internet without a keyboard: Bridging the CE-PC gap

As the Internet spreads into more consumer devices, these devices transform the Internet. There is already an iPhone-customized version of Facebook, for example, and some reviewers like it better than the standard Facebook. The consumer computing revolution will be built on small changes like these.

It is unlikely that any one killer app will emerge; nobody, for instance, buys an iPhone just so they can access iPhone Facebook. Indeed, the very power of the consumer computing device is its infinite flexibility.

Thus, the consumer computing revolution will be a subtle, gradual shift. Just as with the dot-com boom, there will be a huge wave of wild new ideas, and many will be failures. But the ideas that stick will radically alter our everyday lives--just as the Internet has already revolutionized the PC.

IBM 8-core Power7 at 4.0 GHz

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 06:50:43 GMT

clipped by: microblues

Clip Source: www.theregister.co.uk

IBM's eight-core Power7 chip to clock in at 4.0GHz

In fact, according to our documents, IBM will ship Power7 at 4.0GHz in 2010 on a 45nm process. We're also seeing four threads per core on the chip.

The Register has uncovered the first detailed specifications of the "Blue Waters" system IBM is building for the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA).

We've got documents showing IBM going after a 10 petaflop system (peak) comprised of 38,900 eight-core Power7 chips with each chip running at 4.0GHz. This monster will have an astonishing 620TB of memory and 5PB/s of memory bandwidth.

According to the documents, IBM will rely on a 1.30PB/s interconnect to link the systems and will feed them with 26PB of storage. As if that's not enough, IBM will offer an exabyte of archival storage. Why not?

3D-TSV의 안정성?

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 00:10:35 GMT

clipped by: microblues
clipper's remarks: wire-bonding이나 flip-chip보다 TSV가 안정적?

Clip Source: www.eetimes.com

Yole predicts millions of 3D-TSV wafers

Yole said it has identified clear motivations for going to 3-D technologies, mostly for cost reasons. Several players are driven by reliability motivations since higher reliability systems can be manufactured through the vertical integration of several layers using 3-D TSVs instead of wire-bonds or Flip-chip interconnects, using 3-D stacked wafer level optics instead of plastic injection molded lens modules.

Programming languages for multicore

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 00:51:45 GMT

clipped by: microblues

Clip Source: tech.slashdot.org

For the record, I work for Google and we don't use Erlang anywhere in the codebase. Google Gears restricts you to message passing between threads because JavaScript interpreters are not thread-safe, so it's the only way that can work. Visual Basic threading works the same way for similar reasons. It's not because eliminating shared state is somehow noble and pure, regardless of what the article would have you believe, and in fact systems like BigTable use both shared-state concurrency and message passing based concurrency.

foreach (item; list) { fooResults[item] = someTransform(item); barResults[item] = anotherTransform(item); }

If someTransform and anotherTransform are both pure, by implication their parameters are transitively invariant, and thus they can both be invoked in parallel (because the compiler knows "item" can't be changed). What's more both calls can be invoked simultaneously as well.

Thermal breakdown in NVIDIA chips?

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 23:58:35 GMT

clipped by: microblues

Clip Source: www.eetimes.com

Nvidia takes charge for bad chips, but who is to blame?

"Although the failure appears related to the combination of the interaction between the chip material set and system design, we have a responsibility to our customers and will take our part in resolving this problem,'' said Nvidia President and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, in a statement.

"This has been a challenging experience for us,'' he added. ''As for the present, we have switched production to a more robust die/package material set and are working proactively with our OEM partners to develop system management software that will provide better thermal management to the GPU."

Sonics' new chip-level interconnect with multiple external memory channel support.

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 09:11:51 GMT

clipped by: microblues

Clip Source: www.eetimes.com

Link supports multiple memory channels

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Sonics Inc. rolls out a new chip-level interconnect technology Tuesday (July 1), addressing what it says is a growing memory bandwidth problem faced by a broad range of people who develop video processors. SonicsSX can intelligently connect multiple processing elements on a chip with multiple channels of external memory.

SonicsSX address the problem with several advances over the company's existing chip-level interconnects. The new offering expands the maximum bus width from 128 to 256 bits, it increases throughput from 6 to 16 Gbytes, and most importantly in shifts from support of one to as many as eight memory channels.

Sonics has developed interleaving techniques that are flexible and optimized to the operations of underlying memory and controller chips. SonicsSX also implements new data structures to improve the efficiency with which the interconnect grabs related pixel data and addresses.

Spansion's EcoRAM

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 02:36:55 GMT

clipped by: microblues
clipper's remarks: MirrorBit Eclipse architecture?

Clip Source: www.eetimes.com

Spansion aims to replace DRAMs in datacenters

EcoRAM is said to offer four times the memory capacity of traditional DRAM-only servers for the same energy consumption, according to Spansion (Sunnyvale, Calif.). Spansion's EcoRAM is based on its MirrorBit Eclipse architecture, which combines some elements of NOR and NAND memory.

Spansion's EcoRAM propels NOR into a new space. The technology is said to have the read performance to meet the requirements for fast random access--at 1/8 the energy consumption of DRAM and 10 times the reliability.

EcoRAM takes advantage of the fast read and write speeds of the company's MirrorBit Eclipse architecture. In 2007, Spansion announced MirrorBit Eclipse, which combines MirrorBit' NOR and Ornand technology on a single die.

Spansion & Virident's EcoRAM

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 02:33:05 GMT

clipped by: microblues
clipper's remarks: NOR based memory to reduce DRAM power consumption.

Clip Source: venturebeat.com

Spansion and Virident tout low-powered EcoRAM for data centers

According to Spansion, DRAM uses the second-most power in servers after the processor itself; EcoRAM, it says, can greatly reduce that power usage. Part of the improved power profile is the smaller die size of the NOR-based memory, which also allows more to be placed in a single area, in turn resulting in fewer servers and less expensive support infrastructure. “The density we allow is absolutely phenomenal,” boasts Virident’s CEO, Raj Parekh. (See below for partial cost estimates compiled by the company.)

EcoRAM, which is based designed into Virident’s special GreenGateway platform, isn’t good for every kind of server; it’s most useful for instant retrieval of data, as in search queries, rather than large deliveries like videos. Nevertheless, there are millions of servers in the world that could, if Spansion’s numbers stack up, greatly benefit from EcoRAM.

Open Symbian Platform

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 02:29:40 GMT

clipped by: microblues
clipper's remarks: Through Symbian Foundation incl. Samsung.

Clip Source: venturebeat.com

Nokia buys Symbian, opens it for war with Google Android

Clip Source: venturebeat.com

Not even a day after the buzz-worthy purchase of the location-based mobile social network, Plazes, Nokia has made a much larger move. One that will continue to evolve the mobile landscape: It has bought the Symbian mobile operating system, and will set it free.

With the creation of the Symbian Foundation, Nokia is creating a new royalty-free open platform for mobile development. Joining them in this are AT&T, LG, Samsung, STMicroelectronics, Texas Intruments and Vodaphone. Yes, the big boys are coming out to play.

A cloud storage venture company

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 00:34:28 GMT

clipped by: microblues

Clip Source: venturebeat.com

Parascale raises $11.37M to help companies control their cloud storage destiny

Computing and storage in the Internet “cloud” are hot right now, with big players like Amazon and Google offering their own cloud services. There are even startups like RightScale (which raised $4.5 million from Benchmark Capital in April) providing software to make managing your Amazon servers easier. Cupertino, Calif.-based Parascale offers storage management software as well, but it rather than sitting on top of Amazon, Parascale connects a network of Linux servers that its customers own. As a company grows, and its bandwidth needs increase, owning servers rather than buying space from Amazon or Google allows a company to “control its destiny,” Krishnan says. That’s particularly relevant in light of Amazon’s occasional outages.

Montalvo Systems 이야기

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 00:30:35 GMT

clipped by: microblues
clipper's remarks: by Dean Takahashi

Clip Source: venturebeat.com

Post mortem: The inside story behind the collapse of chip startup Montalvo Systems

Clip Source: venturebeat.com

The company had raised more than $84 million and hired an outstanding team of engineers in the hopes of grabbing a small piece of the $30 billion x86 (Intel-compatible) microprocessor industry. But it failed to get its chip out on time and sold its assets to Sun Microsystems for dimes on the dollar.

Understanding the company’s rise and fall offers lessons for entrepreneurs, especially those who would launch quixotic attacks against industry giants such as Intel. Clever design isn’t enough when it comes to getting a product out. For all its planning, Montalvo didn’t execute and was more than a year behind schedule, said several of the key figures involved in the company’s efforts.

Redhat on Virtualization

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 04:34:59 GMT

clipped by: microblues
clipper's remarks: Open source virtualization support based on KVM not hypervisor.

Clip Source: www.etnews.co.kr

"오픈소스 미래는 가상화에 있다"

　◇경제적 주도권, 가상화로 잡아라=IT에서 중요한 선택 기준 중 하나는 ‘경제성’이다. 오픈 소스 소프트웨어가 비용 측면에서 유리하다는 이른바 경제적 우월성을 유지하려면 가상화라는 수단이 반드시 필요하다는 것이 레드햇의 판단이다.

가상화는 갈수록 복잡해진 IT인프라를 단순화해 관리 비용을 낮춘다. 보통 10∼15% 수준인 시스템 활용률을 끌어올려 하드웨어 도입 규모를 줄이는 데도 효과적이며, 전력 비용 등 시스템을 둘러싼 보이지 않는 자원 낭비도 막는다. 스테판 오그레디 레드몽크의 오픈소스 전문 애널리스트는 “오픈 소스 가상화는 비용 절감 측면에서 파괴력을 가진다”고 평가했다.

　◇USB드라이브로 휴대 가능한 가상화 솔루션=특히 레드햇은 가상화가 어렵고 번거로운 작업이 아니라는 점을 강조했다. 이 회사가 이번에 선보인 임베디드 리눅스 하이퍼바이저 ‘오버트(oVirt)’는 플래시 메모리에 집어넣을 수 있을 만큼 초경량이다. 레드햇은 “주머니 속에 넣은 USB드라이브 하나로 PC에서도 서버에서도 가상머신(VM)을 관리할 수 있으며, 시스템 간 가상머신의 마이그레이션도 실시간으로 지원한다”고 말했다.

　현재 시험판 형태인 오버트는 2006년 리눅스 커널에 통합된 KVM 프로젝트에 기반을 두고 있다. 레드햇은 또 다른 오픈 소스 가상화 프로젝트인 젠(XEN)을 염두에 두고 “젠은 운용체계에 추가(add-on)되는 개념이지만, KVM은 리눅스 커널과 완전히 통합되는 것”이라면서 “앞으로 오픈 소스 가상화 시장은 KVM이 주도하게 될 것”이라고 말했다.

3D IC

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 09:33:35 GMT

clipped by: microblues

Clip Source: itnews.inews24.com

인텔 무어의 법칙, IBM이 깬다

하지만 향후 예정돼 있는 32나노미터 초미세 공정 이후에는 사실상 트랜지스터 집적도를 물리적으로 더 이상 높이기가 힘들어, 2012년 이후에 무어의 법칙이 깨지는 것 아니냐는 우려도 일각에서는 제기되고 있는 상황.

왓슨연구소의 컴퓨터 기술연구 담당 류경동 박사는 "IBM이 개발하고 있는 3차원 통합(3D Integration) 기술은 실리콘을 위아래로 '쌓아' 하나의 칩셋 내 트랜지스터 집적도를 몇배 이상 높일 수 있도록 하는 기술"이라고 설명했다.

◆발열 현상은 '공기방울'이 해결

위아래로 반도체를 집적하는 3차원 통합 기술은 반도체 업계에서는 금기시 되는 일이다. 반도체가 작고 트랜지스터 갯수가 많을수록 데이터를 처리하면서 발생하는 열이 높아 오류를 일으킬 가능성이 높기 때문이다.

IBM 시스템 부문 스티브 샘즈 부사장은 "윗층과 아랫층 반도체 사이에 일종의 공기방울로 구성된 '버퍼'를 둬 반도체에서 나오는 열을 빠르게 식히고, 상호 열간섭 현상도 없앨 수 있었다"고 설명했다.

IBM이 현재 연구 중인 이 3차원 반도체 통합 기술은 ▲위아래로 반도체를 집적하는 부분 ▲공기방울을 이용한 발열 해결 부분 등이 1~2년내 현실화 될 것으로 알려졌다.

다만, 이를 실제 IBM의 컴퓨터 칩셋인 파워 프로세서에 적용하고, 타 반도체 업체에 상용화 할 수 있을때까지는 3~5년 정도의 중장기적인 시간이 필요할 것이라고 샘즈 부사장은 내다봤다.