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NewsVac: News from around the Web

• Inside Tsubame - the Nvidia GPU supercomputer 11 months, 2 weeks ago
  
  When you enter the computer room on the second floor of Tokyo Institute of Technology's computer building, you're not immediately struck by the size of Japan's second-fastest supercomputer. You can't see the Tsubame computer for the industrial air conditioning units that are standing in your way, but this in itself is telling. With more than 30,000 processing cores buzzing away, the machine consumes a megawatt of power and needs to be kept cool.
• Smartphone growth slows 11 months, 2 weeks ago
  
  The recession is hindering smartphone sales, says Gartner, which reported the segment's weakest year-on-year growth since the study began. Sales totaled 36.5 million in 3Q 2008, up 11.5 percent from 3Q 2007, but Linux's share held fairly steady at 7.2 percent from the previous quarter.
• Who's Breaking Moore's Law? 11 months, 2 weeks ago
  
  The computer industry needs to stop padding products with ever longer lists of features and "improvements," and start focusing on raw performance.
• Multi-Core a Drag on Some HPCs 11 months, 2 weeks ago
  
  Turns out throwing more cores at certain high performance computing tasks can make the situation worse.
• Data center in a Box 11 months, 3 weeks ago
  
  Imagine a scenario where a data center runs out of space. What does the business need to do? It needs to find more space, build the infrastructure, racks, cooling, power and everything that needs to be done to make it a real brick and mortar data-center. Anything from a year plus to build something like that. Wait and spend a lot of money, before any real results come out of it.
• Do you watch the DVDs and Blu-rays you buy? 11 months, 3 weeks ago
  
  What are the chances you'll actually watch a DVD/Blu-ray more than once or twice?
• Second Google Android phone revealed 11 months, 3 weeks ago
  
  An Australian-based electronics company will ship the world's second Google Android phone, dubbed "Agora". It has a Blackberry Bold-esque form factor, and will ship on January 29. Interestingly, it will be very affordable at $A299 ($US192, GBP129, E151) and will be sold without a contract to any telco. APCmag.com has the full story.
• AMD Will Ignore Netbook Market, Intel in Doubts 11 months, 3 weeks ago
  
  Netbooks are still all the rage these days, but according to Intel, this is going to change soon. The company has stated that they first thought that netbooks, who are almost exclusively powered by Intel chips, would be for emerging markets, but as it turns out, they are especially popular in Europe and North America. Intel claims that while these devices are "fine for an hour", they are not something for day to day use. And AMD? They are ignoring the market altogether.
• The Green Penguin – Where Does Your E-Waste Go? 12 months ago
  
  The article discusses E-Stewards, a new certification program for e-waste recyclers that aims to prevent dumping in landfills and developing countries.
• Lessons From the $1 Billion Intel Trade-Secret Theft 12 months ago
  
  What if the FBI came knocking on your door saying that your employer had accused you of stealing US $1 billion from the company? That’s exactly what happened to Biswamohan Pani, a former Intel engineer who was indicted earlier this month for stealing trade secrets from the chip maker. Instead of raiding the supply closet for some notepads, pens, and paper clips, Pani allegedly downloaded more than 100 pages of data containing details about future Intel chip designs and 19 drawings detailing the chips’ layouts.
• Apple, AT&T Sued Again Over iPhone 3G Issues 1 year ago
  
  A New York iPhone 3G user has filed a class action suit against Apple and AT&T Wireless, claiming the device does not deliver promised network capabilities and the smartphone's casing is prone to hairline cracks.
• USB devices spreading viruses 1 year ago
  
  USB thumb drives are convenient, popular and often free--and they're spreading viruses like sailors on shore leave.*
• Nvidia announces "personal supercomputer" 1 year ago
  
  Hardware maker Nvidia has announced a new computer that has the power of a cluster of computers at a small fraction of the cost.
• Multicore Is Bad News For Supercomputers 1 year ago
  
  With no other way to improve the performance of processors further, chip makers have staked their future on putting more and more processor cores on the same chip. Engineers at Sandia National Laboratories, in New Mexico, have simulated future high-performance computers containing the 8-core, 16‑core, and 32-core microprocessors that chip makers say are the future of the industry. The results are distressing. Because of limited memory bandwidth and memory-management schemes that are poorly suited to supercomputers, the performance of these machines would level off or even decline with more cores. The performance is especially bad for informatics applications—data-intensive programs that are increasingly crucial to the labs’ national security function.
• Open Comparability: against anti-benchmarking EULAs 1 year ago
  
  It is time that legislators, regulators and procurement officials put an end to end-user license agreements (EULA) that prevent publication of comparative benchmarks.
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