Agam Shah
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Apple’s aging Mac Pro is falling way behind Windows rivals
Apple's Mac Pro is aging fast, especially with screaming fast Windows desktops being announced in recent weeks.Introduced in 2013, the Mac Pro was a top-of-the-line desktop at that time. It looked exquisite in its sleek cylindrical design, and it sported new features like Thunderbolt 2 ports, plus the latest CPUs, GPUs and NVMe storage.More importantly, it was a signal that Apple had not abandoned the professional computing market. The latest Mac Pro was a relief to those clamoring for an upgrade from an older version of the computer, which last received a face-lift in 2010.But the Mac Pro is again falling behind the competition, with powerful new workstations from Lenovo, Dell and HP carrying superior technology. The PC companies are waging an active campaign to tempt Mac Pro users, many of them creative professionals, to move over to Windows PCs with better CPUs, GPUs, and memory. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Nvidia’s screaming Tesla P100 GPU will power one of the world’s fastest computers
It didn't take long for Nvidia's monstrous Tesla P100 GPU to make its mark in an ongoing race to build the world's fastest computers.Just a day after Nvidia's CEO said he was "friggin' excited" to introduce the Tesla P100, the company announced its fastest GPU ever would be in a supercomputer called Piz Daint. Roughly 4,500 of the GPUs will be installed in the supercomputer, which will be built at the Swiss National Supercomputing Center in Switzerland.Piz Daint will a deliver peak performance of 7.8 teraflops, which would make it the seventh-fastest computer in the world. The fastest in the world is the Tianhe-2 in China, which delivers a peak performance of 54.9 petaflops, according to the Top500 list released in November.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Microsoft’s new Raspberry Pi 3 kit makes it easy to create new devices
Microsoft wants to make the Raspberry Pi 3 computer easier to use for people who want to be device makers but haven't worked with hardware before.Microsoft is developing the Seeed Windows 10 IoT Core Grove Kit with China-based Seeed Studio. The kit has all the hardware and software needed to start creating cool new devices.Contents of the kit include the Raspberry Pi 3, a breakout board, connectors, cables and a smartphone-like screen. The kit will be available in the summer, though the companies didn't immediately provide a price."If you're interested in getting started with software, you know your hardware ... but you're scared of plugging in your hardware and electrocuting yourself, this kit is for you," said Daniel Rosenstein, lead principal program manager at Microsoft.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Servers with Nvidia’s Tesla P100 GPU will ship next year
Nvidia's fastest GPU yet, the new Tesla P100, will be available in servers next year, the company said.Dell, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Cray and IBM will start taking orders for servers with the Tesla P100 in the fourth quarter of this year, Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said during a keynote at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California.The servers will start shipping in the first quarter of next year, Huang said Tuesday.The GPU will also ship to companies designing hyperscale servers in-house and then to outsourced manufacturing shops. It will be available for in-house "cloud servers" by the end of the year, Huang said.Nvidia is targeting the GPUs at deep-learning systems, in which algorithms aid in the correlation and classification of data. These systems could help self-driving cars, robots and drones identify objects. The goal is to accelerate the learning time of such systems so the accuracy of results improves over time.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Nvidia’s DGX-1 supercomputer packs the horsepower of 250 servers
Your electric bills could soar if you kept Nvidia's monster DGX-1 computer running continuously for one month. The DGX-1 supercomputer can deliver the computing power of 250 two-socket servers in a desktop box, claimed Nvidia, which introduced the system Tuesday at its GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. The computer can deliver about 170 teraflops of performance, and multiple boxes on a rack could deliver 2 petaflops of performance. The fastest computer in the world delivers a peak performance of about 10 petaflops. Nvidia says DGX-1 is about 56 times faster than a server with two Intel Xeon-E5 2697 v3 chips, which can deliver about 3 teraflops of performance.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Intel’s top PC, IoT executives leave in management shakeup
The writing was on the wall for some Intel executives after a former Qualcomm executive was hired to oversee the company's PC, Internet of Things and software businesses, and two of them are departing.Kirk Skaugen, who previously led the Client Computing Group, and Doug Davis, who ran the IoT group, are leaving the company, Intel said Monday.Their roles were diminished after the November appointment of Venkata Renduchintala, who formerly worked at Qualcomm, as president of Intel's Client and IoT businesses and its Systems Architecture Group. Renduchintala, who's known as Murthy, is effectively Intel's number two executive after Brian Krzanich.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Microsoft is putting Windows 10, Cortana at the center of smart homes
Are you too lazy to open the door or switch on a light? Let Windows 10 and its Cortana voice-activated digital assistant do the job for you.Microsoft's vision is to make home automation a breeze in Windows 10, and the company featured several related Internet-of-things announcements at its ongoing Build conference.Windows 10 will work with a wider range of devices and appliances by integrating new Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF) protocols, scheduled to be released in 2017. Additionally, Cortana will allow users to easily automate tasks using a Windows PC, mobile device, Xbox console or Raspberry Pi 3.Users will be able to program "actions" so Cortana can be used to switch on lights, air conditioning or even unlock cars. For example, users will be able to speak, "lights" to their smartphones, and the bulbs will turn on.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Kicked out of PCs, Blu-ray drives are revived in data centers
Blu-ray and DVD drives are being kicked out of PCs but finding a new life in data centers as storage that can retain data for up to 100 years.A massive new system from Sony called Everspan is a collection of optical drives that can store up to 181 petabytes of data. The system can expand to 55 feet in length and have hundreds of Blu-ray-like drives.The system will be used for long-term storage of data that isn't modified often, or information that businesses feel need to be retained for specific reasons. Everspan was announced and shown for the first time at the Open Compute Project (OCP) U.S. Summit 2016 this week, and will start shipping to customers in July.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Beyond Centrino: Intel drives device changes for a 5G world
Intel sparked a wireless revolution over the last decade with its Centrino processor platform, designed to connect laptops over Wi-Fi, and now believes the 5G mobile standard will fuel the next big change in the way a new generation of devices communicate. The move to 5G networks will provide faster wireless connectivity through a host of technologies and change the way computing devices are built, said Aicha Evans, corporate vice president for Intel's Platform Engineering Group and general manager for the Communication and Devices Group. Wi-Fi is ubiquitous today, but upcoming changes may involve making cellular connectivity a common feature on laptops. This is why Intel is putting a lot of energy into modem development for laptops and mobile devices. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Dell to bring new hyperscale rack architecture to mid-range customers
Dell is bringing the advantages of its enterprise-level hyperscale rack servers to a wider range of customers.At Mobile World Congress next week, Dell will show off its new DSS 9000 hyperscale rack architecture, a server technology that allows computing and storage resources to be decoupled. The new rack design, aimed at mid-sized to large businesses, is based on Intel's Rack Scale Architecture, which is meant to bring configuration flexibility and power efficiency to Web-scale tasks.The DSS 9000 will ship in the second half this year, Dell said.The hyperscale architecture is already available to Dell's largest customers through the company's DCS (Data Center Solutions and Services) division. The architectural blueprint will be made available to mid-range hyperscale customers through the recently formed DSS (Datacenter Scaleable Solutions) group.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Dell is stepping in to protect the boot layer of PCs, tablets
Dell's business laptops and tablets will get an extra layer of protection from hackers with a new security tool being loaded into the company's portable computers.The new Dell security tool focuses on protecting the boot layer so PC hardware or software don't malfunction. It secures the low-level UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface), which sits in a protected layer above the OS. An attack on this firmware can compromise a system at boot time.Hacking the firmware can cause the OS and hardware components to malfunction. Hackers have shown increasingly sophisticated ways in which the UEFI -- which has replaced the conventional BIOS -- can be infected with malware. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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DARPA funds a program so computers can read thoughts
In the future, computers may be able to read your thoughts through a connection with the brain. DARPA wants to create a device that could help make that happen.The device, which will be the size of two stacked nickels, will translate information from a brain into digital signals for use on a computer. The device is being developed as part of a four-year, US$60 million research program funded by DARPA -- the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which operates under the aegis of the U.S. Department of Defense.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: 13 awesome and scary things in near Earth space The program, called Neural Engineering System Design (NESD), is one of DARPA's many research programs that aims to bring brain-like intelligence to computers. The research program will cover neuroscience, low-power chips, photonics and medical devices.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Memory that learns could help tomorrow’s intelligent computers
As researchers try to build more complex computers that get closer to emulating the way the human brain works, one of the areas of focus is memory.Existing chips, hard disks and tape drives are great at storing large amounts of data, but a new breed of memory chip called a memristor could go a step further: helping the artificial intelligence systems of tomorrow actually understand the data and make more use of it.Memristors could help computers connect the dots to identify diseases or help self-driving cars recognize objects based on probabilities and associations. Memristors are best used in machine-learning models to make predictions based on patterns and trends culled from large stacks of information, said Alex Nugent, CEO of Knowm.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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HP tackles ‘visual hacking’ with privacy filters in laptop, tablet screens
HP is putting integrated filters in laptop and tablet displays this year so Peeping Toms can't steal confidential information when surreptitiously viewing your screen. HP's privacy filters will make laptop and tablet screens visible to users in direct view of the display. Moving slightly away makes what's displayed on the screen fuzzier and then virtually invisible the further you go. Users won't be able to see a screen from a 35 degree angle on the left or right, said John Groden, director for Elitebook products at HP. This feature could be handy in planes, airports or cafes, where sensitive information on the laptop could be visible to others.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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After a lapse, Intel looks to catch up with Moore’s Law again
For Intel, the temporary inability to keep pace with Moore's Law -- the foundation of its business -- was a bit of an embarrassment, but the company is trying hard to catch up.Moore's Law is an observation that has led to faster, cheaper and smaller computers, and a concept that Intel has followed for decades. It states that the density of transistors doubles every two years, while cost per transistor declines.Until recently, the company released chips every two years like clockwork. But making smaller chips is becoming challenging and more expensive, said Bill Holt, executive vice president and general manager for Intel's Technology and Manufacturing Group, during the company's annual investor day last week.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Alternative processors tapped to fulfill supercomputing’s need for speed
As world powers compete to build the fastest supercomputers, more attention is being paid to alternative processing technologies as a way to add more horsepower to such systems.One thing is clear: It is becoming prohibitive to build blazing CPU-only supercomputers, due to power and space constraints. That's where powerful coprocessors step in -- the processors work in conjuction with CPUs to conduct complex calculations in a power-efficient manner. Coprocessors are an important topic at this week's Supercomputing 15 conference in Austin, Texas. According to the Top500 list of the fastest supercomputers, released on Monday, 104 systems used coprocessors, growing from 90 systems in a list released in July.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Intel’s fastest chip ever will appear in supercomputers next year
There's been a slight delay, but the latest version of Intel's fastest processor ever will finally reach supercomputers early next year.The Xeon Phi chip, code-named Knights Landing, offers an array of new technologies that collectively deliver performance breakthroughs. The chip is also a springboard for new memory, I/O and storage technologies destined to reach desktops and laptops in the coming years.Intel didn't provide details on the first supercomputers with Knights Landing. The U.S. Department of Energy, however, said that the chip will be used in Cori, a 9,300-core supercomputer that will be deployed in the latter half of 2016 at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center in Berkeley, California.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Intel to invest $125 million in startups run by women, minorities
To encourage diversity in IT, Intel Capital has established a US$125 million investment program targeted at startups run by women and under-represented minorities.The investment program complements a separate $300 million Intel initiative announced in January whose goal is to bring more women and under-represented minorities into its workforce by 2020.Intel already chose four companies, all of which have diverse work forces, for the first round of investments, totaling $16.7 million. Intel Capital has a pipeline of companies it is looking to fund, said Intel’s CEO Brian Krzanich, during a webcast on Tuesday.Intel has talked about plans to change its capital investment program to make it more accessible for women and minorities. Intel wants to be clearer on funding plans and responsive to funding requests from startups run by women and minorities. The company has also established an advisory board of senior Intel employees to help make funding decisions.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Five new things we know about Skylake
With the upcoming release of Intel’s Skylake chips, there’s a lot to look forward to, including faster computers, fewer ports and wireless charging. At Computex in Taipei this week Intel shed more light on the new chip technology, a much hyped successor to Intel’s family of Broadwell family of chips. Here are five things we learned:1) Skylake chips won’t be released when Windows 10 becomes commercially available on July 29, so PCs with a combination of the new OS and chip technology won’t be immediately available, said Kirk Skaugen, senior vice president and general manager of the PC Client Group at Intel, during an interview at Computex. Intel has built Skylake to work hand-in-glove with Windows 10, which among other new features offers biometric authentication that will allow a user’s fingerprint or face to replace a typed password. Skaugen declined to provide a specific release date, but Skylake could be the centerpiece announcement at the Intel Developer Forum in mid-August. PCs could follow soon after.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Acer says Predator 8 gaming tablet primed for September launch
Acer couldn’t keep the mystery around the launch of its highly-anticipated Acer Predator 8-inch gaming tablet bottled up for too long.The tablet could launch sometime in September, with a big event planned for Europe, said a representative at the Acer booth on the Computex show floor this week.The tablet was first shown on stage in April at a lavish event at the World Trade Center in New York. At the time, Acer CEO Jason Chen said during an interview that the tablet details were being finalized and more details would be shared at launch. However, no specific launch date was provided.But details about the tablet starting trickling out much earlier at Computex in Taipei this week. It will run on Android OS and have Intel’s Atom processor code-named Cherry Trail, which has two times faster graphics than the aging predecessor chip code-named Bay Trail. The Cherry Trail chip is also used in Microsoft’s Surface 3, which started shipping last month.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here