IT-Code-News: IT News Head Lines (TweakTown) 12/04/2013

Thursday, April 11, 2013

IT News Head Lines (TweakTown) 12/04/2013

TweakTown

"Always-on" tweeter, Adam Orth, is no longer working for Microsoft - Internet pitchforks work, it seems We heard Microsoft's Adam Orth talking about the always-on debacle that is sure to light up Internet messageboards and social networks across the world in the coming months and years, but it looks like the Microsoft creative director is no longer working with Microsoft.

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A close source of Orth has told Kotaku that he resigned from the company, and wasn't fired. Microsoft were asked to confirm the news, with a spokesperson for the company responding with "we do not comment on private personnel matters". One would gather that all of the publicity he received from the Internet has caused the former MS creative director to resign from his position. I'm sure he'll talk about it soon enough.

RumorTT: Microsoft to release 7-inch Surface tablet Well, well, Microsoft - game on. The Wall Street Journal are claiming that Microsoft are working on a new generation of Surface tablets, which will include a 7-inch variant.

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We know that Microsoft weren't just stopping with one generation of Surface, and I'm sure the next-gen Surface devices are going to be much better than the ones we have right now. Also keep in mind the rumors of a 7-inch gaming tablet under the Xbox brand from last year, and the news from Microsoft begins to get a little more exciting. What would you want from a 7-inch Surface? We should expect it to only come with a 1024x768 display, which isn't mind-blowing, but it's good enough.

Disney Australia announce Wreck-It Ralph Blu-ray release The local arm of Disney has announced the multi-tiered home video release of 2012 CG animated flick Wreck-It Ralph for the 24th April, available on DVD, Blu-ray double play (with DVD) and 3D release featuring the 3D and 2D versions on two discs, along with a DVD.

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Wreck-It Ralph, utilizing the voices of John C. Reilly and Sarah Silverman was released to both critical and financial acclaim and features cameos from video gaming history's most beloved characters such as Sonic The Hedgehog, Bowser, Zangief and Q*bert. Both Blu-ray releases feature a number of worthwhile additional features, such as behind the scenes featurettes, faux video game commercials, and the Disney short Paperman which appeared before the theatrical release. On the 3D release, the short is also featured in 3D. In the coming weeks, we'll take a closer look at the Blu-ray, but for now you can read our review of the theatrical release here and watch the trailer below.

Quantic Dream, the developer of Heavy Rain, looking to hire staff for future multiplayer projects The developer behind the PlayStation 3-exclusive game Heavy Rain, is hiring staff for some upcoming multiplayer title(s). A job listing spotted by Kotaku states that the developer is looking for a "creative lead online programmer with a passion for online gaming in order to be with us for our future AAA projects."

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Quantic Dream says they're looking for an experienced programmer with a "strong understanding of the multiplayer genre". Up until now, Quantic Dream's games have been single-player experiences, driven heavily by their story. Next-gen consoles might help all of this, where we might see some multiplayer elements. The thing is, Quantic Dream are no normal developer - they don't just release a game, they invest so much time into the details within the game world, that this multiplayer news should excite all gamers. Multiplayer within a Quantic Dream game could see gamers playing characters, within the single-player world. What if it was your job to play a detective, and you could lie or tell the truth, kill the main character or not, and have multiple choices through an open-world game? Would that not be mind blowing to see a completely new game instead of the continuation of games we have now where nothing changes, except the graphics? I'm excited.

Intel's 2013 update to their Xeon family isn't being rushed, but it will pack quite a punch when it arrives With no real competition in the server/workstation space, Intel aren't just rushing out their 2013 update to their Xeon platform of processors. Toward the end of this year, we should expect the Ivy Bridge-based Xeon E5 and E7 processors, while the Xeon Phi MIC/co-processor/accelerator gets segmented into more SKUs and thanks to a new stepping, we're seeing clock speeds pushed from 1.1GHz to 1.238GHz with nearly the same TDP and form factor.

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What we will see when the new Xeon processors arrive, is a 12-core part with 30MB of cache and quad-channel DDR3-1866 server memory paths per socket with clock speeds pushing 3GHz and Turbo Boost to boot. Power consumption on these insane 12-core processors should see a helping hand from its 22nm FinFet '3D transistor' process. Toward the end of the year, we should expect the E5-4600 v2 series, which is the same as the above solution, but 4-socket-enabled where the dual QPI links make a square interconnection layout between the CPU. At around the same time, we should see the 15-core IVB-EX enterprise Xeon processors - the E7-4800 v2 and 8800 v2 - which will replace the Westmere-EX processors we have had for the past couple of years now. These chips will have their clock speeds at around 2.4GHz, and their memory will be upgraded to DDR3-1600 with the chipset staying the same as the one we have now on the Romley dual Xeon platform, Patsburg. We should expect RAID TRIM support in OPROM arrive with these processors. These processors will have no unlocked multiplier SKU, so no overclocking here unfortunately.

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We all know of the HPC/BigData war that is going on between Intel and NVIDIA right now, with Intel's Xeon Phi co-processor set to really push the boundaries of our expectations. Intel's new Co stepping of Xeon Phi will have two new SKUs, operating at 1.238GHz with the same, and quite insane, 61 cores and 31MB cache. The 7120X and 7120P, which will be the no cooling and passive cooling respectively, should see 1.2 TFLOPs DP peak performance, and will stick to the same 8GB memory capacity and 512-bit memory path. The GDDR5-5500 memory will continue cranking along still, the same as the 1.1GHz part, as well as the rated TDP of 300W. This will be a 22nm part, so we should see Intel squeeze a little more performance out of it before it steps out from behind the curtain later this year.

Code in OSX 10.8.4 confirms Macs will be getting 802.11ac wireless Code in the latest OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.4 beta seed seems to confirm that future Macs will be coming with support for the super-fast 802.11ac wireless protocol. Within the systems WiFi-frameworks folder, the following code can be found, supporting previous rumors Apple is working on getting 802.11ac into future Macs:

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This means that most, if not all, future Macs will be produced with the 802.11ac wireless standard supported. We'll probably see a refresh of the MacBook Air sooner rather than later and I imagine 802.11ac will be included at that time. This means Apple will likely be releasing 802.11ac compliant AirPort routers and iOS devices.

OCZ Vertex 5 SSD coming next month, features updated Barefoot 3, 20nm NAND flash OCZ has confirmed the existence of a new solid state drive, believed to be the Vertex 5. Current estimates place the launch as occurring sometime next month, though OCZ would not confirm naming or launch window. They did say that it features an updated Barefoot 3 controller and 20-nanometer NAND flash.

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The Vector SSD is currently OCZ's fastest SSD and is based off of the Barefoot 3 platform. It's possible that the next solid state drive could be called something like Vector 2, but Vertex 5 makes more sense. Earlier this year, OCZ updated the Vertex 3 to use 20nm NAND flash and called it the Vertex 3.2. All other features remained the same. Last year, OCZ had some financial troubles that resulted in mass layoffs and discontinuation of numerous product lines.

Bitcoin market price crashing, price dropped $100 in mere hours If you're a Bitcoin owner, today is certainly not a good day. The value of Bitcoins has declined extremely rapidly, dropping $100 in value in just a few hours. Earlier this week, Bitcoin prices were as high as $260. As of the time of writing, Bitcoins were at $149 after having dropped as low as $105.

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Some believe the cause of this crash was an inevitable "downward correction" due to the price rising too quickly. Others have suggested that the Bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, is suffering from a DDoS, resulting in significant lag time and a destabilization of the market. It'll be interesting to see if the price rebounds quickly or if it takes a slow, but steady, increase.

ReportTT: Apple ditches Samsung for upcoming A7 processors We've had several different reports since October of last year that Apple is planning on using TSMC for production of its next processor, thought to be the A7 line of processors. Apple has plenty of reason to avoid using Samsung for its microprocessor producing needs. Probably the main reason, Samsung is one of Apple's chief rivals.

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The reports continue to stack up. This time it comes courtesy of the Korea Times who spoke with an executive as one of Samsung's local partners in Korea. According to the executive, Apple is "sharing confidential data" about its A7 processors with TSMC. They add that TSMC has started "ordering its contractors to supply equipment to produce Apple's next processors using a finer 20-nanometer level processing technology." Of course, this doesn't mean that TSMC is the final choice. It does, however, appear to be a top contender. We'll let you know as soon as we have something concrete.

ReportTT: Next-gen Xbox will take over TV, interact with cable box The Verge is reporting that the next generation Xbox from Microsoft will take over your TV and feature deep set-top box integration. They say that the Xbox 720 will be able to interact with a user's cable box and TV much like Google TV.

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The report states that the Xbox 720 will accept an HDMI connection from the cable box so that it can pass the signal through with an extra UI imposed on top. The Xbox 720 will also make use of Kinect to detect viewers watching and be able to pause video content if a viewer looks away much like the Galaxy S3's eye-tracking technology. We still don't know much about the Xbox 720, but an event is expected in May at which Microsoft will detail the next-gen console.

ReportTT: Microsoft office not coming to iOS or Android until fall 2014 According to a leaked roadmap acquired by ZDNet, Office for iOS and Android won't be coming until fall 2014. The roadmap details various different Office products, including "Gemini wave 1.0" that will launch the Metro-style of core Office products. They will be designed with touch in mind and run on Windows 8 and Windows RT. These will be coming by October 2013.

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Gemini 1.5 will come in April 2014 and consist of an update to Mac Office, updates for Office for Windows Phone, and support for LSX hardware. Finally, fall 2014 is listed as the time period for when Office for iOS and Android will be released. Previous rumors had suggested iOS and Android versions would be released in early- to mid-2013.

First Samsung Galaxy S4 commercials posted to YouTube, shy away from Apple bashing, promote features Samsung has posted up the first advertisements for its upcoming Galaxy S4 device. In the videos, embedded below, Samsung stays away from bashing Apple and Apple followers. Instead, Samsung does what most companies should: focus on the new features present in the device.

The first video, seen above, shows off Samsung's new S Translator. The next video, embedded below, shows off Samsung's new feature to enable audio to be embedded with pictures:

Finally, Samsung shows off the Galaxy S4's Group Play technology which allows multiple users to sync and play the same song for better--and louder--sound:

Watch the ads and let us know what you think of them!

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Good guy Oculus Rift does it right, receives high repairability score in iFixit teardown iFixit seems to tear apart every piece of new technology that is released these days and we love them for that. This time the Oculus Rift goes under the knife screwdriver to show us what makes it tick. [imgsbs]1[/imgsbs] [imgsbs]2[/imgsbs] The team at iFixit were able to get their hands on a developer's edition of the virtual reality headset and made it clear that this is merely a prototype model and the actual production unit may change. The tear down reviled an Innolux HJ070IA-02D 7-inch LCD that has a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels, with 640 x 800 per eye. The LCD is controlled by a Himax HX8851 controller. The head tracking is accomplished by a STMicroelectronics 32F103C8 ARM Cortex-M3 microcontroller with 72MHz CPU, Invensense MPU-6000 six-axis (gyro + accelerometer) motion tracking controller and an A983 2206, which is believed to be a three-axis magnetometer. iFixit awarded the Oculus Rift a repairability score of high, which is rare these days. Head over to source #1 below for the full teardown.

LeakedTT: Images of supposed next-gen iPad bezel surface, lends credence to rumors of a major redesign Two images surfaced this morning on French blog Nowhereelse.fr of what is said to be the front bezel of Apple's next-generation iPad. While the design looks similar to existing iPad's, small differences can be spotted.

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The image depicts a much thinner bezel than what is featured on the existing iPad and more closely resembles an iPad Mini's bezel. This could confirm rumors that the new iPad will be going on a diet and slimming down, while still keeping the same 9.7-inch display.

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In the image the glass and bezel also appear to be flat, which debunks rumors of a curved screen that have been floating around. What do you think? Could this really be a glimpse of the next iPad? Does it really matter much at all if it is? Will the next iPad just be a rehashed version of the current iPad? Let us know in the comments.

The Pirate Bay moves to .GL domain name, ahead of Swedish seizeure of .se domain It seems that at least once a month for the past several years, the Pirate Bay has had to make moves to evade action taken against it in order to keep the ship afloat. This time the popular torrent tracking site has had to switch up its top level domain.

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The change comes in the wake of Swedish authorities announcing that they will seize the current domain, thepiratebay.se. This is not the first time similar actions have been taken, with the site previously being located on the .org TLD back in 2011. This move not only creates a dilemma for Swedish authorities, but it completely messes up all of the pending DMCA take down notices that have been filed with Google recently. Since the domain name has changed, every request that has not been executed will have to be resubmitted to Google. Those who have internet service through an ISP that blocks The Pirate Bay, could see service temporary restored until existing block lists are updated.

SimCity coming to Mac June 11th, if you bought the Windows version you get access to the Mac version Despite its rough start, SimCity is now running smoothly and it appears that server issues are a thing of the past. This morning EA and Maxis announced that the popular city building simulator will be making its way to Mac on June 11th.

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Lucy Bradshaw, Senior Vice President and General Manager of EA's Maxis Label, said in the announcement:

"SimCity is coming to Mac on June 11 and one purchase will give you both the Mac and PC versions. You only need to buy SimCity once to play together across the same servers, regardless of which version you're playing. We didn't want to make any compromises when it came to the Mac so we created a native version that is optimized for the hardware and OSX."

That means that players who previously purchased the game for Windows will get a free Mac download as well. EA says that you will use the same Origin account to log in on both the PC and Mac leading to seamless management of your cities, regardless of which system you are playing on. Since its release more than 1.3 million copies of the game have been sold.

Foxconn sees sales drop 19% in wake of declining iPhone demand Reuters is reporting that Hon Hai Precision Technology otherwise known as Foxconn to us westerners, saw a 19% drop in sales during the first quarter of 2013. Analysts are attributing the vanishing sales to a decline in demand for the Apple iPhone.

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Foxconn sales dipped to $26.96 billion in the first quarter, which is down from nearly $33 billion in Q4 of 2012, and $33.3 billion in the same quarter the previous year. KGI Securities analyst Ming-chi Kuo says that this decline is not surprising as first quarter reports always look worse than Q4 reports that have holiday sales included. Kuo went on to say that the real telling figure is that Foxconn's year to year revenue is in the decline and that "shows that Hon Hai's revenue depends too much on Apple, and iPhone orders corrected more than expected." Apple shareholders do not appear to seem to be very concerned with this news as their stock remained flat after the Foxconn report was released.

Maker builds surveillance package to film entire postal shipment process Maker Ruben van der Vleuten has just published a very cool video showing a recent experiment he conducted on the process of a package being shipped from point A to point B. I am still unsure of the legality of this type of thing here in the US, so beware if you attempt this yourself.

Ruben did not document the electronics very well, but from what I can tell, he used an Arduino to build an intervalometer, that would trigger the camera to take a photo at regular intervals. If the package stopped moving for a period of time, the Arduino would only trigger the camera for three seconds every minute to prevent an excess of dark / duplicate frames. [imgsbs]1[/imgsbs] [imgsbs]2[/imgsbs] Finally, Ruben very cleverly hid it all inside a very inconspicuous brown box. He tackled the task of hiding the camera by drilling a hole smaller than the size of a pea into the side and masked it by writing his name in black permanent marker around it. This camouflaged the dark hole leading to the camera lens. As an avid Maker myself, I tip my hat to Ruben for a simple, yet awesome project.

OopsTT: Japanese city, Yokohama, mistakenly reports North Korean missile launch on Twitter account Early this morning the city of Yokohama, Japan "accidentally" tweeted that North Korea had launched a missile. The report came by way of their official Twitter account @yokohama_sagai, which has roughly 40,000 followers.

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The tweet read North Korea has launched a missile, and was deleted just 20 minutes later. Yokohama officials said that "We had the Tweet ready and waiting, but for an unknown reason it was dispatched erroneously." This mistake comes just two days after a Taiwan news source mistakenly reported the death of the Queen of England , reported the death of former UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher and used images of Queen Elizabeth.

Giada's N70E-DR motherboard is perfect for the NAS builder in your life If you've been looking to build yourself a NAS (network attached storage) system, then you might want to stop by Giada's new motherboard, the Giada N70E-DR. The motherboard packs an integrated Celeron C1007U processor, which chews on just 17W of power.

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The motherboard can handle native RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10 with data security protection and some high-performance Intel 82583V gigabit ethernet ports for some great networking speed and reliability. Also included are some smart hardware monitoring and management capabilities, which allows customers to keep a check on the health of their system. There are six SATA ports, with two of them being of the SATA 3.0 standard. Two USB 3.0 ports are featured on the Giada N70E-DR for some speedy external connectivity. There's one DDR3 DIMM slot, and a PCI-Express x16 port for some speedy graphics if that's what you want your NAS to be capable of.

Samsung Display HQ searched by South Korean police over stolen LG OLED technology It looks like the problems between LG and Samsung and OLED technology isn't being handled with poise and rationality, with Bloomberg reporting that the Seoul Metropolitan Police investigators have entered the Samsung Display HQ in Asan, looking for evidence of LG partners leaking secrets in their OLED technology.

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A Samsung spokesperson has denied any involvement, with an LG spokesperson saying that the police made the allegation themselves. Samsung and LG will continue this battle, with it hopefully ending on a nice note.

Batman: Arkham Origins announced with Rocksteady Studios not involved, are Warner Bros pulling an Activision? Batman: Arkham Asylum and its sequel, Arkham City, have been some of the most memorable, and most successful games of this generation. These games were developed by Rocksteady Studios - but there has now been a third game in the series announced today, Batman: Arkham Origins.

Batman: Arkham Origins will be released for the PC, PlayStation 3, Wii U and Xbox 360 - with no mention of next-generation consoles. It is being put together by WB Games Montreal, and has the game world of Origins set years before the events of the previous Arkham games. Players take control of a younger Batman, who meets many of the series' iconic characters for the very first time. From my perspective, it looks like Warner Bros. are pulling an Activision here, with their Call of Duty series. Back in its hey day (I guess it's still there, isn't it?) it was being pushed between Infinity Ward and Treyarch - the former releasing the best COD titles, the latter selling the lesser quality titles. It made lots of money for Activision, but the entire series has been run into the ground (again, in my opinion).

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Are we seeing a repeat here? Are WB cashing in on Batman being at his peak of popularity right now?

Foursquare goes version 6.0 on the iPhone Foursquare have given their iOS app an update, pushing it up to version 6.0. The latest release sees the Explore part of the check-in app stretch its legs, where it now has the Explore search box on top of the navigation bar - completely replacing the Foursquare logo.

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There's an updated auto-complete engine that helps provide users results faster than previous versions, and the friends list is no longer a list of friends, but is a very hefty chunk of recommendations mixed with trending places, and people that you know that are nearby. Less-used features of Foursquare that resided in the "Me" tab are now in a drawer that slides out from the app's left side. Foursquare 6.0 for iPhone also cuts down the functionality of the main screen, giving the cut parts to providing space for trending places and recommendations instead. When you open Foursquare 6.0 on the iPhone, it will respond to the date, time and location in a very different way. If you were to visit a particular restaurant, Foursquare will tell you where people usually go after visiting that restaurant, such as a local bar.

Ask the Experts: I'm looking at buying an SSD, what would you recommend? Our Ask the Experts section has a new question, where we have Riyaad from South Africa after a new SSD and wants some recommendations on what he should buy.

TweakTown's Ask the Experts

Q: Hi guys, I am ready to purchase an SSD! I'm looking at 256gb as the capacity, what would you recommend? I am running:

Core i7 950 @ stock
MSI X58-Pro motherboard
3gb DDR3 1333mhz ram
MSI's GeForce GTX 680 Lightning Edition

A: You can view the answer to Riyaad's question right here.

Three LulzSec members plead guilty to hacking US, UK websites Three LulzSec hackers have pleaded guilty for cyberattacks against various UK- and US-based websites, reports The Guardian. The three UK-based hackers - Ryan Ackroyd, 26; Jake Davis, 20; and Mustafa Al-Bassam, 18 - admitted to hacking Sony, News International and the UK's National Health Service.

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The LulzSec hackers are set to receive their sentences on May 14, with another LulzSec hacker, Ryan Cleary, who pleaded guilty to hacking into websites for the Pentagon, the CIA, the NHS, News International, PBS, Sony, Nintendo, and the 20th Century Film studio joining them on the day.

Unigine Heaven Benchmark 4.0 Overview and Test Results

Introduction

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Unigine's Heaven Benchmark has been a staple of most tech sites reviews for quite a while now, stressing all GPUs in its benchmarking path. There are nearly two million Heaven Benchmark users, showing just how powerful Unigine's reach is in the benchmarking market. Where Unigine do it right, is by offering Heaven to multiple platforms - Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Other players in the benchmarking game only let users bench within Windows, but Windows isn't the only OS in town. Benchmarking Macs now that they're sporting fast GPUs is something important, and Linux, well, that has always been an important piece of PCs. Heaven has gone through a few changes over the years, with version 4.0 ushering in a bunch of improvements: - Benchmarking presets for convenient comparison of results - GPU temperature and clock monitoring - Drastic improvement of SSDO - Stars at nighttime - Improvement of lens flare - New, improved version of UNIGINE Engine under the hood - Detection of multiple GPUs - Anti-aliasing support on Mac OS X - Enhancement of automation scripts in Pro version - New Advanced edition (see details below) - Russian and Chinese localization Let's dive in now and take a closer look. ... Read the rest in your browser!

ADATA XPG SX900 128GB with SandForce B02 controller SSD Review

Introduction

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We're looking at the ADATA SX900 for the first time today. The SX900 hit the market with the SP900 last year, but the SP900 review didn't go as ADATA planned. Just days ago ADATA fixed their issue with TRIM by releasing new firmware for a number of SandForce SF-2000 based SSDs. The new firmware, 5.0.7a, is new to us. We expected ADATA to launch 5.0.6, but they leaped straight to this release, one that we didn't even know of prior to ADATA handing it out. TRIM is fixed, but the angels aren't exactly singing. We've all seen notices that state products can change without notice. Most of the time we don't even pay attention, but the notices are on just about everything. Most of the time the changes are small, such as a new resistor from a different vender here, or a different diode or capacitor there. We've only seen a significant component changed a few times and the end results have always been pretty bad. How many Ford parts can you put on a Ferrari and still call it a Ferrari? The ADATA SX900 we're looking at today is nothing like the SX900 from 12 months ago. The controller has changed, the new SX900 ships with LSI SandForce's new B02 stepping SF-2281 controller. B02 doesn't change performance at all on its own other than battery life. The B02 stepping uses less power so you get longer battery life - nothing to complain about there. I'll take an Enzo with the full horse power and the battery life of a Prius, sure thing! The ADATA SX900 has another change, 20nm NAND flash. When the first SX900 hit the market, it shipped with Intel branded 25nm sync flash. AnandTech's review sample was a 128GB model just like ours, but it shipped with 16 NAND flash chips. Two months after the AnandTech review was published, another review went live at Legit Reviews. That sample, a 128GB again, shipped with just eight NAND flash chips that were not branded at all. Today we have a new type of SX900. This unit has the SandForce B02 controller, eight unbranded NAND flash chips and we're told the flash is 20nm IMFT. ADATA started packaging their own wafers last year and they say the wafers are coming from Micron. Intel and Micron share the same manufacturing facility in a joint owned venture called IMFT. ADATA isn't the first company to buy wafers from IMFT so no issue there, the problem is we don't have a secret decoder ring to tell what the these chips actually are. For most of us, it doesn't really matter. It's an SSD and we're only going to buy one of them. A few of us are a bit more brazen... little rascals we are. Ever since Intel released RAID 0 TRIM drivers, a fair number of people have bought one drive to start with and another later. With SSDs the trick is to buy two identical drives and with ADATA SSDs, well... good luck with that. ... Read the rest in your browser!

IDF 2013 Transforming Computing Experiences from the Device to the Cloud During her keynote at the Intel Developer Forum today in Beijing, Diane Bryant, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's Datacenter and Connected Systems Group, discussed how her company is helping users harness powerful new capabilities that will improve the lives of people by building smarter cities, healthier communities and thriving businesses.

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Bryant unveiled details of upcoming technologies and products that show how Intel aims to transform the server, networking and storage capabilities of the datacenter. By addressing the full spectrum of workload demands and providing new levels of application optimized solutions for enterprise IT, technical computing and cloud service providers, unprecedented experiences can be delivered. According to the Cisco Global Cloud Index, the annual global datacenter traffic will reach 6.6 zettabytes by the end of 2016, and global IP traffic will reach 554 exabytes per month. Putting this number in perspective, experts believe mankind has created 5 exabytes of information since the dawn of civilization until 2003. Intel is at the intersection of the forces driving the explosion of data, such as the increase of mobile devices generating Web-scale data, the growth of high-performance computation and a growing range of sensors and embedded devices that collect data from automobiles, digital signs and more. To help organizations draw new insights from data, Intel recently announced its Intel Distribution for Apache Hadoop software that delivers optimizations to performance and security, to help more organizations and people take advantage of the vast amounts of data being generated. Intel's Hadoop efforts originated in China, and has been successfully deployed in smart transportation and telecommunications, among other industries.

Improving Safety, Reducing Congestion: Bocom, a leading supplier of traffic management solutions, is collaborating with Intel to transform its end-to-end solution from point video capture to a big data analytics solution. Using Intel Xeon, Bocom can extract data from video and send that information to an Intel-based Hadoop cluster for distributed storage and analytics. Individuals can use this information to streamline their traffic plans, while urban planners can prioritize capital investments and better allocate public safety resources.

Real-Time Call Data: With China's huge population, and the high rate of calls and SMS messages, China Mobile was challenged with offering accurate, timely billing and usage information to subscribers. Using Intel Distribution for Hadoop, China Mobile was able to ensure quality updates and optimal performance. The result is a system that delivers inquiry results 30 times faster and with a greater ability to scale capacity for future growth. The data stored in the Hadoop cluster can also be used for other analytical needs such as personalized promotions and better network usage modeling to discover and fix bottlenecks.

World's Broadest Datacenter Portfolio Intel has a long history of delivering industry leading silicon technology optimized for improved performance, power, I/O, security and reliability, availability and serviceability (RAS) features. Combining these powerful technologies enables Intel to meet the diverse needs of data center applications, and when matched with Intel's industry leading manufacturing, integrate billions of transistors at low power levels. To improve the economics of the data center infrastructure and meet the demands of increasingly diversified applications in 2013, the company will refresh Intel Xeon and Intel Atom processor product lines with new generations of 22nm manufacturing technology-based products. On top of Intel's most extensive data center portfolio refresh in company's history, over the coming months Intel will begin production of the new Intel Atom and Intel Xeon processor E3, E5 and E7 families, featuring improved performance per watt and expanded feature set. Intel Atom SoCs for the Datacenter In December 2012, Intel launched the Intel Atom processor S1200 product family, the world's first 64-bit SoC for servers that ranges from 1.6 to 2.0 GHz, and with a thermal design power (TDP) from 6.1 to 8.5 watts. Today, Intel revealed details of three new low-power SoCs for the data center, all coming in 2013. Intel announced the availability of the low-power Intel Atom processor S12x9 family. Customized for storage deployments, this SoC shares several features with the Intel Atom S1200 processor product family, but contains technologies specifically geared for storage devices.

With up to 40 lanes of integrated PCIe 2.0, or physical paths between I/O and the processor, the capacity demands of multiple devices can be handled more efficiently. Of the 40 lanes of PCIe 2.0, there are 24 Root Port lanes and 16 Non Transparent Bridge lanes, for failover support.

Intel provides hardware RAID storage acceleration so that the computationally intensive RAID function is offloaded in hardware, thus freeing up the SoC to execute other software applications.

PCIe Non Transparent Bridge (NTB): NTB provides failover support

With Asynchronous DRAM Self-Refresh (ADR), the Intel Atom S12x9 family can protect critical DRAM data in the event of a power interruption.

Native Dual-Casting can allow data to be read from a source and delivered to two memory locations simultaneously, which can increase RAID-5/6 bandwidth by as much as 20 percent on a 16+2 RAID 6 system, as compared to system bandwidth without the Dual Cast feature

Today, several OEMs are supporting the Intel Atom S12x9 family, including MacroSAN, Accusys, QSAN and QNAP.

In the second half of 2013, Intel will push the envelope in datacenter efficiency, and deliver the second generation of 64-bit Intel Atom processor for microservers, codenamed "Avoton." Built on Intel's leading 22nm process technology and new microarchitecture "Silvermont," Avoton will feature an integrated Ethernet controller and expected to deliver significant improvements in performance-per-watt. Avoton is now being sampled to customers and the first systems are expected to be available in the second half of 2013. Intel will expand its presence in the network and communications infrastructure market by delivering an Intel Atom processor based SoC codenamed "Rangeley," also built on the 22nm process technology. Rangeley aims to provide an energy-efficient mechanism for processing communication workloads and is targeted for entry level to mid-range routers, switches and security appliances. Rangeley is targeted to be available in second half of 2013. Intel Xeon processor E3 Family This year, Intel will introduce the new Intel Xeon processor E3 1200 v3 product family, based on Haswell architecture. To continue to improve performance for video analytic workloads, the Intel Xeon E3 1200 v3 product family will support improved transcode performance. The new Linux-based media SDK provides developers with a standard interface for video processing, simplifies development and reduces the complexities of accessing hardware acceleration. The SDK also maximizes simultaneous use of CPU and Intel HD graphics capabilities for server-based video streaming, which delivers more concurrent HD transcodes at a significantly lower total cost of ownership. Intel also continues to lower the power levels on the Intel Xeon processor E3 family; the lowest TDP will be 13 watts, approximately up to 25 percent lower1 than the prior generation. The improvement from eight transcode to 10 transcode with Haswell's graphics capabilities also results in up to 25 percent improvement in transcode performance per watt for hardware accelerated media performance. Intel Xeon processor E5 Family Intel's next-generation Intel Xeon processor E5 family will be based on the 22nm manufacturing process, and will be available in the third quarter of this year. These processors will also continue to deliver exceptional energy efficiency by supporting Intel Node Manager and Intel Data Center Manager Software. Security will also be improved with Intel Secure Key and Intel OS Guard which provide additional hardware-enhanced security and enhanced Intel AES New Instructions (Intel AES-NI.) Intel OS Guard, the next generation of Intel Execute Disable Bit, protects against privilege attacks by preventing malicious code from executing out of application memory space, in addition to data memory. Intel Xeon Processor E7 Family: Unlocking Intelligence Beyond software, robust hardware technology is required to generate the computing power to analyze massive data sets. To support in-memory analytics and rapidly respond to scaling data sets, Intel is on-track for production availability of the next-generation Intel Xeon processor E7 family in the fourth quarter of 2013. Featuring triple the memory capacity - up to 12 Terabytes (TB) in an eight-socket node -- this processor is ideal for data-demanding, transaction-intensive workloads such as in-memory databases and real-time business analytics.

With the Intel Xeon processor E7 family, Intel is also announcing Intel Run Sure Technology which will deliver greater system reliability and increased data integrity while minimizing the downtime for businesses running mission-critical workloads. These RAS features will be available with the next-generation Intel Xeon processor E7 family, and will be comprised of Resilient System Technologies, Resilient Memory Technologies.

Resilient System Technologies includes standardized technologies integrating processor, firmware and software layers, including the OS, hypervisors and databases to allow the system to recover from previously fatal errors.

Resilient Memory Technologies includes features to help ensure data integrity and enable systems to keep running reliably over a longer period of time, reducing the need for immediate service calls.

Reimagining the Datacenter Traditionally, "balanced systems" such as rack servers, blade servers or micro servers have to be refreshed to maximize the performance of select subsystems such as CPU performance, memory, storage or the network. Today, with the help of Intel, hyperscale customers are leading a transformation of these "balanced" platforms toward rack scale architecture solutions that separate, and group server, storage and network systems, making them more modular and efficient. This transformation starts with sharing power and thermal components, and improving rack management to reduce operating costs, and will evolve to include high-bandwidth fabric interconnects such as Intel Silicon Photonics technology to enable complete disaggregation of racks to drive optimal flexibility for large scale data center deployments. Intel sees the evolution of rack design happening in three phases:

Physical Aggregation. All non-critical sheet metal removed and key components such as power supplies and fans taken out of individual servers and consolidated at the rack level. Savings are expected due to higher levels of efficiency and lower costs by reducing the number of fans and power supplies.

Fabric Integration and Storage Virtualization. Disaggregate and separate out the storage from compute systems with direct attached storage, and achieve higher utilization through storage virtualization. The compute and network fabric is the key technology that is enabling disaggregation of storage without impact to performance. Intel Silicon Photonics interconnects will enable higher speed connections between various computing resources within the rack, thus enabling the eventual disaggregation of server, memory, network and storage within the rack.

Future. Ultimately, the industry will move to subsystem disaggregation where processing, memory and I/O will be completely separated into modular subsystems, making it possible to easily upgrade these subsystems rather than doing a complete system upgrade.

Benefits of rack scale architecture include increased flexibility, higher density and higher utilization leading to a lower total cost of ownership. Based on the needs of cloud service providers and large hyper-scale data centers, Intel is developing a reference design that utilizes Intel technologies and allows a range of solutions for OEM providers to develop and deliver racks. Intel rack scale architecture will include a suite of innovative technologies such as: Intel's leading Xeon and Intel Atom SoCs for servers, storage, and networking; Intel Ethernet switch silicon for distributed input/output; and Intel's new photonic architecture, based on high-bandwidth, Intel Silicon Photonics Technology. Silicon Photonics Technology will enable fewer cables, increased bandwidth, farther reach and extreme power efficiency compared to todays copper-based interconnects. Intel demonstrated a mechanical prototype of this new rack architecture earlier this year and will publish a complete reference architecture optimized for deployment as a full rack to make it easy for system builders and customers to adopt. One implementation of Intel's rack scale reference architecture is already taking place in China, as Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent and China Telecom are collaborating with Intel on Project Scorpio, an initiative that will deliver a physical aggregated rack consisting of the fan and power supplies in six zones within the rack, with the goal of demonstrating TCO savings. Intel Cloud Innovation Center in Beijing, China The Intel Cloud Innovation Center is a large scale datacenter based in China hosting more than 100 of the latest Intel Xeon E5 and E7-based servers using Intel 10GbE networking, Intel SSDs and Intel Xeon E5-based storage. It's designed to speed solutions innovation for cloud computing. The Center is available starting today for customers and ISVs partners to use for proof of concepts, software development, and solutions evaluation. Intel is working with leading China ISVs to put together cutting edge cloud solutions such as systems designed for big data analytics.

HGST Launches The Industry's First 12 Gb/s SAS Solid State Drives HGST today announced the industry's fastest and most advanced enterprise-class, multi level cell (MLC) SAS SSD family - the Ultrastar SSD800MH, Ultrastar SSD800MM and Ultrastar SSD1000MR. From the market share leader in enterprise SAS/FC SSDs, these HGST drives are the first to double today's SAS interface speed. Designed for the most demanding applications where "hot" data is accessed frequently, such as high-frequency trading, online banking, cloud computing, online gaming, and big data analytics, HGST's new 12 Gb/s SAS SSDs help increase input/output per second (IOPS) and improve response times to mission-critical data in cloud and traditional IT datacenters environments.

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Due to their rich SCSI heritage, SAS SSDs and high performance, high capacity hard disk drives (HDDs) will continue to be the building blocks of choice for future generations of high-performance enterprise servers and storage arrays. Leveraging HGST's SSD market success, the new Ultrastar 12Gb/s SAS SSD family combines enterprise-grade, 25nm, highest-endurance, MLC NAND flash memory, industry-leading performance, advanced endurance management firmware and power loss data management techniques to extend reliability, endurance and sustained performance over the life of the SSD. Enterprise-Class MLC SSDs - A Critical Enterprise Component Increasingly in traditional IT and cloud hyperscale datacenters an application's high-end processing functions are stored on SSDs, which are then paired with high-capacity hard disk drives (HDDs) that store the bulk of that application's less dynamic content in tiered infrastructures. This mix of high-performance SSDs and high-performance and high-capacity enterprise-class HDDs deliver greater efficiencies of scale, improved asset utilization and help lower total cost of ownership (TCO). Enterprise-class SAS SSDs and HDDs are proving to be the preferred solution for datacenter architects who have ruled out client-level SATA SSDs and desktop-class HDD combinations, which may deliver a lower price; but also can result in lower system uptimes. Likewise, putting all types of data on a high-end PCIe only infrastructure is prohibitively expensive. Implementing a sound tiered storage strategy using HGST enterprise-class SSDs and HDDs can make a positive impact through improved service levels and cost savings. Using HGST's highly reliable, high-endurance enterprise-class SSDs rated with the industry's leading 2.0 million hours mean time between failureÂ¹ (MTBF) specification can also help reduce current and long-term TCO as datacenter managers experience fewer failures, improved uptime, and receive the highest performance with improved latency and IOPS. "SSDs along with high-performance and high-capacity HDDs are the main building blocks of choice for traditional IT and cloud hyperscale datacenters and represent a market that is expected to grow in excess of $16 billion by 2015," said Jeff Janukowicz research director, Solid State Drives and Enabling Technologies at IDC. "SSDs, such as HGST's new SAS SSD family, continue to improve generation to generation to meet today's enterprise workload requirements while driving down the price points to support high I/O applications." New HGST Ultrastar 12Gb/s SAS SSD Family: The Right Fit For High I/O Applications As the first SSDs with 12Gb/s SAS, HGST continues to push performance limits. The new Ultrastar SSD800MH 12Gb/s SAS SSD delivers the highest sequential throughput with up to 1,200MB/s large block reads, and up to 750MB/s writes. It also delivers up to 145,000 read and 100,000 write IOPS, reaching speeds >100 times faster than HDDs, allowing rapid access to "hot" enterprise data for improved productivity and operational efficiency. With this new generation, HGST has also improved its SSD "quality of service." Quality of service refers to how quickly and efficiently the SSD can manage and process reads and writes to the drive. Like lanes on a highway, too much data traffic can cause congestion and slow performance. In tier 0/1 enterprise applications such as high-frequency trading, every millisecond counts. As the industry leader in enterprise SSDs, HGST uses unique firmware and controller technology to significantly improve command completion time requirements. The overall result is a 50 percent improvement in latency, a 300 percent improvement in I/O per second (IOPS) writes, and a 2x - 3x faster throughput compared to the earlier generation Ultrastar SSD400S SSD. Common firmware and controller technology across HGST's enterprise-class SSD and HDD families also allows for seamless system integration and reduced qualification times. Building solutions for the future, HGST's new SSD family comes with three endurance levels - high endurance, mainstream endurance and read-intensive endurance. Each 12Gb/s SAS SSD family delivers an optimal balance of performance, reliability, cost and endurance to meet the unique and diverse workload requirements of nearly any enterprise application. The new Ultrastar SSD800MH high-endurance SSD rates at 25 full drive writes per day (DW/D) for five years, ideal for high-frequency trading or online transaction processing. The Ultrastar SSD800MM mainstream endurance SSD rates at 10 DW/D for five years, ideal for applications such as online gaming, big data, and cloud computing. The read-intensive 1TB Ultrastar SSD1000MR SSD rates at two DW/D for five years, perfect for streaming audio/video, cloud computing and other Internet applications. "LSI and HGST have achieved a number of key milestones, including compatibility testing of the fastest 12Gb/s SAS RAID controllers and SSDs, and are prepared to lead the industry transition and market adoption of the new 12Gb/s SAS interface standard," said Bill Wuertz , senior vice president and general manager, RAID Storage Division, LSI Corporation. "As the preferred enterprise interface of the future, 12Gb/s SAS is essential to unleashing the full performance potential of SSD storage solutions to help datacenters and cloud environments contend with massive data growth and accelerate application performance. It is also backward compatible with 6Gb/s SAS for investment protection in current SAS infrastructures." "Our Zebi storage arrays are specifically designed with de-duplication and compression in virtualized server and desktop environments where performance and capacity are critical. Using HGST's reliable, high-performance and high-capacity SSDs and HDDs, combined with our innovative Zebi technology, gives our customers the best balance of performance, capacity, features and price," said Rob Commins , vice president of marketing, Tegile Systems. "We're proud to say that our award-winning Zebi HA2800 storage array uses HGST's SAS SSDs, and we look forward to working with HGST on this new generation of 12Gb/s SAS SSDs to deliver even more performance and capacity to our customers." "With the industry's highest SAS SSD performance, three endurance-level options, high-capacity and proven reliability, HGST offers the most-advanced 12Gb/s SAS SSDs for the enterprise where it is critical SSDs and HDDs integrate seamlessly in tiered storage environments for optimal efficiency," said Brendan Collins , vice president of product marketing, HGST. "Combining more than 50 years of design and qualification experience with proven HGST SAS implementation across interface hardware and firmware, HGST's new line of MLC SSDs provides simple, scalable and flexible solutions that ensure system compatibility and ease of integration into new or existing enterprise storage systems and designs." Availability HGST is currently qualifying its SSDs with select OEMs. Broader qualification samples are now available with channel distribution scheduled in June 2013. Ultrastar 12Gb/s SAS self-encrypting SSD models are also available, which conform to the Trusted Computing Group's Enterprise A Security Subsystem Class encryption specification, helping customers reduce the costs associated with drive retirement and extend drive life by enabling repurposing of drives. The Ultrastar 12Gb/s SAS SSD family is targeted to achieve a 0.44 percent annual failure rate (AFR) or two million hour mean-time-between-failure (MTBF), representing HGST's continued product strength. They are backed by a five-year limited warranty, or the maximum petabytes written (based on capacity).

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