Category : Software News

The company says its Open Compute Project will give customers more choice and flexibility in choosing servers

Facebook has proposed a new model for designing servers that it says will give businesses more choice in selecting components and a smarter way to upgrade systems when needs change, though it remains to be seen how widely its method will be adopted.

The social networking company is looking to “disaggregate” the data center, meaning it wants to reduce the dependencies among computer parts and make it easier for large companies to design the systems they need to suit their own particular workloads.

It laid out the plans at a summit on Wednesday for its Open Compute Project, in which it’s working with component suppliers and end-user companies to define specifications for these interchangeable parts.

The idea is that tech-savvy companies would be able to choose a server design more in tune with their needs. They could order the server through a systems integrator, which would then source parts through components suppliers that have signed onto the project. However, there’s some debate about how applicable the model is outside Internet companies and cloud service providers.

Systems from top-tier server vendors are based on standards to a degree, but the variety of configurations those vendors offer is limited, and many parts are soldered to the motherboard so they can’t be swapped out easily. One result of Facebook’s project may be to pressure those vendors into making their own designs more flexible.

Momentum behind the effort is growing. Facebook announced several new Open Compute Project members at the summit, including storage vendors EMC, Sandisk and Fusion-io, and ARM processor vendors Calxeda, Applied Micro and Tilera. Hitachi also joined, as did Orange and NTT Data, who joined the roster of companies that use servers and are providing input.

Facebook also announced new specifications that expand the range of systems available through the project and could make them applicable to more customers. For example, it is developing a common processor slot that will allow companies to put CPUs from different vendors in the same motherboard.

Meanwhile, Intel said it will contribute its silicon photonics technology, to provide a fast interconnect within server racks, and Advanced Micro Devices said it completed a motherboard specification for use by financial services companies.

Facebook’s argument is that current server designs are too inflexible. Customers who buy from top-tier vendors such as Dell or Hewlett-Packard have limited choice among the components they can pick, and they often can’t change those parts once they’re in place.

“The power supply shouldn’t be embedded in the server, otherwise you have to design the server around it, and if your power requirements change, you’re stuck,” said Frank Frankovsky, a Facebook vice president, in a speech opening the summit.

Instead, power supplies can be implemented at the rack level, where they can be upgraded as needs dictate, he said.

Likewise, I/O modules, CPUs and other components should not be dependent on each other, Frankovsky said.

“That will allow us to do a smarter technology refresh when it’s time to upgrade, where we take out some components but leave others we don’t need to change,” he said.

The common processor slot will allow companies to “evaluate different CPUs right up to the last hour” when they’re selecting a new server design, he said.

It’s easy to see how the model could benefit large-scale Internet services companies such as Facebook, which already designs its own servers. It has also attracted cloud service providers such as Rackspace, which also submitted new designs this week.

But some participants here said other large companies can benefit, too.

AMD said the motherboard it developed is designed to bring the Open Compute Project to more than just online giants such as Facebook. It developed the specification, which was codenamed Roadrunner, by working with financial services firms Fidelity Investments and Goldman Sachs.

It fits into a standard server rack, something that already sets it apart from Facebook’s own server design, which is for a custom rack. The AMD board includes its Opteron 6200 or 6300 processors, but it allows the customer to choose the I/O module and whether they want a SAS controller, said Bob Ogrey, AMD’s “cloud evangelist” and the engineer who designed the board. It also implements a low-cost server management platform that AMD developed with Broadcom, he said.

Companies are testing the board now, and full production will begin at the end of the quarter, he said.

Matt Eastwood, an analyst with IDC, said it makes sense for companies that rely on IT for a competitive advantage to design their own servers. Big banks are willing to invest heavily in powerful systems to run their Monte Carlo simulation programs, for example, which are used to assess investment risk.

Facebook’s model may also suit other companies for whom high-performance computing is essential, Eastwood said, such as pharmaceutical firms or companies that do oil and gas exploration.

Still, that’s far from most of the world’s big businesses. “You’re probably talking about a few hundreds of companies” that have an incentive to make use of the Open Compute Project’s designs, he said.

He also noted that while Facebook is talking about disaggregation, there’s a trend in the industry in the opposite direction, with companies such as Oracle promoting highly integrated systems as a way to achieve maximum compute performance.

Nathan Brookwood, an analyst with Insight64, was also skeptical that the Open Compute project is applicable outside large Internet and cloud service providers. “I’m not sure enterprises can benefit from it,” he said.

Peter ffoulkes, an analyst with 451 Research, was more optimistic. “I think it will be relevant to any large company that wants to customize their data center to match their workload,” he said.

Even large retailers such as Target and Wal-Mart, which may not appear to be technology-driven companies, do a lot of data analysis to uncover customer buying trends, he noted.

The top-tier server vendors don’t want to be left out of the picture, and some said they’ll support the Open Compute specifications in some products. Dell showed two prototype servers, for example, one with an x86 processor and one with an ARM processor, which were both running a server management platform developed through Facebook’s project.

Jay Parikh, Facebook’s vice president of engineering, said the move to more flexible systems couldn’t come at a better time. Data volumes are so high, he said, that companies such as Facebook need to architect complex, custom storage systems to manage the load.

Facebook users upload more than 350 million new photos a day, he said, consuming more than 7 petabytes of storage capacity each month. Those numbers may sound unique to Facebook, but data volumes are expanding for everyone, and other companies will face similar challenges in the near future, according to Parikh.

“The big data challenges that we face today are definitely going to be your big data challenges tomorrow,” he said.

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Intel preps thin fiber optics to shuffle data between computers

Intel is readying silicon photonics for use at the motherboard level

Intel is taking the first steps to implement thin fiber optics that will use lasers and light as a faster way to move data inside computers, replacing the older and slower electrical wiring technology found in most computers today.

Intel’s silicon photonics technology will be implemented at the motherboard and rack levels and use light to move data between storage, networking and computing resources. Light is considered a much faster vehicle to move data than copper cables.

The silicon photonics technology will be part of a new generation of servers that will need faster networking, storage and processing subsystems, said Justin Rattner, Intel’s chief technology officer, during a keynote at the Open Compute Summit in Santa Clara, California, on Wednesday.

At the conference, Intel and server maker Quanta Computer are showing a prototype server rack architecture that is capable of moving data using optical modules. The server uses an Intel silicon switch and supports the chip maker’s Xeon and Atom server chips.

The new rack architecture with silicon photonics is a result of more than a decade of research in Intel’s laboratories, Rattner said. He said silicon photonics could enable communication at speeds of 100G bps (bits per second), and transfer data at high speeds while using lesser power compared to copper cables. The technology could also consolidate power supplies and fans in a data center, reducing component costs.

Intel’s research revolved around the production of devices needed to implement silicon photonics at the rack level, including modulators and detectors. The company is now producing silicon photonics modules that can transfer data at 100G bps, and is offering it to a few clients for testing.

Silicon photonics could potentially redefine server designs, Rattner said. With the high-speed bandwidth, processing and storage units could be decoupled from servers and stored in separate boxes. Once the infrastructure with silicon photonics is in place, server designs could change even more, Rattner said.

Intel is working with Facebook to define new server technologies that will lead to the decoupling of computing, networking and storage resources. The high-bandwidth connection offered by silicon photonics will be key in bringing the rack technologies to reality, and the processor, switch and other modules need to work together on power management, protocol support, load balancing and handshakes to make high-speed data transfers possible.

Critical to this step is “the introduction of silicon photonics in not just the inter-rack fabric, but also the intra-rack fabric,” Rattner said.

Intel is already using fiber optics with its Thunderbolt connector technology, which like USB 3.0, shuffles data between host devices and peripherals. At last week’s International CES show in Las Vegas, Corning announced Thunderbolt Optical Cables that can stretch up to 100 meters.

Intel is being aggressive with pushing silicon photonics into the data center, said Jason Waxman, general manager of the cloud platforms group, in an interview. He said it could be in use in fewer than five years, but did not commit to a timeline.

There are multiple protocols that could be supported for high-speed data transfers, including InfiniBand, Ethernet and PCI-Express, Waxman said. Intel said it will implement the InfiniBand networking technology inside its chips, which could enable faster data transfers.

It is only a matter of time until copper wires are replaced by fiber optics, said Dean McCarron, principal analyst at Mercury Research.

“Over time you will see the server communication infrastructure — which includes switches — to include photonics,” McCarron said.

High-speed communication networks use optical technology, and so far the bandwidth in servers was adequate, McCarron said. But with more data flowing through networks, there is a growing demand to crank up the speed over connections, which is where silicon photonics comes into play.

“We’re going to keep seeing continued demands for the interconnect. It is a forgone conclusion we will have to go to photonics,” McCarron said.

Initial implementations may be expensive, and there may be a need to introduce protocols that could enable high speed data transfers over fiber optics.

“Eventually the signalling gets far too complex, and the move to photonics makes sense,” McCarron said. “The motivation is how do you economically get to higher speeds.”

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Trying to replace wait staff with automation is a mistake, says CTO.

There is a push in retail and restaurants to accomplish more through self-service automation, but that trend doesn’t necessarily mean that a business should look to reduce staff by rolling out technology.

One company that’s doing more with technology is OTG Management, which runs restaurants and other concessions in airports. It has deployed iPads in airport terminal areas using new table-type seating. Each seat also has a credit card reader, allowing travelers to order food with the iPad, pay the bill using the card reader or or simply surf the Web and charge their own device.

There’s no obligation to buy anything, said Albert Lee, the chief technology officer at OTG. It’s more important that people leave with a good experience.

“It’s that trust that has helped us build out in a successful way,” he said.

This technology and attitude appears to be working for OTG. The company started deploying iPads two years ago at JFK and LaGuardia airports, and now has 1,500 devices in use. By the end of this year, it hopes to have as many as 7,000 tablets deployed, including at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and at Toronto Pearson International.

The iPads and card swipes took away some of the things waiters and waitresses usually deal with, allowing them instead to focus on better customer service. They greet new customers, make sure their needs are met, deliver the food, and help with the iPads, if need be. The efficiencies gained allow the wait staff to handle more customers, said Lee.

Although one goal of automation is often staff cuts, Lee says that’s just wrong.

“A lot of people, unfortunately, look at this as a staff reduction exercise and they are doing it so they don’t have to answer questions with real humans, and I think that’s the biggest mistake in the industry,” said Lee.

“This is a tool to ensure the accuracy of an order, a tool to empower the customer,” said Lee, “but the service still remains the same.

“People really need to focus on customer service and customer experience,” said Lee. The iPad and self-help kiosks “are fantastic tools” but “you need a human element to make it really successful,” he said.

It has also meant more IT hiring. OTG is adding four iOS developers, and an equal number of tech support staff. OTG worked with a firm, Control Group, to develop the iPad platform for the restaurant’s use.

In the broader market, restaurants have been generally slow to adopt customer-facing technology for ordering and checkouts. Francie Mendelsohn, the president of Summit Research Associates, which studies self-service systems, said automated kiosk ordering at some restaurants is “logically a no-brainer, except practically it hasn’t worked all that well.”

Mendelsohn said the automated systems often have “build menus” and when customers start deviating from them the process can get time-consuming. Sometimes, customers may not get what they want.

“Of course, with a human there’s a very good chance you’re not going to end up with what you ordered, either,” she said.

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Robotic rover heading toward what could be its first drilling site on Martian surface.

After about five months on the Martian surface, NASA’s rover Curiosity is preparing to drill its first rock on Mars.

NASA announced Tuesday that Curiosity is headed toward a flat rock with pale veins that scientists are hopeful will yield clues to the history of water on the planet. When the SUV-sized rover reaches the rock and if it checks out as planned, it will be the first to be drilled on the Red Planet.

“Drilling into a rock to collect a sample will be this mission’s most challenging activity since the landing,” said Mars Science Laboratory project manager Richard Cook. “It has never been done on Mars. The drill hardware interacts energetically with Martian material we don’t control. We won’t be surprised if some steps in the process don’t go exactly as planned the first time through.”

The super rover is on a two-year mission to help scientists figure out if Mars has, or has ever had, an environment that could support life, even life in a microbial form.

So far the rover, which carries 17 cameras and 10 scientific instruments, has made some important strides.

Last October, it became the first NASA rover to scoop Martian soil into onboard analytical instruments.

In late September, NASA reported that Curiosity discovered evidence of a thousand-year water flow on Mars. The finding came in the form of an outcropping of rocks that appeared to have been heaved up by a vigorous water flow.

With NASA’s plans to drill, scientists plan to analyze the rock and any information about its mineral and chemical composition.

The scientists are hoping the rover will drill on flat-lying bedrock within a shallow depression. Curiosity’s science team decided to investigate this area for a first drilling target because orbital images showed fractured ground that cools more slowly each night than nearby terrain does.

“The orbital signal drew us here, but what we found when we arrived has been a great surprise,” said John Grotzinger, Mars Science Laboratory project scientist. “This area had a different type of wet environment than the streambed where we landed, maybe a few different types of wet environments.”

Scientists are intrigued by the rock’s veins, which, on Earth, are formed when water circulates in fractures.

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The US$3.30-per-share bid could set off a bidding war between two companies already at odds over spectrum.

Dish Network has offered to buy Clearwire for US$3.30 per share, throwing a wrench in Sprint Nextel’s deal to buy its mobile broadband partner for $2.97 per share.

Clearwire disclosed Dish’s offer in a press release on Tuesday afternoon, saying it has an obligation to consider the offer.

Sprint owns almost half of Clearwire’s stock, and on Dec. 17, the two companies reached a deal for Sprint to buy the rest of the company. Sprint still delivers 4G service to many of its customers over Clearwire’s WiMax network. If the deal goes through, Sprint plans to use Clearwire’s large spectrum holdings to supplement its LTE network. The Sprint deal depends on Softbank’s $20 billion bid for most of Sprint going through.

Dish’s bid could set off a bidding war for Clearwire, which has some of the biggest spectrum holdings of any U.S. carrier. Clearwire holds about 160MHz of spectrum in many major U.S. markets, though its frequencies are in high bands that are not of prime quality for mobile broadband.

Some Clearwire shareholders have objected to Sprint’s offer, saying the company’s spectrum holdings alone are worth several times the roughly $2.2 billion that Sprint is offering for the company.

Dish is a satellite TV company that has obtained approval from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to use some of its satellite spectrum for terrestrial mobile service. It was already at odds with Sprint before making its bid for Clearwire, because Sprint won spectrum rule changes from the FCC that diminished Dish’s ability to use its new cellular spectrum.

Before Dish offered to buy Clearwire, it had offered to buy some of the company’s spectrum, at substantially the same pricing, Clearwire disclosed in its press release.

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Wi-Fi Alliance and USB 3.0 Promoter Group demonstrate products using Wi-Fi and USB 3.0 specifications.

LAS VEGAS — The Wi-Fi Alliance demonstrated the emerging Miracast wireless display technology at International CES here Tuesday by sending live computer game animation from a smartphone to a 27-in. television.

The new Miracast wireless display technology has just started emerging in mobile devices, said Kelly Davis-Felner, marketing director for the industry group. To date, more than 200 smartphones, tablets, TVs and other devices have been certified by the Alliance, she added.

In a demonstration at CES, Davis-Felner used an LG Optimus G smartphone enabled with the Miracast technology to wirelessly send an Angry Birds game from the phone a nearby TV, where it was displayed.

The alliance’s wireless display specification can be used to quickly share sales presentations or videos wirelessly, without the need to find cables. Both the display and the computing device, such as a smartphone or tablet, need Miracast technology.

The Miracast technology shows the benefits of using wireless connections, Davis-Felner said. “Everybody benefits when everything works together,” she said in an interview. “Nobody likes ports” on devices.

Analysts have said that there will be more than 1 billion Miracast-ready and certified devices within four years. The Wi-Fi Alliance currently has a list of more than 60 certified devices on its Web site.

Miracast runs over a pathway similar to fast 802.11n wireless, which supports up to 300 Mbps on the 2.4GHz channel.

At CES, a variety of companies showed products using Miracast including, Netgear, Qualcomm, Actiontec Electronics, Advanced Micro Deices, Broadcom, Cavium and Marvell Semiconductor.

Near the Wi-Fi Alliance’s booth, promoters of wired USB connectors showed off their latest innovations at the USB TechZone booth.

The USB 3.0 Promoter Group Sunday announced the development of SuperSpeed USB, also called USB 3.0, which offers up to 10 Gbps of data throughput — or about double the data throughput over USB 2.0.

Brad Saunders, chairman of the USB 3.0 Promoter Group, said that SuperSpeed USB will boost the capabilities of upcoming USB docking and storage applications.

There are already more than 720 certified SuperSpeed USB products available, double the number of a year ago, according to analysts at Multimedia Research Group.

SuperSpeed USB has the backing of many major desktop makers and allows power transport as well as data transport, an advantage over Wi-Fi and other wireless, said Jeff Ravencraft, president of the USB-Implementers Forum.

Saunders and Ravencraft said USB will continue to co-exist alongside Wi-Fi and other wireless connections for a long time, as many users continue to prefer a wired connection for very large data data transfers using devices such as high-capacity hard drives.

The USB trade groups are also backing a new power delivery specification, USB Power Delivery, that was first announced last July, The standard aims to reduce the variety of chargers used for smartphones and tablets, Ravencraft said.

Ravencraft said the European Union’s requirement enacted last year to have a common charging port (via micro USB) on smartphones instead of different ports specified by different smartphone makers.

Ravencraft said a common charging port is seen as reducing waste in landfills when charging cords become obsolete. He said after the power delivery spec was published last summer, that manufacturers will be developing chips in 2013 to accommodate it.

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Dueling language popularity assessments cite C and Java as the most popular programming languages this month.

Tiobe and PyPL offer differing perspectives on which languages are the hottest, respectively basing their criteria on Web page totals and number of searches on a language

The established Tiobe Programming Community Index, which determines popularity by assessing Web page totals pertaining to a specific language, has C as this month’s most popular language, rated at 17.855% estimated market share. It is followed by Java, with 17.417%.

Meanwhile, the new PyPL Popularity of Programming Language Index, which analyzes Google searches on language tutorials, has Java as the top language, with 30.5%, followed by PHP at 15.4%. C ranks just fifth on the PyPL index, with 9.2%. PHP only turns up in sixth place on the Tiobe index, with 5.546%.

“The Tiobe index in my view doesn’t give [an] adequate view of popularity of a programming language,” said Pierre Carbonelle, founder of the PyPL index, which is posted within the pyDatalog website. The Tiobe index, Carbonelle said, looks at pages available, while Pypl counts the number of people actively searching those pages.

Tiobe’s Paul Jansen defended Tiobe’s methodology. “It is true that we are a lagging indicator because we measure the number of pages available. If a page has been created 10 years ago and it still can be looked up, it counts for us. PyPL tracks demand for pages, whereas we track availability of pages. On the long term this is about the same because if there is no demand, there will be no availability and vice versa.” Tiobe also does not rely simply on Google; it also factors in such sites as Yahoo and Wikipedia.

Tiobe has Objective-C as its language of the year for the second consecutive year, with the language in 2012 again gaining the most market share, and it ranks third in the Tiobe January index, with a 10.283% share. Objective-C is the language of choice for developing Apple iOS applications, thus boosting its prominence. PyPL, though, calls C# its language of the year and gives a nod to Python, as well. “Over a five-year period, Python is the language whose popularity is growing the fastest; it is already the second most popular in the U.S.,” PyPL said.

Rounding out the top 10 in Tiobe’s index for the month were C++ (9.140%) and C# (6.196%) in fourth and fifth place, Visual Basic in seventh place at 4.749%, Python (4.173%), Perl (2.264%), and JavaScript (1.976%). For PyPL, C++ was third with 10.4% while C# was fourth at 10.1%. Python was in the sixth spot (8.8%), followed by JavaScript (7.4%), Visual Basic (3.5%), Ruby (2.6%), and Perl (2%).

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Sony is making use of NFC and WiFi to bridge the gap between smartphone and TV

If you thought your TV remote control was just for switching channels, think again. Sony has a new system that uses the remote control as a transfer device between a smartphone and television.

The system, which makes use of NFC (near-field communications), was launched Monday at CES in Las Vegas and is featured in Sony’s Xperia Z cell phone and several Bravia TVs that were also announced the same day.

The technology means video and TV shows can be transferred to the TV without leaving the couch.

TVs with the feature include the flagship Bravia X900A, which includes a display capable of four times the resolution of today’s high-def TV. The “4K” television will go on sale in the spring in the U.S. in two screen sizes: 65-inch and 55-inch, Sony said. A price for the TV set wasn’t announced.

“You’re watching a video and you want to share it with family and friends,” said Phil Molyneux, president of Sony Electronics, during a news conference at CES. “You do this,” he said bringing the phone together with a remote control, “and the video appears on the big screen.”

The feature is one use of NFC that Sony has built into a number of its products.

It shows a portable speaker, an home audio soundbar, and a pair of headphones that could play music when a phone was touched against them. Whatever music was playing in the phone would automatically be transferred to the audio products.

A final product, the personal content station, is being offered as a home storage system for smartphone data, such as photos. Touching the phone to the device automatically transferred pictures and video from the phone.

Near-field communication is a low power wireless technology that typical works over a distance of a few centimeters. Because it only works over a short range, security isn’t usually included and that vastly simplifies data transfer between compatible products. Unlike Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, devices don’t have to be set-up in advance to work with each other.

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The latest research from both companies will be showcased on Monday

Move over, big-screen TVs, cell phones and tablets, because cars might steal the show at next week’s International CES.

As preparations for the annual electronics show approach their climax here, two of the most awaited announcements aren’t from big-name electronics companies but rather auto makers Toyota and Audi.

Each company plans to unveil prototype self-driving car technology here on Monday.

Toyota offered a tantalizing glimpse at its prototype through a 5-second video clip published online of its “Advanced Active Safety Research Vehicle.”

The video shows a Lexus car decked out with various sensors on the front grill, rear wheels and the roof, the most striking of which is a spinning cylinder on the roof. A similar device is used in a self-driving car prototype developed by Google and in city mapping cars operated by companies including Nokia.

Lasers point at the cylinder and through reflections from the car manage to map out an accurate image of the car’s surroundings complete with depth information that would be unavailable from a conventional camera.

The unveiling of the cars at CES is especially notable because the electronics show comes just a week before the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. That event is one of the largest and most important global automotive shows and is typically where the world’s car makers make major announcements.

Several other car makers are also researching self-driving and autonomous automotive technology.

At last year’s Ceatec exhibition in Japan, Nissan unveiled a prototype car that could park itself, while Volvo is working on a vehicle platoon system that allows cars to automatically follow one another on long stretches of highway. Alongside Google in Silicon Valley, Stanford University has developed a prototype self-driving car based on an Audi TTS.

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The disc uses a proprietary storage layer so data doesn’t go bad

A new Blu-ray Disc promises to keep data fresh long after it might have decayed on other discs.

The MDisc, developed by Utah-based Millenniata, will be available from June this year in a 25 gigabyte capacity and will join a long-lasting DVD already offered by the company.

While DVD and Blu-ray Disc are a popular archiving format for consumers, many don’t realize that the discs can become unreliable overtime. The effects of lights, humidity and chemical change inside the disc structure means that the data on discs can eventually become unreadable.

“Most CDs and DVDs use an optical dye to record data, which mean the dye changes color a little bit and that change is then read back to get your data back, and that works for five years or so,” said Douglas Hansen [cq], chief technology officer at Millenniata.

“Over longer periods of times it starts to become suspect and eventually will fail. We record data by actually melting and moving material around, so you get a hard mark, a bit more like having written in stone,” he said.

The Millenniata discs use a proprietary storage layer to record data — one that won’t degrade over time, according to the company.

The company points to a data archiving test conducted in 2009 by the U.S. Department of Defense Naval Air Warfare Weapons Division, which included an MDisc DVD and five other archive-quality DVDs.

The test found no degradation at all on the MDisc discs versus large data degradation and errors in many of the other discs after prolonged stress testing, according to Millenniata.

For the company’s DVDs, the proprietary storage layer means a higher laser power is required to burn data. LG disc burners have firmware support for this and will increase the power when an MDisc DVD is loaded. All DVD drives can read the discs.

“Our Blu-ray product, which is coming out later this year will not require a special firmware change. All of the Blu-ray burners out there should work with it and they’ll be able to read it back just fine,” said Hansen.

The DVD discs are currently available in the U.S. in a 10 pack for $30 and a 20 pack for $58. Pricing for the Blu-ray Discs was not announced.

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