Two key breakthroughs are enabling next-generation semiconductor future https://www.wired.com/2017/06/ibm-silicon-nanosheets-transistors/ “IBM, its Research Alliance partners GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Samsung, and equipment suppliers have developed an industry-first process to build silicon nanosheet transistors that will enable 5 nanometer (nm) chips. The details of the process will be presented at the 2017 Symposia on VLSI Technology and Circuits conference in Kyoto, Japan. In less than two years since developing a 7 nm test node chip with 20 billion transistors, scientists have paved the way for 30 billion switches on a fingernail-sized chip.” http://www.sciencealert.com/physicists-have-found-a-metal-that-conducts-electricity-but-not-heat “a team in the US has shown that this isn’t the case for metallic vanadium dioxide(VO2) –
Nvidia Mezzanine NVLink Connector, Tesla P100 Pictured
In a way, the 2016 GPU Technology Conference represented a ‘coming of age’ for Nvidia, where the company finally established their first proprietary standard that gained immediate industry traction with none other than IBM. The NVLink interconnect, and the Mezzanine connector represent the first custom interfaces (outside of BGA packaging for their silicon) Nvidia designed. Given that IBM’s OpenPOWER conference is taking place at the same time as GTC, we searched for more details about the Mezzanine connector and the NVLink itself, and stumbled on quite an interesting amount of details. First and foremost, ever Pascal (Tesla P100) and Volta (Tesla V100) product that utilizes the NVLink
Nvidia Launches NVLink Standard with IBM
At the 2016 GPU Technology Conference, Nvidia finally unveiled the Pascal GPU architecture. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the GPU aren’t the capabilities the Pascal architecture brings, but rather the first non-Intel driven high-end bandwidth interface since AMD launched HyperTransport in 2001. NVLink standard launched in 2014, when IBM announced its tie up with Nvidia to bring the high-speed interconnect to the market. The goal of NVLink is to remove its future GPU architectures from the dependencies of PCI Express, and achieve maximum bandwidth. If NVLink was replaced with 100% PCIe lanes, the design simply would not be as efficient in terms of lines needed, and would
NVIDIA’s GTC 2016 To Focus on AI and VR
NVIDIA announced on Wednesday that IBM Watson Chief Technology Officer Rob High will deliver a keynote at the GTC 2016 – GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California, next month. High will be joining other keynote speakers attending the conference including Toyota Research CEO Gill Pratt and Nvidia’s own CEO, Jen-Hsun Huang. Back in November 2015, IBM revealed that its Watson cognitive computing platform had begun using Nvidia’s Tesla K80 GPU accelerators. Working with NVIDIA, the company incorporated GPU-accelerated computing as-a-service capabilities into SuperVessel, a global cloud-based OpenPOWER ecosystem resource. Users now can instantly launch Caffe, Torch and Theano deep-learning frameworks from the SuperVessel cloud
IBM: Disruption has Already Happened
Every day, our inbox gets flooded with gazillion startups claiming they’re on a path of market disruption. From another standpoint, numerous funds and banks love to talk about disruption and claim that we will live in a ‘brave new world’ thanks to services they provide. ‘Big Blue’, nickname for an IT giant from Armonk in New York state, decided to claim something different – that the digital disruption already happened. Now, some claims from the slide are quite exaggerated (Netflix?), but we will leave you to bring your own conclusions. The message IBM sends is quite clear and the question is what kind of services IBM offers to
Uncle Sam Shocks Intel With a Ban on Xeon Supercomputers in China
Just as Intel’s (NASDAQ: INTC) CEO Brian Krzanich opened the regular staff meeting before a dramatically reduced IDF2015 conference, in Shenzhen, China – it is a good time to review how government and enterprises don’t see eye to eye when it comes to strategic business. Remember the Tianhe-2 machine at Guangzhou Supercomputer Center, the current World’s number one according to Top 500 Supercomputer list? Unlike some other China supercomputers with their mixed architectures – Tianhe-2 is a fully Intel based machine, the world’s largest assembly of Intel Xeon CPUs and Xeon Phi accelerators. Even after Intel ‘opened the kimono’ and gave a nearly 70% discount on its processors and accelerators, it
IBM and Nvidia to Build 100 Petaflop+ Supercomputers
The Department of Energy has announced that they will be awarding $425 million in grants to build 100+ petaflop supercomputers using IBM and Nvidia hardware
IBM Disappoints in Q3 2014 Earnings, Abandons Promised 2015 Profit Target
IBM has reported less-than-stellar 3Q 2014 earnings, characterized by its CEO as “disappointing.” Will Big Blue’s new focus on the cloud be the silver lining?
IBM, GlobalFoundries to Strike $1.5B Deal
IBM will reportedly pay GlobalFoundries to take over its chipmaking division in exchange for access to intellectual property.
LENOVO將買下IBM的X86伺服器部門
Lenovo Will Be Getting a Deal on IBM’s x86 Server Division
The geopolitics of the US-China relationship are giving Lenovo an upper hand in its deal for IBM’s x86 server division.
GlobalFoundries Applauded for Job Creation
In the five years since GlobalFoundries broke ground in Malta, Saratoga County, New York for their Fab 8, they have exceeded their promise of job creation in the community. Instead of its initial projection of 1,200 new jobs, the company is responsible for approximately 2,400, including construction of the Technology Development Center on its existing 223 acre campus. The direct jobs have a trickle down effect resulting in 3,000 indirect jobs according to a study by Dr. Everett Ehrlich, business economist. GlobalFoundries also made a capital investment of $6.9 billion, plus the building of the new Technology Development Center which increases that number by $2.1
IBM and Apple's Enterprise Partnership a Win for All
Yesterday, Apple and IBM announced that they would be entering into a partnership where IBM would help Apple develop enterprise software for iOS devices and Apple would supply OS and hardware to enable those enterprise applications. This announcement marked the first partnership or relationship between the two companies since Apple stopped using IBM’s Power PC CPUs in their systems in 2006 with the last product announced in 2005. It’s been a long time since the two companies have worked together on anything and now that IBM is mostly a software company (They still have the Power Architecture and Power Chips for HPC) it makes sense
Under Trained Retail Salespeople Get Boost from Red Ant Mobile App
Poorly trained salespeople take heart. If you’ve ever had to evade a customer’s question about your merchandise, help is on the way. Red Ant, who won the IBM Watson Challenge, is creating an app, RetailOS, that provides product information on the spot. A survey showed that out of 1,000 retail workers aged 18–55 plus, 50 percent admitted to lacking product knowledge. Worse yet, 43 percent admitted that they lied to customers at least weekly because they didn’t have a good answer to a question. A few said they hid in the bathroom to avoid an inquisitive customer. Red Ant is stepping in to save the
IBM’s Watson Throws Down a Challenge
IBM challenged developers to write apps for Watson, their intelligent contextual super computer. Submissions arrived from across the globe. More than 40 countries responded with ideas submitted from 400 companies. Only 25 lucky companies were chosen to get access to Watson in order for them to build a prototype of their proposal. IBM then backed the winners helping them take their idea from prototype into an actual application for consumers. The three winners of the contest were GenieMD, obviously related to health, Majestyk Apps, related to childhood education, and RedAnt, related to retail selling. If you want to develop something that will run on Watson,
AMD's Latest Restructuring: Let the Race for CEO Begin?
So, AMD announced that they would be reshuffling the company’s corporate structure which includes some business unite consolidation and executive shuffling. First and foremost, they would be appointing Dr. Lisa Su as the COO from her current position as Senior Vice President and GM of Global Business Units. Anyone that knows how AMD works and what Dr. Lisa Su has been doing already knows that she’s effectively been the COO for quite some time and that the company had actually vacated that position a long time ago. Keep in mind that AMD’s current CEO, Rory Read, was once COO of Lenovo before he came from
IBM Becomes Target of Chinese Bank Security Study
In what appears to be a retaliation to the US official claims of Chinese Government Officials hacking US companies, the Chinese government has quietly advised their banks to review their security policies and hardware implementations, especially those with IBM hardware. While this study of Chinese Banking security risks is not an official or public one, Bloomberg has spoken to four sources that confirm that such a review is under way and is currently focused on IBM, but likely involves others as well. IBM itself has a very interesting history in China as the company claims to have been doing business there for the past 30
80 Tech Companies Cooperating with NSA, Claims Wikileaks
Since we’ve had quite a bit of time between Snowden disclosures of NSA activities, it appears as though Wikileaks has gotten ahold of some secret NSA documents that name names as to whom has been cooperating with them. They claim that they have over 80 different companies in their strategic partnerships. The Wikileaks obtained slide states that these 80 “Major Global Corporations” are supporting BOTH missions. However, the document doesn’t specify exactly what both of those missions are, exactly. However, since this slide is labelled as COMINT that means it specifically pertains to communications between people, which may narrow exactly what those missions might be.
Sony's New 185 TB Tape Drive is Not a Cassette
Many websites have been talking about the return of the cassette tape with the announcement of Sony’s new storage medium innovation. Yes, Sony has managed to innovate a new standard for magnetic tape drive storage, however these tape drives require a fairly large 5.25″ mounted LTO reader which is usually connected via SAS to a server as a backup to the hard drives on the server. Sony has improved upon the LTO-6 Ultrium standard of magnetic tape drive systems and instead has improved the storage capacity per square inch by 74x. Resulting in a final drive density of 185 TB per tape drive based upon
Google Introduces Power8 Motherboard, Intel in Trouble?
Ever since the announcement of the OpenPower Foundation (or consortium) there has been a lot of wondering about whether or not IBM would actually make something of it. After all, IBM’s market share in servers nowadays is fairly low compared to Intel’s and Intel has pretty much dominated the server market for the past 10 years. So, many saw IBM’s move to create the OpenPower Foundation as a desperate move to make something of their new Power8 processor technology and to broaden their market share at any cost. However, companies have been slowly joining IBM’s OpenPower Foundation and their movement has gotten quite some important companies
