HiWEB-Interactive Show Log – 016– 061908
-Opening Comments
“Welcome to HiWEB-Interactive, bringing you information from the edge of technology”
*This is a summary
of recent news and technology highlights.
HiWEB-Interactive – Show #16 – From June 19th 2008
Airing weekly Thursdays at 8p (PST) – And available on LIVE.HIWEB.NET as well as archived
* Comcast called and
said my 464GB is too much data and they will have to terminate my service if it
continues. So they threatened to terminate my service if it continues, BS: 250k
24x7 affects the quality of their network, they better fix their network then
rather than unjustifiably trash there good customers and their reputation.
*HiWEB Has is
hosting a Giveaway on June 26th, sign up to WIN at HiWEB.NET
-Hot NewsTopics this week
(*Prepped 24 Hours Prior)
1 -Linkedin
Gets $53 based on $1B Valuation
2 -Verizon
invites all of its customers to 50mbps FiOS party
4 -Intel
defends USB 3.0 dev process in wake of AMD, NVIDIA ire
6 -2008
could be the 10-million-Mac year
*Youtube viewers make sure to see HiWEB.NET for the live streaming, also this entire show and other past shows.
<<<CUT FOR YOUTUBE POSTS>>> IE: Stop Recording/Start Recording
-Review of Hot Topics
(*Elaborate on Hot Topics)
*SEE PRINTED
NOTES…..
1 -Linkedin
Gets $53 based on $1B Valuation -
LinkedInCorp., a business-networking Web site, has received a $53 million
infusion from blue-chip venture capitalists that values the company at $1
billion.The investment comes as rival FacebookInc., a site that originally
targeted college students, has been attracting older users, leading to
speculation that Facebook -- like LinkedIn -- could become a destination for
professionals hoping to make new contacts, recruit employees or find experts in
certain fields. LinkedIn was the pioneer in that concept. The Mountain View,
Calif., company has more than 23 million users and added 250 new employees in
the last 16 months. It drew more than 7.5 million unique visitors world-wide to
its site in April, up 7.6% from March, according to the most recent figures from
comScore Inc.But Facebook has a much larger audience. Its unique visitors rose
6.6% to 116 million during the same period. The Palo Alto, Calif., company
completed a funding round last year that valued the company at $15 billion.
LinkedIn lately seems to be emulating Facebook in some ways. It added a
"status-update" feature to its site, similar to one on Facebook, that lets
people tell their contacts where they are or what they are doing at any time.
LinkedIn is also in the process of opening its site to outside software
developers, something Facebook did to great fanfare last year.
LinkedIn Chief Executive Dan Nye, however, said in an interview that LinkedIn
has been working on the software-developer platform "for years," and that his
company has a much-richer, more-professional user base than Facebook.
"If you're not on LinkedIn, you're not on a professional network," he said.
LinkedIn's average user is 41 years old and has a household income of $109,000,
according to Mr. Nye.
Facebook said it doesn't release specific demographic information and declined
to comment. But the company's Web site says more than half of Facebook's users
are outside college, and users aged 25 and above represent its fastest-growing
demographic group.
Mr. Nye says LinkedIn has long had other types of site features now popular on
social-networking sites, such as online alerts when people add new contacts or
update their online profiles. Still, LinkedIn remains a more staid,
business-oriented site, where people post detailed work resumes and seek
recommendations about jobs; Facebook is awash in games, fan clubs and quick
chat. "There are a lot of people who have both a Facebook and a LinkedIn
account," said investor Jeffrey Glass, of Bain Capital LLC's Bain Capital
Ventures, which led the latest financing round for LinkedIn. Other investors
included Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners. But
while LinkedIn "is all about productivity," other social networks, like Facebook,
are about fun, Mr. Glass said. "So I think there's a lot of opportunity for
these worlds to coexist."LinkedIn is profitable, Mr. Nye said, and is making
money in several different ways. LinkedIn sells online ads; offers subscriptions
to people who want access to more features on the site; charges for online job
postings; and sells a recruiting product to big companies. The company will use
the additional $53 million to pay for its expansion plans, which include moving
into Europe and possibly making acquisitions, which Mr. Nye declined to
detail.LinkedIn was the subject of acquisition rumors this past fall. Reid
Hoffman, a company co-founder, told the Sydney Morning Herald in January that
LinkedIn had been talking to several suitors, but he declined to name them. Now,
"our path is to build a strong, independent company," Mr. Nye said.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121375055263382925.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
<Change Slide>
2 -Verizon
invites all of its customers to 50mbps FiOS party -The
NXTcomm conference is
happening this week
in Las Vegas, and Verizon CEO has taken the opportunity to throw down the speed
gauntlet. Its FIOS service, which provides the highest download rates available
in the US, will see increased levels of service throughout the 16 states in
which it is offered. The changes will see the maximum speed, 50Mbps down/20Mbps
up, offered throughout Verizon's network, and the speed of the lower tier
services upped as well. With its cable competitors testing usage caps and
connection throttling, the move appears to be Verizon's attempt to kick them
when they're down. FIOS was already available at 50/20Mbps speeds, but only in
some areas. The changes will see it available everywhere Verizon offers FIOS.
Those lucky enough to reside in New York or Virginia and willing to sign up for
a full year will wind up spending $89.95 a month; those elsewhere will be hit
with a $139.95 monthly tab. A 20/20Mbps service will be rolled out at the same
time; this will replace the prior offerings of 30/15Mbps and 15/15Mbps. At the
bottom end, the 5/2Mbps will be gone, replaced with a 10/2Mbps tier. A 20/5Mbps
offering will round out the service. The offer only applies to new customers,
but the remainder should be able to upgrade the next time their contract rolls
around. The new offerings extend Verizon's lead over competing broadband
providers. Comcast is the only one to offer anything matching the speed of the
high end service (and so far only in a couple of its markets), but FIOS offers
superior upload speeds, and edges out Comcast at the low end. Nobody else is
anywhere close. Verizon is also free of the baggage associated with some of the
cable services, such as
charges for high use
and
bandwidth throttling.
Verizon has its own problems—I've found its customer service to be about as
helpful as a
salmonella-laced tomato—but
its FIOS
customers appear to be happy
with the service. The new offerings appear designed to make the service that
much more tempting, which should allow Verizon to permanently wire more houses
into their TV/phone/Internet service.
Despite the poor service history I've had with Verizon, I'd be sorely tempted if
it were ever offered in this neighborhood.
<Change Slide>
3 -Get
to know Skype 4.0 beta
-
It's been a while since a major
Skype
release, and on Wednesday, the eBay-owned VoIP communication service will issue
the first of several planned version 4.0 beta builds for Windows that are
anticipated to drop over the next few months. The biggest changes to come with
Skype 4.0 beta (download)
are visual and organizational. For the first time, the program contains complete
prompts for running sound and Webcam checks within the program set-up. After two
failed tests buffered by common troubleshooting suggestions, Skype will
recommend hardware--like headsets and a Webcam--to reverse incompatibility
errors. Redesigned interface
Skype
4.0 beta's redesigned interface may also get you blinking. Compared with its
stable cousin,
the new Skype beta's GUI has overflowed its banks, replacing tabs in the
once-narrow interface with a second pane tacked on to the right. Four or five
functions are flattened into this single window in an effort to make
communications other than the voice chat staple easier to find and use. To wit,
there's an IM bar deposited at the bottom of the communications pane and large
buttons that prompt voice and video calls. Video calls are large by default,
filling the program's communication activity pane.
Skype Out,
the service offering competitive international rates for Skype users calling
contacts' landlines instead of their computers, has also been chiseled out, by a
large call-to-action button on the navigation bar. The button just below it
opens a directory for finding people, businesses, and chat rooms. The toggle bar
tucked away at the top switches from saved chat conversations to the contacts
view, and rounds out the new additions.
Still more to come
Though there may be a placeholder for it, not every
function in this first beta is live. The shop for Skype-approved hardware, while
available from Skype.com, will not be activated in this iteration, nor will be
the service on real-time advice, called Skype Prime. Automatic redial, call
transferring, video presentations, and integration with Outlook contacts are
also scheduled for roll-out in later builds.The spread-out interface of Skype
4.0 beta for Windows will definitely take some getting used to, especially as it
abandons the client's traditionally nimble, IM-styled build. However, it does
succeed in calling out a wider array of communication services. This may give
the Luxembourg-headquartered company a chance to deemphasize VoIP as its core
competency and mark out new territory in Internet video, collaboration tools,
and entertainment services. As ambitious as Skype's new look and capabilities
are, Mike Bartlett, the program's Windows product manager, confessed during our
briefing that this design and the newly introduced features will be closely
monitored for user backlash. It's likely that strong feedback from Skype's 309
million registered users will leave an impression on Skype 4.0 beta continues to
take shape in the upcoming months.
http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9971528-1.html
<Change Slide>
4 -
Intel defends USB 3.0 dev process in wake of AMD, NVIDIA –
There's a new public tussle brewing between AMD and Intel, though in this case,
it probably won't be settled in a courtroom. AMD and NVIDIA are both angry with
the chip giant for allegedly withholding information on the
USB 3.0
open host controller. Intel, for its part, insists that it has done nothing
wrong and is following the exact same set of procedures that were used during
the development of USB 2.0. It has been erroneously reported in some
publications that AMD and NVIDIA are angry about unreleased information on the
USB 3.0
specification
itself (which promises speeds of up to 4.7Gbps), but this does not appear to be
the case. The flash point on this issue is over access to all information
concerning the open host controller, not the USB 3.0 specification itself. Intel
employee and blogger Nick Knupffer has
written
a post aimed at clearing up the issue (or at least giving the company's
perspective). According to him, it's the USB 3.0 Promoter Group, not Intel, that
controls development of the nascent standard. Intel is a huge presence in any
organization it deigns to participate in, but it's scarcely the only big dog at
the table—Microsoft, HP, AMD, and NVIDIA are all members as well.
As for the open host controller, Intel plans to make the device's specification
fully available to everyone, at no charge, as soon as it's complete. Knupffer
writes: "This isn’t only because we are just nice guys, but it is also because
Intel has set the bar for technology leadership, and industry stewardship. It is
Intel’s stewardship that has led to USB being the most successful interface in
the history of computing. + We at Intel love it when available processor
performance is used to the max." (emphasis mine) As an aside, I can't help
wondering if that last sentence means we shouldn't expect any miracles when it
comes to USB 3.0's CPU usage under load.
Intel's stance here makes a certain amount of logical sense, but it also may be
a bit disingenuous and contradictory. First, Knupffer states that the USB 3.0
Promoter Group, not Intel, is in charge of USB 3.0 development. He then
discusses Intel's "parallel but separate" development of a USB 3.0 open host
controller specification at a cost of "gazillions of dollars and bazillions of
engineering man-hours" that the company will give away for free, and that other
chipset manufacturers will be allowed to use as a blueprint for building their
own USB 3.0 controllers.
Santa Clara's willingness to do the heavy lifting when it comes to designing the
open host controller does save all of the other chipset manufacturers
both time and money, but there's a distinct catch. Intel is the largest
motherboard vendor and chipset manufacturer in the world, and its position as
such gives it a massive amount of leverage when it comes to any sort of open
standard implementation. A USB 3.0 open host controller is whatever Intel says
it is, and none of the other chipset manufacturers (or even all of them
together) have enough strength to change that.
Knupffer justifies Intel's decision to keep the host controller's draft
specifications under wraps by stating "One danger, however, of distributing an
unfinished spec is the risk of incompatible hardware down the line, leading to a
right mess. As an Intel specification Intel has the responsibility to ensure
that specifications we deliver to the industry are fully developed and mature
enough for others to use." Again, this is true, so far as it goes, but it's also
a decision that favors Intel. By holding on to the specification data until its
own design process is complete, the company steals a march on other vendors, and
could potentially deliver USB 3.0-equipped motherboards to market before its
competitors. This is where the AMD/NVIDIA "six-to-nine-month head start"
complaint originates.
There are rumors floating about that AMD and NVIDIA are unhappy enough over the
situation that they may attempt to design their own controller. Hopefully, this
is nothing more than rumor. Based on what we've seen thus far, there is a chance
that Intel is playing the standards group a bit, and yes, such maneuvering might
allow them to bring USB 3.0 motherboards and chipsets to market before the
competition. AMD and NVIDIA understandably don't want to lose face on such a
useful marketing bullet point (even if it's practically worthless), but
attempting to design a separate controller may not be a good idea.
The issue here is incompatibility. Any controller that AMD or NVIDIA designs
would have to be absolutely, 100 percent compatible with Intel's, right down to
the very last degree. If it isn't, Intel wins by default, and consumers
emphatically lose. At that point, the AMD/NVIDIA alliance would be forced to
either shelve their own design, repair it, or actually release it into the
market and hope consumers don't notice. The expected dearth of USB 3.0 devices
at standard launch might make this last option more attractive than it should
be—by the time USB 3.0 devices are widespread, such early chipsets would be
phased out—but all three of these options represent a waste of time, money, and
consumer goodwill.
Ultimately, waiting for Intel's design may be the best decision. If AMD and
NVIDIA are right, Intel will have USB 3.0 chipsets on the market first, but the
value of that lead is questionable, given how few, if any, USB 3.0 devices will
be available. Within six months (nine months at the outside), USB 3.0 will be
ubiquitous across high-end chipsets from all vendors, and while the marketing
bullet may cost AMD or NVIDIA some short-term sales, there will be no long-term
impact. Building, or worse, releasing an incompatible part, meanwhile, could
damage consumer confidence in AMD or NVIDIA chipsets. Unless the engineers in
charge of the development effort can absolutely, positively, guarantee full
compatibility with whatever controller Intel releases, the risk is not worth the
reward.
<Change Slide>
5 -Last.fm
hoping to become one-stop shop for music and videos–
Last.fm and Universal Music Group have announced today a partnership that will
allow Last.fm users to view "thousands of full-length music videos" from UMG's
catalog.
The videos—which
will include those from popular artists like Jay-Z, The Killers, Amy Winehouse,
and Kanye West—will be available on-demand and for free, and UMG says that
artists will get a payout every time a video is streamed. The two companies
claim that the partnership provides a "massive boost" to Last.fm's music video
collection and that Last.fm will be able to provide recommendations to users
watching certain videos based on their musical tastes (also known as "scrobbling").
Like other videos on Last.fm, users can leave comments on each video and watch
them in fullscreen mode, but they won't be able to embed them on their personal
blogs like they can with YouTube videos. Although UMG and Last.fm say that the
streaming videos will be ad-supported, they aren't being treated in the
same way as Last.fm's streaming music.
The videos don't have any ads before, during, or after them (which is quite
nice), and it appears as if you can watch them as many times as you want without
being prompted to pay for anything. The companies say that the share of revenue
that artists get will come from ads shown next to the video content, but for
now, it doesn't appear as if those ads actually exist yet. Still, it's clear
that Last.fm is quite proud of the deal, as it plans to showcase UMG's videos
exclusively on the site for the first month. "This is a hugely empowering
partnership that really takes Last.fm to the next level," Last.fm cofounder
Martin Stiksel said in a statement. "We want to offer a video library that
rivals our unparalleled music catalogue, as we work towards Last.fm becoming the
only place you need to go to for all music-related content, and this deal marks
the first step towards that goal." Indeed, it is only the first step, as there
are a handful of other sites where users can watch music videos.
YouTube
is still the de facto standard for most of the Internet-using public
looking to watch music videos for free, and YouTube has even stated that it
wants to eventually host "every
music video ever created."
MySpace Music
is also
hopping on the bandwagon,
not only with music downloads but also with streaming videos from the plethora
of artists that showcase their music on the site. And, of course, there's always
Yahoo Music's video selection,
as well as
MSN Music's videos.
If the mediocre quality of videos on other sites aren't enough, users can head
on over to
PluggedIn,
launched this April, that
offers high-definition videos
directly from Universal, EMI, Sony BMG, and a handful of videos from Warner
Music. So what, exactly, is the benefit of watching music videos on Last.fm
instead? For one, it makes Last.fm a more complete destination for users'
general music needs, as it now offers both music and video streaming for free
(in addition to Last.fm's famed scrobbling feature, of course). If you're
already a Last.fm fan, there's no longer a reason to go to yet another site in
order to watch the latest Kanye video—you can watch it right there! However,
attracting users of other sites (ones that aren'tLast.fm users already)
may prove to be a challenge because of the level of competition elsewhere on the
'Net.
<Change Slide>
6 -
2008 could be the 10-million-Mac year -
Coming after
news
of Apple ranking seventh in laptop sales worldwide, a blurb in a
Barron's blog
may make the day for Apple fans and leave doomsayers gnashing their well-worn
teeth. As Lehman analyst Tim Luke points out in a note today, new data from
market research firm NPD shows Mac unit sales grew 50% on a year-over-year basis
in May, ahead of the 37% Q2 growth Lehman had expected. The impact of this
cannot be overstated—but I'll try.
Last quarter,
Apple sold 2.289 million Macs, an approximately 50 percent increase over the
same period in 2007, or double the number of Mas sold for the same quarter in
2006. If the May numbers from NPD are indicative of a larger trend, Apple could
sell more than 2.6 million Macs during the current quarter. This would easily
surpass the previous record, 2.319 million Macs sold during the holiday quarter
of 2007. More astonishingly, it could put Apple on track for selling 10 million
Macs in the calendar year of 2008.If you think that's crazy or are just
embittered by Apple's success, consider another analyst's report.
PC Retail
has the words of Needham & Company analyst Charles Wolf, who speculates on the
iPhone halo effect. Our past
surveys indicated that a Windows user owning an iPod was more than twice as
likely to purchase a Mac as a Windows user who did not own an iPod. If anything,
the iPhone halo effect should be far more powerful than the iPod halo effect.
At a price of $199 and availability in more than 70 countries, there is
little doubt the 3G iPhone will meet Apple's goal of selling 10 million units in
2008. One can only imagine what a Keynote it would be at Macworld 2009 if Steve
Jobs were to announce 10 million Macs sold as well.
Analyst: 14 million iPhones sold in 2008, 24 million in 2009
http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/06/18/2008-could-be-the-10-million-mac-year
<Change Slide>
Firefox 3.0 – Total Downloads
http://downloadcounter.sj.mozilla.com/
- Viewer Questions
(*Troubleshooting, New Tech,
Etc.)
How can I verify my Windows computer is free of any Root Kit type software?
I recommend a free product from SysInternals acquired by Microsoft called ‘RootkitRevealer
v1.71’ which is one part on many SysInternals Utilities.
What is a Rootkit?
The term rootkit is used to describe the mechanisms and techniques whereby
malware, including viruses, spyware, and trojans, attempt to hide their presence
from spyware blockers, antivirus, and system management utilities. There are
several rootkit classifications depending on whether the malware survives reboot
and whether it executes in user mode or kernel mode.
Introduction
RootkitRevealer is an advanced rootkit detection utility. It runs on Windows NT
4 and higher and its output lists Registry and file system API discrepancies
that may indicate the presence of a user-mode or kernel-mode rootkit.
RootkitRevealer successfully detects all persistent rootkits published at
www.rootkit.com,
including AFX, Vanquish and HackerDefender (note: RootkitRevealer is not
intended to detect rootkits like Fu that don't attempt to hide their files or
registry keys). If you use it to identify the presence of a rootkit please let
us know!
The reason that there is no longer a command-line version is that malware
authors have started targettingRootkitRevealer's scan by using its executable
name. We've therefore updated RootkitRevealer to execute its scan from a
randomly named copy of itself that runs as a Windows service. This type of
execution is not conducive to a command-line interface. Note that you can use
command-line options to execute an automatic scan with results logged to a file,
which is the equivalent of the command-line version's behavior.
Persistent Rootkits, Memory-Based Rootkits,
User-mode Rootkits and/or Kernel-mode Rootkits
Get here,
http://www.sysinternals.com
or
http://live.sysinternals.com
http://download.sysinternals.com/Files/RootkitRevealer.zip
Whether you’re an IT Pro or a developer, you’ll find Sysinternals utilities to
help you manage, troubleshoot and diagnose your Windows systems and
applications.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897445.aspx
Another from chat http://www.f-secure.com/blacklight/
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-New Technology to keep an
Eye On
(Auto
Tech, Alt. Fuel, Environment, Hacking, High Tech, etc…)
1 -
Scientists find bugs that eat waste and excrete petrol -
“Ten years ago I could never have imagined I’d be doing this,” says Greg Pal,
33, a former software executive, as he squints into the late afternoon
Californian sun. “I mean, this is essentially agriculture, right? But the people
I talk to – especially the ones coming out of business school – this is the one
hot area everyone wants to get into.”
He means bugs. To be more precise: the genetic alteration of bugs – very, very
small ones – so that when they feed on agricultural waste such as woodchips or
wheat straw, they do something extraordinary. They excrete crude oil.
Unbelievably, this is not science fiction. Mr Pal holds up a small beaker of bug
excretion that could, theoretically, be poured into the tank of the giant Lexus
SUV next to us. Not that Mr Pal is willing to risk it just yet. He gives it a
month before the first vehicle is filled up on what he calls “renewable
petroleum”. After that, he grins, “it’s a brave new world”.
Mr Pal is a senior director of LS9, one of several companies in or near Silicon
Valley that have spurned traditional high-tech activities such as software and
networking and embarked instead on an extraordinary race to make $140-a-barrel
oil (£70) from Saudi Arabia obsolete. “All of us here – everyone in this company
and in this industry, are aware of the urgency,” Mr Pal says
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article4133668.ece
<Change Slide>
2 -
Construction to Start on Rotating Wind-Power Tower
-
Remember way back last May when we talked about the
twirling tower
that seemed, well, off the wall? Surprise, surprise, it is set to start
construction in Dubai this month.
Each of the 59 floors of the tower will be able to rotate independently of each
other, and in between them will be wind turbines to generate all the power
needed to run the tower, plus, apparently, several others. The tower is expected
to generate 10 times the power it needs through solar panels on the roof and 48
wind turbines, each of which are expected to generate
as much as 0.3 megawatts of electricity,
creating an estimated 1,200,000 kilowatt hours of energy annually. These are
some seriously big numbers…and we’ll see how they pan out.
As for the construction, the floors will be made of 12 individual units all
created in a factory and spit out fully complete, with plumbing, electrical, air
conditioning and everything else in place. The floors will then be fitted to a
concrete tower core According to architect David Fisher, designer of the
building, this construction will make it highly earthquake resistant, as well as
just plain neat to watch as folks push the button that makes their floor spin.
http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1757/66/
<Change Slide>
3-
Sony intros flash-based HD camcorder -
As it inevitably had to do, Sony today announced the flash-memory version of its
HDR-SR11
hard-disk-based HD camcorder, replacing the older
CX7.
A tad smaller than the CX7 by one or two tenths of an inch in every dimension,
it uses the same 12x zoom lens and 5.6-megapixel ClearVid CMOS sensor that
drives the SR11
(and its line mates, the SR10 and SR12). Since it's smaller than the SR models,
it uses the same 2.7-inch LCD as its predecessor.Going head-to-head with Canon's
HF10,
the HF10 still looks like a slightly better deal based on specs alone.
It's very similar--both are SD-based
models which produce 1920x1080 AVCHD video from approximately 1/3-inch sensors,
though the HF10's is lower 3.3-megapixel resolution, and sport 12x zoom lenses.
But for the same $900 Sony plans to charge for the CX12, Canon includes 16GB
built-in memory for the HF10 while Sony plans to bundle a smaller 4GB Memory
Stick Duo Pro Mark2. The actual street price may be cheaper, of course.According
to Sony, the CX12 will be able to record 25 minutes of highest-quality HD video
(16 megabits per second) on the 4GB card.
Unfortunately, it will still come with the inadequate (and horribly named)
Picture Motion Browser software rather than a real video-editing application,
like Sony's own Vegas Video Movie Studio. You can have a party
trying to find your own real editing application for the AVCHD files.Though
it doesn't sound like there's much new in its video capabilities, Sony has added
its Smile Shutter technology, which pauses shooting until it detects the
appropriate rictus, and child- and adult-prioritization from its Cyber-shot
models, to the camcorder's still photo features.Sony expects to start preorders
on June 20 and to ship the camcorder in the beginning of August for $900.
http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9971840-1.html
<Change Slide>
4 –IBM,
Los Alamos smash petaflop barrier, triple supercomputer speed record
-
IBM
andLos
Alamos National Laboratory
have built the world's first petaflop machine, a supercomputer named Roadrunner
designed to ensure the safety and reliability of the nation's nuclear weapons
stockpile, IBM said Monday. A petaflop is equal to one thousand trillion
calculations per second, and was a highly sought-after goal in the world of
supercomputing. Scheduled for installation at Los Alamos in August, IBM says
Roadrunner represents a breakthrough in hybrid computing, combining
AMD microprocessors
found in standard laptops and servers with the IBM Cell Broadband Engine chips
that power Sony's
PS3
gaming console.Roadrunner "will produce the largest supercomputer ever at 1.5
petaflops, three times faster than the current largest system," IBM chief
engineer Donald Grice says in a video on Big Blue's Web site. "It's a hybrid
architecture that will allow science at a scale that's never been allowed
before."The world's current fastest system, the IBM
Blue Gene computer
at Lawrence Livermore National Lab, will be left in the dust by Roadrunner.
After being loaded onto 21 tractor trailer trucks and shipped from New York to
Los Alamos in New Mexico, Roadrunner will perform at speeds equivalent to
100,000 laptops combined. If every person in the world was armed with a handheld
calculator and performed one calculation per second, it would take us 46 years
to do everything Roadrunner can do in one day, according to IBM."For the first
time, Roadrunner will be large enough to run some multi-scale science
simulations," says John Morrison, leader of Los Alamos's high performance
computing division. "These have been talked about for a number of years in the
high-performance computing industry, but with Roadrunner we will have a machine
that will be able to do this."Roadrunner's
main function
is to run "complex nuclear weapons calculations" that let scientists judge the
safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile without doing live
tests, IBM says. Such a computer could also be used by the pharmaceutical
industry to simulate the effect of drugs on the human body, or by Wall Street to
simulate the impact of events on the stock market.
Roadrunner cost about $100 million and combines 6,948 dual-core AMD Opteron
chips and 12,960 Cell engines, all housed in IBM blade servers. (Compare
blade server products.)
Eighty terabytes of memory are kept in 288 "refrigerator-sized" racks occupying
6,000 square feet.Roadrunner weights 500,000 pounds, and has 10,000 Infiniband
and Gigabit Ethernet connections requiring 57 miles of fiber optic cable.IBM
built 3,456 "tri-blades," each consisting of two IBM QS22 blade servers using
Cell engines and one LS21 blade server based on AMD chips.
"Standard processing (e.g., file system I/O) is handled by the Opteron
processors [while] mathematically and CPU-intensive elements are directed to the
Cell processors," IBM states in a press release. "Each tri-blade unit can run at
400 billion operations per second."
Roadrunner uses open source
Linux
software from
Red Hat
and is more efficient than most supercomputers, delivering 376 million
calculations per watt, according to IBM. That should be enough to place
Roadrunner among the most energy-efficient systems on the Green 500 list coming
out later this month, IBM says.
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/060908-ibm-roadrunner-supercomputer.html?nwwpkg=slideshows
<Change Slide>
-Weekly Picture
From National Geographic
The cloud-scraping plateau of the Andes is an otherworldly realm where flamingos lift off from a lagoon warmed by hot springs and colored carnelian by algae.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/07/bolivias-new-order/steinmetz-photography
-Tech Tip / Demo
PicLens for quicker more effective image browsing…
Searching for photos and pictures of friends, events and people can be fun. But
wouldn't it be cool if you could scan through them in a virtual 3D space?
3D Wall -Transform
your browser into a full-screen, 3D experience for online photos and videos.*
3D Video Search -
Fly through 1000s of YouTube videos faster than ever you've ever imagined
possible. *
Works with Google Images, Flickr, Yahoo, Facebook, MySpace, Photobucket and many
more.
Lets you look through thumbnail pictures very quickly
*Note you can also enable
your WebSites -
You can combine the power of PicLens with Media RSS technology to add immersive
slideshows to your own site.
Website visitors with PicLens installed on their browsers will enjoy your site
in full flair, including the 3D Wall, full-screen mode, and more. For visitors
who don't have PicLens installed, you have to the option to activate your
website for
PicLensLite,
a filmstrip-style presentation that mimics the full-screen mode of PicLens.
http://piclens.com/lite/webmasterguide.php
http://piclens.com/lite/wordpress.php
- WordPress Plug-In
Works in Firefox, Safari and IE
http://piclens.com
- Get version 1.7 today!
-General Talk/Discussions
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2- Future segments will include music production segments, hardware reviews and demos
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-Closing Comments
This was HiWEB-Interactive – Show #16
Remember tune in anytime at live.hiweb.net and Thursdays at 8p (PST) for the HiWEB-Interactive Tech Show
“Thank You for participating in HiWEB-Interactive, we look forward to bringing you more information from the edge of technology” Until next time have Fun with your technology – GottaJiboo!