Systems & Enterprise

23 June 2008 - We've seen PC Manufacturers roll out mini-desktop systems that's well less than 6 liters in volume since the dawn of the Intel Core 2 Duo. Asus made their entry into the market a few months back with the Nova PC, and now, we'e got their latest Essentio PC, touted as the smallest desktop computer with discrete graphics built in. We'll also see one of the most expensive Blu-Ray burner in the Essentio too....

10 October 2007 - micronDR (S) Pte Ltd (www.microndr.com.sg), the data recovery specialist, today announces that until November 30, 2007, all customers with mechanically damaged drives will get a free portable hard disk drive to store their recovered data. This is an industry first as most disaster recovery vendors use DVDs to store recovered data. The new drive also comes with six months of free data recovery service.

5 September 2007 - While we are lurking around Games Convention Asia one day before it opens, we have spotted a 4-way Tigerton S7000FC4UR server at Anewtech booth. This server is powered by Intel Xeon X7350 quad core "Tigerton" processor clocked at 2.93GHz/1066FSB with 8MB L2 cache topping at 130W TDP. This processor is the highest end of the Xeon 7300 series and is expected to be priced at US$2301. More on Xeon 7300 series.

15 August 2007 - micronDR, the data recovery specialist, today announces the appointment of leading IT distributor Powermatic Distribution Pte Ltd as a business partner. Under the agreement, Powermatic Distribution will serve as a collection centre for data recovery requests while micronDR will provide the data recovery services. This partnership will significantly reduce the cost of data recovery to customers of the Prestigio line of portable storage devices distributed by Powermatic Distribution.

25 May 2007 - Lenovo and the NUS today announced the launch of ThinkLab – a new PC lab at the National University of Singapore’s Computer Centre. Equipped with more than 100 Lenovo ThinkCentre A60 desktops powered by AMD processors, the lab is sponsored by Lenovo in partnership with AMD Far East Ltd and Jardine OneSolutions (2001) Pte Ltd. The desktops at the ThinkLab will feature Lenovo’s innovative ThinkVantage Technologies – a suite of award-winning software tools aimed at increasing user uptime with easier maintenance and self-help features. The ThinkLab will be available for use by all NUS students and staff. Its aim: to enhance daily work, productivity and their learning experience.

24 April 2007 - ASUS will roll out five types of low-priced PCs embedded with Intel`s Classmate platform in second half this year, posing heat to Quanta Computer in the competition in low-priced PC market. The five computer types ASUS will introduce are priced at US$199, US$249, US$299, US$399 and US$549 each. ASUS will contract AU Optronics to supply seven-inch LCD display screens for the computers. Industry watchers expect competition in low-priced PC market to heat up in the second half this year after the two heavyweight PC makers begin shipping the products.

17 March 2007 - Tyan recently announced a new addition to their TyanPSC using AMD Opteron processors on top of the current Xeon powered TyanPSC. They have two live running demo on gridMathmatica 2.1 for both Intel and AMD platforms. T-540 DX is powered by 10 Opteron 2218HE processors and has a total of 20GB DDR2 memories. There is a Quadro FX1500 graphics card at the head node. T-650 QX, on the other hand is powered by 10 Xeon "Woodcrest" 5150 processors and has a total of 6GB DDR2 memories.

7 February 2007 - Sun has finished the design of "Victoria Falls," a Niagara 2 processor variation for servers with two of the multicore chips, and plans to begin shipping the machines in the first half of 2008. Sun showed a 1.75-inch-thick prototype server using the chips. Compared with older-generation UltraSparc IIIi-servers, the first-generation Niagara systems have 14 times the performance. The single-chip Niagara 2 systems will have 35 times the performance, and the Victoria Falls systems will have 65 times the performance. Niagara 2 can execute eight threads per core, for 64 threads total per chip. That means the Victoria Falls systems can execute 128 threads per 1.75-inch system or more than 5,000 threads in a rack of servers.

30 January 2008 - TYAN today announced the release of its versatile flexBLADE™ technical workgroup computing platform based on AMD Opteron™ processors. Capable of a wide range of configurations, the versatile flexBLADE™ is comprised of a single chassis form factor with up to 5 dual socket blades, configurable as a cluster, SMP, hybrid-combination or small server farm. Supporting the full range Next Generation AMD Opteron processors, the platform can scale from a cool and quiet, low power 1500 watt departmental solution, up to a robustly configured 3000 watt compute powerhouse. flexBLADE™ will be available through strategic OEM and System Integrator partners in the coming months.

6 September 2007 - Dell expects AMD to introduce its quad-core chip, code-named Barcelona, next week and, comparing it with Intel's Clovertown quad-core processor, the company would like to offer customers a choice of either product. "If you look at floating point instructions, Barcelona is about 30 percent faster than Clovertown. However, if you look at integer instructions, Clovertown is about 30 percent faster than Barcelona," Dell said.

4 September 2007 - New Trial Service to Feature Asia’s First NFC Stored Value Purse with Over-The-Air Capabilities Singapore, 04 September 2007 – Singapore’s leading electronic payments provider, NETS, has teamed up with Asia’s leading communications provider, Singapore Telecommunications Ltd. (SingTel), to announce the republic’s first Near Field Communication (NFC) trials, which includes a stored value wallet with Over-The-Air (OTA) capabilities. This covers wireless downloads and top-ups of stored value to NFC phones, making the trial a first in Asia.

16 July 2007 - Intel is moving to IT usage based segmentation for future Nehalem and Tukwila platforms in H2 2008. The current Itanium segment will be renamed as Mission Critical (MC), Enterprise MP to be known as Expandable (EX), Volume DP to be known as Efficient Performance (EP) and lastly Entry UP to be called Entry (EN). For MC segment, Itanium 2 platform (Itanium 2 9000 series + E8870 chipset) will be succeeded by Boxboro MC platform made up of Tukwila MC and Boxboro MC chipset. For EX segment, Caneland Platform (Xeon 7000 series + 7300 chipset) will be succeeded by 45nm Dunnington Nehalem based processor. For EP 2-socket segment, Bensley platform (Xeon 5000 series + 5000P Blackford chipset) will be succeeded by Tylersburg EP Platform made up of Nehalem EP and Tylersburg-36D chipset and for EP single socket segment, Garlow platform (Xeon 3000 series + 3210 chipset) will be succeeded by Tylersburg EP Platform made up of Nehalem EP and Tylersburg-36S chipset. For EN segment, Cranberry Lake Platform (Xeon 5000 series + 5100 chipset) will be succeeded by Tylersburg-EN Platform made up of Nehalem EP and Tylersburg-24D chipset. All the chipsets will be featuring QuickPath technology, the next generation system interconnect used on Nehalem and Tukwila -based platforms which is commonly known as CSI.

23 May 2007 - SiS today pleasingly announced the cooperation with DELL to develop the latest low-cost PC EC280 by integrating the SiSM661GX chipset. The size of DELL EC280 is very mini-- only as one-eighth size as the regular ATX chassis, which is about 4.5 liter. By integrating the SiSM661GX chipset as a core of its Mini-iTX motherboard, DELL EC280 has all the basic PC functions. The extra power-saving feature of SiSM661GX pairing with the Intel Celeron M 205 FSB400MHz processors and DDR 512/256 memory enable make the DELL EC280 only consumes 65watts per minute.

18 March 2007 - We saw a Blu-Ray duplicator machine over at Rimage booth for those high-definition video producers and software developers. It is called Producer III 8100N, has an embedded PC inside with software. It contains four Blu-ray recorders at 4x speed and support up to 300 Blu-Ray discs in the feeding bin. Images can even be printed onto the Blu-Ray discs too since there is an internal printer from Everest or Prism. It will be available in May 2007.

7 March 2007 - Beginning in July, a startup plans to ship a server using optical interconnects to improve the overall system performance. The Lightfleet "Beacon" server will connect multiple Intel Xeon processors using an array of mirrors, that will beam data using light, a system that Lightfleet calls "Corowave." The company demonstrated a 16-node server in 2006 as a proof of concept. In its initial implementation, Beacon will have 32 simultaneous transmitters operating at 2.5 Gbit/second each. As you add nodes to a Corowave technology-based system, system latency remains flat while overall system bandwidth increases linearly.

5 February 2007 - Tyan announce their first non-x86 based platforms, the S6741 and S6791, which utilizes Raza Microelectronics, Inc.®, (RMI®) XLR 700 and XLR 500 series of processors, respectively. These platforms represent a new generation of high performance, cost effective network security appliance platforms. The innovative RMI XLR Processor® architecture supports up to eight MIPS64®-compatible cores for a total of 32 threads or virtual CPUs (vCPUs™). Using multiple threads, the S6741 and S6791 platforms manage tasks by processing additional network traffic on available threads should a thread be waiting for a data or a packet. In addition to the platforms, Tyan also provides a variety of copper and optical interfaces for the platforms.