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  • Atom smasher claims Hadoop cloud migration victory • The Register

    Image representing SeaMicro as depicted in Cru...
    Image via CrunchBase

    SeaMicro has been peddling its SM10000-64 micro server, based on Intels dual-core, 64-bit Atom N570 processor and cramming 256 of these chips into a 10U chassis. . .

    . . . The SM10000-64 is not so much a micro server as a complete data center in a box, designed for low power consumption and loosely coupled parallel processing, such as Hadoop or Memcached, or small monolithic workloads, like Web servers.

    via Atom smasher claims Hadoop cloud migration victory • The Register.

    While it is not always easy to illustrate the cost/benefit and Return on Investment on a lower power box like the Seamicro, running it head to head on a similar workload with a bunch of off the shelf Xeon boxes really shows the difference. The calculation of the benefit is critical too. What do you measure? Is it speed? Is it speed per transaction? Is it total volume allowed through? Or is it cost per unit transaction within a set amount of transactions? You’re getting closer with that last one. The test setup used a set number of transaction needing to be done in a set period of time. The benchmark then measure total power dissipation to accomplish that number of transactions in the set amount of time. SeaMicro came away the winner in unit cost per transaction in power terms. While the Xeon based servers had huge excess speed and capacity the power dissipation put it pretty far into the higher cost per transaction category.

    However it is very difficult to communicate this advantage that SeaMicro has over Intel. Future tests/benchmarks need to be constructed with clearly stated goals and criteria. Specifically if it can be communicated as a Case History of a particular problem that could be solved by either a SeaMicro server or a bunch of Intel boxes running Xeon cpus with big caches. Once that Case History is well described, then the two architectures are then put to work showing what the end goal is in clear terms (cost per transaction). Then and only then will SeaMicro communicate effectively how it does things different and how that can save money. Otherwise it’s too different to measure effectively versus a Intel Xeon based rack of servers.

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  • A cocktail of AR and social marketing | Japan Pulse

    From top left: Shinjuku, Tokyo Tower, Rainbow ...
    Image via Wikipedia

    Though the AR element is not particularly elegant, merely consisting of a blue dot superimposed on your cell phone screen that guides the user through Tokyo’s streets, we think it’s nevertheless a clever marketing gimmick.

    via A cocktail of AR and social marketing | Japan Pulse.

    Augmented Reality (AR) in the news this week being used for a marketing campaign in Tokyo JP. It’s mostly geared towards getting people out to visit bars and restaurants to collect points. Whoever gets enough points can cash them in for Chivas Regal memorabilia. But hey, it’s something I guess. I just wish the navigation interface was a little more sophisticated.

    I also wonder how many different phones you can use as personal navigators to find the locations awarding points. Seems like GPS is an absolute requirement, but so is one that has a Foursquare or Livedoor client as well.

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  • Kim Cameron returns to Microsoft as indie ID expert • The Register

    Cameron said in an interview posted on the ID conferences website last month that he was disappointed about the lack of an industry advocate championing what he has dubbed “user-centric identity”, which is about keeping various bits of an individuals online life totally separated.

    via Kim Cameron returns to Microsoft as indie ID expert • The Register.

    CRM meet VRM, we want our Identity separated. This is one of the goals of Vendor Relationship Management as opposed to “Customer Relationship”. I want to share a set of very well defined details with Windows Live!, Facebook, Twitter, Google. But instead I exist as separate entities that they then try to aggregate and profile to learn more outside what I do on their respective WebApps. So if someone can champion my ability to control what I share with which online service all the better. If Microsoft understands this it is possible someone like Kim Cameron will be able to accomplish some big things with Windows Live! ID logins and profiles. Otherwise, this is just another attempt to capture web traffic into a commercial private Intraweb. I count Apple, Facebook and Google as Private Intraweb competitors.

  • Tilera throws gauntlet at Intels feet • The Register

    Upstart mega-multicore chip maker Tilera has not yet started sampling its future Tile-Gx 3000 series of server processors, and companies have already locked in orders for the chips.

    via Tilera throws gauntlet at Intels feet • The Register.

    Proof that sometimes  a shipping product doesn’t always make all the difference. Although it might be nice to tout performance of actual shipping product. What’s becoming more real is the power efficiency of the Tilera architcture core for core versus the Intel IA-64 architecture. Tilera can provide a much lower Thermal Design Point (TDM) per core than typical Intel chips running the same workloads. So Tilera for the win on paper anyways.

  • Intel readying MIC x64 coprocessor for 2012 • The Register

    Image representing Intel as depicted in CrunchBase
    Image via CrunchBase

    Thus far, Intels Many Integrated Core MIC is little more than a research project. Intel picked up the remnants of the failed “Larrabee” graphics card project and rechristened it Knights and put it solely in the service of the king of computing, the CPU.

    via Intel readying MIC x64 coprocessor for 2012 • The Register.

    Ahhh, alas poor ol’ Larrabee, we hardly knew ye. And yet, somehow your ghost will rise again, and again and again. I remember the hints at the 80 core cpu, which then fell to 64 cores, 40 cores and now just today I read this article to find out it is merely Larrabee and only has a grand total of (hold tight, are you ready for this shocker?) 32 cores. Wait what was that? Did you say 32 cores? Let’s turn back the page to May 15, 2009 where Intel announced the then new Larrabee graphics processing engine with a 32-core processor. That’s right, nothing (well maybe not nothing) has happened in TWO YEARS! Or very little has happened a few die shrinks, and now the upcoming 3D transistors (tri-gate) for the 22nm design revision for Intel Architecture CPUs. It also looks like they may have shuffled around the floor plan/layout of the first gen Larrabee CPU to help speed things up a bit. But, other than these incrementalist appointments the car looks vastly like the model year car from two years ago. Now, what we can also hope has improved since 2009 is the speed and efficiency of the compilers Intel’s engineers have crafted to accompany the release of this re-packaged Larrabee.

    Intel shows glimpse of 32-core Larrabee beast (Chris Mellor @ http://www.theregister.co.uk)

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  • Artur Bergman Wikia on SSDs @ OReilly Media Conferences/Don Bazile CEO of Violin Memory

    Image representing Violin Memory as depicted i...
    Image via CrunchBase

    Artur Bergman of Wikia explains why you should buy and use Solid State Disks (strong language)

    via Artur Bergman Wikia on SSDs on OReilly Media Conferences – live streaming video powered by Livestream.

    This is the shortest presentation I’ve seen and most pragmatic about what SSDs can do for you. He recommends buying Intel 320s and getting your feet wet by moving from a bicycle to a Ferrari. Later on if you need to go with a PCIe SSD do it, but it’s like the difference between a Formula 1 race car and a Ferrari. Personally in spite of the lack of major difference Artur is trying to illustrate I still like the idea of buying once and getting more than you need. And if this doesn’t start you down the road of seriously buying SSDs of some sort check out this interview with Violin Memory CEO, Don Bazile:

    Violin tunes up for billion dollar flash gig: Chris Mellor@theregister.co.uk (Saturday June 25th)

    Basile said: “Larry is telling people to use flash … That’s the fundamental shift in the industry. … Customers know their competitors will adopt the technology. Will they be first, second or last in their industry to do so? … It will happen and happen relatively quickly. It’s not just speed; its the lowest cost of data base transaction in history. [Flash] is faster and cheaper on the exact same software. It’s a no-brainer.”

    Violin Memory is the current market leader in data center SSD installations for transactional data or analytical processing. The boost folks are getting from putting the databases on Violin Memory boxes is automatic, requires very little tuning and the results are just flat out astounding. The ‘Larry’ quoted above is the Larry Ellison of Oracle, the giant database maker. So with that kind of praise I’m going to say the tipping point is near, but please read the article. Chris Mellor lays out a pretty detailed future of evolution in SSD sales and new product development. 3-bit Multi-Level memory cells in NAND flash is what Mellor thinks will be the tipping point as price is still the biggest sticking point for anyone responsible for bidding on new storage system installs. However while that price sticking point is a bigger issue for batch oriented off-line data warehouse analysis, for online streaming analysis SSD is cheaper per byte per second throughput. So depending on the typical style of database work you do or performance you need SSD is putting the big iron spinning hard disk vendors to shame. The inertia of these big capital outlays and cozy relationships with these vendors will make some shops harder to adopt the new technology (But IBM is giving us such a big discount!…WE are an EMC shop,etc.). However the competitors of the folks owning those datacenters will soon eat all that low hanging fruit a simple cutover to SSDs will afford and the competitive advantage will swing to the early adopters.

    *Late Note: Chris Mellor just followed up Monday night (June 27th) with an editorial further laying out the challenge to disk storage presented by the data center Flash Array vendors. Check it out:

    What should the disk drive array vendors do, if this scenario plays out?They should buy in or develop their own all-flash array technology. Having a tier of SSD storage in a disk drive array is a good start but customers will want the simpler choice of an all-flash array and, anyway, they are here now. Guys like Violin and Whiptail and TMS are knocking on the storage array vendors customer doors right now.

    via All aboard the flash array train? • The Register.

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  • ARM server hero Calxeda lines up software super friends • The Register

    Company Logo
    Maker of the massively parallel ARM-based server

    via ARM server hero Calxeda lines up software super friends • The Register.

    Calxeda in the news again this week with some more announcements regarding its plans. Remembering recently to the last article I posted on Calxeda, this company boasts an ARM based server packing 120 cpus (each with four cores) into a 2U high rack (making it just 3-1/2″ tall *see note). With every evolution in hardware one must needs get an equal if not greater revolution in software. Which is the point of the announcement by Calxeda of its new software partners.

    It’s all mostly cloud apps, cloud provisioning and cloud management types of vendors. And with the partnership each company gets early access to the hardware Calxeda is promising to design, prototype and eventually manufacture. Both Google and Intel have poo-poohed the idea of using “wimpy processors” on massively parallel workloads claiming faster serialized workloads are still easier to manage through existing software/programming techniques. For many years as Intel has complained about the programming tools, it still has gone the multi-core/multi-thread route hoping to continue its domination by offering up ‘newer’ and higher performing products. So while Intel bad mouths parallelism on competing cpus it seems to be desperate to sell multi-core to willing customers year over year.

    Even as power efficient as those cores maybe Intel’s old culture of maximum performance for the money still holds sway. Even the most recent Ultra-low Voltage i-series cpus are still hitting about 17Watts of power for chips clocking in around 1.8Ghz (speed boosting up to 2.9Ghz in a pinch). Even if Intel allowed these chips to be installed into servers we’re stilling talking a lot of  Thermal Design Point (TDM) that has to be chilled to keep running.

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  • Goal oriented visualizations? (via Erik Duval’s Weblog)

    Charles Minard's 1869 chart showing the losses...
    Image via Wikipedia

    Visualizations and their efficacy always takes me back to Edward Tufte‘s big hard cover books on Infographics (or Chart Junk when it’s done badly). In terms of this specific category, visualization leading to a goal I think it’s still very much a ‘general case’. But examples are always better than theoretical descriptions of an ideal. So while I don’t have an example to give (which is what Erik Duval really wants) I can at least point to a person who knows how Infographics get misused.

    I’m also reminded somewhat of the most recent issue of Wired Magazine where there’s an article on feedback loops. How are goal oriented visualizations different from or better than feedback loops? I’d say that’s an interesting question to investigate further. The primary example given in that story is the radar equipped speed limit sign. It doesn’t tell you the posted speed. It merely tells you how fast you are going and that by itself apart from ticketing and making the speed limit signs more noticeable did more to effect a change in behavior than any other option. So maybe a goal oriented visualization could also benefit from some techniques like feedback loops?

    Some of the fine fleur of information visualisation in Europe gathered in Brussels today at the Visualizing Europe meeting. Definitely worth to follow the links of the speakers on the program! Twitter has a good trace of what was discussed. Revisit offers a rather different view on that discussion than your typical twitter timeline. In the Q&A session, Paul Kahn asked the Rather Big Question: how do you choose between different design alterna … Read More

    via Erik Duval’s Weblog

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  • Macintouch Reader Reports: User Interface Issues iOS/Lion

    Magic Mouse on MacBook Pro. Canon Rebel T1i wi...
    Image via Wikipedia

    Anyways, I predict a semi-chaos, where – for example- a 3 fingers swipe from left to right means something completely different in Apple than in any other platform. We are already seeing signs of this in Android, and in the new Windows 8.Also, users will soon need “cheat sheets” to remember the endless possible combinations.Would be interesting to hear other people’s thoughts.

    via User Interface Issues.

    After the big WWDC Keynote presentation by Steve Jobs et. al. the question I have too is what’s up with all the finger combos for swiping. In the bad old days people needed wire bound notebooks to tell them all about the commands to run their IBM PC. And who can forget the users of WordPerfect who had keyboard template overlays to remind themselves of the ‘menu’ of possible key combos (Ctrl/Alt/Shift). Now we are faced with endless and seemingly arbitrary combinations off finger swipes/pinches/flicks etc.

    Like other readers who responded to this question on the Macintouch message boards, what about the bad old days of the Apple 1 button mouse? Remember when Apple finally capitulated and provided two mice buttons (No?) well they did it through software. Just before the Magic Mouse hit town Apple provided a second mouse button (at long last) bringing the Mac inline for the first time with the Windows PC convention of left and right mouse buttons. How recently did this happen? Just two years ago maybe, Apple introduced the wired and wireless version of the Mighty Mouse? And even then it was virtual, not a literal real two button-ness experience either. Now we have the magic mouse with no buttons, no clicking. It’s one rounded over trackpad that accepts the Lionized gestures. To quote John Wayne, “It’s gettin’ to be Ri-goddamn-diculous”.

    So whither the haptic touch interface conventions of the future? Who is going to win the gesture arms race? Who is going to figure out less is more when it comes to gestures? It ain’t Apple.

  • JSON Activity Streams Spec Hits Version 1.0

    This is icon for social networking website. Th...
    Image via Wikipedia

    The Facebook Wall is probably the most famous example of an activity stream, but just about any application could generate a stream of information in this format. Using a common format for activity streams could enable applications to communicate with one another, and presents new opportunities for information aggregation.

    via JSON Activity Streams Spec Hits Version 1.0.

    Remember Mash-ups? I recall the great wide wonder of putting together web pages that used ‘services’ provided for free through APIs published out to anyone who wanted to use them. There were many at one time, some still exist and others have been culled out. But as newer social networks begat yet newer ones (MySpace,Facebook,FourSquare,Twitter) none of the ‘outputs’ or feeds of any single one was anything more than a way of funneling you into it’s own login accounts and user screens. So the gated community first requires you to be a member in order to play.

    We went from ‘open’ to cul-de-sac and stovepipe in less than one full revision of social networking. However, maybe all is not lost, maybe an open standard can help folks re-use their own data at least (maybe I could mash-up my own activity stream). Betting on whether or not this will take hold and see wider adoption by Social Networking websites would be risky. Likely each service provider will closely hold most of the data it collects and only publish the bare minimum necessary to claim compliance. However, another burden upon this sharing is the slowly creeping concerns about security of one’s own Activity Stream. It will no doubt have to be an opt-in and definitely not an opt-out as I’m sure people are more used to having fellow members of their tribe know what they are doing than putting out a feed to the whole Internet of what they are doing. Which makes me think of the old discussion of being able to fine tune who has access to what (Doc Searles old Vendor Relationship Management idea). Activity Streams could easily fold into that university where you regulate what threads of the stream are shared to which people. I would only really agree to use this service if it had that fine grained level of control.