HP can force Intel to develop Itanium until at least 2022

HP will have access to Intel's Itanium processor until 2022, according to Intel's Kirk Skaugen.

Skaugen, who used to be VP of Intel's Datacentre and Connected Systems Group, testified under oath during the HP versus Oracle lawsuit that HP and Intel had an arrangement that "enabled HP to have access to the Itanium microprocessor through 2022, and that HP could extend even longer". Skaugen's testimony was submitted as part of court documents filed on 23 April and gives some indication of how long both HP and Intel were expecting to push Itanium.

Oracle, which has been involved in an increasingly bitter spat with HP over Itanium and the hiring of its current co-president and former HP CEO Mark Hurd, claims Intel's Itanium was on its way out, alleging that HP mislead it and customers, leading to its decision to drop support for the IA64 architecture.

However, according to HP, "Oracle resorts to mischaracterising HP's statements, taking them out of appropriate context, or misstating the relevant timeline."

HP claims Skaugen's comments show that when HP said Itanium had a long future it wasn't lying. "By any measure, all of HP's statements regarding the length of its roadmap and the future of the Itanium microprocessor were true," HP said in documents filed with the court.

Skaugen's comments are something of a surprise, not because they show an agreement between HP and Intel - HP already admitted that one existed - but the length of Intel's commitment to HP on Itanium and the fact that HP could extend it.

HP's language suggests that it, as the customer, had the upper hand in the contract with Intel, with the firm saying, "Intel was committed by contract to continue producing Itanium microprocessors". Skaugen's testimony in court supports HP's claim.

Of course Skaugen's comments about access to Itanium doesn't mean Intel will continue to develop future chips based on the Itanium architecture, though an Intel spokesperson said Itanium development continues "unabated", with multiple generations of chips presently in development.

Intel has also said publicly that the Xeon processor is creeping into the mission-critical market held by Itanium, which suggests that even though it has to work on Itanium, HP might turn to Xeon as a cheaper alternative in the future.

Source: The Inquirer (http://s.tt/1aaNi)

HP says mission critical features of HP-UX will move to Linux

HP said mission critical technologies in its proprietary HP-UX Unix operating system will cascade down to Linux and Microsoft Windows.

HP recently told The INQUIRER that it will commit to Linux in the mission critical market, however it said its HP-UX Unix implementation will be the proving ground for features that the firm will push in Linux and Windows. According to Kate O'Neill, product marketing manager for HP's Business Critical Systems unit, the firm wants to bring a "UNIX-like experience to Linux and Windows".

Talking with The INQUIRER about the mission critical aspect of HP-UX, O'Neill said, "If you think about where Windows and Linux is at today, in terms of delivering the full mission critical experience it's not where HP-UX is at, at this moment in time." But it seems HP will use HP-UX as the operating system for mission critical technologies that it will eventually try to commit to the Linux kernel.

"We continue to drive and innovate in HP-UX because it is what we consider to be the design centre for mission critical, we have to stay at the bleeding edge of mission critical so we can cascade those technologies into [the] Windows and Linux environments," said O'Neill. "It will drive us to be better, not just in that environment itself, but in this emerging mission critical Windows and Linux also."

Given that HP has invested decades and millions into HP-UX, it might be something of a surprise to hear the firm say that its mission critical customers know that one day they will move off proprietary UNIX and onto Linux or Windows.

O'Neill said, "Customers are hesitant to make the transition to Windows and Linux when uptime and planned and unplanned downtime is critical to them, but they do recognise in the future that could be a possibility, so they want to make sure there are options to them as they look down the road."

Although O'Neill's comment about Windows not being mission critical will to many seem like stating the bleeding obvious, there are still questions over whether Linux can be considered in the same breath as HP's HP-UX, IBM's AIX or Oracle's Solaris. Perhaps Linux's biggest hurdle is not its technology but the conservative nature of mission-critical computing, with managers opting for big brands such as IBM and HP in order to safeguard their jobs.

HP's decision to use HP-UX as a proving ground for mission critical features that it will eventually push into Linux serves three purposes. HP's operating system stays ahead of Linux, while the Linux community gets to see whether new features of HP-UX are worth incorporating and potentially the ability to convince the conservative suits that Linux has resilient, high availability features similar to those found in expensive, proprietary operating systems.

Source: The Inquirer (http://s.tt/1aaN6)

Facebook adds antivirus marketplace

Facebook has teamed up with a number of security firms to offer its 900 million users malware protection.

Facebook is offering antivirus and security software free in a marketplace. The software products come from firms like Microsoft, McAfee and Sophos, and Facebook ssers can download licensed copies of the software at no charge.

"Nothing is more important to us than the safety of the people who use Facebook, and the security of their data," said the company in an introductory blog post.

"The Facebook Security Team has pioneered many innovative defense systems against viruses, spam and phishing attacks, as well as extensive automated enforcement mechanisms that quickly shut down malicious pages, accounts and apps."

Facebook said that its almost billion users will benefit from an umbrella form of protection that pulls in more information about risks. For example, it said that its URL blacklist system now features the databases of these other firms, which should make them more up-to-date.

"We believe that arming our users with anti-virus software will help empower them to stay safe no matter where they are on the web," it said.

The security firms will also slot into the Facebook community and will blog on its dedicated security web pages, Facebook added.

Ivy Bridge ultrabooks to speed double-digit mobile sales

Intel has unleashed what it claims is its biggest marketing push "in a long, long time" to drive the potentially high sales of mobile devices powered by the 22nm Ivy Bridge chipset through the channel.

Speaking at the Intel Platinum partner summit in London, Greg Pearson, the chip maker giant's global vice president of sales and marketing and general manger of worldwide sales and operations, said the firm has kicked off its campaign to promote the ultrabook category, "inspired by Intel", "starting right now" across internet, social media, print and TV channels.

"We ae going to push this really hard. We didn't push [the Ivy Bridge predecessor] Sandy Bridge very hard, because we were getting ready for Ivy Bridge. So expect us to really step up and be the demand generation machine you want us to be," Pearson said.

The 22nm Ivy Bridge chipsets are going into ultrabooks – the newest category of laptop. Ultrabooks are both thin and light despite being fully featured, with powerful processing and batteries that can last all day. Previously, even top-of-the-range ultraportables made significant trade-offs of processing power, memory and battery life.

Intel believes ultrabooks will be popular enough to revive laptop and PC sales, while beating off challenges from the likes of certain ARM-based devices and smartphones.

Even though times have been tough, the western Europe channel has performed very strongly, especially in sales of internet-connected devices.

Christian Morales, EMEA vice president and general manager at Intel, said the sales potential is there, with the major barrier being the speed of infrastructure development to support the more powerful applications that are now being used online via a range of connected devices.

"[Last year] saw 23 per cent growth year on year in western Europe, and that is across sales of all connected devices," Morales said.

That compared with 34 per cent year on year in China, 31 per cent year on year in Brazil, and 12 per cent year on year in the US, according to figures Morales produced at the summit. "We expect that [kind of sales growth] to continue for the next few years," he added.

Other channel opportunities

Maurits Tichelman, EMEA channel director at Intel, said other particularly strong channel opportunities in coming years included SSD, digital signage, all-in-one PCs, and education. There would be increasing demand for features and functionality previously desired only by gamers and other extreme computing enthusiasts.

"And the education opportunity is not only about the Classmate, but the solutions, and software," said Tichelman. "With all-in-ones, these are really just fancy PCs with a big screen and full capability. This segment is growing at 30 to 40 per cent on a yearly basis."

Maxima displays bulging order book

Maxima has snared a series of new multi-year business wins worth more than £6m as it progresses with its turnaround strategy.

The contracts include a three-year IT managed services contract worth £2.75m, a two-year contract renewal worth £2.85m with a major UK government executive agency, and a £480,000 three-year contract with an unnamed UK sports organisation.

In a bid to return to profitability, Maxima has been lopping off parts of the business and selling them over the past year, including three software-focused divisions, and its enterprise resource planning division.

The firm welcomed channel stalwart Ian Smith to its boardroom last summer, and a month later he acquired a stake in the business.

Fraser Fisher, managing director of Maxima, claimed these latest wins prove the firm is in a strong position. “Following our recent decision to focus the company around the delivery of managed services to our customers, we are delighted to report our recent contract successes that clearly show that our turnaround strategy is on track," he said.

“Securing IT managed service contracts worth some £6m clearly shows there is a strong demand for the kind of high-quality, specialist managed services that Maxima provides, and that the company is competing strongly in this important market area.

“We are also pleased to strengthen our recurring revenue base, as we continue to develop our offering in key IT managed services areas such as hosting, outsourcing, application and infrastructure management, cloud and virtualisation.”

Symantec increases dominance of security software sector

Market leader Symantec outgrew all its rivals to increase its position of power in the security software market last year, Gartner figures have revealed.

According to a report from the market watcher, the annual worth of the global security software market grew 7.5 per cent to $17.7bn (£10.9bn) in 2011. Gartner research director Ruggero Contu picked out Asia as a key growth area, while "western Europe remained the laggard, because of the region's uncertain economic situation".

Symantec grew global sales 17 per cent year on year to more than $3.6bn, giving it a market share of 20.6 per cent, up almost two points on its 2010 share.

Second-placed McAfee saw its figures negatively affected by its acquisition by Intel, as the chip giant had to write down more than $400m of the security firm's deferred revenue. McAfee's 2011 security software sales were pegged at $1.2bn, a 27.5 per cent drop on the preceding year. Consequently, its market share has dropped from 10.3 to 6.9 per cent.

Just one tenth of a point behind it last year was Trend Micro, which grew revenue 11.3 per cent to $1.2bn. IBM, in fourth place with 5.3 per cent of the market, grew sales 14.2 per cent to $930m. EMC rounded out the top five, after growing 2011 security software revenue 14.3 per cent to $716.1m, giving the storage giant a four per cent slice of the market.

All other vendors, who account for 56.4 per cent of sales, grew total sales 9.3 per cent to almost $10bn.

"Growth in the 2011 security market reflects a continuation in demand for consumer and enterprise security tools," said Gartner's Contu."Products within the security market are undergoing rapid evolution, in terms of both new delivery models – with security-as-a-service showing increasing popularity – and new technologies being introduced, often by startup companies.

"Key vendors continued to expand their product portfolios in 2011, buying companies where appropriate and expanding their reach into emerging markets. M&A activity also has been an important factor in shaping the market landscape, at least during the past five years."

Datawind Launches Ubislate 7+ Series in India

DataWind has launched its Ubislate series of tablets in India. Providing smartphone communication, Internet access, tablet computing and multimedia entertainment, the devices also pack a powerful combination of content and applications.

Intended to help bridge the digital divide, DataWind said its new products break the affordability barriers of computers and bandwidth constraints of wireless networks to deliver internet access to anybody that can afford a simple mobile phone. The UbiSlate tablets are the only devices in the market to offer DataWind's UbiSurfer browser, based on 18 international patents that can deliver Internet access on traditional GPRS networks, which cover the far reaches of the globe. In India the devices will offer unlimited Web-browsing using DataWind's Web delivery platform for under Rs.100/month on traditional mobile networks.

The UbiSlate 7+ and UbiSlate 7C models were introduced at MRPs of Rs. 2,999/- and Rs. 3,999/-, respectively. Differentiated with a resistive screen on the UbiSlate 7+ to the four-point multi-touch projective capacitive screen on the UbiSlate 7C, both models come with embedded GPRS modems in addition to Wi-Fi connectivity allowing ubiquitous Internet access. The 7-inch screen tablets support the Android 2.3 operating system that delivers a rich touch-screen graphical user interface, which significantly reduces the learning curve for new computer users in joining the World Wide Web. A 800 MHz Cortex A8 processor allows smooth usability of a broad range of applications. The embedded HD video co-processor delivers high quality video content making it a perfect multimedia device.

Suneet Singh Tuli, CEO, DataWind, said, "Over the last year, I've been traveling the globe, talking at the World Bank, with Heads of State, at numerous universities and at global conferences, evangelizing the power of the Internet to transform people's lives. We've now created a product that removes the barriers and levels the playing field."

"Our challenge was not only to create a powerful yet low-cost device, but to truly make it useful, we had to create a technology that could deliver Internet access everywhere at an affordable price," said Raja Singh Tuli, Co-Chairman and Chief Technology Officer, DataWind.

DataWind also unveiled its ecosystem of partners for providing content, applications and access, making it the industry's largest collaborative effort to deliver consumers a complete turnkey offering in a single unit. DataWind announced relationships with different companies.

"We value all our partners who have joined hands with us in this venture and expect that this relationship will grow strong in achieving the vision that we jointly share to provide access to information, connectivity and education to the masses of our country at a very affordable cost," added Tuli.

Delivery of UbiSlate 7+ devices have started to consumers who have pre-booked on DataWind's Web site, and will continue over the next several months before retail availability. Delivery of UbiSlate 7C devices will start at the end of May.

Specifications:

Hardware:

- Processor: Cortex A8 800 MHz with graphics accelerator and HD video processor

- Memory (RAM):

-- 7+ - 256 MB RAM / storage (internal): 2 GB flash

-- 7c - 256 MB RAM / storage (internal): 4 GB flash

- Storage (external): 2 GB to 32 GB supported

- Peripherals (USB 2.0 ports, number): 1 standard USB port

- Audio out: 3.5 mm jack / audio in: 3.5 mm jack

- Display and resolution: 7-inch display with 800 x 480 pixel resolution

- Input devices:

- 7+ resistive touch screen

-- 7c multi-touch (four point) projective capacitive

- Connectivity and networking: GPRS and Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11 a/b/g

- Power and battery: up to 180 minutes on battery. AC adapter 200-240 volt range.

Software:

- OS: Android 2.3

- Safety and other standards compliance

- CE certification / ROHS certification 

- Other: additional Web browser: UbiSurfer -browser with compression/acceleration and IE8 rendering

IBM acquires big data software provider

IBM announced that it would acquire Vivisimo, a provider of federated discovery and navigation software for big data.

Vivisimo is a privately held company based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Vivisimo's software automates the discovery of structured and unstructured data and helps to navigate it with a single view.

"Navigating big data to uncover the right information is a key challenge for all industries," said Arvind Krishna, general manager, Information Management, IBM Software Group. "The winners in the era of big data will be those who unlock their information assets to drive innovation, make real-time decisions, and gain actionable insights to be more competitive."

The combination of IBM's big data analytics capabilities with Vivisimo software will automate the flow of data into business analytics applications, helping in understanding consumer behaviour, managing customer churn, network performance, detecting fraud in real-time, and performing data-intensive marketing campaigns, says the company in a release.

"Businesses need a faster and more accurate way to discover and navigate big data for analysis," said John Kealey, chief executive officer, Vivisimo. "As part of IBM, we can bring clients the quickest and most accurate access to information necessary to drive growth initiatives that increase customer satisfaction, streamline processes, and boost sales."

Vivisimo has more than 140 customers, including names such as Airbus, US Air Force, US Navy, Procter & Gamble, Bupa, and LexisNexis among others.

Upon the closing of the acquisition, approximately 120 Vivisimo employees will join IBM's Software Group. IBM will incorporate Vivisimo technology into its big data platform.

Wipro restructuring giving results, say analysts

Wipro's IT business guidance for the first quarter of 2012-13 might have disappointed the street, but the restructuring that the company started a year ago seems to be delivering results, say analysts.

This is evident in the firm’s client addition and mining abilities, and also in its ability to stabilise employee attrition.

A year back when T K Kurien was given the mandate to head the company, his priorities were to increase customer intimacy, focus and mine the existing client base. The fourth-quarter and 2011-12 numbers substantiate this focus.

In terms of client addition in large accounts, Wipro has manage to take its $100-million customer number from just three in 2010-11 to seven by the end of this year.

Wipro generated only 20 per cent of its total revenues from its top 10 clients, compared to 24.4 per cent for Infosys and 27 per cent for TCS. However, the proportion has improved from 19.4 per cent in first quarter of 2011-12 to 20 per cent in the fourth quarter. While revenue from the top customer was down by around eight per cent, revenue from top 2-5 clients grew by 3.3 per cent (in $ terms) and seven per cent in the case of top 6-10 clients. Wipro has also increased investment in SG&A to 12.2 per cent of revenues (IT Services) for the fourth quarter of 2011-12.

“Wipro’s restructuring delivered results rather quickly. Our interactions with management have indicated that the intensity with which the planning, execution and monitoring of the restructuring was done was high. That said, we believe that its restructuring is still a work in progress,” said Sandeep Muthangi of IIFL in his report.

One of the biggest challenges that the company faced was churn within its employee base. That too seems to have been solved as attrition has been stable for the last two quarters. Voluntary quarterly annualised attrition in the first quarter of 2011-12 was 23.2 per cent. This has been stable at 14.4-14.2 per cent over the last two quarters.

“This implies that management and employees seem broadly settled and have bought in to the new management’s strategy for change and the change itself. Wipro’s voluntary attrition (quarterly annualised) continues to be lower than Infosys’. The company is taking a far better view today. Rather conservative hiring in 4QFY12 (resulting to net decline in headcount) might be a manifestation of its discipline to ensure that the company does not have to take tough decision if demand environment worsens,” said Viju K George, Analyst from J P Morgan’s Asia Pacific Research in his report.

Though like its peer Infosys, Wipro’s guidance too disappointed the street, analyst feel that the management commentary was far better than the former and in line with TCS and HCL Technologies. Highlighting that the demand environment is stable.

Other focus for Kurien was focus on areas that would give hyper growth opportunity. The company’s bet on energy and utility seems to be on the right path. During the quarter the segment grew five per cent. During the quarter, it completed 40 cloud projects, and the analytics business grew 33 per cent on a year-on-year basis.

“Management seems confident on the demand environment and suggested that growth should come back after 1QFY13 as deal closures have already started improving in global business. We believe that the medium-to-long term growth prospects of Wipro remain intact as the structural changes implemented by the company are steps in the right direction. 1QFY13 is likely to be a one-off disappointment and we expect the company to perform better going forward,” said the JP Morgan report.

Moreover, the confidence in its business model is also reflected in the company’s decision to go ahead with a wage hike in the month of June. Wipro might give a wage hike of around 8 per cent.

Concerns

But there are some concerns with regard to Wipro’s future performance. For George of J P Morgan, the company needs to be consistent on delivering growth. “Post-restructuring, Wipro delivered strong performance in two quarters (2QFY12 and 3QFY12), which pleased investors. 4QFY12 is a decent show, but the weak guidance has been disappointing,” he said.

Analysts also point out that though Wipro has been successful in adding $100 million customers, client addition in $75 million, $50 million and $10 million has been slow. This has increased by just 3-4 clients for the fiscal.

"Our channel checks indicate that issues with delivery, most notably, project level churn is still relatively higher (vs peers). Also, given the significant change in both the organisation structure as well as the functioning of front-end, anecdotal evidence indicates that the sales function still has to improve," said Muthangi.

Google details Chrome browser security-testing technology

Since late last year, Google has been using an industrial-strength testing system to identify, analyze and fix security holes in its Chrome browser, helping it significantly cut down on the number of vulnerabilities that slip through to the most recent version product in production.

Google calls the system ClusterFuzz. It's made up of "several hundred" virtual machines loaded with about 6,000 Chrome instances, subjecting them to about 50 million test cases every day, the company said Thursday.

The system's capacity is projected to quadruple in the coming weeks. Since its full deployment late last year, ClusterFuzz has flagged 95 unique vulnerabilities, 44 of which were fixed before making it into the most recent stable release of the browser, according to a Google blog post.

In addition to benefiting users of the product, the detections also help open-source software used by Chrome like WebKit and FFmpeg, because Google submits vulnerability reports to their project teams.

In addition to running the tests and detecting browser crashes, ClusterFuzz is also used to manage the distribution of test cases, analyze the crashes to determine if they involve a security hole that can be exploited, and verify if a vulnerability has been properly fixed.

Oracle upgrades standard Java, JavaFX

Oracle on Thursday is releasing updates to the standard edition ofJava and the JavaFX rich client application platform, including the first delivery of the Java Development Kit and JavaFX Software Development Kit for Mac OS X. The latest enhancements for Java garbage collection and the Java Virtual Machine are featured as well.

The company is making available Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE) 7 Update 4 and JavaFX 2.1. Java developers, Oracle said, can download Oracle's JDK, which includes the JavaFX SDK for MacOS X from the Oracle Technology Network. Java SE 7 Update 4 and JavaFX 2.1 run on Windows, too. The company plans to release a consumer version of Java SE 7, complete with the Java Runtime Environment, for Mac OS X later this year.

"It appears that Oracle is steadily making good on the promises of the road map outlined at JavaOne," analyst Al Hilwa, of IDC, said, referring to Oracle's Java technology conference held last fall in San Francisco. "It is important for Oracle to show steady momentum with this road map, and it is certainly good to see continued investment like the new JavaFX technology in Mac OS X from Oracle." Java, though, has been a problem on Mac systems lately, with theFlashback botnet serving as a Java-based attack against Macs.

"Oracle has aggressive plans for Java over the next few years and we are continuing to drive technical advancements across the platform," said Hasan Rizvi, senior vice president of Oracle Fusion Middleware and Java Products at Oracle, in a statement released by the company. "At JavaOne in 2011, we outlined our long-term road map for Java SE and JavaFX, and we are working closely with the Java community to meet our development milestones. With the upcoming Mac OS X port, we look forward to delivering simultaneous releases of the JRE across all major operating systems later this year, so all Java users will be able to take advantage of the latest features and security fixes."

Java garbage collection, which helps with memory management by reclaiming programming objects, is being improved in JDK. "The Java SE 7 Update 4 JDK includes the next-generation garbage collection algorithm, Garbage First (G1), which has been eagerly anticipated by the Java developer community. G1 provides predictable garbage collection even for very large applications," Oracle said in a statement. G1 is a server-style garbage collector, for multiprocessor machines with large memories, Oracle said.

Also key to Java SE 7 Update 4 are performance improvements to the JVM, boosting Oracle Fusion Middleware products. Update 4 merges performance enhancements from the JRockit JVM into the Java HotSpot JVM and OpenJDK, which is the open source implementation of Java SE. "Oracle is continuing its work to merge the Oracle Java HotSpot JVM and the Oracle JRockit JVM into a converged offering that leverages the best features of each of these leading virtual machines," Oracle said. Update 4 will be the first consumer release of Java 7 JRE, scheduled to be released as the default version on Java.com on May 1.

The OpenJDK Community, Oracle said, hosts development of Java SE 7 on Mac OS X and JDK 8, which is the prototype reference implementation of Java SE 8. Oracle has started the OpenJFX project as part of its plan to open-source the JavaFX platform.

JavaFX 2.1 introduces playback support for digital media stored in the MPEG-4 multimedia format containing J.264/AVC video and Advanced Audio Coding (AVC) audio. WebView support for JavaScript to Java method calls allow a user to render HTML/JavaScript. Also, users can allow JavaScript in WebView to make calls to Java APIs to offload specific operations to Java. Version 2.1 adds enhanced font rendering for modern LCDs with Windows-style LCD subpixel rendering. User interface enhancements in version 2.1 include controls for combo box, stacked chart, and applicationwide menu bar.

Oracle also is announcing a public early access for JavaFX Scene Builder, a visual layout tool that enables designing of UI screens by dragging and positioning UI components from a palette onto a scene. JavaFX is available for Windows and Mac OS X, while a developer preview for Linux also is being offered.

(published at InfoWorld.com)

Twitter updates iPhone, Android apps

Twitter released updated iPhone and Android apps Thursday that make it easier for users to search and find new information.

With a growing number of people tweeting and checking tweets on the train, at the local coffee shop and even in the movie theater, mobile apps are increasingly important to Twitter. And the company took note of that with today's updated apps.

People accustomed to using the Discover tab on Twitter.com will now find it on their mobile app. Like the Web version, the tab will help users find out what tweets their followers have retweeted or made into favorites, according to Sung Hu Kim, a Twitter product manager, in a blog post.

Want to know who your followers are following or adding to lists? The Discover tab will tell you that, too.

Twitter also said it has improved its search function. The app update is designed to enable users to see suggestions for different spellings, as well as related terms for their queries.

Trying to find a person you follow? The Connect tab is set up to auto-complete the entry as the user types in first and last names, Kim noted.

"We've also made a few improvements specifically for iPhone: when you tap the search box in Discover, you'll see your most recent queries," Kim wrote. "You can also go directly to someone's profile when searching for a username in Connect."

Twitter also added push notifications for interactions, so users should be alerted when their tweets are retweeted or favorited, as well as when someone new follows their account. And if a user doesn't need to be notified of every retweet or follow, they can adjust their level of connection.

The updated app for the iPhone can be downloaded from the App Store, and the Android app can be found at Google Play.

Sony Rolls Out Android 4.0 Update for Tablet S

Sony announced on its blog that Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich is now available for the Tablet S. Some of the new features include: 

• Enhanced lock screen where you have direct access to notifications and camera mode
• New panoramic camera mode 
• Enhanced Gallery media viewer with direct SD card access and photo editing tools 
• Excclusive "Small Apps" for multitasking 
• New home screen actions such as dragging icons together to create folders
• Improved web browser that allows you to switch between mobile and desktop websites, and the ability to save pages for offline viewing 
• Access files directly from SD card 
• Native screenshot capture via Power Button and "Volume -"

Existing Tablet S users need to connect their devices to Wi-Fi to receive the prompt message for the system update. The whole downloading and installation process will take about a few minutes. Sony's second tablet offering, the Tablet P, will also be receiving the Android 4.0 update athough Sony has not released any specific date for it.

We've reached out to Sony Singapore on the availability of the Android 4.0 update for the Sony Tablet S in Singapore. According to Sony Singapore, it's taking a longer time to develop the software update than originally planned, as the system update software is being developed and released for reach country. Sony Singapore is in the process of estimating the release timing for the market, and will announce the time frame and updates in due course.

Source: Sony Blog via Phandroid

Netgear to ship gigabit-speed wireless in May with 802.11ac router

Gigabit-speed wireless LAN equipment that uses the emerging IEEE 802.11ac standard is about to hit the market, with Netgear saying on Thursday that it will start shipping a consumer 802.11ac router in May for a starting list price of US$199.99.

The Netgear R6300 WiFi Router will be able to achieve a speed of 1.3Gbps (bits per second) and extend the range of high-definition video streaming in homes, the company said. Because it's compatible with the DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) standard, the R6300 will be able to stream content to any DLNA device, including TVs, Blu-ray players and other home entertainment gear.

IEEE 802.11ac can go faster than the current 802.11n technology because of a variety of enhancements, including the ability to use a radio band as wide as 80MHz (versus 40MHz for 802.11n). That's possible because the new standard uses only the 5GHz band, which offers more non-overlapping channels than Wi-Fi's other band, at 2.4GHz. The R6300 will be able to use 802.11n and earlier Wi-Fi standards for both bands in addition to 802.11ac.

Netgear's is the first router based on Broadcom's 802.11ac silicon, which the chip maker introducedat the Consumer Electronics Show in January under the name 5GWiFi. Other chip vendors are also working on processors for 802.11ac. Broadcom's rival Qualcomm Atheros has said it will start shipping samples of chips with the new standard in the second quarter of this year.

The IEEE hasn't yet finished the standard, and the Wi-Fi Alliance does not plan to start a certification program for 802.11ac products until early in the first half of next year. But Broadcom believes any changes still to come in the standard will be relatively minor and can be applied to products already in the field.

Like 802.11n, the new standard presents a variety of modes and features that can provide different performance up to that 1.3Gbps top speed. Those include sending and receiving multiple data streams from multiple antennas and creating targeted streams that resist interference, using so-called "beam-forming." Also, consumers will need to have client devices equipped with 802.11ac in order to get top speeds. Phones, tablets, laptops and other devices built for the current or older standards will work with an 802.11ac router but won't get its optimal performance.

Intel buys $75 million worth of patents from Aware Inc.

Aware Inc., a Massachusetts-based DSL signal processing specialist, announced this morning that it had agreed to sell $75 million in Wi-Fi, LTE and wireless home networking patents to semiconductor giant Intel.

The sale initially boosted Aware's stock price substantially, and the company declared a special dividend of $1.15 per share -- presumably as a direct result of the Intel deal. The dividend will return approximately one-third of the proceeds from the sale to stockholders -- approximately $24 million.

The deal is apparently more or less finalized, though the company cautioned that it is still subject to regulatory approval and the usual closing conditions.

Simultaneously, Aware released its first-quarter financial report for 2012, showing total revenue of $5.7 million -- a decline of 10% compared to the $6.4 million the company made in the same time period last year.

Assuming an annual revenue of less than $23 million, based on Aware's quarterly report, it seems clear that a deal of these proportions represents a major sea-change for the company, which has just 74 full-time employees. Even without the roughly $24 million to be paid out as a dividend, the business may well have just tripled its annual cashflow.

Intel, in the wake of its much-publicized rollout of the new Ivy Bridge processor line earlier this week, has been in an acquisitive mood as far as intellectual property is concerned. The company announced on Tuesday that it had bought out supercomputer maker Cray's interconnect department for $140 million. In addition to IP, that transaction could see as many as 74 Cray employees move to Intel.

AMD consolidating data centers with cloud, hardware upgrades

Advanced Micro Devices is cutting costs and reducing the number of its data centers worldwide with the help of the cloud and hardware upgrades, an AMD executive said Thursday.

AMD will reduce the number of data centers it has to three by 2014, of which two will be in North America and one in Asia, said Farid Dana, director of IT services at AMD, in an interview. AMD currently has 12 data centers, down from 18 in mid-2009 when the consolidation effort began.

The company's goal is to cut costs by shifting more tasks to the cloud, and by opening data centers in locations that have lower power costs and lower taxes, Dana said. AMD is moving away from high-cost-per-watt places like Boston and California and establishing data centers in places like Suwanee, Georgia.

"We've gained some tax efficiency from the location," Dana said. "One of the factors is also disaster recovery. That's why we have three data centers and not one, and we are geographically dispersed."

Dana has a list of 40 physical factors to take into account when deciding where to locate a data center, include proximity to transit, weather, water sources and available electricity. Choices have to be made carefully, and something as simple as a nearby rail line could cause vibrations that harm server operations, he said.

But in downsizing, Dana wants to ensure AMD's engineers have access to the resources needed to design chips. AMD is trying to consolidate servers and reduce expenses such as electric bills through higher utilization rates. The company is also reducing network latency so engineers get quicker access to servers.

AMD is operating a private cloud that makes key EDA (electronic design applications) accessible to engineers worldwide. The company's engineering tasks are executed in real time across a virtual grid of servers that has 120,000 CPU cores. AMD tries to maintain close to a 100 percent utilization rate, and virtualization tools help all cores seem like one "giant number-crunching machine," Dana said.

"We want to do compute anywhere -- it doesn't matter where the engineer sits as long as they get the performance they need," Dana said.

Putting applications in the cloud consolidates computing resources and centralizes the computing infrastructure, Dana said. Data is more secure because it is stored in fewer, centralized locations.

Many companies offer cloud services, such as Amazon, but AMD kept an internal cloud as it wanted to have stronger control over usage of EDA tools. The company has deployed specific tools to track down where resources need to be assigned, and cloud transactions change by region as employees worldwide have been assigned different tasks, Dana said.

Over the past few years, closure of data centers has resulted in huge savings, Dana said. The company is retiring old data centers as contracts end and as hardware retires, replacing it with new equipment and hardware, which requires the same level of investment as upgrading existing data centers.

Idle CPU cycles cost the company, and server upgrades have netted AMD millions in savings, Dana said. Socket compatibility provides a cost-effective way to upgrade to faster and more power-efficient chips without buying extra hardware.

"For socket upgrades you have to do your homework," Dana said. Upgrades could be done to cut costs or add performance, or to test out new chips, he said.

But as servers move to the next generation, it's better to change the motherboard, Dana said. Hardware depreciation could range from three to five years.

LG launches dual-core Optimus LTE smartphone in Europe

LG Electronics said on Friday that it will start selling the Optimus True HD LTE in Germany, Portugal, Sweden, helping the number of available LTE devices to slowly grow across Europe.

The first commercial LTE network may have launched in Europe. But while LTE has become a must-have on smartphones in the U.S., Europe is still lagging behind.

Samsung's Galaxy S II has already started shipping, and a European version of HTC Velocity 4G has also been announced.

Germany, Portugal, Sweden all have three operators that offer commercial services. But it is unclear which operators will start selling the Optimus True HD LTE.

O2 in Germany confirmed that it will start selling the device is June, according to a spokeswoman. Telekom Deutschland said it would not. The other operators in Germany and Sweden didn't reply to questions about their plans, and LG didn't either.

The Optimus True HD LTE has a 4.5-inch display with a 1280-by-720 resolution. It is powered by a 1.5 GHz dual-core processor and also has a 8-megapixel camera. The current version uses Android 2.3. An upgrade to Android 4.0 is on the way, but LG doesn't say when it will be available.

Before launching the smartphone in Europe, the Optimus True HD LTE started shipping Korea and is now also available in Japan, Canada and the US, which shows that Europe is a low priority.

The main problem is that Germany is the only big European market were commercial LTE services are available. Operators in France, Italy, Spain and the U.K. have yet to launch their networks. The U.K. hasn't even auctioned off the spectrum necessary to get started.

The roll-out in those countries isn't expected to start until 201 in earnest, according Alan Hadden, president at industry organization GSA (Global mobile Suppliers Association). Therefore, it makes more sense to stick with just with HSPA, for now.

Because LTE networks aren't widely deployed, Nokia plans to introduce the Nokia Lumia 900 with HSPA at 42M bps to ensure that users can still get a high-speed connection, according to a spokesman at the company.

Apple's latest iPad also allows users to access the Web using HSPA at 42M bps, but the company didn't implemented the spectrum bands used for LTE in Europe.

Globally, the number of LTE devices is growing fast.

The total number of products with LTE was 347 as of April 4, which is around 15% higher than the number of HSPA+ compatible devices, according to Hadden. That is significant because the first commercial LTE network went live 10 months later than the launch of the first commercial HSPA+ service, he said.

There were 64 commercial LTE networks in 34 countries at the beginning of April, and the number of networks is expected to grow to 129 by the end of the year, according to GSA's data.

Huawei aims to offer touch-free smartphones, infinite cloud storage

Huawei Technologies is aiming to bring touch-free smartphones and more inexpensive cloud storage to users, as the company boosts its research and development spending in order to bring "disruptive" technologies that will alter the market landscape.

"We are focused on disruptive technology and taking interesting ideas and turning them into something exciting," said John Roese, general manager for Huawei's North American research and develop center, on Friday.

The China-based company is best known as a supplier of telecommunication equipment. But the firm has been ambitiously expanding into both the consumer and enterprise sides of the technology business, aiming to provide products including Huawei branded smartphones, tablets along with servers and cloud computing offerings.

Last year, the company spent $3.76 billion on research and development, resulting in 11,000 new employees hired for the company's R&D efforts. For this year, Huawei's R&D spending is expected to grow by 20% to about $4.5 billion.

Roese, who spoke to journalists on Friday, manages a research and development staff of 1,000 employees in North America, and was a former CTO for Nortel. One technology the company has been working on is touch-free smartphones, allowing the devices to read users' hand gestures in order to initiate commands.

"What if you use the camera of a tablet or a smartphone and use it to capture the visualization of your hands," he said. "So imagine instead of touching a smartphone, you can actually have a three-dimensional interaction with it."

Touchscreen smartphones and tablets currently allow for the use of several fingers to issue certain commands when pressed on the display. But users only have five fingers on a hand, limiting the number of commands that can be made, Roese said. Using hand gestures, however, would allow users to more easily bring objects forward, push them back or rotate them within the smartphone's graphical user interface, he said.

Other companies already offer motion-sensing input. Microsoft for example uses motion sensing in its Xbox 360 Kinect device. Last month, Sony also announced the Android-based smartphone, the Xperia sola, which can read finger gestures to highlight links in text.

Huawei, however, expects its own touch-free smartphones will need a powerful graphics processor and also two front-facing cameras to fully read a user's hand movements, according to Roese. The technology will be added incrementally over time, starting with small features, and likely start on tablets first, he added.

Last year, the company sold 20 million smartphones. But for 2012, the company plans to reach even higher, and has the goal of smartphone sales hitting 60 million units.

Outside of mobile phones, Huawei also wants to make cloud storage less expensive. The company has partnered with CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, to investigate new storage techniques.

Through the partnership, Huawei's cloud storage system is being used to process and store 15,360TB of physics data taken each year. Roese believes the research could revolutionize computing storage architecture.

"If we are successful, which I think we will be, it literally could change the economics of storage by an order of a magnitude," he said. Suppliers could give infinite backup and only charge people when they needed to restore it, while still making money, he said.

"Of all the projects, and there are lots of good projects, that is the one that could have a profound impact on the market," he said.