David Adams Archive

Intel has already shipped 45nm processors, while AMD is trying to get its 45nm to market. TI is claiming big 45nm performance too. Meanwhile, IBM believes it can lead the market to 32 and then 22nm chip production: "At 22nm, the existing techniques for microprocessor manufacturing useful at the 45nm and 32nm nodes will become obsolete. While currently lithography techniques cannot produce 22nm circuitry, IBM has developed a new approach called Computational Scaling, which will allow for this tiny-scale production. The new technique uses advanced mathematical computation to adjust the shape of the masks and illuminating source during etching."

This week Cisco released twelve sets of security patches, eleven of which were to address security vulnerabilities in the Cisco Internetwork Operating System (IOS), the OS that runs on most of its networking hardware.

The iPhone is revolutionizing the mobile computing market, largely on the strength of its "it just works" credentials. The availability of easily-downloaded apps from the app store is one of the iPhone's big strength. However, the app store has its dark side both for developers and users.

Neil McAllister delves into the Android and iPhone SDKs to help sort out which will be the best bet for developers now that technical details of the first Android smartphone have been announced. Whereas the iPhone requires an Intel-based Mac running OS X 10.5.4 or later, ADC membership, and familiarity with proprietary Mac OS X dev tools, the standard IDE for Android is Eclipse. And because most tasks can be performed with command-line tools, you can expect third parties to develop Android SDK plug-ins for other IDEs. 'By just about any measure, Google's Android is more open and developer-friendly than the iPhone,' McAllister writes. This openness is essential to Android's prospects. 'Based on raw market share alone, the iPhone seems likely to remain the smartphone developer's platform of choice — especially when ISVs can translate that market share into application sales,' McAllister writes. 'In this race, Apple is taking a page from Microsoft's book, while Google looks suspiciously like Linux.'

Logan Harbaugh examines five products for ensuring high availability and performing disaster recovery in complex virtual environments. 'HADR is fraught with complexity, due to the intricacies of virtualization itself,' Harbaugh writes. 'Just as there is no single solution for HADR in general, there is no single solution within virtualization: Different products address different areas, including backups, failover, deployment, and storage virtualization.' Harbaugh's comprehensive article helps sort out the complexities of achieving 'always-on virtualization.'

Cisco and a group of leading tech companies have formed an industry alliance that promotes the Internet Protocol (IP) for interconnecting millions of embedded devices such as thermometers and light switches, forming an "Internet of Things". Many OSNews readers should be familiar with the technical basis of the alliance: embedded open source developer Adam Dunkels' lightweight uIP TCP/IP stack from the Contiki operating system. Nice to see that open source OSes besides Linux and BSD also have a major impact on the technology industry.

Palm's planned Linux-based Palm OS, called "Palm OS II," is "on track" to be ready by the end of the year, with a target of early 2009 for devices running the new OS to be on sale. The new Palm OS is being developed independent of Access, the company that owns the current (old) Palm OS, which is acquired with PalmSource in 2005.

Microsoft just released Windows HPC Server 2008, with support for thousands of processors. A NYTimes article takes a closer look at Microsoft's ambitions in supercomputing, and current trends in the HPC field, where Microsoft has almost no current presence. Microsoft's strategy is probably a recognition that with the price of high-powered hardware decreasing, many new companies and organizations are finding application for high-powered systems, and they hope to be able to take a portion of that new business using people's familiarity with the Windows brand as a foot in the door.

"Hyperion Entertainment VOF and ACube Systems SRL are pleased to announce that they have entered into an OEM license agreement which will allow ACube to offer its customers an OEM version of Hyperion's AmigaOS 4.1 operating system for their SAM440 range of motherboards. Prospective customers wishing to beta-test the near final OEM version of AmigaOS 4.1 for the SAM 440ep will be afforded the opportunity to do so and will subsequently receive the full version. Orders can be placed as of now with ACube. A first public demonstration of AmigaOS 4.1 for SAM440ep is scheduled for the upcoming exhibition Pianeta Amiga in Empoli, Italy on September 27-28, 2008." Update by TH: Due to all the massive cheering and excitement going on in the OSNews Boardroom and our company yacht, we actually forgot to link to the official announcements here and here.

Paul Venezia offers an in-depth review of Citrix XenDesktop 2.0, touching on the growing importance Virtual Desktop Infrastructure as a whole. 'Citrix has married VDI to its existing stable of application and desktop delivery mechanisms, and it continues to leverage the stellar ICA protocol to assist in speed, user experience, and manageability,' Venezia writes. 'If the company can continue to improve XenServer, XenDesktop could become the showcase VDI implementation. As it stands now, coupling XenDesktop with VMware VI3 is probably the best of both worlds.'

Builder Au looked closely at Windows Server 2008 and then listed the 10 things about the OS that left an impression on them. They looked at 64-bit compatibility, NT domain migration, and the licensing terms, just to name a few.

The opening up of the mobile industry is great news for application developers but not so good for IT security professionals, according to experts. For example, Symbian, the single most widely used mobile software platform, has already wrestled with the dangers of openness to third-party developers, said Khoi Nguyen, group product manager in mobile security at Symantec. Symbian 7 and 8 were fairly open and allowed almost any application to be installed and run. This led to a few hundred viruses being introduced within a couple of years, so Symbian 9 was locked down significantly, he said.

Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth announced Wednesday that his company, Canonical, will hire professional designers and interaction experts to improve the usability of the Linux desktop software ecosystem. They will work closely with upstream developers to bring a better experience to users of the open source operating system.

AMD plans to spin off its chip manufacturing operations by year's end, probably by hawking them outright or by inking a partnership with a larger chipmaker -- a maneuver akin to selling a house and leasing it back. Meyer is vague on the exact timing of a deal, but he knows it's probably the best thing the company can do quickly to improve its financial position, and its reputation with investors. A successful transaction would see AMD pocket a good chunk of cash, while handing manufacturing to a company that can better keep pace with Intel's world-class operations.