Nvidia expects to do well in Windows-on-ARM race
Three years ago, few people had heard of Nvidia processors.
But today the chipmaker is winning attention for its latest Tegra 3 quad-core technology being used in smartphones and tablets. The Tegra 3 is, for instance, used in the new Asus Transformer Pad 300 series and the Transformer Pad Infinity series, both of which were unveiled this week here at Mobile World Congress.
Nvidia, like Asus Technology and others, is widely regarded as a technology innovator, the kind of company that rises quickly to take on giants like Intel, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments (TI), analysts said. Read more...
Oak Ridge lab to deploy fast Titan supercomputer
A government research lab in Tennessee will deploy a new supercomputer later this year that could put the U.S. back in contention for the top spot on the list of the world's fastest supercomputers.
The Titan supercomputer at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory is on track for completion by autumn, and will deliver between 10 petaflops (10,000 trillion operations per second) and 20 petaflops of peak performance, the ORNL said Wednesday. The initial phase of its development has just been completed, the lab said.
Titan, which is a Cray XK6 system, will be the result of hardware upgrades to ORNL's existing Jaguar supercomputer, which delivers 3.3 petaflops peak performance. Read more...
More smartphones are getting HD Voice
Quad-core processors and big screens are getting most of the attention at Mobile World Congress, but a feature that is getting more common on new smartphones is HD Voice.
More smartphones are becoming compatible with HD Voice, which improves call voice quality, as interest from operators for the technology is increasing. But even more mobile operators need to get onboard to increase its usability, according to Orange.
The improved quality it offers is possible thanks to AMR-WB (Adaptive Multi-Rate - Wideband), a speech-compression algorithm that doubles the range of voice frequencies transmitted. Phones also have better acoustics and noise cancelation, according to Alex Nourouzi, product marketing director at Orange, which all users benefit from. Read more...
Google privacy checklist: What to do before Google’s privacy policy changes on March 1
We've been talking about it for weeks, but the big day is almost here: On March 1, Google will implement its new privacy policy and terms of service, unifying 70 separate privacy policies and extending them across most of Google's offerings.
This grand consolidation means that all of your Google account data will live in a single database that every Google service can access. Google Maps will have access to your Gmail data, which will have access to your YouTube history, and so on. Google insists that this change will ultimately benefit users, but privacy advocacy groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation fear that users will lose control over the personal data they've shared with Google. Read more...
AMD buys SeaMicro, enters server hardware business
Advanced Micro Devices announced Wednesday it is buying low-power server vendor SeaMicro, a surprise move that puts AMD in the systems business and disrupts Intel by acquiring one of its close partners.
AMD will pay $334 million in cash and stock for SeaMicro, a 40-employee Silicon Valley startup that has gained attention for building highly dense and power-efficient servers for use in large-scale cloud computing environments. SeaMicro CEO Andrew Feldman will become general manager of a new division at AMD, the Data Center Server Solutions group.
AMD plans to sell SeaMicro-branded servers directly to customers, but it bought the company primarily for its technology, which it hopes to license to other server vendors to build their own low-power systems, AMD officials said. Read more...
Mobile data privacy is terra incognita to users and developers
President Obama's move Thursday to establish a so-called Privacy Bill of Rights for the Internet can be seen as the consolidation of decade-long efforts by disparate groups to improve privacy protections via countless browser add-ons, settings, and privacy policies. But while it's possible to guard privacy on the desktop, the rapidly growing mobile space is still the Wild West, with an almost endless landscape of privacy pitfalls that challenge even the most vigilant consumer.
Today's mobile phones collect an enormous amount of personal data -- from the user's email address to his or her location, contact list, calendar and even photos -- and tether it to a single unique device ID number. One location-based photo-sharing app reportedly activated users' microphones to narrow down their location beyond what GPS data could provide. There is as yet very little to protect the valuable data on these most personal of devices. Read more...
Eric Schmidt, Ben Horowitz, And Othres Share Thier Thoughts On the Current State Of Tech IPOs
Wealthfront, a startup that has been disrupting the investing and personal finance space, is debuting a new video tonight that is definitely worth a look. The video features content from Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt, Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Ben Horowitz, Qatalyst CEO Frank Quattrone, and Benchmark Capital partner Bill Gurley and features their perspectives on recent tech IPOs and their significance to the industry.
Some of the highlights include lessons learned from the last bubble, what to expect from this new wave of tech IPOs and why going public is great for companies. For example, Schmidt gives his advice for employees of companies going public: he recommends taking your time and being careful about selling stock so that you actually make money and don’t just incur a heavy tax liability. Read more...