architecture

Tilera has introduced a range of processors with up to 100 cores, aiming to take on Intel in servers that handle high-throughput Web applications.

The chips in the 40nm 64-bit Tilera Gx family, announced yesterday, have between 36 and 100 cores and are intended by the Silicon Valley-based chip design company to compete with Intel's Sandy Bridge range of processors.

"The reason we can go against Sandy Bridge architecture is [Intel's range] was designed for general-purpose [applications], so it has to account for single-thread performance and power-point performance and Windows," Ihab Bishara, Tilera's head of … Read more

With speculation and rumor suggesting (possibly accurately) that OS X Lion will be issued without the "Rosetta" dynamic translator that allows PowerPC code to run on Intel-based Macs, a number of people are undoubtedly concerned about their readiness to use a platform without any form of PowerPC support. Over the years, people have accumulated applications, tools, and utilities that use either Intel or PowerPC, or both, and while numerous developers have updated their software to work natively on Intel Macs, with Rosetta being so transparent, people may be unsure whether their software requires PowerPC.

Another factor that plays … Read more

SAUSALITO, Calif.--Here in Marin, a county forward-thinking enough that it commissioned a world-class civic center by Frank Lloyd Wright, it should come as no surprise that many homes are truly stunning and would be envied the world over.

And the envy will probably be especially strong for those who fork over $150 to visit 10 multimillion dollar masterpieces throughout Marin, just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, on April 30 and May 1. Dwell magazine, in conjunction with Marin magazine, is hosting the Home Tours. But as part of my Road Trip at Home series, I got a chance to visit four of the residences before the tours take place.

The four homes I toured provided a terrific cross-section of the best Marin has to offer: a Tiburon hilltop cacophony of windows featuring world-beating views of Marin, the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, and Berkeley and Oakland; a spare but impressive floating home in the middle of one of Sausalito's best houseboat communities; a "Bridge House" that imaginatively spans a small valley and a river below; and a home at the top of a hill in a tree-studded and quiet neighborhood that emphasizes the beauty and grandeur of the outdoors throughout its modern interior.

As the home tour's official brochure puts it, these houses are "pushing residential architecture forward in Marin County... Discover the houses that are bringing the outdoors in, realizing dreams, and defining what modern design means."

Gate 5 House For years, one of my favorite things to do in Sausalito has been to go walking on the houseboat docks. And while there are several of them clustered together in a small area on the north end of town, I've long favored one specific dock for its quiet, the lush plants that residents grow outside, the many cats that wander peacefully along the wooden planks, and the whimsical art found up and down the dock.

So I was very happy when I discovered that the one houseboat included in the home tour is not only on my favorite dock, but is located right at my favorite part of the dock.

This is owner-architect David Spurgeon's Gate 5 House. Unassuming from the outside, inside it's a study in maximizing minimal space. After all, this is a house with two wide-open floors and no other rooms, save for a couple of bathrooms and a closet-cum-bunk-bed. Yet it features a fantastic gourmet kitchen, views to die for of Southern Marin's Richardson Bay, a boat of its own that allows Spurgeon to set sail for just about anywhere he wants to go, and much more.

Spurgeon, who works in Sausalito as an architect, started out by buying the aging tugboat that previously filled his slip and turning it over to the local fire department, which in turn moved it nearby and used it to set test fires. Once the slip was empty, Spurgeon began building his new home by hand in 2002, completing it three years later. "I built everything you see," he told me proudly.

The house is designed to be comfortable in all seasons. When it's warm, Spurgeon can open the wide doors that lead from the main upstairs space to a deck that looks out over the water. When it's cold, he keeps the doors closed, trapping heat inside. Spurgeon touts the house's green credentials: it has radiant heat in the floors, and bamboo flooring, low-E glass, steel siding, and manufactured lumber from new-growth wood.

The house also uses space wisely. In the lower level, Spurgeon installed closets that open both into his bedroom area and into the bunk bed room. The bunk is built on top of the closet, which is located at floor level. I thought using the closet would require stooping down, but that wasn't the case.

In the bathroom, Spurgeon displays more creative use of materials. For his fixtures here, he employed food service equipment, including a kettle caddy for the main plumbing. It feels industrial, but looks just right.

I asked Spurgeon something I've always wanted to know about the houseboats: Don't they suffer from mold, since they're smack dab in the middle of an extremely wet environment? The only corrosive he worries about, he said, is the salt from the bay water that can attack the wood and metal of the boat.

But it doesn't look like he has much trouble with that, and when I asked him if he likes living here, he glowed. "Basically, you never really lose the connection to the outside," Spurgeon said, touting the seals that show up outside from time to time and the "pelicans that come in like marauding bombers" about 6 inches off the surface of the water. "It's an absolute cacophony of stuff with all the doors open... I love it here. I always feel like I'm camping out."

And if camping means cooking in a gourmet kitchen, sign me up. … Read more

Starting in the early nineties, the PowerPC chip became the primary CPU architecture used in Macs for the next decade and a half. While it had potential, both it and the corporate politics behind it ultimately became a hinderance for Apple when competing with the vast and growing x86 and developing x64 architectures from Intel and AMD.

Apple made the transition to the x86 and x64 architectures very smooth with the use of Rosetta and Universal Binary applications, but this effort also resulted in a lot of remaining PowerPC code that is either still being used or is being packaged … Read more

We've been keeping a close eye on the development of the Toyota FT-86 concept, mostly because we're excited at what could be the first small, sporty Toyota (or Scion) since the Celica took a trip to the chopping block in 2006*. However, we've also been peripherally aware that Toyota's development partnership with Subaru--provider of the 86's Boxer four-cylinder engine--meant that we'd eventually see a Subaru variant of the sports coupe. It now appears that we won't have to wait much longer, as Subaru has recently launched a teaser site for its "Boxer … Read more

Energy analogies abound with respect to cloud computing and its effect on enterprise IT operations and economics. Nick Carr's seminal work, "The Big Switch," laid out the case for why computing will be subject to many of the same forces as the electricity market was in the early 20th century. While I've pointed out the analogy isn't perfect, I will say there are often interesting parallels that are worth exploring.

One example is the ongoing discussion about the effect of cheaper computing on the reduction (or lack thereof) of future IT expenditures. Simon Wardley, a … Read more

SAN RAFAEL, Calif.--It looks like a futuristic spaceship, resplendent with sand beige walls, a sky-blue roof, and a 172-foot-tall gold tower, but it's not quite that sci-fi. Still, the Marin County Civic Center definitely has an out-of-this-world pedigree: It was designed by famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and was the last major design of his career.

For anyone who lives in Marin County, just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, or who has driven through, the Civic Center may well be a familiar sight. Located just east of U.S. Highway 101, the beautiful low-slung complex … Read more

In the physical world, people knowing they'll be judged on appearances often prefer to put their best foot forward.

But there's a direct analog of the real world taking shape inside thousands of Google computers, a collection that began with addresses and roads and that's extended to photos and 3D buildings. What do you do when it's time to spruce up for virtual visitors?

You can of course learn how to create 3D models and submit them to Google. But a New Zealand start-up is hoping you'll do the same thing most people do when … Read more

While these giants could creep you out while driving solo across the bleak countryside, anything that beautifies the landscape gets my vote. Here, Brookline, Mass., architecture firm Choi+Shine struts its stuff, literally, by taking ubiquitous electrical pylon and creating transmission towers that resemble a sculpture park of electrifying statues with heads, torsos, forearms, and legs.

While the Land of Giants project was originally submitted to a Icelandic contest aimed at obtaining new ideas and looks for high-voltage towers and lines, it could easily cross borders. Several versions exist, so take a gander at the designs here, which won an … Read more