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Intel adds low-power Xeon chips

Intel has added to its stable of Xeon processors and shaved the price on an Atom chip.

On Sunday, Intel introduced two low-power Xeon processor models rated as low as 45 watts and a higher-end processor.

The L3110 (3.00GHz) integrates 6MB of level-2 (L2) cache memory and is rated at 45 watts, one of Intel's lowest TDP (Thermal Design Power) ratings for a Xeon processor. This is priced at $224.

The Xeon L3360 (2.83GHz) comes with 12MB of L2 cache and is rated at 65 watts. This is listed at $369.

A higher-end X3380 Xeon (3.16GHz) … Read more

Citrix offers cut-down XenServer for free

Citrix on Monday upped competition in the virtualization market with the announcement that it will provide a version of its XenServer hypervisor for free.

The software will be available for download by the end of March from Citrix's Web site, the company said. Users can get a single server instance of XenServer, said Simon Crosby, chief technical officer at Citrix. The release will include multinode management, resource sharing between several servers and full live-motion features.

However, Crosby told ZDNet UK that the free edition "will not include some features that we will continue to monetize."

Not included … Read more

Nehalem servers to anchor Intel cloud computing

New "Nehalem" servers will anchor Intel's renewed push into cloud computing, as the chipmaker focuses on mega data centers with hundreds of thousands of servers.

Intel's cloud-computing efforts this year will be centered on a new server that uses upcoming Nehalem technology, Intel said Tuesday in a teleconference on its cloud-computing strategy. Nehalem is Intel's new chip architecture currently used only in its Core i7 desktop processors.

Mega data centers potentially mean mega-growth. The world's largest chipmaker sees between 20 percent and 25 percent of server shipments going to mega data centers by 2012. … Read more

Microsoft patches four critical IE, Exchange holes

Updated at 12:30 p.m. PST with nCircle comment.

Microsoft on Tuesday released security updates that fix four critical vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer and Exchange Server that could allow an attacker to take control of an affected computer remotely.

Microsoft Security Bulletin MS09-002 plugs two critical holes in IE that could allow remote code execution if an IE user views a Web page that has malicious code, according to Microsoft's notification.

"Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights," … Read more

Your iPhone, Your Web Server for File Sharing

A new app that makes the iPhone into a web server has appeared in Japan's iTunes App Store. The app, called Serversman@iPhone (Google Translated Press Release), was developed by a Japanese company called Freebit.

The app allows iPhone users to exchange files with computers via uploading and downloading via a browser or by using the webDAV protocol. Direct connection for file transfers is available on a local area network containing all the devices. Otherwise use of VPN software provided by Freebit is recommended.

The app is currently only available in the Japanese iTunes App Store, but an English … Read more

Barclays buys into Sun stock

Update at 9:03 a.m. PST: Comments from Sun added.

Barclays Global Investors has signed aboard as a new shareholder in Sun Microsystems, taking a 3.18 percent stake in the struggling hardware maker, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing Thursday.

Sun, whose stock closed up 10.3 percent on Thursday, at $5.48, after heavy trading volume of 21.6 million shares, has seen its stock on the rise since January 30, when it traded at $4.16 a share.

On the day before Sun's shares started their northward trek, the company's … Read more

Intel delays 'Tukwila' server chip--again

Intel has delayed a high-end server chip, billed as the world's first 2 billion transistor microprocessor, originally expected as long ago as 2007.

Tukwila is a quad-core update to the Itanium processor, which has had a less-than-promising run since the original version was announced back in 2001. The chip's architecture--based on explicit instruction-level parallelism--is a radical departure from the x86 design used in PCs today. It was believed at one time that Itanium would replace x86 chips in many Intel-based computers.

So, what's delaying it this time? Intel has "made some engineering enhancements to the Tukwila … Read more

For casino industry, server-based gaming still in the cards

In the summer of 2005, the casino industry was abuzz with excitement over what was then seen as the next great thing--server-based gaming, a major technological shift in how slot machines work.

Essentially, this innovation was going to make it possible for the machines to present a wide variety of games, all served up from back-office databases, and chosen on the spot by players. This was a sea change from the traditional model, in which a device had a single game built into it. As a result, I wrote then, the technology was "slated to be the biggest news … Read more

DIY server farm? Check!

Need a little extra computing power, but don't want to pay for it? Sure, we all do.

Altair was probably thinking along the same lines Monday when it announced its Personal PBS. It's a free turnkey application that purportedly leverages multicore CPU technology to transform any desktop computer into a miniature compute farm or cluster system.

In addition, for an (undisclosed as of yet) fee, PBS provides an upgrade option path that lets customers submit jobs from their personal desktop to back-end server systems running PBS Professional.

Altair expects this new product to appeal to the open-source community, … Read more