fujitsu

IDC: Server market shows glimmer of hope

Third-quarter sales of servers across the globe showed a 17.3 percent decline from the same quarter in 2008, sagging to $10.4 billion, according to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker.

But server shipments improved, falling only 17.9 percent for the quarter, compared with 30.1 percent in the second quarter, noted the IDC report released Wednesday. Even more promising, shipments grew at a healthy 12.4 percent over the second quarter, the market's largest sequential quarterly gain since 2005.

All three server segments tracked by IDC--volume, midrange enterprise, and high-end enterprise--saw lower third-quarter sales compared with … Read more

Sun takes big fall in server market

All top five server vendors globally saw declines in revenue and shipment in the third quarter of 2009, with Sun Microsystems registering the biggest fall, according to the latest figures from Gartner.

In a report released Monday, the research firm noted that Sun saw its server revenue drop 32 percent and unit shipments dip 38 percent in the third quarter, compared to the same period last year.

IBM experienced a 12 percent decline in revenue growth, though it clocked the highest revenue in the market for the quarter at $3.4 billion. Hewlett-Packard and Fujitsu saw their revenue decline 15 … Read more

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These flexible RFID tags can take the heat

With radio frequency identification tags already showing up in school uniforms, it makes sense they'd make their way into other types of uniforms as well.

But what to do when said uniforms are worn in manufacturing plants where garments have to be sterilized with heat so microorganisms and other outside pollutants don't contaminate the goods? Wouldn't the RFID tags turn into goop?

Funny you should ask. Fujitsu has come up with a flexible, ultra high frequency (UHF)-band RFID tag that can withstand temperatures up to 250 degrees Fahrenheit (much, much hotter than CNET's New York … Read more

Fujitsu's hard-drive business now Toshiba's

Fujitsu and Toshiba announced on Thursday that they have completed the transfer of Fujitsu's hard-drive business to Toshiba.

First announced in February, the agreement moves Fujitsu's former hard-drive business into a new Toshiba subsidiary company called Toshiba Storage Device Corp., or TSDC.

To ease the transfer, Toshiba will initially own 80 percent of TSDC, with the remaining 20 percent owned by Fujitsu. By December of 2010, Fujitsu will give up its entire share, making TSDC a wholly owned Toshiba subsidiary.

The conclusion of the deal had been postponed because of delays in obtaining regulatory approval from the European … Read more

Intel forum debuts to include USB 3.0 gear

As the next generation of Universal Serial Bus technology nears commercial reality, next week's Intel Developer Forum will play host to more USB 3.0-capable devices.

A Fujitsu laptop, a high-end video camera, and a solid-state drive using USB 3.0 technology, among other hardware, will be demonstrated at IDF, according an announcement from the USB Implementers Forum on Thursday.

USB technology is now used on virtually all computing devices globally as well as the lion's share of consumer electronics products. Also referred to as "SuperSpeed USB," next-generation USB 3.0 boosts the data transfer rate … Read more

Still waiting for the tablet revolution

A lot of people are betting that 2010 will be the year of the tablet computer.

Of course, we've heard such predictions about tablets before. This time, the reasoning goes, is different, because the devices will have more sophisticated touch screens and consumers are more used to virtual keyboards. Most importantly, Apple just might be jumping into the fray.

Tablets, you may recall, are either laptops with a screen that twists and folds flat and uses a stylus or fingertip for input, or something more like an oversize iPod Touch that's used for tasks like checking e-mail, getting on the Web, and watching videos.

True, market researchers at DisplaySearch predict sales for all touch-screen devices will be growing from $3.5 billion this year to more than $6 billion by 2012. But if 2010 is going be the year of the tablet--meaning regular folks start buying these en masse--someone has to get it right.

So far, we're still waiting.

Toshiba, Archos, Fujitsu, and Lenovo have touch-screen tablets coming our way in the next few months, none of which should revolutionize our already established expectations of tablet PCs.… Read more

Report: Asian firms eye alternative chips

Updated on September 16 at 6:30 a.m. PDT: adding information from Hironori Kasahara, a professor of computer science at Waseda University

Large electronics companies are building a chip for consumer electronics devices in Japan, while a China-based device manufacturer said it is working on devices using the ARM chip design, according to reports.

In Japan, some of the country's largest electronics and chip manufacturers are collaborating in an effort to develop a new low-power processor design for consumer electronics devices, according to Nikkei, which Forbes reported earlier.

The Japan-based group includes Fujitsu, Toshiba, Panasonic Renesas Technology, NEC, … Read more

High-end server chips breaking records

How would you like a single-chip microprocessor with more than four times the performance (on some applications) of Intel's best Core i7?

Then consider that up to 32 of these chips can be directly connected to form a single server, achieving four times the built-in scalability of Intel's next-generation Nehalem-EX processor.

That's IBM's widely anticipated Power7, which it described at last week's Hot Chips conference. But if you're interested, you'd better be prepared to spend a lot more than four times as much per chip. IBM isn't talking about pricing, but large … Read more