Business Tech

Intel Labs Europe is joining a handful of French institutions to investigate large-scale computing challenges that face today's information technology industry.

The Exascale Computing Research Center will investigate machines that can perform 1,000 times more calculations than today's top supercomputers, Intel said, and the chipmaker is spending millions of dollars on the three-year partnership.

The effort also includes Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique, Grand Equipement National de Calcul Intensif, and the Universite de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines. Those organizations will jointly match Intel's investment, Intel said.

"France has taken a leading role in driving high-performance computing research in Europe. We chose to work with these three organizations because of their world-class software competency in exascale and high- performance computing," said Steve Pawlowski, general manager of the Intel Architecture Group's central architecture and planning, in a statement.

The move also raises the company's profile in a jurisdiction that's been tough on Intel. The chipmaker ended up on the losing end of a European Commission antitrust judgment, and is now appealing the resulting fine of 1.06 billion euros ($1.58 billion). Intel just settled a separate antitrust case brought by rival AMD.

Intel Labs Europe employs 900 researchers in Europe, the chipmaker said.

Advanced Micro Devices is laying claim to the world's fastest graphics card at it continues an assault on Nvidia at the high-end of the graphics chip market.

As teased last week by AMD senior vice president Rick Bergman at a financial analyst meeting, the "Hemlock" graphics card--now officially called the ATI Radeon HD 5970--is AMD's top-of-the-line graphics product.

"It's in production. You'll be able to buy it at e-tailers around the world...Five Teraflops out of this baby," Bergman said last week. A teraflop is a trillion floating point operations per second, a key indicator of graphics performance.

Review site Tom's Hardware called it the "fastest discrete (standalone) card in the world."

The card integrates two graphics processing units (GPUs) for a total of 4.3 billion transistors. It also boasts 3,200 stream processing units and 160 texture units--tiny individual processors for accelerating graphics. And it supports Microsoft's DirectX 11 for speeding up graphics in Windows 7.

The 5970 will ship in Area-51 ALX and Aurora desktops from Dell's Alienware unit and allow "massive overclocking," according to AMD. Overclocking allows users to ratchet up chip speeds beyond the card's specified rating. "The unrivaled overclocking capabilities of the ATI Radeon HD 5970 are enabled by the unique design of the card, which features advanced fan and vapor chamber technologies and a fully vented exhaust to keep the card cool and ensure overclocking headroom using ATI Overdrive technology," AMD said in a statement.

A maximum resolution of 7680x1600 is achieved by driving up to up to three displays at once.

AMD cited games that will benefit from the card such as Electronic Art's Phenomic's BattleForge, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat (GSC Game World), Battlefield Bad Company 2 (EA Dice), DiRT 2 (Codemasters), Aliens vs. Predator (Rebellion), and the update to The Lord of the Rings Online (Turbine).

Though prices will vary, some retailers are currently listing the price at $599.

Intel Capital announced seven new investments Tuesday, including a storage systems company for Apple users and a cloud computing company.

"Innovation does not stop during economic slowdowns," Arvind Sodhani, president of Intel Capital and Intel executive vice president, said in a statement. "New technologies are the drivers of growth that help lead economies back to prosperity."

Investments as spelled out by Intel:

• Active Storage (Los Angeles) provides a media storage platform for Apple-based infrastructures. The company's hardware RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) solutions are aimed toward the business and creative industries, particularly video post-production, broadcast, publishing, education and science. The company intends to focus this round of funding on R&D and sales and marketing.
  
• Joyent (Sausalito, Calif.) provides cloud computing infrastructure and services to help customers develop, deploy and manage Web applications and sites, and to improve data center performance. Joyent's cloud computing technologies offer better performance, utilization rates, savings and security. Joyent will use the funding to accelerate its product development and for increased global expansion.
  
• Crucialtec (Cheon-Ahn City, Korea) is a manufacturer of specialized input devices that utilize optical technology for mobile phones, smart phones, and IPTV (Internet Protocol television) remote controllers. Crucialtec's Optical Trackball enables users to enjoy the full internet experience with mobile products as they do with a PC. Intel Capital's investment will help with the development of a new generation of mobile solutions for the global market by providing Crucialtec with additional working capital.
  
• Gudeng Precision Industrial (Taipei, Taiwan) is a semiconductor front-end equipment manufacturer that helps customers enhance product yield and reduce production costs. Presently, Gudeng Precision is the world's leading photomask and wafer handling total solution provider, and the company's products are accepted and certificated by worldwide tier-one customers. Gudeng Precision will use the funding to expand business in China and enhance working capital.
  
• V-Cube (Tokyo) develops and markets Web-based videoconferencing systems. Its flagship "nice to meet you" service enables one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many interactive real-time communications and on-demand services over the Internet. Currently, V-cube is the largest service provider in Japan for Web-delivered visual communications. The investment will be used to further optimize the service for access from mobile Internet devices and Netbooks and to stream high-quality video over WiMAX wireless broadband networks.
  
• NeuString (Dubai, UAE) delivers predictive analytics software and consulting services to mobile network operators, helping companies to achieve greater financial performance. The NeuString Optiprizer software allows operators to optimize pricing, reduce leakage and get real-time reporting on operational metrics. The investment from Intel Capital will be used for sales and marketing build-out and new product development.
  
• Phoenix New Media (Beijing) provides dedicated and comprehensive portals to well-educated Chinese audiences of over 100 million. The portals, which are available on internet and mobile platforms, provide news and information generated from in-depth interviews, commentary columns, and social networks. The key features offered by Phoenix New Media help address Chinese netizens' diverse needs on information, expression, interaction and entertainment.
  

In addition, Onkyo, a Japanese company announced Monday that its board of directors has approved the issuance to Intel Capital of a bond having a face value of approximately $6.6 million, convertible into common shares of Onkyo at Intel Capital's option and a warrant to purchase common shares of Onkyo, Intel said. The convertible bond and the warrant would be issued to Intel Capital in December, subject to compliance with securities procedures and satisfaction of customary closing conditions.

The new deals total approximately $25 million, Intel said.

IBM researchers have cooked up a quick medical diagnostic testing system based on a silicon chip that can get by on a small sample and test for multiple diseases.

The breakthrough to be announced Tuesday means that physicians can test a patient immediately following a heart attack to improve survival rates. The test checks for disease markers, proteins that can be detected in blood using "capillary action force." In a nutshell, capillary forces refer to the tendency of a liquid to rise in narrow tubes or be drawn into a small opening.

The IBM Research-Zurich findings will be detailed in the December issue of the Royal Society of Chemistry. (See reprint PDF.)

Read more of "IBM researchers speed up medical diagnostic testing via chip" at ZDNet's Between the Lines.

Global semiconductor sales are now expected to fall this year by 11 percent--an improvement over the previous estimate of a 17 percent drop, according to research released Monday by Gartner. And the outlook for 2010 is sunny.

Revenue is projected to drop this year to $226 billion, an 11.4 percent decline from last year's $255 billion. Next year however, it's expected to bounce back by 13 percent from this year's level, hitting the same $255 billion figure it did in 2008.

Personal computers are the largest factor driving semiconductor sales. In another recent report, Gartner said it expects demand for consumer PCs to continue, which will fuel gains in microprocessors and DRAM (dynamic random access memory) chips. But sales may not jump out of the starting gate.

"Both device types experienced lower revenue declines than the industry average, and DRAM began to be profitable for some vendors in the third quarter of 2009 after almost three years of losses," said Bryan Lewis, research vice president at Gartner, in a statement. "While most of the news has been positive to date, recent channel checks in Taiwan indicate there is concern that PC orders are slowing earlier than the seasonal norm and that 2010 may get off to a slow start."

Besides PCs, cell phones have also been a boon for semiconductor sales, noted Gartner, with their need for NAND flash memory.

"The revenue forecast for the commodity memory market -- DRAM and NAND flash -- has improved because of the stronger demand outlook, which means that pricing has strengthened more than previously forecast," said Lewis. "ASSPs [integrated circuits that perform a specific task] and memory, primarily NAND flash, also benefited from an improved outlook for cell phones."

ARM on Tuesday announced the launch an alliance of 35 tech companies to support development of Android-based products using its widely used chips.

ARM-based chips power the world's most popular smartphones, including--in the U.S.--the Apple iPhone, Blackberry Storm, Palm Pre, and Motorola Droid.

The Solution Center for Android alliance will serve as a resource for designers and developers of ARM technology-based products running on the Android operating system, which is the software on the popular Motorola Droid smartphone and Acer Liquid.

In addition to smartphones, Android powers digital picture frames and smartbooks--what the Windows-Intel camp prefers to call Netbooks. ARM-based smartbooks packing processors from Qualcomm, Freescale Semiconductor, and Texas Instruments should begin to emerge in force at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, where Lenovo, among others, will debut its first-ever smartbook design. The Lenovo smartbook is expected to be sold by AT&T.

"Developers require assurance that the components they are using are up to the task," ARM said in a statement. "Android was written for the ARM architecture and Android 2.0 was launched on high-performance (ARM) Cortex-A processor designs."

ARM says the launch of popular products is putting new pressure on the ecosystem that supports ARM. "As we have seen through the recent launches of handsets such as Motorola's Droid and Acer's Liquid, the Android platform represents a fundamental change in the open source ecosystem," Kevin Smith, VP of segment marketing at ARM, said in a statement.

Smith says that ARM now needs to ensure that development solutions are world-class. "ARM is in a position to foster an innovative ecosystem to ensure that device manufacturers have the best development solutions at their disposal," he said.

Analysts agree. "Consumer adoption of smartbooks, smartphones and other 'always on' connected devices is forecast to increase significantly in the next few years," Jeff Orr, a senior analyst at ABI Research, said in a statement provided by ARM. "Manufacturers of these devices need a support structure that enables them to develop cutting-edge devices quickly and affordably."

ARM said that in addition to the support of major device makers, silicon partners and solution providers, the Solution Center for Android comprises more than 35 members of the ARM community, including Texas Instruments, Mentor Graphics, and Archos.

Updated at 9:30 a.m. PST: Clarifying that "Netbook" is the name that the Windows-Intel camp gives to the small laptops and "smartbook" is the moniker applied by the ARM camp of device makers.

This week's Supercomputing 2009 in Portland, Ore., puts the spotlight on the highest of high-end computing systems.

Intel unveils supercomputer chip, NEC partnership

The chipmaker has disclosed a version of its Xeon processor line optimized for high-performance computing. The company also announces it's teaming up with NEC.
(Posted in Nanotech: The Circuits Blog by Brooke Crothers)
November 16, 2009 1:35 PM PST

Microsoft testing Excel for supercomputers

At the SC09 conference, Microsoft releases an updated version of Windows Server for high-performance computers as well as a compute cluster version of its Excel spreadsheet.
(Posted in Beyond Binary by Ina Fried)
November 16, 2009 9:40 AM PST

Jaguar supercomputer races past Roadrunner in Top500

The Cray XT5 supercomputer known as "Jaguar" finally bests IBM after three tries. The top 10, while still dominated by supercomputers housed in the U.S., had just one newcomer.
(Posted in Circuit Breaker by Erica Ogg)
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previous coverage

Roadrunner supercomputer maps HIV family tree

Researchers are using IBM's Roadrunner to analyze tens of thousands of genetic sequences from individuals with HIV in the hopes of zeroing in on vaccine target areas.
(Posted in Health Tech by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore)
October 28, 2009 6:25 PM PDT

Supercomputer to use new Nvidia 'Fermi' chip

Oak Ridge National Laboratory announces plans for a new supercomputer that will use Nvidia's next generation GPU architecture.
(Posted in Nanotech: The Circuits Blog by Brooke Crothers)
September 30, 2009 3:05 PM PDT

How Intel's supercomputer almost used HP chips

In the 1990s, Intel seriously considered building the world's fastest supercomputer with a rival's processors, but the Pentium Pro arrived in time after all.
(Posted in Deep Tech by Stephen Shankland)
September 22, 2009 8:09 AM PDT

Intel on Monday disclosed a version of its Xeon processor line optimized for supercomputers and announced a partnership with NEC to develop future supercomputers.

At Supercomputing 2009 in Portland, Ore., Intel unveiled a future version of its "Nehalem-EX" processor optimized for supercomputers. The six-core chip will run at higher speeds than eight-core versions of the Nehalem-EX processors and will offer advantages for supercomputer specific tasks, Intel said in a statement. Intel also refers to supercomputing as high-performance computing, or HPC.

The chip architecture will offer greater memory speeds and capacity and will allow customers to build single computers or "nodes" with up to 256 such processors, according to Intel. This will be available next year, Intel said.

Intel said Monday that four out of every five supercomputers on the Top500 list published Monday are powered by Intel processors.

Intel also announced that it is partnering with Japan's NEC--that country's largest supercomputer vendor--to jointly develop technologies "that will push the boundaries of supercomputing performance," according to a joint statement.

NEC will use the technologies in future supercomputers based on the Intel Xeon processor and other technologies such as AVX (Advanced Vector Extensions), an extension to Intel's x86 instruction set architecture.

AVX will be used with Intel's upcoming Sandy Bridge microarchitecture due in 2011, according to Intel.

"With NEC further innovating on Intel Xeon processor-based systems, Intel is poised to bring Intel Xeon processor performance to an even wider supercomputing audience, " said Richard Dracott, general manager of Intel's High Performance Computing Group, in a statement.

Fumihiko Hisamitsu, general manager of HPC Division at NEC, said: "NEC's substantial experience in the development of vector processing systems...is a natural fit for taking Intel architecture further into new markets."

A vector processor design can perform operations on multiple data elements simultaneously. Intel Xeon chips are good at scalar processing, which handles one data item at a time.

The initial focus of the collaboration will be the development of technology to boost the memory speed and scalability--the latter refers to expanding a system to increase performance or capacity. "Such enhancements are intended to benefit systems targeting not only the very high end of the scientific computing market segment, but also to benefit smaller HPC installations," the two companies said.

NEC will also continue to sell its existing SX vector processor-based products. NEC, for example, currently markets the SX-9 supercomputer.

Advanced Micro Devices is not the only large Intel competitor to rail against Intel's alleged strong-arm tactics.

Nvidia has also complained loudly for years about Intel business practices in the graphics chip market, where Intel commands about 50 percent of the market.

Nvidia is the world's leading supplier of "discrete," or standalone, graphics chips but takes a distant second place in overall market share to Intel, which supplies "integrated" graphics built into the chipsets that accompany all of its processors. Mercury Research estimates the total market for graphics chips, including integrated graphics, at almost $10 billion in 2009.

In the third quarter, Intel had 53 percent of the graphics chip market, up from the 49 percent share in the same period last year, according to Jon Peddie Research, which tracks the graphics chip market. Nvidia took about 24 percent, down from the 28 percent in the third quarter of last year.

These figures get even more lopsided for Intel when the market is segmented into integrated graphics only. "Put your seatbelt on. They've got 80 percent of the notebook integrated market," said Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie Research. Though this is a much smaller and more segmented market than overall PC processor market, which was at the center of last week's $1.25 billion settlement between Intel and AMD, it still shows the level of Intel's dominance, according to Peddie.

Nvidia claims these latter market share figures reflect Intel's "bundling" tactics--the same carrot-and-stick tactics that AMD has cited for years and that were spelled out in a complaint filed by New York's attorney general earlier this month.

Intel is trying to impede competition on two chipset fronts, according to Nvidia. One front is the burgeoning market for chipsets in Netbooks--tiny, inexpensive laptops that are typically priced around $350. In this market, Nvidia sells its Ion chipset, which competes with Intel's integrated graphics product.

"Intel's tactics with Ion have been the most aggressive we've seen from a competitor. They have offered the Atom [a total of three chips] for $25, but when the one-chip Atom is used with Ion, it sells for $45," Nvidia CEO Jen Hsun Huang said in a statement provided to CNET. "A customer can't even choose to resell the chipset and use Ion instead. What's the point of Nvidia getting an Intel bus license if it's impossible to overcome Intel's pricing bundles?" he asked, referring the licensing fee that Nvidia pays Intel.

"We'll keep growing as a company, but further action needs to be taken to protect consumers," Huang said.

Intel disputes this. "He's playing a trick of numbers, said Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy. "He's giving you a $45 list price--that nobody pays--for a part and then a negotiated price (which is more realistic). He's mixing apples and oranges. We have scrubbed and continue to scrub our pricing practices as it relates to chipsets and processors. It's all above cost. And that meets the legal standard worldwide."

In Netbooks, Nvidia has made some headway this year; its Ion chipset has been used in Netbooks from Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo, among others--and Huang concedes this. But Peddie said Nvidia still faces a formidable challenge. "They're nibbling away it at. But it's a pretty big hill to climb," Peddie said.

In the second front of Nvidia's most hotly-contested feuds with Intel, the former has halted development of chipsets for Intel's new "Nehalem" processor technology (marketed as the Core i series of chips), following a complaint filed by Intel in February--which Nvidia then countered in March. Intel alleged in its motion for a declaratory judgment that the 4-year-old chipset license agreement with Nvidia does not extend to Intel's future-generation processors with "integrated memory controllers," which includes Intel's newest Nehalem Core i processors.

"It's meant to get Nvidia to cease and desist from citing that they have a license," Peddie said. "That's an interesting tactic because if the court rules in favor of keeping Nvidia from saying they have a license, it also creates the burden on the OEMs [PC makers] of not wanting to get in a crossfire between Nvidia and Intel," he said.

Intel again disputes this. "It's not seeking to prevent them from doing anything. For well over a year and including mediation, we argued with Nvidia about their rights under that agreement. And we tried multiple times to reach an agreement. And we could not," Mulloy said. "We asked the court to tell the parties what the agreement means. At the end of that process, we'll work with them and try to figure out what to do next."

Note: Mercury Research numbers were provided by Nvidia.