Google plans to release later this week a near-final version of the Google Web Toolkit 1.5, software designed to ease the onerous parts of writing sophisticated Web-based software.
GWT 1.5 includes support for Java 5, a version of the Sun Microsystems programming language released in 2006, and produces software that runs about 1.2 to 2 times faster for complex Web applications, said Bruce Johnson, Google's engineering manager for GWT.
The new software fuels Google's ambition to make the Web a much richer software environment--an ambition on display Wednesday and Thursday at the Google I/O conference in San Francisco. Johnson believes the Web is already "really close" to the abilities of personal computers as a software foundation.
"We've observed that there's no question anymore whether you're going to target the browser or a desktop app. For almost any new exciting app, you're going to target the browser," Johnson said. "For the right set of applications, it's already better than what you can do on the desktop. For extremely low-latency applications, like video editing, I think we're still a couple years out."
Google is trying to shift people toward the Web, hoping to profit indirectly by spurring more Internet searches, its main source of revenue. It's also got some direct but much smaller businesses, including subscription fees for corporate use of online Google Apps such as its spreadsheet and calendar. Also at Google I/O, the company is revealing the fees for heavy users of its new Google App Engine service to host Web applications.
App Engine, which was unveiled in April and now has about 60,000 approved users, is free for starter applications requiring 500MB of storage and network bandwidth to support about 5 million page views a month, Google said. On Wednesday, the service will be open to the 150,000 who've signed up so far and to any others who want to join.
Beyond that, Google will charge 10 to 12 cents per hour of processor core work, plus 15 to 18 cents per gigabyte of storage per month, plus 11 to 13 cents per gigabyte of data transferred out, plus 9 to 11 cents per gigabyte of data transferred in. The fees are similar in broad structure to that of a competing service from Amazon.
GWT: Doing the grunt work
GWT lets programmers write their code in Java, but then converts that raw material into the JavaScript language that's built into Web browsers. One advantage of GWT is that it can handle the significant differences in how different browsers handle JavaScript, Google argues.
"Not all the JavaScript standards are interpreted in different ways," Johnson said. "The truth is it's a minefield."
GWT supports most modern browsers, including recent versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari (and other Webkit-based browsers such as that of the iPhone and Google Android), and Opera.
Sun introduced more changes to Java with the current Java 6, but it was Java 5 that introduced several changes to the language. Among them (brace yourself if you're not a coder): generics, enumerated types, annotations, enhanced for/loop syntax, and autoboxing.
Supporting those newer features makes GWT less different from other Java programming environments, cuts down on opportunities for programmer mistakes, and can help GWT produce faster JavaScript, Johnson said.
GWT uses the Eclipse project's JDT to understand people's Java code, then adds a Google-engineered component that translates it into JavaScript, Johnson said.
It's open-source software, and "We get dozens and dozens of patches" from outside contributors. Among those in the current release is support for right-to-left languages such as Arabic.
It's just like an unformatted hard drive, Amazon.com Chief Technology Officer Werner Vogels explained. The difference is that it's in the "cloud" somewhere and you get to it through an API.
Amazon Web Services executives on Sunday described a forthcoming persistent storage feature, called EC2 Persistent Storage, which they say will make its hosted computing services more flexible and far more reliable.
People can sign up for an early beta test program now before Amazon opens it up for a wider release later this year.
The service works with Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) hosted server offering. It allows developers to set aside a storage volume online, on which people save files in different file systems. This differs from what is available now with EC2 because once a compute instance is taken offline, the data associated with it goes away.
With a persistent storage service, data can remain linked to a specific computing instance. Significantly, people can take a snapshot of that data and store it on Amazon's S3 storage service. That effectively acts as a way to create a back-up of their computing operation on the "cloud," according to Amazon executives.
"The snapshot is extremely powerful technology and allows for building highly fault-tolerant applications operating worldwide. Combine these snapshots with Availability Zones and Elastic IPs and you have all the tools to manage and migrate even the most complex of applications," Vogels wrote on his blog.
"And the great thing is it that it is all done with using standard technologies such that you can use this with any kind of application, middleware or any infrastructure software, whether it is legacy or brand new," he added.
Amazon Web Services evangelist Jeff Barr also describes the service on his blog, saying it was one of the most requested features from developers.
Thorsten vok Eiken at RightScale, who has been testing the service, talks about the implications of this feature and says his company is making tools to make it easier to use these services.
Von Eiken says that persistent storage is a dramatically important feature that will lead many more companies and developers to hosted development platforms.
"It's going to be like agile software development: if you want to survive as an Internet/Web service you will have to compute in the cloud or your competitors will leave you in the dust by being able to deploy faster, better, and cheaper," he said.
Samsung Electronics introduced a new ARM-based processor for smartphones at Mobile World Congress 2008 in Barcelona, Spain. The S3C6410 "mobile application processor" includes special hardware accelerators to handle motion video processing and 3D graphics, thereby freeing up the main processor for other tasks and speeding overall performance.
Samsung S3C6400 processor
(Credit: Samsung Semiconductor)At the heart of the S3C6410 is an ARM1176 processor core that can be clocked up to 667MHz. The chip is made on Samsung's advanced 65-nanometer manufacturing process.
By embedding a hardwired Multi Format Codec on-chip, the S3C6410 can perform video capture in MPEG4/H.263/H.264 formats and replay in MPEG4/H.263/H.264/VC1 formats using much less power, thereby giving consumers longer video playback time with a standard size battery, Samsung said. The hardwired codec offers standard-definition quality video capture and playback at 30fps, as well as supports two-way real-time video conferencing.
The S3C6410 processor supports all major operating systems, including Windows Mobile, Linux, and Symbian OSTM. The S3C6410 processor is expected to be available in sample quantities in May, with mass production scheduled for the third quarter of 2008.
Samsung's ARM chip road map may contain signposts to future iPhone processors. On Tuesday, ARM Holdings and Samsung Electronics extended their Strategic Long-Term Licensing Agreement, allowing Samsung to retain access to key ARM processor IP. For the iPhone, this may result in faster, more powerful models. Samsung currently makes the main processor, based on an ARM11 design, in the Apple iPhone.
Samsung ARM processor
(Credit: Samsung Semiconductor)"The agreement is an extension of the previous subscription license and will enable Samsung to obtain early access to new technology, including the recently announced ARM Cortex-A9 processor, and broad access to a wide range of ARM IP," according to a joint release. Samsung will use the technology in future products aimed at the wireless, digital consumer, and mobile internet device markets, the company said in a statement.
The roadmap shows the ARM Cortex-ABN core achieving 800MHz in 2008 and 1GHz in 2009. Samsung is also slated to transition from 90-nanometer technology to 65nm later this year and 45nm in the latter half of 2009, according to the road map.
In a November 2007 interview with IDG News Service, ARM's CEO Warren East, said "there will be iPhone II, III...if we do our job right, then [iPhones] will be based on future ARM products." Though the main iPhone processor has taken on an Area-51 Hanger 18 aura of mystery, even after countless teardowns, one thing is clear: it is an ARM1176 core, similar to Samsung's S5L8900. "We have looked at the die markings inside the package itself and the die markings have a number of 'S5L8900' and as near as I can tell that's what the processor is," said Greg Quirk at Semiconductor Insights. Samsung, historically tight-lipped about any iPhone-related questions, could not be reached for comment.
Samsung is not necessarily a shoo-in, according to Quirk. Though there is a very good chance Apple will continue to use Samsung, he pointed to the fate of media processor supplier PortalPlayer--which generated 90 percent of its sales from Apple's iPod: it was dropped from the iPod (though, ironically, Samsung picked up some of this business). On another front, Quirk expects future iPhones to use new Bluetooth/Wi-Fi technology from Marvell Technology.
Apple is expected to bring out new models later this year that offer better performance and support 3G for faster broadband connections.
Samsung ARM roadmap
(Credit: Samsung Semiconductor)
It seems some investors are thinking about where all this user-generated content is headed.
Nirvanix, a new storage provider for online media applications, has received $12 million in funding from Mission Ventures, Valhalla Partners and Windward Ventures, the company announced Tuesday.
Nirvanix, which launched in early September, provides storage and retrieval tools for online media applications that host user-generated content. The company intends to specialize in large-scale media sites where millions of users may generate, store and retrieve content.
It's offering itself up as a viable alternative to Amazon's Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), with the addition of a guaranteed service level agreement (SLA) as part of its package.
The funding will go toward expanding Nirvanix's business-to-business storage delivery service, according to Nirvanix.
The announcement follows hints earlier this week that social-networking site Facebook is considering getting into the storage services game for its independent application developers.
Amazon in June will modify the pricing of its Simple Storage Service (S3) to take into account bandwidth costs.
The changes, which are set to go into effect June 1, will lower costs for 75 percent of the customers and cause an increase of over 10 percent compared to current costs for 14 percent of its customers, according to the company.
Introduced last year, S3 lets developers store application data on Amazon servers. Pricing is now set at 15 cents per gigabyte of storage per month and 20 cents per gigabyte of data transferred.
The changes lower the cost of storage to 15 cents per gigabyte-month of storage used. The new scheme also sets up tiered pricing for downloaded data and introduces a new cost for server requests over the Internet.
"Disaggregating request costs from data transfer costs allows us to offer lower bandwidth prices to all of our customers," according to Amazon's description of the price change.
It said it doesn't intend to make any other structural changes to pricing in the future.
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