Optimizing the Virtual Data Center - GigaOM

Optimizing the Virtual Data Center - GigaOM: "What we need is software that continuously analyzes conversations between all servers, then automatically reconfigures the data center so servers that communicate more often are on the same physical hardware. Call it a Virtual Data Center Optimizer."

Java darling Azul Systems is fluxed | The Register

Java darling Azul Systems is fluxed The Register: "Azul crafts server appliances based around its own multi-core chips. The systems - 768 processors and 768GB of memory - scream through Java code. The start-up has also been leading the push around transactional memory."

the.codist{} - Writing Multithreaded Code Is Like Juggling Chainsaws

the.codist{} - Writing Multithreaded Code Is Like Juggling Chainsaws: "In job interviews, a popular question is 'what is the major problem you have to solve in writing multithreaded code?' Generally, if they have read a little about it, they often say 'avoiding deadlocks'. If they have done a bit of thread coding, maybe in Swing, they might say 'protected shared data'. Only the truly experienced in complex threaded coding will say 'avoiding doing nothing'."

How To Read C Declarations - USF Computer Science 652 - Programming Languages - ANTLR Project

How To Read C Declarations - USF Computer Science 652 - Programming Languages - ANTLR Project: "The rule goes like this:
Start at the variable name (or innermost construct if no identifier
is present. Look right without jumping over a right parenthesis; say
what you see. Look left again without jumping over a parenthesis; say
what you see. Jump out a level of parentheses if any. Look right;
say what you see. Look left; say what you see. Continue in this
manner until you say the variable type or return type."

Bloglines | My Feeds (2175) (1)

Bloglines | My Feeds (2175) (1): "What strikes me from reading the Nexus specs and that of the associated NX-OS operating system is how this new switch reminds me of an old mainframe. Nearly all services are virtualized, with multiple copies of the OS starting and stopping as needed. Everything is redundant, isolated, and intended for nonstop service. It is hard to imagine when, if ever, you'd even need to reboot. And while the Nexus supports network connections up to 10 gigabits per second, the really fast networking takes place in parallel between cards over a passive backplane. The Nexus 7000 is a data center in a rack, only with dramatically reduced cooling and power requirements which suggest to me that Cisco has a growth strategy for this architecture that will, over time, make it look more and more like a big computer and less like a router. Throw on a virtualized AIX or Solaris and the Nexus will eventually reveal that its true competition is less likely to be Juniper than it is IBM, HP, and Sun."

VMware Spruces up Desktop Offering

VMware Spruces up Desktop Offering: "VDM2 lets companies manage multiple desktop images running on virtual and physical servers in their datacenters. It takes all the computing required for an organization's desktops, laptops and thin clients off the hard drive on the edge of the network to virtual servers where administrators can manage hardware upgrades, monitor application use and secure data access from one central location.

Having the ability to capture 40 or 60 desktop images on a single server sounds great, particularly when these desktops can easily be moved around on virtual machines hosting other application workloads, but so far only the earliest of adopters have embraced desktop virtualization.

'It's absolutely in its infancy stage,' Michael Rose, an analyst at IDC, said in an interview with InternetNews.com.

Rose said few people are deploying server-hosted virtual desktops. 'No one is going to roll out 100,000 virtual desktops tomorrow,' he said. 'It's still very early.'"

Tanenbaum-Torvalds debate, Part II

Tanenbaum-Torvalds debate, Part II: "The problem with distributed algorithms is lack of a common time reference along with possible lost messages and uncertainty as to whether a remote process is dead or merely slow. None of these issues apply to microkernel-based operating systems on a single machine."

Derek Powazek - A Savvy Approach to Copyright Messaging

Derek Powazek - A Savvy Approach to Copyright Messaging: "So instead of using code that looks like this:

Use code like this:

And then just set the height to be the height of the photo itself, without the copyright statement. That means the copyright notice is there, just layered behind the page. If you view the image raw on the server (like this), you’d see the copyright notice"

VMware employs Stage Manager | The Register

VMware employs Stage Manager | The Register: "More practically, perhaps, Stage Manager has the potential to make thrusting Exchange 2008 or SAP's latest code explosion onto your data center a bit easier. Rather than setting up and maintaining armies of 'shadow instances' to deal with, say, the SAP roll out, customers can create virtual replicas of different hardware and application pairings. Through a slick GUI, VMware's software guides admins through every stage of this process, moving apps from the integration, test, staging and - fingers crossed - user acceptance phases"

IBM and SAP to develop joint software - Yahoo! News

IBM and SAP to develop joint software - Yahoo! News: "he product, codenamed Atlantic, will allow users to access SAP's Business Suite applications for workflows, reporting and analytics through IBM's Lotus Notes desktop software."

AnandTech: The MacBook Air CPU Mystery: More Details Revealed

AnandTech: The MacBook Air CPU Mystery: More Details Revealed: "The CPU in the MacBook Air is a 65nm Merom based Core 2 Duo, with a 4MB L2 cache, 800MHz FSB and runs at either 1.6GHz or 1.8GHz. The packaging technology used for this CPU is what makes it unique; the CPU comes in a package that was originally reserved for mobile Penryn due out in the second half of 2008 with the Montevina SFF Centrino platform. Intel accelerated the introduction of the packaging technology specifically for Apple it seems"

SAP Talks Up Business Objects Union

SAP Talks Up Business Objects Union: "Business ByDesign, the company's first on-demand, software-as-a-service offering for the mid-market, Kagermann said SAP engineers will pick the best features from Business Objects and incorporate them in one end-to-end offering so that it's 'more or less transparent' to the end user."

Linux Love - Part 7

Linux Love - Part 7: "To give you some statistics: the drive is rated for 600,000 load/unload cycles, and after 2.5 months of running Feisty I’m already at more than 56,000 load/unload cycles (and only 150 power cycles), according to the SMART data. At this rate the drive will be dead after 2.5 years, and I don’t even use this computer for more than a couple of hours each day. Are YOU affected? If you’re running Ubuntu, you should know that the only way to see the number of load cycles is by using SMART tools which aren’t even installed by default. To install them, simply run: $ sudo apt-get install smartmontools Now, to find your drive’s load cycle count, run this command in a terminal (replace /dev/sda to suit your computer configuration, /dev/hda for example if you have ata drive): $ sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda | grep Load_Cycle_Count You should see an output like this: 193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0012 095 095 000 Old_age Always - 55380 In this example, 55380 is the load cycle count which SHOULD increase by 3-5 in an HOUR. But if it’s increasing by 3, 5 or more in a MINUTE, there’s definitely a problem. Think about it: HDD manufactures are claiming that a drive will support about 600.000 load cycles, meaning that your drive should be fine for a few years. But when the count is"

Bug In AMD's Quad-Core Barcelona And Phenom May Be More Serious Than Previously Suspected - Wolfe's Den Blog - InformationWeek

Bug In AMD's Quad-Core Barcelona And Phenom May Be More Serious Than Previously Suspected - Wolfe's Den Blog - InformationWeek: "Erratum 298 will be described as follows: 'The processor operation to change the accessed or dirty bits of a page translation table entry in the L2 from 0b to 1b may not be atomic"

San Jose Mercury News - Out of the box: Valley companies dump cubicles for open office spaces

San Jose Mercury News - Out of the box: Valley companies dump cubicles for open office spaces: "Intel's Tunmore said he anticipates 15 to 20 percent more people will work in the same amount of space. That will allow the company to provide more conference rooms, which are in such demand that they are booked months in advance, he said"

Chip problem limits supply of quad-core Opterons - The Tech Report

Chip problem limits supply of quad-core Opterons - The Tech Report: "The erratum is present in all AMD quad-core processors up to the current B2 revision. AMD has said a revision B3 is in the works and expected in Q1. One source told TR that large quantities of B3 chips might not be available until the end of Q1."

Hassle-Free PC - Forbes.com

Hassle-Free PC - Forbes.com: "he folks at Zonbu, a tiny firm in Menlo Park, Calif., think they've produced the answer: a $99, 2-pound computer about the size of Apple (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people )'s Mac mini. It comes preloaded with a modified version of the free Linux operating system and a set of basic applications, none of them from Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ). There's no power-gobbling microprocessor from Intel (nasdaq: INTC - news - people ) or AMD and no optical or hard drive, just 4 gigabytes of flash memory so you can store a few files locally. The bulk of your files are stashed on the Web, thanks to a deal Zonbu struck with Amazon's S3 online storage service. The catch, if you want to call it that, is that the $99 price requires you to pay a monthly fee for support and software updates. The fee is based on storage, ranging from $13 for 25 gigabytes to $20 for 100 gigabytes. Supposedly the lower-power chip can reduce your electricity bill enough to make up for the monthly fees to Zonbu. Remains to be seen."

Dan Weinreb’s Weblog

Dan Weinreb’s Weblog: "The most interesting thing is that 15% of the residents actually do coding, in a language that lets you make active objects. There are 30,000,000 running scripts, 2.5 billion lines of code. Generally there are 15,000 scripts actively running on each “region” (processor), updating at 45 frames per second, and there are 4,000 processors. There are 30,000,000 concurrent threads. The language itself they described as “terrible”; they are working on bringing up the Mono implementation of the CLR so they can provide good languages."

HP Tacks On More Virtualization and Power Tools

HP Tacks On More Virtualization and Power Tools: "At the Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco Nov. 12, HP executives will detail updates to its BladeSystem C-class infrastructure that include new ways to manage virtual environments across thousands of individual blades within a data center. "

An Intel Approach to Meds | Newsweek Enterprise - Technology | Newsweek.com

An Intel Approach to Meds | Newsweek Enterprise - Technology | Newsweek.com: "the number of transistors on a chip went from about 1,000 to almost 10 billion. Over that same period, the standard treatment for Parkinson's disease went from L-dopa to . . . L-dopa. Grove (who beat prostate cancer 12 years ago and now suffers from Parkinson's)"