Researchers create computer that fits on a pen tip

Micro-computer's first use will be for medical monitoring
Researchers at the University of Michigan today announced they have created the first prototype for a millimeter-scale computing system that can hold up to a week's worth of data when implanted in something as small as a human eye.
The computer, called the Phoenix chip, is just over one cubic millimeter in size and was designed to monitor eye pressure in glaucoma patients.
"This is the first true millimeter-scale complete computing system," Dennis Sylvester, a professor at the school and one of the researchers on the project, said in a statement.
Within the computer is an ultra low-power microprocessor, a pressure sensor, memory, a thin-film battery, a solar cell and a wireless radio with an antenna that can transmit data to an external reader device held near the eye.

The Phoenix chip computer just covers the 'N' on a penny

The chip uses a power gating architecture with an extreme sleep mode that powers the computer up briefly every 15 minutes to take readings. By remaining in sleep mode most of the time, the chip sips power, averaging 5.3 nanowatts every time it turns on.
The Phoenix chip's photovoltaic system requires 10 hours of indoor light or 1.5 hours of sunlight to fully charge the battery.
The chip's micro radio automatically tunes into whatever wireless frequency is available in order to download data to a reader. The data can then be used as part of an electronic medical record for treatment.
According to researchers, the micro computers and their wireless networks could one day also be used to track pollution, monitor structural integrity, perform surveillance, or make virtually any object smart and trackable. "Our work is unique in the sense that we're thinking about complete systems in which all the components are low-power and fit on the chip," Sylvester said. "We can collect data, store it and transmit it. The applications for systems of this size are endless."
The researchers presented their papers on the new microcomputers and the networks at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco. The work is being led by three faculty members in the University of Michigan Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
University professor David Blaauw said that once the chips reach the nanoscale level, hundreds of the computers could be fitted onto a single silicon wafer to perform multiple monitoring tasks.
The researchers pointed to Bell's Law, which states that there's a new class of smaller, cheaper computers about every decade. With each new class, the volume shrinks by two orders of magnitude and the number of systems per person increases. The law has held from 1960s' mainframes through the '80s' personal computers, the '90s' notebooks and the new millennium's smart phones, they said.
"When you get smaller than hand-held devices, you turn to these monitoring devices," Blaauw said in a statement. "The next big challenge is to achieve millimeter-scale systems, which have a host of new applications for monitoring our bodies, our environment and our buildings."

Apple boosts MacBook Pro speeds in 'ho-hum' refresh

Moves to dual- and quad-core 'Sandy Bridge' processors, debuts Intel's Thunderbolt I/O technology
As anticipated, Apple today refreshed its MacBook Pro notebook line, turning to Intel's new Sandy Bridge chip architecture and adding a new connectivity technology dubbed Thunderbolt that transfers data at speeds up to 10Gbps.
Prices for most of the new models have not changed. The entry-level 13-in. MacBook Pro runs $1,199, while the most expensive 15-in. laptop still costs $2,199. Apple did raise the price of the top-of-the-line 17-in. model by $200, however, to $2,499.
"A ho-hum product announcement," said Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research, giving his assessment of the refresh.
All MacBook Pros now run one of Intel's Core i5 or Core i7 dual- or quad-core processors, and include Intel's integrated graphics chipset. The 13-in. models some standard with dual-core i5 processors, while the 15- and 17-in. MacBook Pros sport a quad-core i7. The larger notebooks also boast AMD's Radeon HD 6490M or 6750M discrete graphics, which Apple claimed were three times faster than the Nvidia graphics in the older models.
According to Apple, all MacBook Pros are "up to twice as fast as their predecessors."
The additional power comes at a price, however. All models now feature a battery that Apple said provides 7 hours of power between charges, down from the 10 hours it boasted for last year's 13-in. MacBook Pros and off the 8-to-9 hours estimated for 2010's larger 15-in. and 17-in. models.
Gottheil, however, said that the changes in battery life estimates resulted from a new, more rigorous testing procedure that Apple is now using, and dismissed the idea that the new processors and graphics were behind the battery declines.
Apple's 13-in. MacBook Pros are powered by a 2.3GHz or 2.7GHz Core i5, come with 4GB of memory standard, and feature a 320GB or 500GB hard drive. Both rely on the integrated Intel HD Graphics 3000 chipset. The smaller MacBook Pros are priced at $1,199 and $1,499.
The two 15-in. models -- down from three -- run a 2GHz or 2.2GHz quad-core i7 processor, come with 4GB of memory and a 500GB or 750GB hard drive, and include AMD's graphics processor with either 256MB or 1GB of graphics RAM as well as the Intel integrated chipset. Apple eliminated the middle-of-the-road 15-in. MacBook Pro, which was priced at $1,999, but kept the low- and high-end models at $1,799 and $2,199.
Apple's new 17-in. MacBook Pro comes standard with 2.2GHz quad-core i7, 4GB of memory, a 750GB hard drive and the top-end AMD graphics card with 1GB of RAM. It was the only model of the five to get a price increase.
All MacBook Pros also now sport a new I/O (input/output) technology developed by Intel, which formerly called it Light Peak but has renamed it Thunderbolt.
Thunderbolt offers direct bi-directional connections to high-speed peripherals such as data drives, and using optional adapters, to other technologies, including FireWire, USB, Gigabit Ethernet and Apple's DisplayPort.
Apple's notebooks were the first to launch with the Thunderbolt technology.
One rumored change -- a move to solid-state drives (SSD) to mimic the MacBook Air -- didn't come to pass, something that irked Gottheil.
"I'm deeply disappointed," he said. "I thought that at the least, [the new MacBook Pros] would use a clever hybrid drive that put the OS and apps on a solid-state drive."
Customers can swap out the traditional platter-based hard drive with a SSD, but the prices run from $100 for a 128GB SSD to $1,250 for a 512GB. (The prices vary by the original configuration of the MacBook, with lower swap-out prices for models that come standard with larger hard drives.)
"Yes" Gottheil said of the SSD prices.
Apple last revamped the MacBook Pro in April 2010, and today's refresh looks to Gottheil like a return to the line's roots.
"They're returning to the original definition of the line, where the [MacBook] Pros are for pros," Gottheil said. "And they may be trying to get back some of the margins they lost during the recession," he added. "They have come back some, but they're still not at the point they were before the recession."
Even with the increased processor, graphics and connectivity horsepower in the new MacBook Pros, Gottheil still thought that the aged MacBook and the four-month-old MacBook Air, both available for $999, is the "sweet spot" for most consumers.
He was especially high on the MacBook Air, which eschews a hard drive for an SSD. "An SSD addresses real people's performance issues, getting stuff off the disk," he maintained.
Last month, analysts disagreed over whether a design gaffe by Intel would delay the MacBook Pro relaunch. On Jan. 31, Intel acknowledged that a supporting chipset for the next-generation Sandy Bridge processors contained a flaw in the Serial-ATA (SATA) controller. The bug could cause poor hard drive performance or even make the drive invisible to the system, Intel confirmed.
Apple may have been able to sidestep the problem, and utilize flawed versions of the Intel chipset, since its notebooks could tap into the two unaffected ports to connect to systems' hard and optical drives.
The new MacBook Pros are available immediately at Apple's retail stores, some authorized resellers and via the company's online store. At the latter, the new models currently indicate a 1-to-2 day shipping delay.

100G Ethernet stays pricey as speed needs soar

Virtualization, video and massive amounts of data are all driving enterprises and service providers toward 100-Gigabit Ethernet, but the cost of the fledgling technology remains prohibitively high and few products have been installed, industry observers said at the Ethernet Technology Summit.
The 100GE standard was ratified by the IEEE last year, but the technology is just beginning to creep into use. Analyst Michael Howard of Infonetics Research estimates that only a few hundred ports of 100GE have been delivered and most of those are being used by service providers in tests or trials.
However, with the growing amounts of data going in and out of servers in big data centers, some large enterprises also are running into a need for something faster than 10-Gigabit or 40-Gigabit Ethernet, Howard said at the Ethernet Technology Summit this week in Santa Clara, California. Virtualization allows servers to run at higher utilization rates, and blade server chassis pack more computing power into a rack. Connecting these systems to top-of-rack switches, and linking those to other switches at the end of a row, is starting to require multiple 10-gigabit links in some cases, he said.
The Mayo Clinic is already testing 100GE as a possible replacement for multiple 10-Gigabit Ethernet links in its data center, which are needed because its virtualized servers can drive so much traffic onto the clinic's LAN. One reason is that Mayo doctors frequently consult with other physicians around the world and need to share medical imaging files such as CAT scans and MRIs, said Gary Delp, a systems analyst at Mayo.
Aggregated 10-Gigabit ports are still an inefficient way to create fast links within the data center, and 100GE should be more efficient, Delp said. He expects vendors to come out with aggregation technology that pushes traffic more efficiently, and whether users adopt that or 100GE will be a matter of economics, he said.
Some other large enterprises are in similar situations, according to Howard. Using four to eight aggregated links also typically takes up more space and power and generates more heat than a single high-speed connection does, Howard said. One solution administrators are beginning to use is 40-Gigabit Ethernet, which is somewhat less expensive and more readily available today, but the traffic curve points to a need for 100GE, he said.
Cost is one of the main barriers to adoption of 100-Gigabit Ethernet and is likely to remain so for the next few years, Howard said. Though per-port prices can vary based on specific deals, the cost of a 100GE port is still effectively six figures. Juniper Networks typically charges about ten times the cost of a 10-Gigabit Ethernet port, meaning 100GE can cost about $150,000 per port, a company executive said on Tuesday. Brocade Communications announced a two-port module with the new technology for $194,995 last year. It can be ordered now and is expected to start shipping in the first half of this year, the company said Wednesday.
The 100GE equipment is pricey because the technology is so new, according to Howard. Early components are expensive as well as large, power-hungry and hot, and there are still several generations to go in downsizing these parts for more economical systems. It's a fundamental problem of networking today, as the cost of equipment falls by about 15% per year but traffic increases by 45% or more, Howard said.
This isn't the fault of the Ethernet equipment industry or the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, which developed the 100GE standard, Howard said. At these speeds, the problem comes down to physics. "It's just that we're up against limits," he said. An IEEE study group is now looking at writing specifications for some of the components that go into 100GE equipment, with an eye toward creating a vendor ecosystem around interoperable products.
Analyst Nathan Brookwood of Insight 64 doesn't think price will deter enterprises that have to use 100GE in their data centers.
"The people who can't solve the problem any other way will cough up the bucks to solve it this way," Brookwood said. Initially, those will probably be operators of massive computing clouds, such as Facebook and Google, he said. A Facebook network engineer said a year ago that the company already needed 100GE. The new technology may also go into high-performance computing environments, according to Brookwood.
Despite these projections, 100GE remains far from being a mainstream technology. Even 10-Gigabit Ethernet is just starting to be used for server interfaces, albeit at a growing rate. The global market for 10-Gigabit Ethernet server interfaces was nearly $100 million in the fourth quarter, up 57% from a year earlier, research firm Dell'Oro Group reported this week. Some types of products for this technology are just beginning to reach the market. At the Ethernet event, Broadcom showed off its first server adapter based on the 10GBase-T specification, which uses standard Ethernet cabling and can reach 100 meters. It is expected to ship in commercial volumes in the second quarter.
Because of pricing and other issues, most observers don't expect 100GE to be widely used until 2013 in service providers and at least 2015 in data centers.
"100 Gigabits is a lot of bandwidth, and most environments haven't even figured out how to consume 10 gigabits," said Greg Scherer, vice president of server and storage strategy in Broadcom's High Speed Controller Business Unit.

Microsoft: Update glitch hit 10% of WP7 users

Microsoft shed a little bit of light on the problems it had sending out the first update for its Windows Phone 7 software, but it has still suspended updates to Samsung phones while it works out the issue.
Ironically, the update was designed to improve the software update process rather than add features that people have been waiting for, like cut and paste.
In a blog post late on Wednesday, Microsoft said that 90% of people who received an update notification installed the software successfully.
Nearly 5% of people who had a problem did so because they had a bad Internet connection or insufficient computer storage space, Microsoft's Michael Stroh wrote in the blog post.
A "technical issue" is affecting the update process for a "small number" of Samsung phones, he said. As a result, Microsoft has briefly suspended updates to Samsung phones until it can correct the problem, he said.
It's unclear if the issues will have an impact on the timing of Microsoft's next update, which CEO Steve Ballmer recently said would come out in early March. That update will add copy and paste, a function in high demand, and other performance enhancing changes, the company has said.
The HTC Arrive, the first CDMA Windows Phone 7, announced by Sprint Thursday, will include that update, Mark Elliott, a Sprint spokesman said. The Arrive is set to go on sale March 20.
Like many other smartphone software developers, Microsoft requires users to connect the phones to their computers and make the update download through its Zune software on a PC or the Windows Phone 7 Connector for the Mac.
Also like most other phone software makers, Microsoft is rolling the update out over time. It started on Tuesday and said it could be days or even weeks before some people get it.

Iran claims two new supercomputers

After Stuxnet attacks damaged its computer systems, Iran tries for an IT comeback via supercomputing
Iran's government is claiming that it has developed two new supercomputers powerful enough to earn rankings on the Top500 list of the world's most powerful systems.
The supercomputing announcement, made Wednesday, is being treated as a big deal in Iran and involves top Iranian government officials, including President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
If this announcement was made by any country other than Iran, it would get little attention. The larger of the two systems is far, far behind the current top-ranked system in China.
But a U.S. embargo means Iran has to buy many of its components from the black market. The country is also a target of a cyberwar, as the Stuxnet worm illustrated.
Ahmadinejad discussed this project, via a videoconference with officials at the two universities where these systems were installed, according to government media press reports.
Iran's supercomputing claims could not be independently verified. It may well be a fake and an elaborate attempt to demonstrate IT prowess after the Stuxnet worm hit its nuclear control systems.
It could also be an effort by the regime to offer some distraction from the region's spreading turmoil threatening authoritarian governments.
A photo spread in one of Iran's news outlets shows what purports to be one of the two systems at Amirkabir University of Technology in Tehran.
In it are a series of racks on what may be a raised floor, not unlike a typical data center. Other photos show people at terminals and in conference rooms.
Reports include a claim that the largest system is capable of 89 teraflops. One teraflop equals 1 trillion floating point operations per second. The fastest computers in the world now exceed 1 petaflop, or a thousand trillion floating point operations per second.
Although an embargo prevents U.S. companies from selling microprocessors and other components to Iran, U.S.-made computer technology seems to be readily available in that country.
In 2007, for instance, Iranian officials disclosed the source of AMD chips in a Linux-based high-performance computing system. The name of a distributor in the United Arab Emirates was visible on the boxes in one of the photos.
AMD, at the time, said it had never authorized the sale. The photos were quickly removed from the Iranian site after the details were published.
But Iran's latest supercomputer announcement appears to have no details about the components used to build the systems. Iranian officials have not yet responded to request for details about them.
Mehdi Noorbaksh, an associate professor of international affairs at Harrisburg University of Science and Technology in Pennsylvania, urged skepticism around Iran's supercomputing announcement and said it may well be fake.
"The Iranian government is notorious for fabricating this kind of information -- believe me," said Noorbaksh. "When the government announces something like this, it is very difficult to confirm it."
Noorbaksh said Iran's announcement may be a reaction to the malware attack on its nuclear systems, to demonstrate to the world that "we are in control."
Iran's nuclear capabilities and many of its computers were hurt by the Stuxnet worm, which damaged the country's nuclear refining capabilities.
If Iran wants its systems considered for listing on the Top500 list, it will have to run the high-performance Linpack Benchmark and submit the results to the list. It has thus far not submitted anything to the list, according to a list official.

Update: HP reports mixed quarter on weak PC sales

Hewlett-Packard reported a jump in profit for the first quarter of its 2011 fiscal year but sales were dragged down by weakness in its PC and services divisions.

The poor performance from those groups prompted HP to lower its revenue forecast for the year, causing its share price to slump 12% after the results were announced.

"If you use Q1 as a marker, it's clear we do a lot of things well at HP. It's also clear that we have isolated areas that we need to improve," CEO Leo Apotheker told reporters on a conference call.

HP's profit for the quarter ended Jan. 31 was $1.36 per share before one-time items, up 27% from a year earlier and ahead of the $1.29 per share that financial analysts had expected, according to a consensus poll from Thomson Reuters.

Revenue was $32.30 billion, up 4% from a year earlier but below the $32.96 billion that analysts had been looking for.

Revenue from HP's services division declined 2% from last year to $8.6 billion. It did well with bigger, long-term deals, but short term contracts for IT outsourcing and application services fared poorly, Apotheker said.

Revenue from its Personal Systems Group declined by 1%, to $10.4 billion. Sales of business PCs were up 11%, HP said, but the growth was offset by weak sales to consumers, especially for netbooks computers. HP has also had channel problems in China, though Apotheker said the company is "getting past the issues."

HP's enterprise hardware business fared better. Revenue from servers, network and storage gear climbed 22 percent to $5.6 billion. And revenue from printers and related products increased by 7% to $6.6 billion, HP said.

"We reported good results across most of the business but we have opportunities to improve growth in a few areas," Apotheker said.

HP's shares ended the regular trading day at $48.23, down 1%. Following the earnings announcement they slumped more than 12% in the after-hours markets, to $42.40.

Apotheker took the reins at HP last November and is in the midst of a minor makeover to improve HP's profitability and competitiveness. He's due to outline his plans for the company at an event in San Francisco next month.

The former SAP executive is expected to expand HP's efforts in enterprise software, as well as other profitable areas such as networking and storage. On Tuesday he said he'll describe HP's view of technology trends and explain how they mesh with HP's products and services.

HP is also expanding its focus on mobile gadgets. Earlier this month it announced a tablet PC and two smartphones based on the webOS software it acquired when it bought Palm last year.

HP is also shuffling its board, replacing four directors that were involved in the decision to oust CEO Mark Hurd last year. The new members include Patricia Russo, the former CEO of networking vendor Alcatel-Lucent, and Meg Whitman, who used to run eBay.