Some interesting revelations are coming out of the court battle between Hewlett-Packard and Oracle. At issue is Oracle's decision to stop supporting Intel's Itanium platform based on claims the processors are nearing end-of-life (EOL) status, the timing of which is suspect. Oracle made the decision to ditch Itanium after hiring former HP CEO Mark Hurd, which itself prompted a legal battle and subsequent settlement. Not long after, Oracle said it was ditching Itanium, HP cried foul, and a big legal mess ensued. Some of it was resolved last night.
While Blizzard may taketh away with one hand, it giveth away with the other: disappointed Blizzcon fans are still smarting from news of the convention's 2012 cancellation, but hardcore WoW-heads now have reason to rejoice. Through the 30th, Blizzard is auctioning off hundreds of server blades used to house World of Warcraft in its infancy. All of the proceeds will be donated to the St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital.
When it comes to PCs, AMD processors are the only thing keeping Intel from complete and utter market domination. But could the plucky little David (OK, AMD's actually pretty pretty big) be preparing to throw in the towel against Intel’s x86 Goliath? A couple of comments by AMD spokesmen over the past few days makes the company's future on the PC seem much more hazy than it did just a few weeks ago, when Bulldozer launched.
Ask Oracle and the company will tell you the only reason Intel hasn't pulled the plug on the Itanium is because Hewlett-Packard is making secret payments to chipzilla to keep the server chip alive. Oracle executives said as much in a recent court filing, which is in response to a larger lawsuit filed by HP accusing Oracle of violating an agreement between the two vendors by announcing back in March it would no longer develop software for Itanium.
It wouldn't be a supercomputing conference without Intel in attendance, and at SC11 this week, the chip maker offered up details about its Xeon E5 family and Knights Corner MIC (many integrated core) platform. Slated to ship sometime in the first half of 2012, Intel's Xeon E5 processors share the same DNA as the Core i7 3960X that's making the rounds on the Web, and is the world's first server chip to support full integration of the PCI Express 3.0 specification, Intel claims.
After being delayed for the past several months, AMD today announced the launch and immediate availability of its AMD Opteron 6200 (formerly code-named "Interlagos") and 4200 ("Valencia) Series of server processors for the enterprise. The new chips purportedly offer better performance, scalability, and efficiency for enterprise customers.
A lot of the comments left on our recent NAS box showdown revolved around the fact that 1) it isn’t too difficult to build a NAS server of your own and 2) all of the options were kind of expensive for home use. A newly released NAS server looks to provide an answer to the second issue. The $220 Synology DS212j (brethren to the well performing DS411+II covered in the showdown) was designed with home use in mind, as evidenced by its low price point and user-friendly features that help turn the server into a cloud storage device.
When life hands PC gamers lemons – like news that the massive $1.6m Battlefield 3 tourney is console-only – they figure out a way to hack the lemons to bits and make lemonade. In this case, gamers have gained access to 128-player support for the “Operation Metro” map available in the BF3 beta, which isn't offered on the official servers. Don’t necessarily go rushing out to find the action, though; DICE, the makers of the game, thinks the lemonade tastes mighty bitter and they’re threatening to swing the banhammer at anyone who participates in the unsanctioned fun.
When Oracle acquired Sun last year, it did so for things like the Java platform and the Solaris operating system, not servers running on Intel's x86 architecture. In fact, even though Sun thought it could become a major seller of x86 servers prior to the buyout, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison now says that the company makes next to no money on them and plans to start phasing x86-based servers out entirely in 2012 favor of more profitable Solaris/SPARC-based hardware.
Maybe you're aware that DDR3 memory is nearly as cheap as tap water these days. That means you can totally justify stocking up on gobs of RAM, but at what point do you stop? Long before 288GB, which is more than your motherboard or any consumer board supports, but is exactly the amount you can stick in Gigabyte's GA-7TESM motherboard.
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