Chinese Supercomputer Likely to Prompt Unease in U.S.

The Wall Street Journal

A newly built supercomputer in China appears poised to take the world performance lead, another sign of the country's growing technological prowess that is likely to set off alarms about U.S. competitiveness and national security.

The system was designed by China's National University of Defense Technology and is housed at the National Supercomputing Center in the city of Tianjin. It is part of a new breed that exploits graphics chips more commonly used in playing videogames—supplied by Nvidia Corp.—as well as standard microprocessors from Intel Corp.

Supercomputers are massive machines that help tackle the toughest scientific problems, including simulating commercial products like new drugs as well as defense-related applications such as weapons design and breaking codes. The field has long been led by U.S. technology companies and national laboratories, which operate systems that have consistently topped lists of the fastest machines in the world.

But Nvidia says the new system in Tianjin—which is being formally announced Thursday at an event in China—was able to reach 2.5 petaflops. That is a measure of calculating speed ordinarily translated into a thousand trillion operations per second. It is more than 40% higher than the mark set last June by a system called Jaguar at Oak Ridge National Laboratory that previously stood at No. 1 on a twice-yearly ranking of the 500 fastest supercomputers.

"I don't know of another system that is going to be anywhere near the performance and the power of this machine" in China, said Jack Dongarra, a supercomputer expert on the Oak Ridge research staff who is a professor at the University of Tennessee and recently inspected the system in Tianjin last week. "It is quite impressive."

The development was not altogether unexpected. China placed 24 systems in the so-called Top 500 supercomputer ranking last June; a system called Nebulae, for example, took second place that also used chips from Nvidia and Intel.

But Mr. Dongarra and other researchers said the machine should nevertheless serve as a wake-up call that China is threatening to take the lead in scientific computing—akin to a machine from Japan that took the No. 1 position early in the past decade and triggered increased U.S. investment in the field.

"It's definitely a game-changer in the high performance market," said Mark Seager, chief technology officer for computing at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. "This is a phase transition, representative of the shift of economic competitiveness from the West to the East."

Nearly all components of the high-profile Japanese system, called the Earth Simulator, were created in Japan. By contrast, most of the Tianjin system relies on chips from Intel and Nvidia, which are both based in Santa Clara, Calif. So U.S. customers could presumably construct a system with similar performance, noted Horst Simon, deputy lab director at Lawrence Berkeley Lab.

But Mr. Dongarra noted that communications chips inside the machine were proprietary and designed in China, and the country is also working on its own microprocessors.

Moreover, while the Japanese system was a single machine, Tianjin is part of a multi-year strategy by China to develop a range of machines to create a dominant position in both military and commercial applications. "In that sense, I would say this is a much more important event than the Earth Simulator," Mr. Simon said.

The new supercomputer will be operated as an "open access" system, available to other countries outside of China to use for large scale scientific computation, said Ujesh Desai, an Nvidia vice president of product marketing.

It reflects a major design shift to use graphics chips to help accelerate the number-crunching functions most often carried out by so-called x86 chips, which evolved from personal computers and have long dominated supercomputing. Advanced Micro Devices, which makes both graphics chips and x86 microprocessors, is another company besides Nvidia that is promoting the technology shift.

Melinda Gates: No Apple Products in my House

cNet

 

How should one bring up children? Should one give them everything for which they ask? Or should one make them understand very early in life that some things are bad for them, whether it is physically or psychologically?

This flight of philosophical depth comes to me on reading an interview in the New York Times with Melinda Gates, wife of Microsoft's Bill.

I wasn't sure whether to laugh, cry, admire or attempt to plait my eyebrows. You see, the interviewer offered her questions about Apple. The first was quite amusing: "Do you own an iPod, which is made by Apple?"

When I read this i was overcome with a feeling that Halloween had come early. Melinda Gates needs to be told that the iPod is made by Apple? Might this phraseology not have made her shiver too?

Still, her reply was sturdily corporate: "No, I have a Zune."

The interviewer persisted on pushing the buttons of Melinda Gates and her Zuneiness: "What if one of your children says, 'Mom, I have to have an iPod?'"

Again I was disturbed by this phraseology. Do kids really say "I have to have"? Or might they still have a tinge of human politeness and offer "Please can I have?"

Gates again offered a corporately correct response: "I have gotten that argument--'You may have a Zune.'" Note the enormously polite use of "may" in response to the alleged "I have to have".

The interviewer was not to be deterred. She asked Gates whether she owned an iPad ("Of course not"). Gates denied that her husband works on an Apple laptop. "False. Nothing crosses the threshold of our doorstep," she said.

This curious interview of domestic manners reached its highest note when the interviewer asked: "Isn't there room in this world for both Apple and Microsoft?"

Really. Isn't that like asking someone whether there's room for rabbits and porcupines? Voles and raccoons?

But the response might suggest to some that this interview was being conducted via Google Translate. For Gates' reply was: "Microsoft certainly makes products for the Macintosh. Go talk to Bill."

Perhaps you, too, are left with a peculiar sensation in several of your active quarters on reading these exchanges. I wonder, though, what the Gates' kids might make of it all. Surely they must have held an iPod or an iPad in their hands. What if they liked them?

Is deprivation a positive parenting tactic? Or will children grown up to crave what they were denied? Just as those who own Apple products crave Flash. Oh, wait.

MacBook Air Has the Feel Of an iPad In a Laptop

The Wall Street Journal

 

Some of the nicest, if little discussed, benefits of using an Apple iPad tablet are that it starts instantly, resumes where you left off, and has a long enough battery life that you aren't constantly fretting about running out of juice or looking for a place to plug it in. And it can do a lot of things for which people use laptops.

What if somebody designed an actual laptop that worked this way—you know, a computer with a real keyboard and a larger screen that could run traditional computer software and store more files than an iPad? And what if it was almost as light and portable as an iPad? Well, somebody has, and that somebody is Apple itself.

The computer in question is the company's new MacBook Air, which went on sale last week, starting at $999—a price that's very low for an Apple laptop, though hardly a bargain for a Windows one. The new Air comes in two sizes. The base $999 model has an 11.6-inch screen (versus 9.7 inches for an iPad) and weighs 2.3 pounds (versus 1.5 pounds for an iPad). The larger—but still thin and light—model starts at $1,299, has a 13.3-inch screen, and weighs 2.9 pounds.

I've been testing both versions, but especially the 11.6-inch model, and I find that, despite a few drawbacks, they really do offer the different, more iPad-like experience Apple claims they do. Battery life is strong, and the wake up from sleep is almost instant, even after long periods of being unused.

Like their predecessors in the Air family, these are gorgeous, very thin and light, but very sturdy aluminum computers. And, like their predecessors, or like iPads and smartphones, they rely on solid-state storage—flash chips—instead of a conventional hard disk to hold all your files. But Apple has dramatically reduced the physical size of the flash storage to make room for larger sealed-in batteries, so battery life is longer. It has also cut the price from the last version of the Air, a 13-inch model that cost $1,799 with a solid-state drive.

Also, the company has re-engineered the way these new Airs sleep, adding a long "standby" period of very low power consumption that Apple says lasts up to 30 days. This standby mode kicks in after about an hour of idle time, and replaces the traditional hibernation system, where your current activity is saved to a conventional hard disk just before the battery dies. With hibernation, getting back to where you were can be slow and somewhat uncertain. With the new "standby" mode, the process just takes a few seconds, only a bit longer than normal sleep.

These are just the first of a number of changes Apple plans in order to make its computers behave more like the iPad and iPhone, without losing their greater power and more traditional keyboards, touchpads and mice, and ability to run conventional programs.

For instance, Apple has said it will soon introduce an "app store" for the Mac, which would make it simpler to find and download programs for the computers, and notify users of updates. And it will also roll out, in its next Mac operating system, called Lion—due next summer—a system of apps icon screens, like those on iPhones and iPads, that you can flick through with the company's multitouch touchpad gestures.

In my harsh battery tests, I found the two new Air models almost matched Apple's battery claims, even with all power-saving features turned off, Wi-Fi kept on, the screen on maximum brightness and a continuous loop of music playing. The 11-inch model lasted four hours and 43 minutes, versus Apple's claim of up to five hours. The 13-inch model lasted six hours and 13 minutes, versus Apple's claim of up to seven hours.

This means that, in normal use, with power-saving features turned on, you'd be almost certain to meet, or possibly exceed, Apple's claimed battery life. For comparison, I did the same battery test on a new Dell 11.6-inch model, the M101Z, which costs about $450, but is much thicker and heavier than the smaller Air, and uses a conventional hard disk. It got only two hours and 41 minutes of battery life, which means that in normal use you'd probably get three to four hours.

The new models are designed to hardly ever require a traditional bootup or reboot. The idea is that you'd only reboot if you had a problem, or installed software that required a reboot, or if the machine had been idle and unplugged more than a month. But even booting is very fast.

In my tests, a cold boot took 17 seconds and a reboot, with several programs running, took 20 seconds. By contrast, the Dell I tested took more than three minutes to fully boot up and be fully ready for use.

Unlike on many netbooks, these two new Apples also have high screen resolutions so you can fit more material into their relatively small sizes. The 13-inch model has the same resolution as Apple's 15-inch MacBook Pro and the 11-inch Air has greater resolution than the 13-inch MacBook Pro. Also, unlike on many netbooks, they feature full-size keyboards, though the 11-inch model has reduced-size function keys.

The new Airs aren't meant to be the most robust machines. They use last-generation Intel processors and have only two gigabytes of memory in their base configurations, and their storage is well below typical hard-disk capacities.

For example, the 11-inch, $999 model has a paltry 64 gigabytes of storage; the 13-inch model starts at a still-weak 128 gigabytes of storage, and even the high-end version of the larger model, which costs $1,599, has just 256 gigabytes of storage. And neither the storage nor the memory can be expanded once you choose your initial specs.

I'd recommend buyers of the 11-inch model spend $200 more to double the storage to 128 gigabytes. And people doing a lot of video editing might want to double the memory on either model to four gigabytes, for an extra $100.

Also, as with the earlier Air models, these two lack a DVD drive and an Ethernet port. Apple sells an external drive for $79 and an Ethernet adapter for $29. If you add in all these extras, prices can climb quickly.

They also lack ports called HDMI ports, becoming common on Windows PCs, for easy connection to televisions, and their keyboards aren't backlit. The two new models do, however, have two USB ports instead of the single USB port in the older Air.

I was surprised to find that even the base $999 model was powerful enough to easily run seven or eight programs at once, including Microsoft Office, iTunes and the Safari browser with more than 20 Web sites open. It also played high-definition video with no skipping or stuttering.

So, if you're a light-duty user, you might be able to adopt one of the new Airs as your main laptop. If you're a heavy-duty user, who needs lots of power and file storage, they're likely to be secondary machines.

Overall, Apple has done a nice job in making these new MacBook Airs feel more like iPads and iPhones without sacrificing their ability to work like regular computers. But, as always with Apple, you'll pay more than you will with Windows PCs.

Apple Opens Chinese App Store

The Wall Street Journal

 

BEIJING—Apple Inc. announced Tuesday that it launched an online store and a simplified-Chinese version of its App Store for customers in China, the latest move in an aggressive expansion by the company after years of neglecting the market.

Chinese customers can now order Apple products, including the iPhone 4 and the iPad, online and have the products delivered. Prior to this move, iPhone buyers had to order the devices on Apple's Chinese website and pick them up at one of Apple's four mainland Chinese Apple Stores in Beijing and Shanghai.

According to the new Chinese online store, Apple is shipping iPhones in China in one to two weeks, and iPads in 24 hours as of Tuesday morning.

The company's expansion in China comes as competition in China's nascent but fast-growing smartphone market is heating up, with Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC Corp. also planning an expansion here.

Apple, which had only one Apple Store in China last year and relied largely on authorized resellers to reach other customers, has said it plans to open 25 Apple Stores in the country by 2011. It has also sped up the release of new products in China, the world's largest mobile market and second largest personal computer market after the U.S.

With e-commerce booming in China and consumers spending tens of billions of dollars in transactions each year online, the move could help boost the company's distribution in China. Apple had 7.1% of China's smartphone market as of the second quarter, ranking fifth after Nokia Corp., Samsung Electronics Co., Motorola Inc. and Sony Ericsson, according to research firm Analysys International.

According to research firm IDC, Apple has less than 1% share of unit shipments in the PC market.

Still, e-commerce is a more complicated business in China, where many customers prefer to pay cash on delivery for their purchases, and it can be more difficult to make deliveries to remote regions due to a lack of infrastructure development. And unlike in the U.S., where many brands have their own successful e-commerce websites, three-quarters of online shopping in China is done through Taobao.com, a retail website operated by Alibaba Group.

Apple's online store warns customers outside of large urban areas that their deliveries may take one to two extra business days. The store says it accepts credit and debit cards, as well as bank transfers and cash deposits.

Releasing a Chinese version of Apple's Chinese App Store, an online marketplace where customers can purchase software applications for their iPhones, iPads and iPods, also removes a barrier for Chinese users to access the store. But other hurdles remain, including the requirement for users to have dual-currency credit cards in order to make purchases within the store—a requirement that has led many users to either hack their iPhones in order to use applications from other sources, or make purchases in the App Store using false identities and fraudulent gift cards.

An Apple spokeswoman said payment requirements for the Chinese App Store remained unchanged as of Tuesday.

Apple, Blackberry spar over Smartphone

Sydney Morning Herald

 

Canada's Research In Motion (RIM) fired back at Apple's Steve Jobs on Tuesday over his claims that the iPhone is outselling the Blackberry and that 18cm tablet computers have no future.

"We think many customers are getting tired of being told what to think by Apple," RIM co-chief executive Jim Balsillie said in a blog post responding to the comments made on Monday by Jobs.

"For those of us who live outside of Apple's distortion field, we know that seven-inch tablets will actually be a big portion of the market," Balsillie said after Jobs dismissed seven-inch (18cm) tablets as too small.
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Blackberry is developing a touchscreen tablet computer called the PlayBook which features a seven-inch (18cm) screen in a bid to challenge Apple's iPad, which features a nearly 10-inch (25cm) screen.

Jobs, speaking to financial analysts during a conference call on Monday, dismissed seven-inch (18cm) tablets as "tweeners" saying they were "too big to compete with a smartphone and too small to compete with an iPad".

He suggested makers of seven-inch screens "include sandpaper so users can sand down their fingers" to be able to tap onscreen keys.

Balsillie struck back with criticism of Apple's refusal to allow Adobe's Flash video to play on the iPad.

"We know that Adobe Flash support actually matters to customers who want a real Web experience," he said.

"We also know that while Apple's attempt to control the ecosystem and maintain a closed platform may be good for Apple, developers want more options and customers want to fully access the overwhelming majority of websites that use Flash."

During his earnings call, Jobs also said that the iPhone "handily" outsold BlackBerry during the quarter and he didn't see the RIM handsets catching up any time soon.

Apple sold 14.1 million iPhones during the quarter, up 91 per cent from a year ago.

"RIM has achieved record shipments for five consecutive quarters and recently shared guidance of 13.8 to 14.4 million BlackBerry smartphones for the current quarter," Balsillie said.

"Apple's preference to compare its September-ending quarter with RIM's August-ending quarter doesn't tell the whole story because it doesn't take into account that industry demand in September is typically stronger," he said.

"As usual, whether the subject is antennas, Flash or shipments, there is more to the story and sooner or later, even people inside the distortion field will begin to resent being told half a story," the RIM co-CEO said.

Row 44 hires former Vegas.com Chief Executive

LA Times

 

Row 44 Inc., which provides broadband Internet connection for airline passengers, announced Monday that former Vegas.com Chief Executive Howard Lefkowitz recently joined the company as chief commercial officer.

In his new role with the firm, Lefkowitz will be selling advertising opportunites to businesses on Row 44's inflight Internet portal. He will have a role in marketing to airlines.

This is key because the Westlake Village company recently raised $37 million from investors to persuade international carriers to outfit their planes with Row 44 equipment that gives passengers Wi-Fi connection while flying.

Row 44 hopes Lefkowitz can build on business connections that he made during his nine-year tenure as president and chief executive of Vegas.com.

When Lefkowitz joined the travel website in 2001, it was a small startup with about 20 employees. When he left in August, the site, with  400 workers and 2.5 million Internet visitors a month, described itself as the "largest city destination travel website in the world."

As a 25-employee firm, Row 44 hopes Lefkowitz can bring the same stroke of luck.

Row 44, named after the last row on a DC-10 commercial jet, uses a network of telecommunications satellites belonging to Hughes Network Systems. By tapping into Hughes' network, Row 44 has the potential capability to provide worldwide Internet access.

In January, Row 44 landed a contract with Southwest Airlines to provide Wi-Fi service on the airline’s fleet of more than 540 planes.

HP Sued by Shareholders Over Kickback, Foreign Bribery Claims

Bloomberg

Directors at Hewlett-Packard Co., the world’s largest computer maker, were sued by shareholders over claims they permitted or encouraged violations of federal kickback and foreign bribery laws.

From 2007 to 2009, HP violated the federal anti-kickback law by paying government vendors “influencer fees” to win contracts to design information technology systems, according to the complaint filed in federal court in San Jose, California. The company is also under investigation for possible violations of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Current and former directors at HP “consciously condoned HP’s illegal and unethical marketing practices,” according to the Oct. 19 complaint. The misconduct has “put the company at risk of having its U.S. government contracts rescinded,” the shareholders claim, adding that HP sales to U.S. agencies from 2007 to 2009 totaled more than $880 million.

The case relies in part on HP’s announcement in August that it agreed to pay $55 million to settle a Justice Department probe of whether the company overcharged taxpayers through a General Services Administration contract. That settlement also resolved a False Claims Act lawsuit, first filed by a whistleblower and joined by the government, alleging that the company paid kickbacks.

While the U.S. made HP aware of its illegal marketing practices in “late 2006/early 2007,” the directors allowed the unlawful conduct to continue until Dec. 31, 2009, according to the shareholder complaint.

The complaint also cites HP’s disclosure last month that the Justice Department and U.S. Securities Exchange Commission joined a probe by the German Public Prosecutor’s Office examining whether the Palo Alto, California-based company engaged in bribery overseas.

“It is painfully obvious that HP’s board has not and will not act as a disinterested and independent check on illegal corporate action, and that to remedy this misconduct, HP’s shareholders need to bring suit,” according to the complaint.

The case seeks to recover the False Claims Act fines and repayment of the salaries paid to the directors serving from 2007 to 2009.

HP spokeswoman Mylene Mangalindan didn’t immediately return a call seeking comment. John McCool, an outside spokesman for the company, said HP is reviewing the complaint.