IBM
Water-Cooled Supercomputer Doubles as Dorm Space Heater
Massive supercomputers that devour electricity to keep them humming are not exactly the poster children for green technology. But IBM hopes to change that with its plans to build a supercomputer that will use water to keep the system cool and even recycle some of the waste heat to help heat the university where it’s housed.
From IBM with Love: Inside the World’s Greatest Keyboard
From the satisfying click of its keys to its no-nonsense layout and solid steel underpinnings, IBM’s 24-year-old Model M is the standard by which all other keyboards must be judged.
Smart Grid: The First Green Bubble?
The Smart Grid is the hottest thing in Green IT these days, attracting not just lots of press, but attention from heavyweights like Cisco, IBM, Intel, and Google. There’s also plenty of venture capital money chasing the Next Big Thing — but there’s some evidence that the Smart Grid may be the next tech bubble to burst.
Obama Taps IBM Open Source Advocate For USPTO
langelgjm writes “President Obama has announced his intent to nominate David Kappos, a VP and general counsel at IBM, to head the US Patent and Trademark Office. This move is particularly notable not only because of IBM’s much friendlier attitudes towards open source compared with some of their rivals, but also because Kappos himself is open source-friendly: ‘We are now the biggest supporters of the open source development project,’ explains David. ‘Admittedly this policy is not easily reconcilable with our traditional IP strategy, but we are convinced that it is the way to go for the future.’ Not just a lawyer, Kappos earned an engineering degree before working in the legal field. Kappos has been described as ‘critical of the American approach to patent policy.’ Given his background, could this mean a new era for US patent policy?”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Obama Taps IBM Open Source Advocate For USPTO
langelgjm writes “President Obama has announced his intent to nominate David Kappos, a VP and general counsel at IBM, to head the US Patent and Trademark Office. This move is particularly notable not only because of IBM’s much friendlier attitudes towards open source compared with some of their rivals, but also because Kappos himself is open source-friendly: ‘We are now the biggest supporters of the open source development project,’ explains David. ‘Admittedly this policy is not easily reconcilable with our traditional IP strategy, but we are convinced that it is the way to go for the future.’ Not just a lawyer, Kappos earned an engineering degree before working in the legal field. Kappos has been described as ‘critical of the American approach to patent policy.’ Given his background, could this mean a new era for US patent policy?”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
IBM’s Freeware Symphony Suite Takes Aim At MS Office
The kicker: Lotus Symphony is a free business productivity software suite. In this economy, might companies looking to shave pennies any and everywhere might look closer than usual at freeware, especially freeware developed and supported by IBM.
Sun Kills Rock CPU, Says NYT Report
BBCWatcher writes “Despite Oracle CEO Larry Ellison’s recent statement that his company will continue Sun’s hardware business, it won’t be with Sun processors (and associated engineering jobs). The New York Times reports that Sun has canceled its long-delayed Rock processor, the next generation SPARC CPU. Instead, the Times says Sun/Oracle will have to rely on Fujitsu for SPARCs (and Intel otherwise). Unfortunately Fujitsu is decreasing its R&D budget and unprofitable at present. Sun’s cancellation of Rock comes just after Intel announced yet another delay for Tukwila, the next generation Itanium, now pushed to 2010. HP is the sole major Itanium vendor. Primary beneficiaries of this CPU turmoil: IBM and Intel’s Nehalem X86 CPU business.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
IBM releases new enterprise cloud portfolio
Big Blue launches a new product and service lineup aimed squarely at the heart of the enterprise IT market.
Oracle Beware — Google Tests Cloud-Based Database
narramissic writes “On Tuesday, the same day Google held a press event to launch its Google Apps Sync for M|cr0s0ft Outlook, the company quietly announced in its research team blog a new online database called Fusion Tables. Under the hood of Fusion Tables is data-spaces technology, which would ‘allow Google to add to the conventional two-dimensional database tables a third coordinate with elements like product reviews, blog posts, Twitter messages and the like, as well as a fourth dimension of real-time updates,’ according to Stephen E. Arnold, a technology and financial analyst. ‘So now we have an n-cube, a four-dimensional space, and in that space we can now do new kinds of queries which create new kinds of products and new market opportunities,’ said Arnold, whose research about this topic includes a study done for IDC last August. ‘If you’re IBM, M|cr0s0ft and Oracle, your worst nightmare is now visible.’”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
HP Gives Scale-Out Architecture Extreme Makeover
HP on Wednesday announced its Extreme Scale-Out portfolio, intended to cut data center costs for businesses involved in heavy Web 2.0, cloud computing and high-performance computing activities. Such companies typically have data centers with thousands of servers. The HP ExSO portfolio includes a lightweight modular system architecture, as well as services and support. However, HP is in some ways already behind archrival IBM, which last year unveiled its System x iDataPlex solution for the same target markets.
