SPARC Users - Heads Up
Alert! - Re Data Storage Reliability
Editor:- March 5, 2008 - I
know that you use SPARC servers because you care about the smooth running of
your enterprise - and don't like to fire fight foreseeable, avoidable irritating
glitches.
But something which you or your organization may do (for
what seems like perfectly valid economic reasons) could soon result in
unwittingly ... more
TSMC SPARC CPUs will Have Even More Cores
SANTA
CLARA, Calif - February 19, 2008 - Sun Microsystems Inc. today
announced that it had selected Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company
as its foundry partner for processors based on a 45-nanometer design as well as
future generations.
Sun will continue to design its chips while
long-time Sun partner TI
will continue to test and build the 45-nanometer processors in TSMC.
"After a lengthy evaluation we selected TSMC for one reason:
they're simply the best at turning complex processor designs into silicon,"
said David Yen, Sun's executive vice president, Microelectronics group. "TSMC
is already fully engaged with engineers from both Sun and TI and I expect we'll
all benefit from the cross-pollination of ideas among these three companies."
Sun, which currently designs processors based on 90- and 65-nanometer
processes, is moving to the smaller 45-nanometer to allow more circuitry to be
squeezed onto the same amount of silicon. The result: chip designers are free to
add new features such as processing cores or encryption engines that improve
overall chip performance.
The 45-nanometer design process also allows Sun to increase the
number of threads per processor. storage chips
XML Firewall Supports Solaris on SPARC
Vancouver,
Canada - February 11, 2008 - Layer 7 Technologies announced today its
XML Firewall and XML Networking Gateway software products support Solaris 10
on SPARC platforms from Sun Microsystems.
The SecureSpan
XML Firewall provides advanced identity and message level SOA security for
cross-domain, B2B and portal applications, while the SecureSpan XML Networking
Gateway adds support for complex SOA message routing, mediation, virtualization
and Service Level Agreements. In addition to gateway software Layer 7 also
offers a family of turnkey, hardware-accelerated XML appliances for the data
center.
...Layer 7 Technologies,
Storage Security
It's Groundhog Day for 8Gbps Fibre Channel HBAs
COSTA MESA, Calif -
February 6, 2008 - Emulex Corp today announced availability of its
8Gb/s Fibre Channel host bus adapters.
Designed to maintain
backward compatibility with existing 4Gb/s and 2Gb/s products, Emulex PCI
Express 2.0-based 8Gb/s HBAs enable a seamless transition to next-generation
SANs.
...Emulex profile
Editor's
comments:- my first reaction to this was - hadn't I already run a similar
story about QLogic
sampling 8Gbps HBAs last August? Turns out I had. That's why Emulex's white
paper Fact vs. Fiction -
What QLogic doesn't want you to know (pdf) is also getting a link here.
How Many Apps on Solaris? etc
Editor:- January 24,
2008 - an article published today on ITJungle.com discusses how many
ISVs actually support Solaris.
An interesting part of the article
is speculation about how some other OS's which were important in SPARC's infancy
have fared since. According a Sun survey cited in the article most ISVs still
love Solaris.
That's in stark contrast to IHVs. Most IHVs which
strongly supported the SPARC platform in the 1990s exited the market many
years ago. Although there are genuine opportunities for leveraging Sun's newer
processors many IHVs are safer with Intel architecture processors because of the
availability of alternative sources.
That's the coffee which helped
create the buzz about SPARC in the early 1990s - when many chipmakers made
SPARC chips which could be used in workstations. It could happen again. When
someone is prepared to go public on this I'll let you know on these pages.
Nanochip Aims to Trash Flash SSDs
Fremont,
Calif - January 22, 2008 - Nanochip, Inc. today announced the
completion of a $14 million series C financing round.
It
will allow Nanochip to complete development of its first prototypes later this
year to support design verification testing and limited customer sampling in
2009 followed by full commercialization in 2010.
Nanochip is
developing a new class of ultra-high-capacity non volatile storage chips.
Nanochip says its first products could exceed 100GB per chip set, reaching
terabytes in the future, and at a substantially lower cost compared with
flash memory solutions.
"Flash has become the technology of choice for a variety of consumer and
business applications where cost-effective, non-volatile
solid-state storage is a
must," said Keith Larson, VP and director of
investor Intel
Capital. "However, as flash process technology scaling begins to approach
its limits, Nanochip's technology is well positioned to provide memory capacity
with exponentially higher storage densities at a cost per gigabyte significantly
below that of flash technology. New memory components, such as Nanochip's, will
enable new, innovative electronics devices and increase the performance of
existing computing and other devices." ...Nanochip profile
Editor's
comments:- I'm used to waiting years between the time I first mention a
company on these pages to the time that their first product apears. Nanochip is
a good example. The company was founded in 1996 and was listed here in 2001.
But it doesn't expect to sample its first commercial products till 2009.
That's a 13 year gestation period!
Although the company looks and
talks like a chipmaker - it aims to compete head to head in the
solid state disk market and
I predict it will have to design make and market demonstration SSDs in order to
prove its concept to the oems it hopes will one day use its technology, or
license it or (more likely)
acquire the company. |
| SPARC history:-
see this UK Sun VAR page in
1997,
1999,
2000,
2001,
2003
|
 | |
|
 |
Axstor, based in
Coventry in the UK, provides
world class high-performance iSCSI storage
solutions at a cost-effective price point. | |
|
 |
Vibrant
Technologies sells used Sun servers
and new and used storage all
around the
world to over 3,500 customers. | |
|
 |
Quorum - High
Availability and Workload
Management appliance from
Themis Computer
Manage upto
50 servers in real-time, any application,
any server with 1 simple
interface. | |
| . |
|
|
| . |
Squeak! -
Animal Brands and Metaphors in the Storage Market
Animal
marketing metaphors are popular in service industries, but you'd be surprised
how many companies have used animals in their marketing of data storage
products and services.
The storage market was worth over $160 billion
in 2006, and as it gets bigger - more companies will turn to animal brands to
help differentiate their otherwise bland products and lend them artificial
(or deserving) characters and virtues.
The idea behind this type of
marketing is to suggest positive connotations so it's unlikely that anyone will
choose to associate their products with gremlins. But you may be surprised by
the population of the storage ark.
This reference articles lists all
known companies who have furry marketing brands, and also includes some which
are slimy, scaly and scary too. ...read the article,
Mice in storage |
| |
| . |
 |
10 Ten
Tips for a Successful RAID Implementation - article by Infortrend
Editor:- In the 20 years since I first worked on
RAID I've read and
published countless articles about this subject.
So what can a new
RAID article tell you?
Plenty of practical stuff - from a modern
perspective. ...read
the article
, ...Infortrend
profile | |
| . |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| . |
 |
Sanitization
Methods for Cleaning Up Hard Disk Drives - article by Intelligent Computer
Solutions
Removing the data on old unwanted disk drives has
become a concern for all users.
In 2005
Pointsec found that
they were able to read 7 out of 10 hard-drives bought over the Internet
at auctions such as eBay, for less than the cost of a McDonald's meal, all of
which had "supposedly" been "wiped-clean" or "re-formatted".
This article reviews the various methods available to sanitize hard disks along
with the advantages and disadvantages in each case....read the article,
...Intelligent Computer
Solutions profile,
disk sanitizers | |
| |
