Andy Patrizio

IBM has updated its Cell BladeCenter server, changing just about everything but the processor to improve performance. The company also released a major upgrade to its multi-core development kit. IBM’s (Quote) BladeCenter QS21 is an update to the QS20, which shipped at the beginning of the year. It’s powered by the Cell Broadband Engine (Cell/B.E.), the […]

Fujitsu Computer Systems is known primarily for its high-end servers, but the company is making a play for the SMB (define) market with the release of its PRIMERGY TX120 tower server. The TX120 measures just four inches wide by 13 inches tall and 16 inches deep, produces 28 decibels (dB) while idle and 31 dB in […]

SAN FRANCISCO — Intel has announced the latest generation of its vPro chipset for business computers, with enhancements across its feature sets, particularly in the areas of virtualization. Systems that incorporate the new chipset should be available this coming week from major desktop computer vendors. vPro is a support technology for software and hardware inventory […]

IDC has released its Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker for the second quarter 2007, and despite the talk of a sales slowdown, the top server vendors are all doing well. Yes, even Sun and Dell were up. Revenue in the second quarter for the worldwide server market grew 6.3 percent over 2006 figures to $13.1 billion, […]

STANFORD, Calif. — Hot Chips is an appropriate term for a conference on future trends in microprocessors. On a rare hot day here in Memorial Hall on the campus of Stanford University, even the air conditioners fail to counterbalance the heat from notebooks that adorn practically every lap in the auditorium. Inside, the talk among […]

An MIT-inspired startup will introduce a new multi-core chip today at the annual Hot Chips conference at Stanford University. The TILE64 boasts a “clean sheet” design, unencumbered by any legacy compatibility concerns, that Tilera says will provide a huge leap in multithreaded performance. Tilera was founded in 2004 to bring to market the multi-core processor […]

The alliance between IBM and Sun drew a rather short but succinct response from HP: Welcome to the party. While IBM is getting into the game to sell Solaris on its x86 hardware now, HP has been selling x86 servers for running Solaris for more than a decade. And it has enjoyed a decent business […]

It won’t clear the polluted air around Beijing, but the new IBM supercomputer purchased by the Beijing Meteorological Bureau (BMB) will go a long way to help forecast the weather and air-quality control in next year’s Olympic games. The System p575 is an 80-node machine with IBM’s POWER5+ microprocessors, capable of delivering 9.8 teraflops per […]

Sun is in the process of extending its multithreading support to protect applications and data alike from accidentally stepping on each other and potentially corrupting memory or data. The solution is hardly unique. It’s the same issue relational database vendors went through 30 years ago. When you have multiple people accessing and modifying the same […]

Microsoft’s monthly patch cycle was unusually large this month, with nine Security Bulletins addressing a total of 14 vulnerabilities. Eight of the fixes are listed as critical, the most important and severe issues. Four of the fixes are rated important and the final two are listed as moderate. A particularly serious Bulletin is MS07-046, which […]