Photo shows a server tray using Asetek’s Rack CDU Liquid Cooling system. The piping system connects to a cooling distribution unit. (Source: Asetek)
The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) looks to join the Department of Defense in utilizing “hot water” liquid cooling, as a retrofit for its Skynet HPC cluster. Asetek announced that NREL will install its RackCDU (Rack Coolant Distribution Unit) direct-to-chip liquid cooling system, as the cluster is relocated to the new data center at the Energy Systems Integration Facility (ESIF) in Golden, Colorado.
Last year, NREL had been studying the energy efficiency performance, savings, lifecycle cost, and environmental benefits of RackCDU for potential broader adoption across the DoD. At the ESIF data center, warm water (75 degrees) liquid cooling will be used to operate servers and to recover waste-heat for use as the primary heat source for the building office space and laboratories. The higher liquid temperatures used by Asetek’s RackCDU (105F) will improve waste-heat recovery and reduce water consumption for the data center.
By retrofitting an existing air-cooled HPC cluster with RackCDU, NREL will reduce the cooling energy required to operate this system, reduce water usage in the cooling system and increase the server density within the cluster, reducing floor-space and rack infrastructure requirements. The system will be installed as a drop-in retrofit to existing air-cooled servers and racks.
“Ambient water temperature in the hydronic system is a critical factor in data center efficiency and sustainability,” said Steve Hammond, director of the Computational Science Center at NREL. “Starting with warmer water on the inlet side can create an opportunity for enhanced waste-heat recovery and reduced water consumption, and in many locations can be accomplished without the need for active chilling or evaporative cooling, which could lead to dramatically reduced cooling costs.”
The new Energy Systems Integration Facility is located at the NREL’s campus in Golden. The data center is set to complete construction this summer.
Yesterday I attended the House Taxes Committee Meeting. There were two topics that touched upon broadband and both were quick discussions. The super condensed notes on the sessions (vis a vis broadband):
HF1686 (Lenczewski) Public fund investments authorized, energy improvement repayment provided for, capital equipment financing requirements changed, and street reconstruction bond election requirements changed.
Quick Notes: Anything related to fiber was taken off the table once the legislators realized that this amendment might conflict with other policies. They may rework the language – but really the momentum seemed to be to remove it. Some discussion on whether or not the fiber was intended for government-only use – but again momentum was to drop it.
HF389 (Lesch) Collection of 911 fees from prepaid wireless telecommunications services and prepaid wireless E911 services provided for, broadband development grant program established, and money appropriated.
Quick Notes: Legislators were not in favor of the broadband development grant program – more (I believe) based on prepaid phones not being connected enough to the cause than the actual fund. Again They may rework but momentum was to leave off the fund and the higher level momentum was to avoid any controversy.
Below is video and more notes on the session. It was interesting to watch the Tax discussion when what I was listening for was broadband because tax involves some deep ideologies and so it’s clear to see that broadband is not the issue – money is. From that perspective I think the second video I have posted is interesting. Someone mentioned the need to represent the private sector – to which someone else asked who represented the public sector? Just an interesting glimpse.
Discussion on HF1686 (Lenczewski) Public fund investments authorized, energy improvement repayment provided for, capital equipment financing requirements changed, and street reconstruction bond election requirements changed.
Lynnette Slater Crandall – Dorsey Whitney Bond Lawyer – MIPF introduces the amendment.
Questions –
Fiber optic – does that have to do with municipal telecom systems?
Yes – but we just realized that it might be controversial so we ask that we remove that part.
We are looking at Section 4,7,8. We would want to delete the fiber portion from each section (or remove the first mention and subsequent referrals).
Mr. Carlson –
This only refers to intergovernmental fiber connections, not to serve residents or commercial entities. So I question the controversy. Some wealthy counties are already doing this. They are self-funding fiber networks for government use.
Brent Christensen (Minnesota Telecom Alliance) –
The MTA opposes the portiorn of the bill that relates to government funded and constructed networks. (Lines 3.3, 3.4, 5.3, 5,.4, 5.29 & 5.30.) It creates an uneven playing field. Also it permits local government to make investments that may lead to long-term debt for equipment and expenditure in the competitive telecom world for equipment that may become obsolete. Finally the amendment conflicts with Minnesota law that requires a referendum before a city can enter the telecom business.
Mike Martin (MN Cable Communications Association)–
We share MTA’s concern. It opens the door to government sponsored competition. The issue is the ability to lease capacity. There’s no definition of what local governments serve, which could leave to reselling. Dakota & Scott Counties are already doing this. There are transparency issues.
Are governments selling fiber now? Yes – for example Carver County got ARRA funding to build a network and used some bonding to match. Then they asked providers (competitors to existing providers) to come on board too. It means governments might be able to compete at below market rates.
We might not object in areas without service but that’s not necessarily the case here.
Question: This is the tip of the iceberg. Maybe we need to reconsider the referendum with increased transparency. Maybe people need to understand the risk. Monticello is a deal that hasn’t worked.
Dorsey Whitney: It’s not the intent to submit a controversial topic. We’ll try to make a change to accommodate these issues or delete fiber pieces.
General Questions:
Question: We don’t want anything that would be controversy for the private sector – but who is watching for the public sector?
We do work with League of Cities. Sometimes one governmental agency has a diverging view from other types of government entities.
Questions: If it’s all technical why do we need to do this?
It might help the bond owners sleep better at night. There is expanded authority that matters to our constituency.
HF389 (Lesch) Collection of 911 fees from prepaid wireless telecommunications services and prepaid wireless E911 services provided for, broadband development grant program established, and money appropriated.
We fund 911 services in MN by charging a fee on phone bill. More phones don’t have phone bills; they are pre-paid services. One of the leader in pre-paid phones was paying the bill but they quit. So we’d like to get pre-paid phones back
Representing AT&T
We think this is a bill whose time has come. We need to resolve this as the customers change and move away from landline. Prepaid is 23 percent of market .
Questions:
We’re laying this bill over. I have concerns. We talked about adding 4 cents for broadband grant fund. That seems beyond the scope. I hope if this comes back in Omnibus Tax Bill that this gets dropped.
There is one other amendment – delete section 16.
The date for report from Commission of Public Safety from 2014 to 2015. One concern – how do we come up with an adequate fee without a more precise estimate? The sooner we get a report the better we’ll be.
I agree but the department didn’t think they’d have adequate data in the time previously provided.
The need for data and the quicker the better would be helpful. We don’t want to collect more than is necessary.
Dep of Revenue
We want to express concerns. It puts us in the position of being a collector for another agency’s fees. We do collect some fees for other agencies. This puts us in the place of using sales tax system, which puts us in an awkward position given relationship with retail providers.
Question – but you’re already doing it. Department of Public Safety isn’t geared up to collect fees.
Question – Who else could do it?
We could do it, but it’s a bad precedent. We collect annual drycleaner bills. We do solid waste fees. But these are smaller projects. Not of this magnitude.
Jamie Pool – MN Grocers
We are concerned with local business collecting taxes for national providers. We support e-911. The bill goes into effect when minutes start to get used. The fees must be itemized. We’d need to set up systems and start collections. The language also says any fee changes will be announced on the website – requiring us to keep up and opening the door to inconsistency. We understand we don’t’ need to sell these cards – but we want to provide one-stop shopping.
Jackie Mines Emergency Services
We currently collect 911 fees. We distribute it. We provide backbone for infrastructure. We support this bill. It’s a mechanism for fair and equitable fees. With migration to prepaid it’s important to public safety to keep fees coming into the fund. We are happy to make reporting available when we can. We would be happy to send out letters as well as post fee changes on our website. We might need to get contact info on grocery shops.
Apple (AAPL) is set to post its results for the second fiscal quarter on April 23rd and a new report suggests increased competition may have hurt Apple more than usual. Credit Suisse analyst Kulbinder Garcha said in a recent note to clients that competition is hurting Apple more than it has in the past, and he sees iPhone sales in the March quarter falling to 38 million units — though that figure is still up from 35.1 million iPhones in the same quarter last year.
You can find some interesting imagery on Google Maps Street View. It’s no wonder, given the efforts the company takes to produce it. They’ve even gone so far as to design special equipment to get imagery from the places where it’s just too hard to get a car or even the Street View Trike.
Sometimes, you’ll just find some weird stuff. Apparently you can even find people having sex.
A redditor pointed this out in the ever-popular WTF subreddit. My first instinct was to assume that this was a fake. Google wouldn’t really take a picture of this and leave it available on Street View would it?
Luckily, right there at the top of the comments was a link. Yep, it’s really there.
It’s entirely possible that this couple isn’t actually having sex, and is rather just having some fun at Google’s expense. On the other hand, it’s also possible that they’re doing both.
Interestingly enough, Google blurred out the license plate on its own:
You can click through if you want to see it and mess with Google’s controls. If you want to, however, you should probably do it now, because I doubt this will be sticking around for long.
Popular recording artist Brandy recently did an At Google Talk discussing “mapping the past, searching the present, and inventing the future” with Googler Dara Wilson.
The talk was part of the Black Googlers Network’s Black History Month celebration, and took place on February 25th.
Facebook announced the launch of a new self-serve targeting ad targeting feature for partner categories. The categories use data from select third parties like Acxiom, Datalogix and Epsilon.
“For example, a local car dealership can now show ads to people who are likely in the market for a new car who live near their dealership,” the company explains. “To date, advertisers have been able to show ads to people based on their expressed interests on Facebook. Now with partner categories, they can also show ads to people on Facebook based on the products and brands they buy across both desktop and mobile.”
“Companies have long used this type of targeting off of Facebook, and we are excited to make this available to advertisers of all sizes on Facebook,” the company adds.
The categories work the same way all targeting on Facebook works. To kick things off, partner categories includes over 500 unique groups and works with other Facebook targeting options.
The feature will be available to US advertisers in Power Editor and through the API starting today.
Facebook assures users that no personal information is shared between Facebook and third parties or advertisers.
What does that mean for the Geek? According to ZTE’s tests — which of course will have to be independently confirmed by us geeks — the phone’s 2 GHz chip is “twice as fast for computing and three times as fast for graphics” while also reducing power consumption over the previous Atom.
ZTE hasn’t shared much additional information on the phone; there are no availability dates, no prices, nor target markets although I’d assume Europe, Australia and Asia will be important markets as ZTE’s prior Intel-powered phones have done well there. The phone itself has a 5-inch 1280 x 720 display, runs Android Jelly Bean with 8 GB of internal storage and 1 GB of RAM. A pair of cameras (8 and 1 megapixels) adorn the back and front, and the rear camera has an LED flash. Wireless charging is supported.
Partners such as ZTE are extremely important to Intel, which until recently has been on the sidelines when it comes to the mobile market. Most of the top handset makers — Samsung, Apple, HTC, Nokia and others — have long used chips with the ARM architecture, leaving Intel with few mobile partnership options.
Motorola did make one effort, the RAZRi, but aside from that, ZTE is Intel’s new BFF. Intel couldn’t ask for a better partner either: since ZTE is based in China, Intel has a foot into the door of the biggest mobile opportunities on the planet today. And that could pay off down the line if ZTE keeps pushing forward with Intel Atom inside its smartphones.
At this year’s National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) show, Microsoft (MSFT) announced that it is partnering with NBC SportsGroup to use Windows Azure Media Services across NBC Sports’ digital platforms. Through the agreement, which rolls out this summer, Microsoft will provide both live-streaming and on-demand viewing services for more than 5,000 hours of games and events on devices, such as smartphones, tablets and PCs.
Previously at the 2012 NAB event, Microsoftannounced its Media Services cloud platform, with a Broadcast Reference Architecture.
“Microsoft is constantly looking for innovative ways to utilize the power of the cloud, and we see Windows Azure Media Services as a high-demand offering,” said Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president at Microsoft. “As consumer demand for viewing media online — on any available device– grows, our partnership with NBC Sports Group gives us the opportunity to provide the best of cloud technology and bring world-class sporting events to audiences when and where they want them.”
Microsoft is working with iStreamPlanet Co. and its live video workflow management product Aventus to integrate with Windows Azure Media Services, and provide a scalable, reliable, live video workflow solution. This will enable NBC Sports Group to bring its portfolio of properties to the cloud. These properties include the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games, “Sunday Night Football,” Notre Dame Football, Premier League soccer, Major League Soccer, Formula One and IndyCar racing, PGA TOUR, U.S. Open golf, French Open tennis, Triple Crown horse racing, and more.
“NBC Sports Group is thrilled to be working with Microsoft,” said Rick Cordella, senior vice president and general manager of digital media at NBC Sports Group. “More and more of our audience is viewing our programming on Internet-enabled devices, so quality of service is important. Also, our programming reaches a national audience and needs to be available under challenging network conditions. We chose Microsoft because of its reputation for delivering an end-to-end experience that allows for seamless, high-quality video for both live and video-on-demand streaming.”
As you may know, the European Commission has been investigating Google’s search business for about two years. This is expected to reach a conclusion soon, as Google recently submitted a proposal for settling concerns.
The Financial Times is now reporting (via TechCrunch) that Google will likely bow to regulatory pressure by taking measures to more prominently show results from competing vertical search engines.
One of the European Commission’s primary concerns, according to officials involved, is the visibility in search results of rival so-called “vertical search” services – in areas such as maps, finance or weather – that may provide more relevant results to a query.
This specific finding indicates that alongside widely expected concessions to more clearly label Google’s own services, the US group will also need to offer solutions that give more prominence to rival specialist search services and consumers clearer alternatives.
While it remains to be seen if this will actually happen, this would go significantly further than Google’s concessions in the U.S. Federal Trade Commission investigation.
Should Google be required to give competing services more visibility in its own search results, even if it hurts the user experience?
The New York Times reported this week that EU antitrust chief Joaquin Almunia said he’s receiving proposals from Google this week. While Almunia has not commented on the angle, a new complaint was filed by Google competitors claiming that the company unfairly uses Android to help its search business.
Apple’s (AAPL) next-generation iPhone will reportedly be available with three or five different color options, including one to three new colors on top of the current black and white options. Topeka Capital Markets analyst Brian White reported as much back in January, and now a new report from Japanese blog Macotakara reinforces those earlier claims. A translation of the post says that the iPhone 5S will be announced in July with three new color options, though a subsequent report from AppleInsider suggests the translation is not accurate and the original post says only one new color option will be available in addition to black and white. Macotakara says Apple’s new entry-level iPhone will be available in several different colors as well.
Google announced that it has made some adjustments to the template HTML editor for Blogger. It now supports line numbering, syntax highlighting, auto-indentation and code folding.
In a post on the Blogger Buzz blog, Google software engineers Samantha Schaffer and Renee Kwang walk you through the steps for moving the date of a blog post from above the post title to underneath it, as an example.
“Finally, we’ve added a ‘format template’ button that automatically cleans up the indentation of the template, and made it possible to search for text by pressing ‘Ctrl+F’ once you’ve clicked into the editor,” they write. “To find and replace text occurrences one by one, use ‘Ctrl+Shift+F’ or to find and replace all occurrences at once, use ‘Ctrl+Shift+R’.”
Apple (AAPL) has struck a new deal to license patents from Access, according to a document published on the patent holding firm’s website. The IP covered in the small deal includes patents originally filed by Palm, Bell Communications Research and Geoworks. As 9to5Mac points out, former Apple CEO Steve Jobs once told then-Palm CEO Ed Colligan that the company’s patents were “not that great,” and that Apple had passed on an earlier opportunity to acquire them to protect the iPhone because they were basically worthless. To be fair though, the Apple-Access licensing deal is valued at 1 billion yen, or about $10 million USD, which is indeed practically nothing to a company with more than $140 billion in cash on hand.
Google announced this morning that Google Play Music is launching in five new European countries: Austria, Belgium, Ireland, Luxembourg and Portugal.
“Music first launched on Google Play in Europe in November 2012, and the fast rollout to more countries today is due to the multi-territorial licensing process, as recommended by the European Commission last year,” explains Google Play head of international music partnerships, Sami Valkonen. “We have 14 multi-territorial licenses for composition rights covering Europe and representing the vast majority of the world’s music, and have recently welcomed the members of AKM/AUME in Austria, SABAM in Belgium, SPA in Portugal, and IMRO in Ireland into our growing list of author’s society partners.”
Google is also launching Artist Hub in these countries. This is a platform for independent musicians to sell their music directly to fans. This is discussed a bit more here.
In addition to the five new countries, Google Play Music is available in the following European countries: the UK, Germany, France, Spain and Italy.
Google introduced a new rel-alternate-hreflang annotation for webmasters to specify international landing pages. It’s called “x-default hreflang,” and it signals to Google’s algorithms that a page doesn’t target a specific language or location.
“The homepages of multinational and multilingual websites are sometimes configured to point visitors to localized pages, either via redirects or by changing the content to reflect the user’s language,” explains Google Webmaster Trends analyst Pierre Far. “Today we’ll introduce a new rel-alternate-hreflang annotation that the webmaster can use to specify such homepages that is supported by both Google and Yandex.”
“The new x-default hreflang attribute value signals to our algorithms that this page doesn’t target any specific language or locale and is the default page when no other page is better suited,” says Far. “For example, it would be the page our algorithms try to show French-speaking searchers worldwide or English-speaking searchers on google.ca.”
If example.com/en-gb targets English-speaking users in the UK, example.com/en-us targets English-speaking users in the US, example.com/en-au targets English-speaking users in Australia, and exmaple.com/ tshows users a country selector and is the default page worldwide, then the annotation would something like this:
Intel has a busy year of new processor product rollouts planned, as it continues to update its chips to take advantage of technology innovations. During her keynote at the Intel Developer Forum today in Beijing, Diane Bryant, senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s Datacenter and Connected Systems Group, unveiled details of upcoming Intel products targeting the server, networking and storage requirements of the data center.
The company will refresh its Intel Xeon and Atom processor lines with new generations of 22nm manufactured products. In coming months Intel will also begin production of new Intel Atom and Xeon processor E3, E5 and E7 families, featuring improved performance per watt and expanded feature sets, Bryant said.
Intel Atom for the Data Center
In December 2012, Intel launched the Intel Atom processor S1200 product family. Today, Intel revealed details of three new low-power SoCs (system on chip) for the data center, all coming in 2013.
Intel Atom Processor S12x9 product family for Storage. Intel announced the availability of the low-power Intel Atom processor S12x9 family for storage deployments. This SoC shares several features with the Intel Atom S1200 processor product family, but contains technologies specifically geared for storage devices. With up to 40 lanes of integrated PCIe 2.0, or physical paths between I/O and the processor, the capacity demands of multiple devices can be handled more efficiently. Of the 40 lanes of PCIe* 2.0, there are 24 Root Port lanes and 16 Non Transparent Bridge lanes, for failover support.
Avoton. In the second half of 2013, Intel will deliver the second generation of 64-bit Intel Atom processor for microservers, codenamed “Avoton.” Built on Intel’s leading 22nm process technology and new microarchitecture “Silvermont,” Avoton will feature an integrated Ethernet controller and expected to deliver significant improvements in performance-per-watt. Avoton is now being sampled to customers and the first systems are expected to be available in the second half of 2013.
Rangeley. Intel will expand its presence in the network and communications infrastructure market by delivering an Intel® Atom™ processor based SoC codenamed “Rangeley,” also built on the 22nm process technology. Rangeley aims to provide an energy-efficient mechanism for processing communication workloads and is targeted for entry level to mid-range routers, switches and security appliances. Rangeley is targeted to be available in second half of 2013.
Intel Xeon processor E3 Family
This year, Intel will introduce the new Intel Xeon processor E3 1200 v3 product family, based on Haswell architecture. Intel continues to lower the power levels on the Intel Xeon processor E3 family; the lowest TDP will be 13 watts, approximately up to 25 percent lower than the prior generation. The improvement from eight transcode to 10 transcode with Haswell’s graphics capabilities also results in up to 25 percent improvement in transcode performance per watt for hardware accelerated media performance.
Intel Xeon processor E5 Family
Intel’s next-generation Intel Xeon processor E5 family will be based on the 22nm manufacturing process, and will be available in the third quarter of this year. These processors will support Intel Node Manager and Intel Data Center Manager Software. Security will also be improved with Intel Secure Key and Intel OS Guard which provide additional hardware-enhanced security Intel OS Guard protects against privilege attacks by preventing malicious code from executing out of application memory space, in addition to data memory.
Intel Xeon Processor E7 Family
To support in-memory analytics and rapidly respond to scaling data sets, Intel is on-track for production availability of the next-generation Intel Xeon processor E7 family in the fourth quarter of 2013. Featuring triple the memory capacity – up to 12 Terabytes (TB) in an eight-socket node – this processor is ideal for data-demanding, transaction-intensive workloads such as in-memory databases and real-time business analytics.
With the Intel Xeon processor E7 family, Intel is also announcing Intel® Run Sure Technology which will deliver greater system reliability and increased data integrity while minimizing the downtime for businesses running mission-critical workloads. These RAS features will be available with the next-generation Intel Xeon processor E7 family, and will be comprised of Resilient System Technologies, Resilient Memory Technologies.
Resilient System Technologies includes standardized technologies integrating processor, firmware and software layers, including the OS, hypervisors and databases to allow the system to recover from previously fatal errors.
Resilient Memory Technologies includes features to help ensure data integrity and enable systems to keep running reliably over a longer period of time, reducing the need for immediate service calls.
Photos of what is claimed to be the front glass and bezel assembly from Apple’s (AAPL) fifth-generation iPad leaked on Wednesday, reinforcing earlier reports of a major upcoming redesign. An image of the new iPad’s purported rear shell was published this past January, showing a redesigned case that closely resembles the iPad mini. Now, French blog Nowhereelse.fr has photos of what it claims to be the new iPad’s front bezel and glass display cover. While their authenticity is not guaranteed, the photos show a new thinner bezel that aligns with earlier reports suggesting the new iPad will have a smaller overall footprint while maintaining the same 9.7-inch display size. An additional photo of the purported fifth-generation iPad bezel follows below.
Want to know how many fish there are in the sea? The amount of carbon dioxide in the water in the mid-Pacific? How about getting humpback whales a record deal? These are all projects that Liquid Robotics’ connected, sensor packed robots have undertaken. The company, which makes self-sufficient, autonomous ocean-going robots, has built a sea-faring internet of things. And like all seagoing entities its robots have had their share of shark attacks and are always on the lookout for pirates.
The Wave Glider robots are pretty amazing machines, with a dry box packed full of server gear, solar panels and the original wave-harnessing energy technology all packed onto what used to be surfboard. Add to it, a satellite radio, cellular and some shorter range radios so a fleet of Wave Gliders can create what is essentially a distributed computing platform in the ocean. To learn more about how they work and what they do, check out this week’s podcast with Graham Hine, the SVP of product management for Liquid Robotics.
“Magic” mushrooms grow naturally throughout the world. The psilocybin within magic mushrooms was used in ancient times for religious ceremonies and recreation. Today though, governments are frightening the population and are banning not only naturally-occurring mushrooms…
In what has to be the most accurate currency crash prediction ever made, bitcoin crashed today from $266 to a low of $105 in a rapid “free fall” market crash pattern, erasing $1 billion in currency valuation in a matter of hours. I openly and publicly predicted all this…
