We are talking about servers here. The next wave of computing will be distributed on the front-end side, with enormous amounts of data transmitted to server farms 'in the cloud' - Here is AMD's take on the future of servers, what do you think ?


[Photos courtesy of the Skintile Project at Philips]
[Reproduced from VentureBeat]
The ‘surround computing’ era is just around the corner

The ‘surround computing’ era is coming soon, according to Mark Papermaster, the chief technology officer of chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices.

In a talk at the Hot Chips semiconductor design conference in Cupertino, Calif., Papermaster said that the enormous growth of sensors and mobile computing devices will produce a huge explosion of data that will overwhelm traditional data centers. We’ll be surrounded by computing everywhere, which explains why Papermaster calls the time ahead the surround computing era.
To deal with this surge of data, Papermaster said chip designers will have to create server chips with “heterogenouus” capabilities, acting as both microprocessor or graphics processor from one moment to the next. Sometimes you need a single processor (microprocessor computing) to work on a chunky piece of data, and sometimes you need a lot of processors working in parallel (graphics computing). AMD specializes in microprocessor-graphics combo chips dubbed accelerating processing units, or APUs.

My nike fuel band is awesome, I have 430,000 fuel points as of today. When I read last week-end that a small startup raised $11m on kickstarter to bring to market an ipod nano-like wristwatch I thought I would post my thoughts.

[Reproduced from the NYTimes]
Disruptions: The Next Wave for the Wristwatch

Cellphones have already muscled onto watches’ turf as a time-telling tool. Now, some of the biggest technology companies are eyeing your wrist, too.
Companies like Apple, Nike and Sony, along with dozens of start-ups, hope to strap a device on your wrist.

It is quite a disruption for the wristwatch, which has not actually been around all that long. Though said to have been invented in 1868 by the Swiss watchmaker Patek Philippe, it didn’t really catch on until after World War I. Before that, people carried watches in their pockets or on chains.