Microsoft, Intel research parallel computing with US universities

Microsoft and Intel said Tuesday they are teaming with US universities to unleash the mighty potential of multi-core computer chips.

Microsoft and Intel will jointly spend 20 million dollars over five years to fund Universal Parallel Computing Research Centers at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

A recent trend is to increase computing power but reduce electricity use and heat production by crafting multiple processors, or computer brains, into each chip.

Designing software and support architecture that best enables such chips to divide tasks equally among the brains, or cores, in ways that let them simultaneously tend to jobs and maximize computing speeds has proved daunting.

"It is important for industry to work in tandem with academia to unleash the immense power of parallel computing," said Microsoft Research vice president Tony Hey.

"Working jointly with industry and academia, we plan to explore the next generation of hardware and software to unlock the promise and the power of parallel computing and enable a change in the way people use technology."

Intel and rival Advanced Micro Devices already market chips with two or four cores and say it is likely the number will rise. Intel researchers have made an 80-core research processor.

"We're quickly moving the computing industry to a many-core world," said Intel Research director Andrew Chien.

"Working with Microsoft and these two prestigious universities will help catalyze the long-term breakthroughs that are needed to enable dramatic new applications for the mainstream user."

Harnessing the power of multi-core chips will let computers "bridge the physical world with the virtual," according to Chien.

He expects "efficient and robust" applications for digital media, data analysis, and Internet-enabled mobile devices.

Predicted research breakthroughs include software enabling people's mobile telephone to recognize faces of approaching acquaintances and whisper their names to users.

Another foreseeable application is described as voice recognition software so accurate it could be used to record witness testimony in courtroom proceedings.

"This is a once-in-a-career opportunity to recast the foundations of information technology and influence the entire IT industry for decades to come," said UC Berkeley professor of computer sciences David Patterson.

The universities will have to provide millions of dollars in funding for the centers in what is said to be an unprecedented parallel computing research alliance.

source : http://www.spacedaily.com/

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Panasonic Financing Options Sign of Coming Times

Economic times are tough and one of the biggest problems for companies that need to buy critical technology is getting financing and protecting critical cash reserves. Banks and financial institutions are simply not able to reliably lend at the moment, which is forcing some vendors, like Microsoft, into their own reserves. Others, like Panasonic’s Toughbook Division, put programs in place to assure that their customers can continue to make purchases — and Panasonic can continue to benefit from sales. This practice is becoming widespread and includes other big names like HP and IBM.

Looking at the Cause

I met with the folks from Panasonic this week to better understand what was going on. What they were seeing was that the economic downturn was resulting in a knee-jerk reaction to either postpone or shelve entirely critical IT projects that used Panasonic Toughbook solutions. Those projects had previously been set as a high priority and intended to improve critical operational efficiencies. In some cases, they saw instances where specs were modified to accept inferior products that [...]

Source : http://www.itbusinessedge.com/

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Information technology

Information technology (IT), as defined by the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), is "the study, design, development, implementation, support or management of computer-based information systems, particularly software applications and computer hardware." IT deals with the use of electronic computers and computer software to convert, store, protect, process, transmit, and securely retrieve information.

Today, the term information technology has ballooned to encompass many aspects of computing and technology, and the term has become very recognizable. The information technology umbrella can be quite large, covering many fields. IT professionals perform a variety of duties that range from installing applications to designing complex computer networks and information databases. A few of the duties that IT professionals perform may include data management, networking, engineering computer hardware, database and software design, as well as the management and administration of entire systems.

When computer and communications technologies are combined, the result is information technology, or "infotech". Information Technology (IT) is a general term that describes any technology that helps to produce, manipulate, store, communicate, and/or disseminate information. Presumably, when speaking of Information Technology (IT) as a whole, it is noted that the use of computers and information are associated.

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Technology

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