Thursday, September 30, 2010

New Whitepaper Claims GPUs Threaten Malware Security

For the past 3.5 years or so, NVIDIA has ardently advocated the GPU as a computational platform capable of solving almost any problem. One topic the company hasn't targeted, however, is the tremendous performance advantage the GPU could offer malware authors.

LED bulbs in the home: So far, so good

An LED bulb that puts out almost as much light as a 40-watt incandescent but uses less than 9 watts.

Bad Hardware: Thus 3 LED bulbs of 9 watts each, are worth of 120W incandescent.
The best part is that the prices are coming down. The 40-watt equivalent general light bulb from Lighting Science Group, which is dimmable, costs just under $20.



Apple’s latest TV set top-box has been torn down and dissected

The latest version of Apple TV also boasts 256MB of RAM, a Panasonic manufactured WiFi board, along with 8GB of NAND Flash memory - which iFixIt speculates could be used for caching streaming content.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Safe Segway: It's head dies on scooter in cliff plunge ! ! !



Finally, a truth on evil hardware.

The millionaire owner of the Segway company has died after falling from cliffs while riding one of his firm's motorised scooters.

BAD HARDWARE WEEK: Did he apply all the latest safety firmaware patches? Or he was simply equally skilled in his product drive like president Bush was?

The moral is again literally the same: What made me reach killed me. And who doesn't know history is condemned to repeat it.

Slimmer iPad on tap for second-quarter 2011?

Apple could release a more svelte iPad by the end of the second quarter of 2011, Goldman Sachs said in an investment report yesterday.

Mini mobile

For customers who think it's too much of a hassle to actually pull their phone out of their pocket, Sony Ericsson is bringing out a device that connects to a phone and provides a quick snapshot at important information.

Is Google building a Serendipity Engine?

Daisy, daisy, never forget me.

Japanese 10 petaflops K supercomputer

Next-Generation Supercomputer project:

Star Wars Films In 3D Due In 2012

"Star Wars creator George Lucas is converting all six films from his iconic science fiction saga into 3D and will re-release them in theaters in 2012. 'Episode I: The Phantom Menace' will be released first."

Monday, September 27, 2010

There is no “Silicon” left in Silicon Valley. !!


The silicon computer-chip manufacturing industry in the South Bay of San Francisco no longer exists. This manufacturing zone, that once ran up the peninsula from San Jose to San Mateo, has all but disappeared.
In the ‘70s and '80s, the valley was dotted with many computer-related manufacturing facilities.

BAD HARDWARE WEEK: If you do not believe to link above, believe me. I have a tone of commercials from Silicon Valley companies in electronic magazines of '70ies or '80ies. Now, not detectable with Google Earth 3D in former Silicon Valley.
Hmm, shall we call it now on : IP Valley? Ghost Valley? Bush Valley?

Iranian nuclear fuel facility leaked and disabled by computer worm ! ?

A high-ranking Iranian official recently acknowledged that at least 30,000 computers belonging to classified "industrial units" have been infected and subsequently disabled by the enigmatic Stuxnet worm.

Friday, September 24, 2010

IBM characterizes single-atom DRAM

The ultimate memory chips of the future will encode bits on individual atoms, a capability recently demonstrated for iron atoms by IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif., which unveiled a new pulsed technique for scanning tunneling microscopes (STMs).

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Intel will deliver a poison pill for its users ? Never to surrender to AMD !

Previously, that capability, which delivers a "poison pill" that can remotely wipe the PC's hard drive, was only available via Ethernet or Wi-Fi. Now, if that laptop has a 3G connection, the PC can be protected, Marek explained to reporter Mark Hachman.

BAD Hardware: "To protect PC?" What about using that hiden option for hacking and extortion?

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Latest tweet: Twitter hacked, sending users to third-party sites

The Twitter social media site has been hacked, impacting thousands of users of the popular microblogging site.

CUDA in the Cloud: GPGPU for the Masses?

By 2013 the Enthusiast class will lose market share to the Performance and Mainstream classes from 46% to 35% of dollars spent. The good news for Enthusiast hardware producers is that this "market share shrink" occurs in an expanding market and expenditures on the Enthusiast class will grow from $9.5 billion to almost $12.5 billion in 2013."

I saw the new Earth and the new Heaven: The first habitable Earth-like planet could turn up in May 2011

In 1965, Intel co-founder Gordon Moore observed that the number of transistors that fit on a chip doubles about once every two years – a trend now known as Moore's law. Samuel Arbesman of Harvard Medical School in Boston wants to see if scientometrics – the statistical study of science itself – can similarly be used to not only study past progress but also to make predictions.
Can the rate of past discoveries be used to predict future ones? We may soon find out. Two researchers have used the pace of past exoplanet finds to predict that the first habitable Earth-like planet could turn up in May 2011.

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Shaq's hack and attack

Shaquille O'Neal is being sued by a former employee for some unusual charges -- computer hacking and destruction of evidence.
The man alleges that Shaq had him delete legally sensitive information from Shaq's computers.

He also claims that Shaq conspired with former members of law enforcement to help plant child pornography on the man's computer, that Shaq tried to break into his voicemail account, and that Shaq destroyed (his hacking) evidence by throwing a personal computer into a lake. Whether any of this has credence remains to be seen.

BAD HARDWARE: Hmm, was it actually a free computer throwing, or a splashing slam after someone's score assistance?

NuSmart 2816 Arm processor based computer

Days of X86 monopoly are numbered?

Boeing teams with Space Adventures to offer spaceflight trips

Boeing's (CST)-100, which is under development, can hold seven and is bigger than NASA's Apollo orbiter but smaller than NASA's Orion."
Boeing says the ship will be able to launch on a variety of different rockets, including Atlas, Delta and Falcon. It will use simple systems architecture and existing, proven components, Boeing stated.

Devil is spending 8% of its time to advancing technology of any kind, and almost 12% in programming cable TV !


Internet Explorer vs Firefox at BAD HARDWARE WEEK

Recent Pageviews by Browsers at BAD HARDWARE WEEK visitors

Firefox
 ................3,967 (44%)
Internet Explorer......
3,552 (40%)
Chrome
...................585 (6%)

It took 10 years to move IE from throne where XP installed it.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Researchers 'destroy' Microsoft ASP.NET security In less than 50 minutes

Finally, a truth on bad security.

RESEARCHERS have managed to exploit the way in which AES encryption is implemented in Microsoft's ASP.NET software to leave web users' data up for grabs.
Duong and Rizzo's last statement claiming that their attack "totally destroys" security is particularly chilling. Apparently the technique used in the exploit has been around since 2002 and it is surprising that not only has Microsoft missed this one but also security researchers and hackers who are usually adept at taking advantage of any seemingly minor weakness in code.

Microsoft will deliver a touchscreen PC

Microsoft will deliver a touchscreen PC

National government or intelligence agency strike using Stuxnet worm

Stuxnet's sophistication and its lack of any real money-making component are leading experts to believe the attack is likely the work of a national government or intelligence agency.

NASA looks at horizontal, railgun-like 10 Mach rocket launcher

For now, the engineers have proposed a 10-year plan that would start with launching a drone like those the Air Force uses, NASA said. More advanced models would follow until they are ready to build one that can launch a small satellite into orbit, NASA stated.

USAF Secretary: New Bomber Critical for the U.S.

Here.
Seems that more than 20 existing B2 stealth bombers will be needed for some future wars.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Samsung and Toshiba move to 21-nm NAND flash in 2011.

20 nm is a rock bottom for NAND flash?

Intel's 22nm CPUs coming in 2H 2011

It appears that Intel has sped up the fabrication transition process, as Sandy Bridge, the second-generation of Core-branded CPUs, is supposed to ship in Q1 2011.
This indicates that Intel was somewhat late with Sandy Bridge microarchitecture and it will get back on track with 22nm processors.

Monday, September 13, 2010

Beware!!! A new computer virus "Here you have" is on move and has already infected big corporations

If you are working in a LAN then this virus will spread itself to all the computers in the network. Computers at NASA, Disney, Proctor & Gamble, Comcast, the Kansas Department of Transportation and Wells Fargo have already been infected.

Wednesday, September 08, 2010

Reproducing a Cray 1A supercomputer in a single FPGA

The Cray-1A first done the stage in 1976, weighing 5.5 tons (including a refrigeration complement as well as using at 80MHz — with the whopping 8MB IMPEL. Who wouldn’t want to own a single — or a miniature chronicle of one, for that matter? 
Chris's version was implemented on a Xilinx Spartan-3E 1600 development board. This is basically the biggest FPGA you can buy that doesn’t cost thousands of dollars for a development kit. Chris says that the Cray occupies about 75% of the logic resources and consumes all of the on-chip RAM. The result is a spiffy Cray-1A running at about 33 MHz with about 4 kilowords of RAM.

BAD HARDWARE: You would say so what? But, it is interesting to note that Cray 1A was US government export forbidden technology. I don't know if  that ban is still valid. Check before you buy your own Cray I. :)
One of the sad things about pre-internet machines (especially ones that were primarily purchased by 3-letter Government agencies) is that practically no software exists for them. The Cray-1 was so complicated, it required a dedicated mini-computer just to boot it !

Tuesday, September 07, 2010

Self explanatory:Why processors with more than 8 cores are not efficient


Oracle's corporate sex culture

Oracle's  Ellison will hire former  HP's  Hurd after his expert experience in sex affairs with HP employees.

However, seems not without background reason. In 1995, certain Ms. Lee won a $100,000 settlement of a wrongful termination suit in which she claimed that she was fired from her job as an executive assistant after she refused to have sex with Ellison.Who might handle Ellison affairs better than Hurd?

BAD HARDWARE: Ellison's  favorite Chinese general would say: “Know your enemy to win the war.”

Monday, September 06, 2010

Intel spends $75 million a year defending itself in court from allegations of patent violations.

The company calls the plaintiffs patent trolls, and the cases are frequently filed in the Eastern District in Texas where judges and juries tend to be more sympathetic to the plaintiffs?.

BAD HARDWARE : I would say those judges are more subjected to corruption than the others . If someone pay each year $75M to layers and damages, he must be involved in continual crime in some way? Right?

Over the last year, the market for live streaming video exploded.

Nearly one and a half billion minutes of live video was streamed online in the last 12 months.

Friday, September 03, 2010

Canon develops world's largest CMOS sensor

Canon has announced it has developed the world's largest CMOS sensor measuring 202 x 205mm. Approximately 40 times the size of Canon's largest commercial CMOS sensor, it captures images with 1/100th the amount of light required by an SLR camera. Its advanced circuitry allows video recording at 60 frames per second with 0.3 lux illumination that according to the company is roughly one-half the brightness of a moonlit night. There is currently no information about the sensor's resolution. This follows last week's development announcement of Canon's 120 megapixel 29.2 x 20.2mm APS-H CMOS sensor.

HP cougars over 50 !


The board got wind of the sexual harassment settlement, discovered the phony "cougar" expense reports and gave HP CEO Hurd the ax.

Titillating? Mildly. The biggest scandal at HP? Hardly. The biggest scandals at HP haven't made the headlines because they are so commonplace in Great Recession Corporate America. CEOs in one company after another are throwing workers onto the unemployment rolls and dodging taxes to boost short-term profits and fatten their own paychecks. They are shifting the burden of a poor economy onto the public purse -- while continuing to line their own pockets.

Shortly after Mr. Hurd was forced out, Mr. Ellison made an unusual and passionate defense of him. In an e-mail to The New York Times, Mr. Ellison called the H.P. board’s action “the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs many years ago.”

A4 chip drives AppleTV, iPod Touch

The previous AppleTV was effectively a PC using an Intel PentiumM.
Original Apple TV  New AppleTV
Release  Jan. 2007  Sept. 2010
Chipset maker  Intel  Samsung
Chipset  Pentium M  Apple A4
Speed  1 GHz  1 GHz
Chip count  3  1
Package area (mm2)  975  196
Die area (mm2)  242  53
Pins  2,344  531

Northrop Grumman says "deeply regrets" inconvenience caused by a widespread outage in the state's computer network

Mills also defended the $2.4 billion outsourcing contract between Virginia and the company, calling the contract a "bold course" and a "first of its kind cloud project."
Northrop Grumman Corp. has made two moves to strengthen its ties with Virginia. First, it picked the state for its new corporate headquarters, and then in April it agreed with Gov. Bob McDonnell’s administration on modifications to the troubled 10-year, $2.36 billion statewide outsourcing contract it won in 2005.

More than a week after the collapse of computer systems it runs for Virginia, Northrop Grumman is saying it "deeply regrets" the outage that paralyzed some of the basic work of state government for days.
The contract modifications provide for responsiveness and accountability, resolve all pricing issues, and create a rapid response team to address customer service issues, Duffey said.

“In fact, the governor and [Northrop Grumman chief executive officer and president] Wes Bush were pretty conscientious about making sure that there were two separate teams working on those two issues,
 
BAD HARDWARE: Seems that sorry was quite enough from rapid response team in this case? Things like that simply happens in clouds. Isn't it? Ever heard of backup links? Two separate emergency teams? But, where is the third NG team to coordinate those two?

Thursday, September 02, 2010

Computer Porn in Australia politics

To politics in New South Wales now and the veteran morals campaigner Fred Nile today angrily denied that he has been using his office computer to view pornography.

The Christian Democrats MP was responding to evidence that was allegedly leaked to a Sydney newspaper.

It suggests that an audit of computer usage links Mr Nile's log-in details to more than 200,000 hits on adult websites.
Yes,no,yes answers are quite amusing. Hilarious. These people are obviously professionals in lying.

Wednesday, September 01, 2010

Power7 Hub Chip Torrent Key to IBM's PERCS Supercomputer

The PERCS IBM hub module contains 48 10Gbps optical links and delivers more than 1.1 terabytes/second of bandwidth. A hub connects each Power7 quad-chip module (QCM), with each Power7 drawer consisting of 8 QCMs and 8 hubs. Presumably this is the same setup going into the PERCS-class Blue Waters system at NCSA.

IBM announces Power 7 processor at the clock up to 5.2 gigahertz

Finally, a truth on bad hardware
It can handle more than 50 billion instructions per second, about 17,000 times more than a top-of-the-line mainframe from 1970. Webb, in an interview with the Journal, said the new chip is designed to be better at the analytic workloads customers increasingly want to run.
Using power 7 , to be housed at the University of Illinois, IBM's Blue Waters will be the largest publicly accessible supercomputer in the world when it goes online in 2011, theoretically capable of achieving 16 petaflop speeds by connecting up to 16,384 Power7 nodes, although IBM said that initially the theoretical peak performance will likely be closer to 10 petaflops . Each hub chip  in Blue Waters enclosure will be connected with 48 optical connections able  for a total of 1,128 GB/s peak bandwidth . 8,9 Tbps.

Resistive Switches and Memories from Silicon Oxide

The nanocrystal wires are as small as 5 nanometers (billionths of a meter) wide, far smaller than circuitry in even the most advanced computers and electronic devices.
"The beauty of it is its simplicity," said Tour, Rice's T.T. and W.F. Chao Chair in Chemistry as well as a professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and of computer science. That, he said, will be key to the technology's scalability. Silicon oxide switches or memory locations require only two terminals, not three (as in flash memory), because the physical process doesn't require the device to hold a charge.
"Manufacturers feel they can get pathways down to 10 nanometers. Flash memory is going to hit a brick wall at about 20 nanometers. But how do we get beyond that? Well, our technique is perfectly suited for sub-10-nanometer circuits," he said. Meanwhile, the switch also shows robust nonvolatile properties, high ON/OFF ratios (>105), fast switching (sub-100-ns), and good endurance (104 write-erase cycles). It also means layers of silicon-oxide memory can be stacked in tiny but capacious three-dimensional arrays. "I've been told by industry that if you're not in the 3-D memory business in four years, you're not going to be in the memory business. This is perfectly suited for that,"

BAD HARDWARE: I can imagine cards based on this switches as backup devices of the future tablets.
Toshiba now says that it will add 32Gb and 3bit-per-cell products made in the 24nm process.
Seems that last  flash  iteration is around the corner. AFter that Resistive Switches will follow.

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