Australian research scientists have made a radical breakthrough that could dramatically increase the speed of the optical networks at the core of the internet.
The Sydney University based Centre for Ultra-high bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS) team, led by Ben Eggleton, has created a switch embedded in a silicon chip. The chip uses scratches on a glass surface to direct optical traffic at speeds of up to 640 gigabits per second.
Traditionally, switching network traffic means converting it from light into electrical signals and then back again. However, with the massive speeds now used in backbone networks, such an approach is becoming a bottleneck. The new switch opens up the prospect of multi terabit-per-second speeds.
Eggleton says “The switch chip essentially uses one beam of light to control another. The scratches create a photonic circuit that does the job traditionally done by electronics”. The circuit will guide data in much the same way as trains are guided from one track to another.
Just as potentially impressive as the operating speed is the simplicity and potential cheapness of the design. This should eventually allow it to be incorporated into a wide variety of equipment.
The CUDOS team has worked with other researchers at the Australian National University and the Technical University of Denmark on the project. A proof of concept chip is currently under evaluation in Europe.
Find CUDOS here
The ongoing Google/YouTube-Viacom litigation has now officially spilled over to users with a court order requiring Google to turn over massive amounts of user data to Viacom.
That data includes every YouTube username, the associated IP address and the videos that user has watched on YouTube. Google will also be required to hand over copies of every video removed from Youtube for any reason. Stanton dismissed Google’s argument that the order will violate user privacy, saying such privacy concerns are merely “speculative.”
Meanwhile, the judge denied Viacom’s request that Google turn over YouTube’s source code.
It seems that far more data is in danger of being transferred than is required to satisfy Viacom’s core stated concern, which is to understand the popularity of copyright infringing vs. non-infringing material. Viacom has asked for much more than that, opening up the possibility of their taking legal action to sue individual users (or at least use the threat of a lawsuit) who have watched ‘copyrighted’ material on YouTube.
Telstra has failed to meet Sol Rujillo’s June 30 deadline for completing the migration of 5 million users to a new billing system, despite its claiming less than four months ago that the multi-million-dollar overhaul would be complete on time.
Mr Trujillo told analysts at Telstra’s half-yearly results in late February that the migration was “on plan” and that he would reveal whether the telco had “hit” its goal of completing the migration by the end of the 2007-08 financial year during full-year results in August.
However, a Telstra representative confirmed yesterday that progress was “satisfactory”, but that the migration of customers was still ongoing, despite the deadline.
The failure to meet the deadline is likely to see Telstra forced to continue pumping funds into running the legacy system as well as the new platform.
Telstra has not revealed any details of how many customers have already been migrated to the new billing platform.
Internet users will now have an easier time finding sites that rely heavily on the popular Flash video format.
Adobe Systems, owner of Flash, has released a customised version of the Flash Player software that will allow Google (and other search engines) to see certain elements of Web pages embedded with Flash content in the same way a human would.
Search Engines currently have a difficult time “seeing” non-text formats such as Flash, which can lead to sites that make heavy use of the technology being ‘penalised’ in terms of their indexing.
Adobe’s new tool will help crawlers navigate dynamic Flash pages more easily. Google’s crawlers, for instance, will be able to click buttons along the way and remember the information for the index.
Google is already using the new tool and Yahoo plans to soon. Adobe also plans to extend support to other search engines.
Microsoft is proceeding with plans to stop selling the Windows XP operating system to retailers and major computer as from June 30th.
Once major manufacturers such as Dell and HP have cleared their stocks of machines loaded with XP, then new machines will only be issued with Vista, and anyone wishing to revert to XP will have to buy Vista Ultimate or Vista Business and then legally “downgrade” to XP.
Smaller PC makers will be allowed to buys XP for resale through til January 2009. Cut down versions of XP will also remain available for use on machines such as the Asus Eee PC.
The decision comes despite vociferous protests from large numbers of people unhappy with Vista and amid calls for XP to be kept on-line until the release of the next Windows version 7, pencilled in for sometime in 2009.
Last week, Microsoft said it would provide full technical support for Windows XP through 2009, and limited support through 2014.
The long awaited Firefox 3 has now been officially released in its final stage.
You can download Firefox 3 from here.
Release Notes can be found here.
By downloading Firefox 3 within the next 24 hours, you will also be helping the Mozilla team set a new world record for the most downloaded piece of software in one day/24 hour period.
Live at Mozilla HQ:
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IBM has built the biggest ever dual-boot Windows/Linux HPC system for a consortium of Swedish research groups and universities.
The record-chasing firm will apparently unveil its 5,376 Intel Xeon quad-core processor blade system later on today. Computer World claims the system is able to reach an impressive 46 sustained teraflops on a beta version of Windows HPC Server 2008, with each chip apparently running at 2.5GHz and using 50 watts.
What makes the achievement particularly noteworthy is the fact that it is a relative rarity for an HPC system to be built on Windows rather than exclusively on Linux, which makes up around 85 percent of all HPC systems in the world.
Microsoft has long been interested in catching up with its rivals in the HPC field, and mow it looks like it might finally be making inroads.
The mega computer, which sits in the Umea University, about 680km north of Stockholm, is amongst the top 50 most powerful machines currently in existence.
At the International Supercomputing Conference, AMD today introduced its next-generation stream processor, the AMD FireStream 9250, specifically designed to accelerate critical algorithms in high-performance computing (HPC), mainstream and consumer applications. Leveraging the GPU design expertise of AMD’s Graphics Product Group, AMD FireStream 9250 breaks the one teraflop barrier for single precision performance. It occupies a single PCI slot, for unmatched density and with power consumption of less than 150 watts, the AMD FireStream 9250 delivers an unprecedented rate of performance per watt efficiency with up to eight gigaflops per watt.
Customers can leverage AMD’s latest FireStream offering to run critical workloads such as financial analysis or seismic processing dramatically faster than with CPU alone, helping them to address more complex problems and achieve faster results. For example, developers are reporting up to a 55x performance increase on financial analysis codes as compared to processing on the CPU alone, which supports their efforts to make better and faster decisions. Additionally, the use of flexible GPU technology rather than custom accelerators assists those creating application-specific systems to enhance and maintain their solutions easily.
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Teens constantly getting fragged by opponents with faster reflexes and better tactics can now sign up for a summer camp to improve their skills at Unreal Tournament 3.
The two-week ‘Camp Fatal1ty’ course is open to students aged 13-17 and costs US$3,499, with US$300 extra for optional weekend stays.
It will be held at Stanford University, UCLA and Villanova University and has been set up in collaboration with professional gamer Johnathan ‘Fatal1ty’ Wendel and the iD Gaming Academy.
As well as testing out new skills in tournament play against fellow classmates, the teens will learn to create machinima and build highlight video reels of their best in-game moves and shots.
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LG has launched a 22in widescreen LCD screen which it claims is the world’s most energy efficient monitor.
The Flatron W2252TE boasts a power draw of just 22W, around 45 per cent lower than the average 40W of similarly sized monitors.
“With the ever increasing time spent by consumers on computers these days, there is a need for products that are more energy efficient,” said Fiona Landsberg, marketing manager for LG.
“We are committed to expanding our ‘green’ monitor portfolio with products that either equal or better the energy saving provided by the W2252TE.”
The screen offers a 1,680 x 1,050 resolution, 170-degree viewing angle, 250 cd brightness and a 2ms response time.
The W2252TE is expected to hit the shelves in August, but pricing details are yet not available.
Mozilla has announced that Firefox 3 will be available for download on 17th of June.
Following two release candidates on the PC and three on the Mac, the latest iteration of the open source browser has been declared ready for general consumption.
“After more than 34 months of active development, and with the contributions of thousands, we are proud to announce that we are ready,” wrote Mike Beltzner on the Mozilla community blog.
Mozilla is pitching the launch as Download Day 2008 in an attempt to break the Guinness World Record for the largest number of downloads in 24 hours.
So far over a million users around the world have pledged to download the new browser on 17 June.
NEC has unveiled a portfolio of fault-tolerant servers, the Express5800/320Fd-MR mid-range server and the Express5800/320Fd-LR entry-level server.
The firm said that the products offer improved processing power and maintainability and are designed to simplify server consolidation by supporting virtual operating systems for the first time.
NEC’s fault-tolerant servers feature dual modular hardware redundancy. The main hardware components, including CPU and memory, are replicated to run in ‘lockstep’ in which the two redundant modules process the same instructions at the same time.
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Telstra has done an about-face on its broadband wholesale strategy by suggesting it might be willing to resell ADSL2+ high speed internet services to rival ISPs.
Telstra, which had delayed its switching on of more then 900 ADSL2+ exchanges for three years until April this year, has traditionally denied competing ISPs access to its ADSL2+ network in fear that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) would force it to resell the connection to competitors at low-ball prices.
At the time of Telstra’s opening of the 900 ADSl2+ ports, the company declined to state whether or not it would offer wholesale access to its freshly unveiled high-speed service.
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WD today launched its new line of WD Caviar Black 7200 RPM 3.5-inch SATA (Serial ATA) hard drives for high-performance desktop, workstation and multi-drive systems. Available in capacities of 750GB and 1TB, WD Caviar Black hard drives are part of a new family of WD product categories designed to simplify the buying experience for customers worldwide.
WD was the first company to introduce a hard drive, optimized for low power consumption, using GreenPower technology, and is raising the bar for the high performance desktop market with WD Caviar Black. “WD Caviar Black hard drives offer the highest capacity and performance in a desktop class drive available on the market today enabling users to maximize the features and functionality of power computing applications such as multimedia, video and photo editing,” said Don Bennett, WD vice president and general manager of desktop storage. “Selection of a WD Caviar Black drive ensures WD customers receive the best WD has to offer in terms of features, performance and reliability.”
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Security research firm, Kapersky Lab, is calling all security and cryptography experts to join forces in an effort to crack a blackmailing virus that employs a currently unbreakable 1024-bit encryption key.
The virus, which has been dubbed ‘Gpcode’, infiltrates a user’s computer via unpatched browsers. Once active it encodes most of the data on the computer, including .doc, .txt, .pdf, .xls, .jpg and .png files, with a 1024 bit key and then demands money from the user to obtain the decryption key.
The malware is a revision of a previous virus, thought to be from the same author, which appeared two years ago but only used a 660 bit key.
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