Scott Ferguson

Hewlett-Packard is beefing up its blade workstation offering by adding more choices of Intel quad- and dual-core processors as well as Nvidia graphics. The ProLiant xw460c Blade Workstation is specifically geared toward the MCAD (mechanical computer-aided design) market, which requires a powerful computing system to render 2-D and 3-D graphics and to support the types […]

A startup is looking to tackle desktop virtualization by leveraging an open-source hypervisor and building management tools to help keep track of an entire fleet of PCs. The company, called Qumranet, is leveraging the virtualization technology found in the open-source KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) hypervisor to create its first commercial product, dubbed Solid ICE (Independent […]

Stanford University is planning to delve into the world of parallel computing. On May 2, the university, along with some of world’s largest IT companies, plans to unveil the Pervasive Parallelism Lab, which looks to develop new ways to create applications that can take advantage of the ever-increasing number of multicore processors coming into the […]

HP Labs engineers are claiming a breakthrough in the field of electrical engineering that could lead to an entirely new class of chip memory that might one day replace traditional DRAM technology. In the journal Nature, engineers with HP Labs published a paper April 30 that details the discovery of a fourth fundamental circuit element […]

Advanced Micro Devices is taking another shot at the commercial desktop market. The company plans to officially unveil its new desktop platform, formally code-named Perseus, which will include single, dual-, tri- and quad-core microprocessors, a new chip set called the 780V, and optional ATI Radeon discrete graphics. AMD has lined up several of the top […]

Intel has struck a new agreement with Cray that the two companies say they hope will lead to technological breakthroughs in the field of supercomputers and high-performance computing. Intel and Cray announced what they called a “multiyear” agreement on April 28. While Intel will supply x86 microprocessors to Cray, the two companies also hope to […]

Sun Microsystems has tapped Mike Splain, a Sun Fellow and 20-year company veteran, to lead its Microelectronics Division, the company announced April 28. The previous head of the division, David Yen, left the company to take a position at Juniper Networks. Splain had been acting as the head of the division since Sun announced Yen’s […]

Sun Microsystems is buying the technical assets of Montalvo Systems, a semiconductor company that was looking to break into the x86 market against the likes of Intel and Advanced Micro Devices. In a statement, a Sun spokesperson said the company completed the acquisition of Montalvo April 21, although the announcement was not made until April […]

VMware is looking to expand the reach of its virtualization technology deeper into the Chinese IT market, and the virtualization giant has turned to Lenovo to make that happen. The two companies announced an agreement April 23 that calls for Lenovo to support VMware’s Virtual Infrastructure 3 software suite across its line of servers that […]

10 Things AMD Needs to Fix Now Ramp as Quicklyas Possible to 45 nmThe first, and probably most important, job for AMD is to bring its chip manufacturing to 45 nanometers from the current 65-nm process. The switch will give the company’s processors an additional performance boost- 10 Things AMD Needs to Fix Now – […]

In its effort to quickly ramp up new products following a disappointing first quarter, Advanced Micro Devices is releasing three additional tri-core Phenom processors for the mainstream PC market. The three Phenom X3 processors, which AMD officially released April 23, add some additional clock speeds to the lineup and help fill in the gap between […]

IBM is looking to become the backbone of Web 2.0. At the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco April 22, IBM will unveil the iDataPlex, an x86-based server system that the company will begin selling to Web 2.0 companies as well as enterprises that need high-performance computing capabilities. The iDataPlex system supplies about 100 Intel-based […]