The Feeds and Guessed Speeds of Power7
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Just before The Four Hundred went on hiatus, I told you that IBM would be making a presentation about the forthcoming Power7 processors at the Hot Chips 21 conference hosted by the IEEE at Stanford University. And indeed, the top techies working on the eight-core Power7 processors did raise the curtains a little bit about the future brains of the Power Systems lineup, which are due in 2010. READ MORE >

Server Makers Stomach the Worst Quarter in History
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Servers have been the backbone of the business of supplying corporate-scale data processing since mainframes were invented more than 40 years ago. Over the years, as Moore's Law has provided faster, more capacious, and cheaper systems every year like clockwork and competitors bucked against each other for business, server makers have had to get their profits from other areas. If sales levels in the second quarter are any indication of the new normal level for the server biz, then there are some dramatic changes coming our way. READ MORE >

Training for the Future: An IT Degree in Energy Efficiency
by Dan Burger

When it comes to IT skills that apply to jobs and careers for the future instead of the past, the makeover of Metropolitan Community College stands out. This educational facility, with its new enterprise-class data center and a recently overhauled curriculum, was featured in earlier this year in an article in The Four Hundred. Last week the school announced a new two-year associate degree program in the design and management of energy efficient data centers. READ MORE >

As I See It: The Future in Parallel
by Victor Rozek

Ours is a mixed marriage. I am PC and my wife is Mac. We are the Yang and Yin of personal computing. She has Mac OS X, I have Windows XP. She has iPhoto, I have HP Photo. She has iChat, iMovie, iDVD, iCal, iSync, and iTunes, I have no tunes and a bunch of other stuff I seldom use. She has Steve Jobs, I have Bill Gates; which is to say she has cool and I have nerd. She has a virus free computer, I have multiple layers of security software and in spite of daily updates and scans, I'm still not sure my PC is intrusion free. I console myself with the fact that I could buy two PCs for the cost of her Mac. READ MORE >