More Power7 Details Emerge, Thanks to Blue Waters Super
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

The great and wonderful thing about big government-sponsored supercomputing projects is not just the exotic technology that such massive projects cook up, but also the fact that people like to brag about what they are up to inside the small circle of supercomputing centers in academia and governments. Eventually, some of the information about future HPC projects and the products they will be based on leaks out to the rest of the world, giving us a glimpse into the technologies that might be deployed in some modified form in commercial servers. READ MORE >

Intel Has a Great Q2, and AMD Has a Poor One and Taps a New CEO
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

If chip maker Intel were an economic barometer for the various economies of the world--and particularly the skittish economy of the United States--no one would be talking about a recession, but rather a slight slowdown that had occurred in the past and a situation that is clearly on the mend. Unfortunately for those of us in the developed economies of the world, Intel is not much of a barometer of the economies at large, even if it is a big player in many economies. And hopefully, rival Advanced Micro Devices, which is struggling to right itself, isn't either. READ MORE >

HP Jumps Into Containerized Data Centers, Too
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

When Sun Microsystems debuted the idea of putting working data centers inside standard shipping containers in October 2006, it was not intuitively obvious that this idea would take off in the market. Sun, and then Rackable Systems and Verari Systems, who both jumped in an offered their own data centers in containers last year, believe enough in the idea to put engineering and sales resources into the concept. And now HP is following suit. READ MORE >

The X Factor: The IT Department Matters as Much as the CIO
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Ever since I have been in the information technology publishing business, the publishers who I have worked for as well as the companies that I have run myself have all toyed with the idea of launching what is called in the lingo a C-level publication. Something for chief executive officers, chief financial officers, and chief information officers. The reason why publishers think about doing this is simple: They believe that they could charge a premium for either the content or the advertising that supports it--or a mix, if they use a mixed model--because these are the people who either cut the checks or approve the cutting. READ MORE >