TechEye |  |
- Samsung starts churning out 3D vertical NAND
- Lenovo’s first Kabini-book listed in Euroland
- US Navy clones Expedia to save on logistics
- Australians revolt over CAPTCHA
- Jeff Bezos buys the Washington Post
- Serious fault means Xerox copiers make stuff up
- Global tablet sales slow
- SIA reports semi sales up
- Aussie woman wanted iPhones, accidentally bought 'two apples'
- Qualcomm might ditch TSMC, embrace GloFo
| Samsung starts churning out 3D vertical NAND Posted: 06 Aug 2013 04:08 AM PDT Samsung is about to start producing 3D vertical NAND (V-NAND) flash chips, allowing for higher densities and more performance in a small package. The layers can be stacked vertically and Samsung says it can cram up to 24 layers onto a single chip. Samsung used a special etching technology that connects the layers electronically by punching holes from the highest layer to the bottom. With the new vertical structure, Samsung can enable higher density NAND flash memory products by increasing the 3D cell layers without having to continue planar scaling, which has become incredibly difficult to achieve, the company said. The chips are not only smaller and denser, they are said to be two to 10 times more reliable than conventional 10nm-class floating gate flash memory. V-NAND also offers a twofold performance gain over 10nm-class NAND and twice the scaling of 20nm-class planar NAND. “Following the world’s first mass production of 3D Vertical NAND, we will continue to introduce 3D V-NAND products with improved performance and higher density, which will contribute to further growth of the global memory industry,” said Jeong-Hyuk Choi, senior vice president, flash products and technology, Samsung Electronics. With heaps of Galaxy smartphones, tablets and SSDs rolling off production lines, Samsung will have no trouble putting the technology to good use. |
| Lenovo’s first Kabini-book listed in Euroland Posted: 06 Aug 2013 03:47 AM PDT An interesting listing popped up on several Euro price search engines overnight courtesy of Lenovo. The Lenovo ThinkPad Edge is getting a Jaguar overhaul. The ThinkPad Edge E145 is based on AMD’s new cheap and cheerful Kabini APU. The E1-2500 is a dual-core clocked at 1.4GHz. It is a 15W part manufactured in 28nm. In addition to a pair of aguar CPU cores, it features HD 8240 graphics, with 128 shaders clocked at up to 400MHz. The APU supports single channel DDR3-1333 and DDR3L-1333. This particular ThinkPad SKU ships with 4GB of memory and a 500GB hard drive. Other highlights include Bluetooth 4.0, 802.11n wireless and a matte 11.6-inch 1366x768 display. There is no word on battery life yet and the list price stands ranges from €460 to just north of €500 in Austria and Germany - not what we’d call cheap. Although it's listed, it's not available yet, but retailers expect it in stock by the end of the month. |
| US Navy clones Expedia to save on logistics Posted: 06 Aug 2013 03:37 AM PDT The US Navy is using travel software similar to that under the bonnet of Expedia to slash its global logistics and transportation budget. The Navy expects to save $20 million per year thanks to Expedia technology. According to a talkative navel, the system consolidates information about freight and personnel travel schedules into a single database. Slashdot said this then shows up giving decision-makers a choice of the quickest, cheapest options available. The Office of Naval Research, which developed the application, said that the Transportation Exploitation Tool (TET) is a little more sophisticated than online travel sites such as Expedia or Travelocity were in 1996. The system consolidates travel schedules and capacity reports for both military and civilian carriers to give logistics planners a choice of open spaces in ships, planes, trucks, trains or other means of travel, along with information about cost, estimated time of arrival and recommendations of the most efficient route. In the bad old days logistics planners trying to get an engine part to a Navy ship stranded in a foreign port would spend hours or days looking through separate databases to find something able to carry the part. Bob Smith, program manager at the Office of researching navels , wrote that the system uses advances in technology to provide outstanding optimisation of available flights and ship routes. It saves huge amounts of time and could mean lives being saved. Particular if the limes arrive on time and no one gets scurvy. The system is based in cloud servers and has been combined with the Financial and Air Transportation System, which is the travel and supply-chain planning system owned by the US Transportation Command. The prototype version saved the Navy $28 million in transportation costs, and the outfit expects it to continue to save about $20 million per year. |
| Australians revolt over CAPTCHA Posted: 06 Aug 2013 03:33 AM PDT Australians do not give an XXXX for the use of CAPTCHA and are now in open revolt. According to IT News, a new campaign calling for the death of CAPTCHA has begun in Earnest, which we think is a small town near Cairns. They say that the technology to combat spam bots is also blocking people with disabilities and the feature should be removed from websites. A CAPTCHA is a completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart. They are designed to prevent spammers from automatically sending unsolicited commercial messages to sites and users by requiring people to read unreadable text and numbers. The problem with CAPTCHA is that it hinders people with vision impairments to the point that they cannot use certain websites. Blind Citizens Australia, Able Australia, Media Access Australia and the Australian Deaf-Blind Council are calling on organisations to stop using CAPTCHA, setting up a petition with the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network. Apparently when CAPTCHA uses audio files along with the strings of letters, people with disabilities find these just as tough. Dyslexic, colour-blind and older users often find CAPTCHA hard to get through too. It is starting to look like the use of CAPTCHA may in fact contravene Australia's Disability Discrimination Act. A better way for everyone, critics suggest, would be the use of emails to activate and verify users, instead of CAPTCHA. The W3C web standards organisation has already commented that CAPTCHA has become less effective as an anti-spam measure, with character and image recognition software being able to defeat it. |
| Jeff Bezos buys the Washington Post Posted: 06 Aug 2013 03:24 AM PDT Analysts claim that Jeffrey Bezos' purchase of the Washington Post is a chance for the newspaper industry to evolve into something more relevant to the 20th century. The Amazon founder wrote a $250 million cheque for the Washington Post and is believed to have a cunning plan to save newspapers. In a statement, Bezos said that he is very optimistic about the future of the paper. To many this means Bezos wants to try to change newspapers in the same way he did the book business. The Post has seen a rapid decline in print advertising, a loss of subscribers and challenges in building up online revenue. Bezos indicated that he wouldn't make radical changes in editorial operations and would continue to emphasise accountability journalism. But he said that the paper will need to "invent" and to "experiment," focusing on the internet and tailored content, to address the changing habits of readers. The LA Times said that this is the first time a true digital native is buying a newspaper publishing company. It quoted Alan Mutter, a media consultant and former newspaper editor, as saying that Bezos had the means, motive and opportunity to re-envision what it means to be a newspaper in the digital era. Bezos will own the Post outright, buying it with his own money, not Amazon's. By taking it private, he won't be subject to shareholders who want a quick buck. |
| Serious fault means Xerox copiers make stuff up Posted: 06 Aug 2013 03:11 AM PDT Scanners in the Xerox WorkCentre line have started randomly altering numbers in the pages in which they are scanned. The error was found by D Kriesel who wrote in his blog that this was not an OCR problem, just that the printer didn't like the numbers it was given and put something else in. Kriesel stopped short of blaming elves, but it was clear that was what he meant. The scanned images look correct at first glance, even though numbers may actually be incorrect. The problem could cause incorrect invoices, dodgy construction plans, incorrect metering of medicine and tennis elbow. The copiers in question are the common Xerox WorkCentres, and Xerox seemed to be unaware of the problem until Kriesel discovered it. Different WorkCentre models appear to be affected although so far the problem was tested on the Xerox WorkCentre 7535 and 7556. The current software release, as installed by Xerox support, did not solve the problem and probably existed when Adam wore shorts. Kriesel said that the error has been confirmed by a Xerox rental firm in the meantime, and Xerox is investigating. He pointed out that anyone who has been using a Xerox work centre needs to worry about the documents they have scanned over the last years. He said that Xerox seems eager to solve the problem, and because of the possible dangers an immediate publication of the issue is advisable. |
| Posted: 06 Aug 2013 12:08 AM PDT IDC, which has repeatedly talked up the importance of Apple in mobile, made the somewhat strange claim that the reason the tablet market is suffering is because everyone is waiting for a new tablet from Cupertino. Instead of just saying that the global tablet sales slowed during the second quarter, IDC could not resist telling us that the whole tablet market should reignite with the expected release of a new iPad model later this year. One would think that the whole of the tablet market was dependant on Apple, rather than the trillions of other tablets which are out there. IDC’s Tom Mainelli said that a new iPad launch always piques consumer interest in the tablet category and traditionally that has helped both Apple and its competitors. A quarter-over-quarter slowdown in sales was expected given that Apple did not release a new version of the iPad early in the year as it had in the past, according to IDC analysts. This strikes us as an odd thing to say given that his figures clearly show that, while Apple is the single biggest company making iPads, its control of the market has collapsed. According to IDC, Apple shipped 14.6 million iPads in the second quarter of 2013, a 14 percent drop from the 17 million tablets it shipped in Q2 2013. Over that same time, Android tablet shipments surged from 10.7 million in Q2 2012 to 28.2 million in Q2 2013, an increase of 163 percent. Apple held a 60.3 percent market share and Android held a 38 percent market share in Q2 2012, Android now holds a 62.6 percent market share and Apple holds a 32.5 percent market share. Global tablet shipments in the second quarter of this year declined 9.7 percent from the prior three-month period. "A new iPad launch always piques consumer interest in the tablet category and traditionally that has helped both Apple and its competitors," Mainelli claimed. IDC's theory that people were waiting for Apple to release a new tablet does not really work. IDC reports tablet shipments climbed nearly 60 percent to 45.1 million units when compared with the same quarter a year earlier. This is the same period that Apple did not release a tablet and therefore could not grab much interest. The theory that Apple is directing market interest is a little tricky when it did not release a model during a period of 60 percent growth. Meanwhile, sales of tablets grew for Apple rivals Samsung, Asus, Lenovo and Acer, market figures showed. IDC noted that Microsoft fuelled products were starting to make progress into the market. About 2 million Windows powered tablets were shipped in the second quarter in an increase of more than five times from the same three-month period last year, according to IDC. |
| Posted: 05 Aug 2013 09:08 AM PDT According to the latest statistics from the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), there has been a six percent quarterly boost in sales, topping the expected industry forecast. |
| Aussie woman wanted iPhones, accidentally bought 'two apples' Posted: 05 Aug 2013 07:06 AM PDT A 21 year old woman in Brisbane, Australia who was trying to buy two iPhones was conned into buying a pair of edible apples. |
| Qualcomm might ditch TSMC, embrace GloFo Posted: 05 Aug 2013 07:05 AM PDT Qualcomm is rumoured to be thinking about shifting SoC production from TSMC to other foundries, namely Globalfoundries. The company allegedly believes the move would improve its competitiveness and allow it to grow market share. With Qualcomm's mobile SoC business booming, there should be no shortage of interested foundries. As Seeking Alpha recently put it, Qualcomm is selling shovels in a goldmine, but it doesn't build the shovels – TSMC takes care of that. Now that TSMC has apparently landed a lucrative high-volume deal with Apple, Qualcomm might want to look for preferential treatment elsewhere. The report comes from Digitimes, so it's flavoured with a pinch of salt. Perhaps the most obvious choice would be Globalfoundries. After a rather slow start, GloFo's 28nm process seems to be doing just fine and the AMD spinoff needs all the business it can get. GlobalFoundries has apparently stepped up development of 20nm and 14nm nodes and it is gearing up to take on TSMC. With Qualcomm on its side, GloFo could become a force to be reckoned with. GloFo's new Fab 8 can churn out 60,000 300mm wafers per month and it should lead the way as far as sub-28nm production is concerned. Globalfoundries and Qualcomm are old chums. They started working together on a range of technologies back in 2010. Qualcomm also picked up ATI's Adreno graphics team, so they've got some family ties as well. This isn't the first Glofo-Qualcomm 28nm rumour, either. Could we even end up with something much bigger than a simple foundry deal? Qualcomm certainly has the cash to acquire a sizable stake in both AMD and Globalfoundries. In fact, Qualcomm could outright buy AMD without breaking a sweat, provided that regulators don't interfere. Qualcomm could benefit from AMD's graphics IP and know-how, as it's facing much stiffer competition in the mobile GPU segment. AMD is also working on ARM A57-based server parts, but it doesn't want to dabble in consumer SoCs. On the face of it, all three companies could gain a lot from some sort of long-term strategic partnership, or they could consolidate. But QualFo MicRo Device-O sounds rather like a mouthful. |
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