Tilera made headlines back in 2009 with its 100-core Tile-GX chip, targeting data indexing, web search, and video search, especially in systems with high concurrent load. As cloud storage and processing has gained popularity – not least because of the rise in data speeds allowing mobile gadgets to rely on remote data crunching and capacity – so the interest in multicore chips of this sort has increased.

According to the company, it’s working with more than 80 customers and has twenty design wins already for the new 16- and 32-core processors. Potential applications include streamed video- and voice-over-IP systems, real-time image and video processing, and more.

Tilera is offering a number of evaluation systems, ranging from an entire computer on a half-sized PCIe card up to a full-featured appliance packing up to 144 cores per 1U box. Unlike ARM-based manycore systems, like HP’s Project Moonshot, Tilera’s system can run all the regular server apps without recoding.

It doesn’t seem so strange when we look at the infrastructure inside the building, you can see straight away what attracted Google to the location. The old paper mill has a massive underground tunnel that runs from inside the building to the Gulf of Finland where it slurps up cold ocean water. That cold ocean water was originally used to cool a steam plant inside the paper mill. Google wants to use that massive tube that runs into the Gulf to grab cold ocean water to help cool the massive array of servers that will be inside the building.

The cold ocean water will be fed to a heat exchanger to cool the hot servers, which would help make this a green facility and keep all the servers inside the building running at a frosty temperature. The underground tunnel to the Gulf, which was the big selling feature for Google, spans 450m and tunnels through solid granite bedrock. Before making the purchase, Google sent robots with cameras through the long tunnel to ensure that it was in good condition. The old paper mill was previously owned by Finnish pulp and paper maker Stora Enso. The company closed the mill in 2008 citing poor profits. Google has previously eyed cold climates to place its data centers so it could use the frosty climate for cooling and reduce the power needed for cooling servers inside the locations.

“When someone tells you we’ve selected the next data center site and it’s a paper mill built back in 1953, your first reaction might be: ‘What the hell are you talking about?,’” says Joe Kava, Google head of datacenter operations and construction. “‘How am I going to make that a data center?’ But we were actually excited to learn that the mill used sea water for cooling…. We wanted to make this as a green a facility as possible, and reusing existing infrastructure is a big part of that.”

[via Wired]

Any information on the exact specifications of the to-be-announced Ivy Bridge models haven’t been released yet, but the Sandy Bridge E5 chips have already known to run the gamut from a 1.8 GHz quad-core processor to 3.1 GHz in eight-core assortments. That’s some serious processor speed right there, no doubt. Competitors beware, here.

If this possibility moves into the realm of reality for Intel, the Xeon lineup could create potential problems for workstations like the upcoming Macbook Pro refreshed updates. It may force Apple and other competing companies into either choosing Sandy Bridge models and going for a slightly aged, but wider range of processors, picking from a limited Ivy Bridge range, or having to go through a divide in the computer lineup between the pair of Intel architectures.

Up to four memory channels – with support for up to 1600MHz memory – are on offer, with up to 12 DIMMs per CPU available for a somewhat ridiculous potential total of 384GB memory per processor catered for. AMD is also pretty keen to point out that the new Opterons are the only x86 chips to support ultra-low voltage 1.25v memory, adding to the platform’s energy frugality.

“The AMD Opteron 3000 series offering is designed for hosting customers who require dedicated servers for their customers. These cloud and web hosting customers appreciate the cost savings associated with a lower cost infrastructure, yet still want to deploy a server-class product with reliability and security features and server OS certification” AMD

As for what’s in the pipeline, first to market will be the Bulldozer-based “Zurich” using an AM3+ socket. Zurich will herald AMD’s Opteron 3000 Series, targeting those looking for a compact server with cheap consumer-like sockets and will, the company believes, open up a new market of customers pairing cloud computing with the traditional benefits of a local server.

Zurich will arrive in the first half of 2012, while the new AMD Opteron chips are on sale now.

The first Redstone units will be available, albeit in limited volumes, to HP’s business customers next year. HP will also be pushing for a set of Project Moonshot open standards, working with AMD, ARM, Calxeda, Canonical and Red Hat, the target will be so-called “hyperscale” computing environments which balance power and performance with reduced scale and complexity.

Redstone is a major coup for ARM, which bit off two sizable targets in the shape of Intel and AMD when it attempted to challenge the status quo in the enterprise server industry. Until recently, server manufacturers opted for a few high-power chips paired with gobfuls of RAM, a setup that can handle high load but is comparatively wasteful when load reduces.

Chip alternatives like ARM Calxeda take a different approach, using many low-power processors that can scale up to handle larger tasks but use far less power when load is low. HP will also use Intel’s Atom processors in later iterations of Redstone.

The reason the chilly location was chosen is one of cooling and money. The cold climate will allow Facebook to chill its servers using nothing but forced air. The average temperature in the city is 35.6F and hasn’t gone over 86F for more than 24 hours since 1961. The Facebook server farm will be gigantic.

Telegraph.co.uk reports that the massive facility will be built in three buildings covering an entire area the size of 11 football fields. I would assume that since Telegraph is a UK site, they mean soccer fields as far as Americans are concerned. The cold air in the city will help keep costs down, but the costs of running the facility for power alone will be gigantic. The cost for power alone is estimated to be £45M yearly. You have to love the resolve of the person in the photo driving the Mustang in ice and snow.

[via Telegraph]

This new unit will be just under $500 USD and with the ability to begin with any amount of storage, scaling up an option as a person’s usage grows. The DS712+ allows you multiple redundancy options and the two-bay server will support RAID 1 or Synology Hybrid RAID (SHR) for single disk redundancy. Dual NICs will allow for inexpensive MPIO support, SHR will allow users scaling their storage to do so quickly when adding disks in the DX510, and the entire DS712+ runs DiskStation Manager (DSM) software.

DSM software is currently on version 3.2 and supports Mac and Time Machine for OS X Lion. Your DiskStation will include support for joining LDAP domains including simply to act as a lightweight LDAP server. Alongside this is Package Manager which allows you to add packages only when you need them, and users can now browse, install, and run add-ons from inside the DSM. Packages can be installed including VPN server, Syslog Server, and now 3rd party packages as well!

Synology rounds the whole package off with the following features:

Other business-friendly features include:
• Support for ADS domains up to 100,000 users and groups
• ACL support for granular file-level permissions (using local or ADS users and groups)
• iSCSI support with MPIO, MC/S, and SPC-3
• Virtualization support (supports VMware, Citrix Xen, and Hyper-V)

You can find all the places where you can pick up the SD712+ by heading over to Synology.com and tapping the correct region for where you’re living.

However, the outage meant that job applications submitted during a certain time frame were lost. The period that apps were lost in ran from August 7 to about midday on August 9. If you put in an application then you may need to resubmit it. Apparently, the outage happened after a routine maintenance upgrade to the server.

OPM says that no data was compromised or breached because of the crash. Apparently, all of the applications and the agencies looking to fill spots have been made aware of the outage and the people were asked to reapply. This also means that the vacancy period for some positions is being extended. At least this time none of the data was lost and it appears the outage was not the result of hackers.

[via Federaltimes]

PC business revenue for Intel rose by 11 percent year-over-year, indicating that PC sales have yet to be majorly impacted by more mobile developments but have certainly slowed. Their Intel Atom chipset business dropped 15 percent year-over-year, which reflects the decline in netbook sales. This raises concerns in the company’s transition to smartphones and tablets.

However, when asked about Intel’s missing presence in the mobile device market, the company argued that they’re actually already a major mobile device player because they power all of the data centers that deliver content to mobile devices via cloud computing. Indeed, there was a strong demand for Intel’s server chips with their data center group revenue increasing by 15 percent.

Intel CEO Paul Otellini said in a statement that “Strong corporate demand for our most advanced technology, the surge of mobile devices and Internet traffic fueling data center growth, and the rapid rise of computing in emerging markets drove record results.”

[via ZDNet]

The consumer models have a choice of dual-core Intel Core i5 or Intel Core i7 processors, paired AMD Radeon HD 6630M discrete graphics, while the Server model has a quad-core Intel Core i7. $599 gets you the 2.3GHz Core i5 mini with 2GB of RAM and a 500GB HDD, while up to 750GB of hard-drive and 8GB of RAM are options. $799 gets you the 2.5GHz dual-core Core i5, with 4GB of RAM and a 500GB HDD; a 2.7GHz Core i7, 8GB of memory, and either a 750GB hard-drive or 256GB SSD are options.

Finally, the 2.0GHz quad-core Core i7 Mac mini with Lion Server model has 4GB of RAM, twin 500GB hard-drives and starts at $999. Options include up to 8GB of RAM, two 750GB hard-drive or two 256GB SSDs.

Ports and connectivity include Thunderbolt and WiFi. The new Apple Mac mini ships from today.

The app will let the phone user connect to their storage server as well. The app offers connectivity with Windows Phone 7 into Windows Home Server 2011, Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials, and Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials. After the app is installed and integrated into the home or office network the app allows the user to remotely administer their server.

Using the app the server owner can perform management tasks including viewing alerts, managing users, or starting and stopping backups. If the permissions are set correctly, the user can also use the phone to view and access media files on the server. To integrate the support the servers need to have a plug-in installed that can be downloaded free and the app for the Windows Phone available on the Zune Market.

[via Windows Team Blog]

The chip company hasn’t detailed what makes those three levels different, though clock speed and cache seem likely factors. Meanwhile, the Z-Series for tablets – codenamed Desna – will target Windows based slates and have a sub-6W TDP, as per the leaked slides we saw last week. The first model to use the platform will be MSI’s WindPad 110W, launched earlier this week,

We won’t have to wait until 2012 and Trinity for the first Bulldozer products, however; AMD confirmed that the first mainstream chips – including Zambezi for desktops and Orochi for servers - will arrive in Q3 2011. The new 9-Series chipset that will support them is already available, the company said, and will be showing up in products from next month.

AMD also brought BlueStacks on stage for a demonstration of the company’s Android virtualization software for Windows-based devices. That will allow Z-Series based slates to run Android apps alongside Windows software.

Because of how the system is structured, automatically asking nodes to find a new, stable node and re-mirror their data if they can’t communicate with the original – and taking user access to that data offline for the duration – the massing number of stuck nodes caused the zone to grind to a halt. Usually the re-mirroring takes milliseconds, Amazon says, however because of the scale of the disconnect a “re-mirroring storm” was spawned:

“In this case, because the issue affected such a large number of volumes concurrently, the free capacity of the EBS cluster was quickly exhausted, leaving many of the nodes “stuck” in a loop, continuously searching the cluster for free space. This quickly led to a “re-mirroring storm,” where a large number of volumes were effectively “stuck” while the nodes searched the cluster for the storage space it needed for its new replica. At this point, about 13% of the volumes in the affected Availability Zone were in this “stuck” state.” Amazon

Amazon goes into detail as to how its engineers brought the system back online, but the important stat for subscribers is that “0.07% of the volumes in the affected Availability Zone could not be restored for customers in a consistent state.” It’s not exactly clear how much data loss that actually translates to.

In the future, Amazon says it will be adding support for Virtual Private Cloud users to take advantage of system capacity in other Availability Zones, reducing the likelihood of downtime should their current zone go down. Meanwhile, it will also be boosting the monitoring and recovery tools it uses, including automating some of the processes, and giving users themselves the ability to make snapshots of “stuck” volumes that can be restored in other zones.

Finally, and addressing one of the biggest complaints of the past week, Amazon says it will re-examine customer communications, giving regular, frequent updates rather than only alerting users when there was something new to say. AWS customers affected will get an automatically-applied “10 day credit equal to 100% of their usage of EBS Volumes, EC2 Instances and RDS database instances that were running in the affected Availability Zone.”

[via Facebook live]
images from Inside Facebook

The Xeon E3-1260L – with a 45W TDP – and Xeon E3-1220L – with a 20W TDP – have 4 and 2 cores respectively. The quadcore runs at 2.4GHz with a Turbo overclock to 3.3GHz, while the dualcore runs at 2.2GHz with a 3.4GHz overclock. Just like Intel’s other Xeon processors they support up to 32GB of memory.

However, it’s the Sandy Bridge model that’s more interesting, currently unnamed but expected to arrive in the second half of this year. It will have a 15W TDP, and open up the door to compact server clusters with low power draw and more flexibility for balancing changing workloads. Finally, there’ll be a new Atom-based processor with sub-10W TDP in 2012.

When paired with RAM, each ARM node should consume 5W of power under load. 120 nodes could fit into a 2U box, for a total of 480 cores, and Calxeda is working on the necessary software layer so that developers can recreate server apps that will run on ARM chips.

Exact processor specs, including clock speed and availability, are yet to be confirmed. Calxeda – under the name Smooth-Stone – secured $48m in funding back in August last year. AMD is believed to be readying its own server range, using its Bobcat APU chips.

[via Slashdot]

That means 256 Atom CPUs, rather than 512, but with the same number of cores available. Each chip runs at 1.66GHz and has access to 4GB of memory; four Atoms are packaged onto each “Compute Card” while a total of 64 cards can be bundled together in an entire system. Intel says that, despite the server company’s influence on the design of the 64-bit processor, the N570 isn’t exclusively intended for SeaMicro, but has admitted that “it just so happens there are relatively few server vendors that are using Atom.” The SM10000-64 is available now, priced from $148,000.

[via WSJ]

Press Release:

SeaMicro Now Shipping the World’s Most Energy Efficient x86 Server with New 64-bit Intel Atom N570 Processor

The New SM10000-64™ Integrates 256 Intel® Atom™ Dual-core 1.66GHz Processors – 512 64-bit Cores and 850GHz, into a 10 Rack Unit System

SANTA CLARA, Calif., February 28, 2011 – SeaMicro™, the Silicon Valley pioneer of low power server technology, today announced the immediate availability of the world’s most energy efficient 64-bit x86 server: the SM10000-64™. The newest member of the SM10000™ family combines SeaMicro’s revolutionary server architecture with 256 of the latest 64-bit Intel® Atom™ N570 dual-core processors. The result is the SM10000-64, which delivers an industry leading 512 1.66 GHz x86 cores in a 10 rack unit-tall (17.5 inches) system. Bringing together Intel’s most advanced Atom processor and SeaMicro’s Internet-optimized server design, the SM10000-64 reduces power and space by more than 75 percent without the need for any software modifications.

Optimized for 64-bit Internet data center environments, the SM10000-64 delivers more compute per unit power and more compute per unit space than any x86 system ever built. The SM10000-64 is also the industry leader in bandwidth per unit compute. SeaMicro’s 1.28 terabit/second supercomputer style fabric enables the SM10000-64 to deliver five times more bandwidth per unit compute than do traditional servers. This allows applications that require extensive server to server communication such as Hadoop to run more quickly by keeping network bottlenecks from inhibiting application performance.

For example, in the Hadoop MinuteSort benchmark test (http://sortbenchmark.org), 29 SeaMicro SM10000-64s were able to beat the performance of 1,406 dual socket quad core servers, but used just one-quarter of the power and took one-fifth the space. A very different test designed to benchmark web serving produced similar results. With ApacheBench, a test that fetches one million 16 KB files per-second, a single SeaMicro’s SM10000-64 delivered the same performance as 45 best-in-class dual socket quad core servers, but used one-quarter the power and one-quarter the space.

SeaMicro’s SM10000-64 showcases the new Intel Atom dual-core 1.66 GHz N570 processor. The N570 supports 64-bit operating systems, four gigabytes of operating system addressable memory per socket and is the first low power Atom processor to support virtualization. Each dual core N570 processor supports four threads and delivers the industry’s best performance per watt for Internet workloads. When used on a SeaMicro motherboard, and in conjunction with SeaMicro power management technology, the N570 uses, at peak utilization, less than one watt for each gigahertz of compute.

“Intel is committed to working with innovative companies to deliver extraordinary solutions,” said Jason Waxman, general manager of Intel’s Data Center Group. “The combination of SeaMicro’s unique server architecture and the new dual core Intel Atom processor, which provides 64 bit OS support and four gigabytes of OS addressable memory all while maintaining the benefits of x86 software compatibility, make for a very compelling value proposition.”

Like all SeaMicro servers, the SM10000-64 is exceptionally easy to use. It simplifies data center operations and management by eliminating layers of Ethernet switches, server management devices and expensive load-balancers. It is plug and play – customers can deploy it without modifications to existing operating systems, application software or management tools.

SeaMicro’s SM10000-64 system is comprised of:

256 dual core 1.66 GHz Intel Atom processors,
1.024 Terabytes of DDR3 DRAM,
up to 64 SATA solid state or hard disk drives,
8 – 64 one gigabit Ethernet uplinks.
Additional benefits include:

support for 64-bit operating systems,
four gigabytes of addressable memory per socket,
industry leading density with 512 cores per 10 rack unit, or 2,048 cores per 7-foot rack,
delivers one gigabit of bandwidth per core: 5 times more bandwidth than traditional servers*
runs off-the-shelf OSs for application compatibility, enabling drop-in adoption,
Integrated top-of-rack switch, load balancer and consol server, simplify infrastructure by eliminating equipment that adds unnecessary cost and management complexity.
The SeaMicro SM10000-64 is now generally available in the U.S. and at select international locations. The US list price for a base configuration is $148,000. More information on SeaMicro and the SM10000-64 is available at www.seamicro.com.

About SeaMicro
SeaMicro is transforming the data center landscape by building servers that draw one-quarter the power and take one-quarter the space of traditional servers. By delivering breakthrough innovations borne of multiple technology domains – CPU design, virtualization, supercomputing and networking – SeaMicro has created a new server architecture purpose-built for scale out infrastructures such as those found in the web-tier, online gaming, search and index computation. SeaMicro was founded in 2007 and is backed by Khosla Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Crosslink Capital, as well as leading public corporations. The company also received the largest Department of Energy grant given to a server company, $9.3 million as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

*each dual core 1.66GHz Intel Atom N570 processor is supported by two 1 Gb NICs for a bandwidth per-unit compute of 2 Gb/3.32 GHz = 600 megabits/ GHz. A traditional dual socket quad core server with 2 Gb NIC delivers 111 Mb per GHz: 2 gigabit/( 2 sockets x 4 cores x 2.26 GHz per core)= 2/18, or 111 megabits/GHz.

There’s support for Microsoft Exchange, Sharepoint and other business applications, as well as file-sharing and offsite backup, server virtualization and VMware. As well as the twelve internal bays, there are three iSCSI ports on the back for attaching external arrays.

Redundant power supply support and a new business-oriented dashboard round out the main specs. The Drobo B1200i will arrive in Q2 2011, price tba.

Press Release:

Drobo Means Business

New Drobo Business Line Delivers ‘Big Storage in a Small Box’ – Unprecedented Combination of Technical Sophistication, Ease of Use and Affordability for Small and Medium Businesses

SANTA CLARA, Calif. – Feb. 8, 2011 – Drobo, makers of the award-winning data storage products for businesses and professionals, today introduced a new line of sophisticated yet easy-to-use and affordable storage solutions for small and medium businesses (SMBs). Designed specifically for customers who need critical business storage capacity without the complexity and price of legacy storage solutions, the new Drobo business systems are optimal as primary and secondary storage for Microsoft Exchange®, Sharepoint®, and similar business applications, as well as departmental file-sharing or offsite backup, and server virtualization deployments including those using VMware solutions.

“VMware recognizes the importance of affordable storage alternatives for firms implementing virtualization as they continue on the path toward IT as a service,” explained Parag Patel, vice president, global strategic alliances, VMware. “Like larger organizations, SMBs are looking for ways to improve productivity and lower IT costs. Drobo streamlines VMware-virtualized storage for SMBs by delivering storage that is simple, scalable and automated – all with an affordable price tag.”

With more than 150,000 customers worldwide, Drobo has been embraced by individual professionals and small businesses globally. The new Drobo business systems up the ante with improved system performance and redundancy, a new business-oriented dashboard and control panel and upgraded business support options – all while maintaining Drobo’s breakthrough ease-of-use and the BeyondRAIDTM data protection capabilities that define the Drobo brand.

“A complex quote, full of techno-babble and corporate speak, wouldn’t represent Drobo fairly,” said Mark Peters, senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. “Now available for SMBs, Drobo is what it has always been – surprisingly advanced and scalable storage, packaged and priced for people who don’t need to have doctorates or second mortgages to have easy, functional and sophisticated capabilities at their fingertips.”

“Our customers aren’t shy; they have tried Drobo for themselves and are now demanding more units for the rest of their business,” said Tom Buiocchi, CEO at Drobo. “Our new Drobo for business family continues to meld even more big technology and Drobo ease-of-use for the best storage experience ever.”

Today’s announcement covers a new Drobo family of products designed with business in mind. These products include:

8-bay file sharing Drobo with remote backup (Available now)
8-bay SAN (iSCSI-attached) Drobo (Available now)
12-bay SAN (iSCSI-attached) Drobo with expanded redundancy features, support for thin provisioning and deprovisioning and new data-aware tiering technology (Reserve now, shipping Q2-11)
Drobo’s new business line also includes performance enhancements, new management software and extended business support and services, in addition to the existing ease of use, affordable capacity and storage features that set Drobo apart from any other storage product on the market. The systems are based on the patented BeyondRAIDTM technology and are certified for VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Exchange and Symantec backup. Prices start just above $2K. The new line of business products is available for purchase at http://www.Drobo.com.

Drobo also announced its new Business Premier partner program and customer milestone of 150,000 sold. Both press releases can be accessed online at http://www.drobo.com/news/press_releases.

About Drobo
Drobo makes award-winning data storage products for Small and Medium Businesses and Individual professionals that provide an unprecedented combination of sophisticated data protection and management features, affordable capacity, and ease-of-use. Based on the patented and proven BeyondRAIDTM technology, Drobo�s ability to deliver “Big Storage in a Small Box” creates the best storage experience ever for small and medium businesses and hundreds of thousands of individual professionals worldwide, who use it to support their file backup and media archiving, server virtualization, and email application needs. To learn more, visit http://www.drobo.com or follow us on Twitter @drobo.

The TS-112 is the baby of the range, a single-drive box which can be expanded via USB or eSATA, and works as a home file server, DLNA/UPnP streamer, USB printer sharer – for up to three printers – and SqueezeServer functionality. There’s also optional standalone wireless use, with a USB WiFi dongle, together with a gigabit ethernet port.

The TS-212 does much the same as the TS-112 but accommodates two drives with data protection. It has the same feature set as the one-drive version, including Full HD 1080p movie streaming. Finally, the TS-412 packs a full four drive bays and offers a choice of Single Disk, JBOD, RAID 0/ 1/ 5/ 6/ 5 + hot spare setups. No word on pricing at this stage, but all three will go on sale in February 2011.

Press Release:

QNAP Debuts New Affordable High Performance Turbo NAS Server Family for Emerging HOME, SOHO, and Prosumer Users

New TS-x12 Lineup Includes 1, 2, and 4-drive Models Featuring Embedded Marvell 1.2GHz CPU and 256MB of DDRII RAM, Delivering Great All-around Performance, Low Power Consumption, and a Wealth of Applications for Home Networks.

Taipei, Taiwan, January, 2011 – QNAP Systems, Inc., a leading manufacturer of world class NAS servers, NVR Video Surveillance Systems, and Network-based Media Players today announced the TS-x12 lineup of affordable high performance Turbo NAS servers intended for the fast-growing home and SOHO market segment. The new models utilize the latest Marvell 1.2GHz processor and include 256MB of DDRII memory and Gigabit LAN ports, offering up to 8TB of networked storage with a unique blend of solid performance, high reliability, and advanced features at very affordable price points. The TS-x12 series includes the 1-drive TS-112, 2-drive TS-212, and 4-drive TS-412.

NAS is becoming a popular addition to home networks as they solve the problem of how to centrally store and share digital content among computers in the home – especially in mixed Windows/Mac networks. QNAP’s new TS-x12 models are easy to attach to existing networks and provides easy file sharing within the network, centralized backup of all networked computers, website hosting, printer sharing, even recording of surveillance video from IP cameras.

“The new TS-x12 series Turbo NAS servers offer affordable high performance coupled with ultra-low power consumption and virtually noise-free operation,” said Tony Lu, Product Manager from QNAP. “Home users no longer need to sacrifice performance for lower cost NAS; and the new TS-x12 series offers advanced features like RAID and iSCSI support, making them an incredible value for the money.”

The new TS-x12 models also improve the multimedia experience and capabilities for home users. The built-in UPnP media server (TwonkyMedia) feature of the TS-x12 series supports numerous UPnP-compliant media players such as the Sony® PS3 and Microsoft® Xbox 360 gaming consoles. Users can even use their iPhone and Android phone to stream music and video or view digital photos stored on the NAS in real-time from anywhere they have a Wi-Fi or 3G connection.

Availability
The TS-x12 series will be available starting in February through popular commercial distributors, resellers, and retailers globally.

Alternatively, there’s the Mac mini with Snow Leopard Server, as first announced back in 2009; you’ll get two of those to a 1U space. Pricing for the Mac Pro server – which Apple claim is over 25-percent faster at certain tasks than the Xserve – kicks off at $2,999, while the roughly quarter-powered Mac mini server starts at $999.

“When you look at these tiny cores, another way of making them work in a very efficient way is [not to] surround them with a whole bunch of south bridges and network controllers. … Essentially, the tiny cores and systems-on-chip should go together” Dileep Bhandarkar, Microsoft

Global Foundation Services is the division of Microsoft responsible for managing the hosting of Bing, Hotmail and Windows Live Messenger, together with Sharepoint and Exchange installations for businesses. Bhandarkar said that ARM’s work on server processors was interesting but unproven, however it “lights a fire under Intel and AMD to deliver more effective x86 solutions.”

For its part, Intel said it had “no announcements to make” regarding new Atom chips, but did point to the fact that its existing processors are already found in at least one HP Windows Home Server model.

Although Microsoft has not been specific as to the circumstances surrounding Muglia’s departure, it’s not the first time the exec has displeased Ballmer. Previously head of Microsoft’s internet business, he was demoted in 2001 after an online project fell foul of privacy advocates. However, in 2009 he was made president of servers and tools. Recently, Microsoft came under renewed criticism for changes made to the next version of Windows Home Server, amid partner HP pulling out of the segment.

Apple has pulled the curtain off the Mac Pro Server, which is set to start shipping in “two to four weeks.” The workstation is a new addition to the Apple Store, and it features a single 2.8GHz quad-core Intel Xeon “Nehalem” processor, 8GB (4 x 2GB) DDR3 SDRAM, and two 1TB hard drives. You also get ATI’s Radeon HD 5770 with 1GB of GDDR5 video memory, and an 18x SuperDrive.

New purchasers will also get Mac OS X Server with unlimited license versions. The base price for the new server begins at $2,999, and will have free shipping, once it ships. Of course, you can start upgrading the Mac Pro Server and see $3,475 price increases, if you felt so inclined.

[via Apple]

However it’s also fully compatible with previous ARM Cortex A-series applications, smoothing out upgrade potential for existing hardware and software developers.  That’ll include Android, Adobe Flash Player, Java Platform Standard Edition (Java SE), JavaFX, Linux, Windows Embedded Compact 7, Symbian and Ubuntu.

ARM are targeting not only mobile computers and smartphones but low-power servers and high-end digital home entertainment systems with the Cortex A15, with smartphones using 1-1.5GHz versions of Eagle while home servers might get the 1.5-2.5GHz chips.  That’s more a limitation of power consumption than anything else.  The first ARM Cortex A15 chips are expected in 2013 from TI and others.

Press Release:

ARM Unveils Cortex-A15 Mpcore Processor to Dramatically Accelerate Capabilities of Mobile, Consumer and Infrastructure Applications

Unprecedented levels of performance, power-efficiency, and technology leadership accelerate industry momentum to deliver extraordinarily innovative products

CAMBRIDGE, UK– SEPT 8, 2010 – ARM today introduced the Cortex™-A15 MPCore processor that delivers a 5x performance improvement over today’s advanced smartphone processors, within a comparable energy footprint. In advanced infrastructure applications the Cortex-A15 processor running at up to 2.5GHz will enable highly scalable solutions within constantly shrinking energy, thermal and cost budgets. The Cortex-A15 processor is available for licensing today and is targeted at manufacture in 32nm, 28nm, and future geometries.

As the latest addition to ARM’s Cortex-A family of processors, the Cortex-A15 MPCore processor will enable a new and vast array of products ranging from next-generation smartphones, tablets, large-screen mobile computing and high-end digital home entertainment devices through to wireless basestations and enterprise infrastructure products.

“The launch of the Cortex-A15 MPCore processor marks the beginning of an entirely new era for the ARM Partnership. It brings together more than 20 years of ARM expertise in low-power design with a host of new and very aggressive high-performance technologies,” said Mike Inglis, EVP and GM, Processor Division, ARM. “The Cortex-A15 MPCore processor will become the next major step along the industry’s energy efficient computing roadmap and open up a wide range of new application possibilities for our Partners.”

The debut of the Cortex-A15 MPCore processor enhances the ARM Cortex-A Series of processors by providing the electronics industry with the broadest range of software and feature-set compatible processors. The Cortex-A15 extends the capabilities of the ARM Cortex-A Series by adding efficient hardware support for OS virtualization, soft-error recovery, larger memory addressability and system coherency. While remaining true to ARM’s power-efficient design heritage, the Cortex-A15 MPCore processor brings a new level of performance scalability as well as a feature set that enables ARM Partners to address a range of innovative and traditional markets with a single processor architecture.

The Cortex-A15 also enjoys full application compatibility with all of the other highly acclaimed Cortex-A processors. This enables immediate access to an established developer and software ecosystem including Android™, Adobe® Flash® Player, Java Platform Standard Edition (Java SE), JavaFX, Linux, Microsoft® Windows® Embedded Compact 7, Symbian® and Ubuntu, along with more than 700 ARM Connected Community™ members providing applications software, hardware and software development tools, middleware and SoC design services.

“The operational and economic benefits of cloud computing will transform the high-tech industry over the next decade. Everything from the handheld devices to the network infrastructure will require more performance and efficiency to handle the increasing amounts of information that will emerge from the use of remote resources,” said Jim McGregor, Chief Technology Strategist at In-Stat. “ARM has been at the core of the mobile industry and the Cortex-A15 MPCore and accompanying technologies extends the potential for this highly efficient and flexible architecture to other applications critical to our connected world.”

Collaborative differentiation through partnership continues to be the main driver of the ARM business model and the launch of the Cortex-A15 MPCore processor is the result of ARM’s work with lead licensee partners Samsung, ST Ericsson and Texas Instruments, who were key drivers of the definition of the processor, ensuring it meets the key challenges faced by the industry.

“The market’s demand for more functionality and connectivity with low power consumption requires ever more advanced processor, system and chip design. By combining the advanced CPU technology from ARM with Samsung’s world leading chip design and manufacturing capabilities, Samsung has already achieved considerable success in offering high performances and low power Application Processor products to the market place,” said Yiwan Wong, VP of SoC Marketing, System LSI Division, Samsung Electronics. “We believe this new Cortex-A15 MPCore processor core from ARM, with its quantum leap in processing capabilities, will successfully enable many next-generation electronic products and redefine the level of experience consumers will demand from their smartphones and mobile computing devices.”

“We have entered a new era for smart devices where wireless computing solutions bring 3D navigation, augmented reality, HD video filming, high speed broadband and other advanced capabilities to more consumers, enabling our vision of an all-connected world,” said Edgar Auslander, Senior Vice President, Strategic Planning at ST-Ericsson. “Following our pioneering single die integration of modem and application engine featuring a dual Cortex-A9 processor, we are pleased to continue to work with ARM as a lead partner for the Cortex-A15 MPCore processor. Integrated into our leading-edge system-on-chip solutions, the new ARM core will enable our customers to build extremely power-efficient devices with an unprecedented level of performance.”

“As a long-term key partner, TI has worked with ARM for 17 years to innovate and deliver more than 3 billion ARM processor-based system-on-chip (SoC) devices. As an advanced lead partner and first licensee of the Cortex-A15 MPCore processor, we look forward to leveraging the Cortex-A15 core to deliver industry-leading processors that will provide the high performance demanded by the next generation of connected devices, all within a low power envelope. When pairing the Cortex-A15 MPCore processor with TI’s SmartReflex™ 3 technology, future OMAP applications processors will yield a 60 percent reduction in power, enabling TI to continue delivering the industry’s most energy-efficient, high performing solutions. We also see the potential for broader market implementations, leveraging the Cortex-A15 core for home entertainment and multimedia applications,” said Remi El-Ouazzane, vice president, OMAP platform business unit, TI.

Supporting Technology

The Cortex-A15 MPCore processor will be supported by specifically optimized ARM Physical IP that was developed jointly with the processor. These optimizations enable rapid development of leadership physical implementations, initially targeting 32nm and 28nm technologies with a roadmap extending to 20nm.

The processor is also supported by a broad range of ARM technology including the AMBA 4 compliant CoreLink™ system IP, CoreSight™ debug and trace IP, Mali Graphics, and a robust set of development tools. This technology is complemented by a broad range of SoC and software design solutions, tools and services from the ARM Connected Community™ ecosystem to provide ARM Partners with a smooth path through the development, verification and production of full function, compelling devices while significantly reducing time-to-market.

For details on the specific new features and capabilities of the Cortex-A15 MPCore processor and the supporting technology go to http://www.arm.com/products/processors/cortex-a/cortex-a15.php

IBM’s server is the x3755 M3 and is aimed at enterprise use along with HPC and SMB applications. The addition of IBM servers brings the total servers using the Opteron 6000 processor line to 45 on the market today. Other companies already offering servers using the 600 series include Acer, Dell, and HP.

Acer and HP are both offering rack and blade servers. Dell is only offering rack mount server. IBM is at this point only offering a 4P system whereas the other firms are also pushing 2P servers with 6000 series processors inside. AMD has also stated that Cray will be using the 6000 processors in the XE6 super computer. The XE6 is the first supercomputer from Cray to use multiple-cabinets.

Those traditional high-power chips deliver processing grunt, but also have significant electricity requirements; in contrast, Smooth-Stone say their chips require less energy and less cooling.  Among the investors are ARM, ATIC (Globalfoundries owner and part-owner of AMD), Battery Ventures, Flybridge Capital Partners, Highland Capital Partners and Texas Instruments.

[via Venture Beat]

The modules are designed to plug directly into any IDE port and come in two versiosn to support different IDE connector types. The Type-1 supports 40-pin IDE ports and the Type-2 supports 44-pin headers. Both of the devices use MLC flash storage.

AMP claims that the devices are both compatible with a number of motherboards from different makers. The devices have power saving circuitry and ECC functionality. Pricing for the devices ranges from $62.95 to $159.95 depending on the storage capacity.

In short, it’s all about making Pogoplug more serious, and making sure the files you share with others – via the straightforward email invite system – look like they’ve come from your company rather than Pogoplug’s generic site.  That includes adding in company logos and backgrounds, together with adding custom email addresses so that clients can send files directly to the Pogoplug Biz.

There’s also a web-only sharing feature, which Pogoplug say is intended for artists and the like who want to give clients a preview of a file but not let them download the original (though we guess they could always take a screenshot if they were really determined not to pay you).  The Pogoplug Biz is available for preorder today, priced at $299 with no ongoing fees.

Press Release:

Cloud Engines Launches New Pogoplug Biz for Business Users

Pogoplug Biz is the secure and inexpensive way for a business to access, share and send files over the Internet

Cloud Engines, Inc, announces today the introduction of the Pogoplug Biz, a new version of the company’s award-winning Pogoplug specifically designed for business use. The Pogoplug Biz offers safe and secure remotely accessible storage and a flexible system for controlling access to video, audio, photos, and documents from anywhere on the Internet.

The product installs in 60 seconds and requires no modification to network or firewall settings. Pogoplug Biz lets business owners use their own domain name(s) and customize (or “skin”) the user interface and email templates, enabling users to seamlessly represent their company whenever they share files online. A Pogoplug Biz, combined with one or more USB hard drives provides businesses with an extensible cloud storage solution with no monthly fees.

Pogoplug Biz features include:

- Usage Statistics and Auditing: quickly access a summary of how many times a file or folder has been viewed, streamed or downloaded. Keep track of the number of views, streams, and downloads.

- Customization: customize the look and feel of the Pogoplug interface, including the color, logo, domain name and background image. Customize the look and feel of emails that are sent when you share files.

- Custom Email Addresses: claim your own custom email addresses and let your clients email files to your Pogoplug. Create an unlimited number of custom upload folders and give them each a unique email address to share with your clients.

- Cloud/Mobile Printing: print from any mobile device, including the iPhone and iPad. Print to any printer connected to Pogoplug, from anywhere.

- Web View-Only Sharing: share viewable files over the web while preventing them from being downloaded. Web View is perfect for creative professionals and photographers who want to show clients previews of work but not allow them to download the files.

- Multiple Users: allows an administrator to set access levels and storage quotas for individual users.

- Remote backup: continuously mirror all or part of your Pogoplug storage to a second Pogoplug in a remote location.

“Businesses need online storage and sharing solutions that aren’t encumbered by fees or limitations,” said Daniel Putterman, CEO of Cloud Engines, Inc. “Pogoplug Biz gives companies a secure, private and customizable solution to solve this problem.”

The Pogoplug Biz is available for preorder at Pogoplug.com/buy. Pogoplug Biz costs $299 with lifetime Pogoplug service.

Useful Links
Pogoplug web site: www.pogoplug.com
Twitter feed: www.twitter.com/pogoplug
Pogoplug online community: www.pogoplugged.com

About the Pogoplug Biz

The Pogoplug Biz is a device that connects up to 4 external hard drives to the Internet. It is designed for businesses that need to share remote storage of a variety of file types via the Internet to co-workers and customers anywhere in the world. Robust customization allows the Pogoplug Biz to represent your company or brand effectively while maintaining Pogoplug’s famously easy set-up and use.

About Cloud Engines, Inc.
Founded in 2007 by experienced entrepreneurs from the digital media and security industries, Cloud Engines is located in San Francisco, California. The company was formed with a mission to change the way personal content is stored and distributed over the Internet. The Cloud Engines philosophy is that by making a product simple, open and affordable, the community will participate in making it better. For more information, please visit, www.cloudengines.com andwww.pogoplug.com

All three models have four 3.5-inch drive bays and support various levels of RAID configuration.  The DS411+ runs an Intel Atom D510 processor and sucks up 60.5W during use, while the RS810+ uses 68W; both support wake-on-LAN, HDD hibernation and power scheduling.  Meanwhile the RackStation RS810RP+ gets a second, redundant power supply.  Both it and the RS810+ support hot-swapping of drives, can have their 1GB of standard RAM expanded to 3GB, and have modular motherboards for easier maintenance and repair.

Of course, as well as backup there’s web hosting functionality – each unit can host up to 30 different sites simultaneously – and IP camera control, Windows ADS compliance and more.  The diskless DS411+ will be priced at $650 and carry a 2 year warranty. The diskless RS810+ is $1399, RS810RP+ is $1899, and RX410 expansion system (which can boost storage to up to 16TB) is $550; all 3 rackmounts carry at 5 year warranty.

Press Release:

Synology® Unleashes Scalable RackStation RS810+ and DiskStation DS411+ High-performance NAS Servers with Extensive Functionality for SMB Users

Redmond, Washington—July 16, 2010— Synology® America Corp. today officially launched the RackStation RS810+ and DiskStation DS411+, 4-bay NAS servers with rich, business-oriented features, appealing to SMBs that demand flexibility and great performing network attached storage solutions.

Businesses need a strong foundation to face mission-critical tasks, and can rely on the Synology RS810+ and DS411+ to deliver high-performance. Tested in a RAID 5 configuration in a Windows® environment, the Synology RS810+ and DS411+ deliver an average of 112MB/sec reading speed while RS810+ writes at 107MB/sec and DS411+ writes at 106MB/sec. The web server responsiveness rates are remarkable; the Synology RS810+ and DS410+ take less than 32 seconds to handle 1,000 simultaneous requests.

For forward-thinking and continuously expanding SMBs, the Synology RS810+ offers scalable storage up to 16 TB with the RX410, and is expandable to up to 3 GB RAM. The Synology RS810+ was certified to be VMware® ready, delivering a reliable storage solution for virtualization deployment. The hard drives are hot-swappable to ensure continuous service uptime when a drive needs replacement. The modular design allows for rapid in situ replacement of the motherboard. For businesses that require uninterrupted data sharing and protection, the Synology RS810RP+ comes with a redundant power supply, which optimizes data availability and safety.

The Synology RS810+ operates at 68 watts while DS411+ draws at 60.5 watts. With energy conservation features such as Wake on LAN/WAN, scheduled power on/off, and hard drive hibernation, users are not only able to reduce monthly bills, but also reduce their carbon footprint.

“The Synology RS810+ and DS411+ run on the award-winning operating system, Synology DiskStation Manager 2.3 (DSM 2.3), and are specifically designed for businesses that want an affordable alternative to various network devices or costly PC servers,” said Rosiel Lee, product manager at Synology Inc. The Synology RS810+ and DS411+ will host up to 30 websites with Web Station, become affordable NVR solutions, supporting up to 20 IP cameras with Surveillance Station, and act as mail servers with Mail Station. In addition, comprehensive business- oriented features are provided, including cross-platform data sharing, encrypted data storage and transmission, all-round backup solution, iSCSI capability and Windows ADS integration.

Availability

The Synology RS810+, RS810RP+, RX410 and DS411+ are now shipping worldwide.

The software refused to connect via the ethernet interface, and then when finally working underperformed compared to similar processors to the Marvell 1.2GHz chip at the heart of the GuruPlug.  Meanwhile, the unit got painfully hot to the touch, which Tarreau narrowed down to insufficient cooling for the CPU.

Internal wires, too, were of poor quality and quickly snapped. Now, Tarreau’s GuruPlug did show signs of having been tinkered with internally – the power supply has had its warranty sticker broken and a new one stuck over the top – possibly as part of a PSU replacement program that suppliers GlobalScale performed a few months back, but even so that doesn’t explain the poor CPU heatsink.  We’re reaching out to GlobalScale for official comment, but at first glance it looks like the GuruPlug Server Plus really might be too good to be true.

The real magic isn’t in the processor but the way the company puts them together.  Each Atom chip is matched up with its own DRAM and a custom SeaMicro ASIC on a credit-card sized board; eight of these so-called “compute blocks” are combined onto a 5 x 11 inch mainboard, and then SM10000 box packs 64 such mainboards.  Then there’s special Dynamic Compute Allocation Technology (DCAT) which balances load across the various CPUs and can dynamically set unused chips into sleep mode.

Connections to the network are via up to 64 gigabit ethernet ports, and you can also have up to 64 hard-drives.  According to SeaMicro the whole thing says the whole thing uses less than 2 kilowatts of power but can run regular applications with no modification necessary.  No word on how much the SeaMicro SM10000 costs, however.

[via Slashdot]

Various storage sizes are available – up to a 2TB HDD – and power consumption with a 1TB drive is said to be just 7W.  While there’s only room for a single 3.5-inch drive internally, the back panel has two USB 2.0 ports and two eSATA ports for adding further storage; alternatively you can hook up a USB printer and use Bubba Two as a network print server.

For most it’ll be the media server functionality that’s most promising, with Bubba Two compatible with UPnP, iTunes server, PS3 and Logitech’s Squeezebox Server software.  There’s also remote access with a simple webpage login that promises to avoid remembering what your IP is day to day, standalone bittorrent downloads, and an integrated firewall, router, email server and calendar.

The Bubba Two is available from €236 ($292) with 500GB (€356 for 2TB; €308 for a 32GB SSD) while the Bubba Two WiFi – with 802.11n support and WiFi router functionality – starts at €312 ($386) for 500GB (€452 for 2TB; €380 for a 32GB SSD).

[via Twitter]

Back when we reviewed the HP Data Vault X510 we described the Windows Home Server as quiet, straightforward to install and arguably more capable than its MediaSmart cousins. That’s everything you could ask from a backup machine, and when you throw in the system’s ability to share videos, audio and photos to your DLNA-compatible HDTV, console or DPF, it’s not hard to imagine the Data Vault X510 becoming the hub of your digital home.

Also on offer is an HP Mini 311 notebook, ideal for grab-and-go computing with an 11.6-inch HD-capable display and NVIDIA Ion LE graphics, together with an 8-inch HP sd828a1 Smart WiFi Display. Unlike basic digital photo frames, the Smart WiFi Display can pull in images from online galleries, play YouTube and other videos, stream internet radio and even display Twitter messages, news and weather updates. Finally, there’s an HP shirt up for grabs too.

To stand a chance of winning, all you have to do is leave a creative/funny/comical comment in this prize thread on why you should be the winner of this giveaway. That will get you an entry into the SlashGear HP Data Vault X510 giveaway. However, if you want to stand a chance of picking up one of the other prizes, we’re also looking for creative ways in which you’d use the Data Vault X510, HP Mini 311 notebook or HP sd828a1 Smart WiFi Display. That could be a written case study, a poster or advert showing a great way of using one or all of the devices, or even a song or video. If you submit a creative entry it’ll count as a second chance in our Data Vault X510 giveaway, and we’ll also be judging those creative ideas for an opportunity to take away one of the other prizes. Creative entries should either be left in the comments (if they’re written or a link to a video you’ve created) or emailed to hpgiveaway at slashgear.com before the giveaway closing date.

SlashGear is taking part in this HP giveaway with six other sites; each has an HP Data Vault X510 to give to a reader, while the rest of the prizes will be shared out among the most creative entrants from all seven of the individual competitions. Remember, while a simple comment is enough to get you an entry into SlashGear’s giveaway, you’ll need to step up your game and think of something more creative if you want a chance for the Mini 311, Smart WiFi Display or HP shirt. Don’t forget, you’ll also get a second entry for the Data Vault X510 giveaway if you submit a creative entry – doubling your chances to win! – as well as standing a chance in the second half of the giveaway. The seven sites taking part are:

1. Neowin (competition closed)
2. Jake’s MediaBlab (competition closed)
3. Hardwaresphere (competition closed)
4. SlashGear (2-May to 9-May)
5. Geekazine (9-May to 16-May)
6. AbsolutelyWindows (16-May to 23-May)
7. GottaBeMobile (23-May to 30-May)

Entries on SlashGear are accepted from today, up until midnight PST on Saturday May 8th, and we’ll be announcing the winner of the HP Data Vault X510 on Sunday May 9th. We’ll also be choosing the ten most creative entries to pass forward to HP for consideration in the second half of the giveaway, which will be decided after all seven sites have run their competitions. Full rules are below, and good luck!

Rules

Competition is open to residents of the US over the age of 18. Family members, friends or affiliates of HP and SlashGear are not permitted to enter. Competition entries are only accepted via the specified SlashGear comments thread; entries left in the comments section of any other post will not be recognized. Entries should be submitted before midnight pacific time on Saturday May 8th 2010; one comment entry per person (and yes, we check).

Creative entries should be submitted either in this comments thread or via hpgiveaway@slashgear.com. The closing date for creative entries is midnight pacific time on Saturday May 8th 2010. Each creative entry will be accepted as a second entry for the HP Data Vault X510 giveaway, up to a maximum of two entries (comment and creative). The winner of the HP Data Vault X510 will be selected from the entries received; the creative entries will be judged on their merits and the ten best submitted to HP in consideration for the second prize pool: one HP Mini 311 notebook, one HP sd828a1 Smart WiFi Display and one HP shirt. There is no cash alternative and, should any of these prizes become unavailable, HP and SlashGear reserve the right to substitute another prize of equal or greater value.

The winner of the HP Data Vault X510 will be announced on SlashGear on Sunday May 9th 2010 and contacted via email if possible; they will be expected to respond within seven days else their prize may be forfeit and another winner selected. Editors decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into. Winner agrees that their name and details of their entry may be used for promotional purposes by, but not limited to, SlashGear and HP.

It’s the more comprehensive sibling to the standard GuruPlug Server, which gets two USB 2.0 ports and a single ethernet connection, as well as no memory card slot.  Both have a 1.2GHz processor with 512MB of RAM and various tinker-friendly ports.

The Globalscale GuruPlug Server Plus is available for preorder now, at $129, with deliveries expected to take place from April 2010.  As for the basic GuruPlug Server, that’s $99 and will also begin shipping in April.

[via Hack a Day]

Video demo after the cut

In case you’ve forgotten, the SheevaPlug is a capable little server stuck inside a wall-wart AC adapter sized casing, with a USB port and ethernet connection.  Announced last February – and since updated with a new, more powerful version at CES 2010 earlier this month – it uses a fraction of the power of a full-sized server but is entirely sufficient for handling VoIP calls, number-prompt screening systems, intelligent diverts and voicemail-as-email.

The SheevaPlug itself is around $99 and PlugPBX is free and reasonably straightforward to install.  Once that’s done, you’re free to play around with either just the basic functionality – routing calls over the internet to save money on your regular landline provider – or go for more complex systems; one we’re pretty impressed by is adding a Bluetooth dongle to track whether your cellphone is at home or not, re-routing incoming calls to that number if you’re away from home.  More details in the video below.

[via Hack a Day]

The M’SERV S2100 measures in at 10.2-inches long and 4.7-inches high, yet can be stuffed with up to 4TB of storage space.  There’s also a 1.3+GHz VIA Nano CPU, two memory slots, two SATA bays and an internal Compact Flash socket which the S2100 can boot from.  As for ports, you’re looking at dual gigabit ethernet, three USB 2.0 and a VGA output.

Rather than simply position the S2100 as yet another NAS, VIA reckon it’ll be sufficient for backup, “cloud-intermediary storage roles”, network video recording and – thanks to VT virtualization support – virtual server applications.  No word on exactly what sort of price the system will go for; we’ll have to wait until the first retailers and OEMs move to pick it up.

Press Release:

Big on the Inside, Small on the Outside: VIA M’SERV S2100 Addresses SOHO and SMB Server Needs

VIA M’SERV S2100 is a compact, versatile server system suitable for a range of essential applications geared towards the needs of modern small business and home office users

VIA Technologies, Inc, a leading innovator of power efficient x86 processor platforms, today announced the VIA M’SERV S2100: a compact and versatile server system suitable for a range of applications for SOHO and SMB customers. Available to OEM customers, the VIA M’SERV S2100 is a mere 10.2″ long by 4.7″ high and provides up to four terabytes of storage in a stylish, compact, low power and low noise system.

The VIA M’SERV S2100 is the first product of its kind to offer the unique advantages of the high-performance, 64-bit VIA Nano processor. This makes the VIA M’SERV S2100 capable of addressing many traditional and next-generation server applications including sophisticated backup, cloud-intermediary service roles along with other storage oriented server applications such as NVR (Network Video Recorder) systems and Log servers.

By selecting the VIA Nano processor, the VIA M’SERV S2100 brings a novel set of features to the compact server market. These include VT virtualization support for the latest virtual server applications and the VIA AES encryption engine that can be employed to offer an advanced and non intrusive on-the-fly data encryption service through hardware.

“The VIA M’SERV S2100 is uniquely positioned to offer a wide range of essential server applications for small business and home office users,” said Jerry Yuan, VIA Embedded Business Development Manager. “The VIA Nano processor brings with it an advanced set of features that makes the VIA M’SERV S2100 an exceptionally compelling mini-server product”.

VIA M’SERV S2100 Compact Server System
Measuring just 13.5cm by 12cm by 26cm (5.3″x4.7″x10.2″), the VIA M’SERV S2100 is powered by a 1.3+GHz VIA Nano processor and supports 2 slots of DDR2 SO-DIMM 667/533MHz memory. Two SATA bays with integrated power ports are mounted within the case, and a type I Compact Flash socket can be used as a bootable SSD for embedded OS/AP to improve the system reliability and enhance boot speed.

Connectivity includes dual Gigabit Ethernet ports while two USB 2.0 ports at the back are supplemented by one port at the front allowing easy accessibility for USB peripherals such as flash drives or memory card readers.

The VIA M’SERV S2100 supports Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 (x86 & x64), and Windows Server 2008 Foundation, as well a range of major Linux distributions including Ubuntu, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 (Service Pack 2) and FreeBSD.

For more details about the VIA M’SERV S2100 compact server system, please visit:
http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/embedded/mserv/s2100/

VIA M’SERV S2100 Availability
The VIA M’SERV S2100 system is available now for system integrators and OEMs. For pricing and availability, please send an email to: embedded@via.com.tw

A USB 2.0 port allows the connection of external storage or a printer, meanwhile, and the whole thing uses one-tenth the power of a regular PC.  Marvell seem to be targeting home media use this time around, with a strong emphasis on streaming content both within the home and to remote clients when users are away.  However it could also be used to host a website, as part of a mesh or grid network, in a security or home automation system, or for various degrees of industrial control.

As before, Marvell will sell the Plug Computer 3.0 as part of a developer kit, via partner firms such as Universal Scientific Industries Co., Ltd, Ionics EMS, and Globalscale Technologies Inc.  Pricing is yet to be confirmed; we’re hoping it comes in at around the same $99 price-point as the original SheevaPlug did.

Press Release:

Marvell unveils Plug Computer 3.0 with integrated Wireless and Built-in Hard Drive

Powerful Microserver is bolstered with 2 GHz Armada Processor to drive the “Always-On Lifestyle”

CES – Las Vegas, Nevada (January 5, 2010) — Marvell (NASDAQ: MRVL), a worldwide leader in integrated silicon solutions, today unveiled Plug Computer 3.0 – a new always-on, always connected turnkey platform designed to power the next generation intelligent applications and services for the home and office. The new embedded Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and built-in hard drive extend the use of Plug Computer into new applications including management of medical and financial records as well as a command post for the smart home – allowing for remote management of lights, thermostat and irrigation systems.

Equipped with the recently announced Marvell® ARMADA™ 300 processor, Plug Computer 3.0 offers 2 GHz of processing performance yet maintains a very low power footprint – making Plug Computers more powerful, eco-friendly and efficient – enabling development of plug ‘n’ play next generation consumer devices with zero configuration. From streaming the latest winter vacation video to a connected TV in the bedroom, to enjoying favorite music on a Wi-Fi enabled receiver in the living room, Plug Computer 3.0 makes enjoying media on intelligent devices throughout the home easier and on-the-go more enjoyable than before.

“With unprecedented integration and very low power design, Plug Computer 3.0 offers a powerful, yet compact, and green development platform to accelerate the development and availability of innovative software and services in the home,” said Dr. Simon Milner, Vice President and General Manager, Enterprise Business Unit, Communications and Consumer Group at Marvell. “Following the shipment of more than 10,000 SheevaPlug™ development kits to date, we’re confident that this will be a transformational year, where innovative concepts organically fuel a new generation of rich applications to go hand-in-hand with the always-on lifestyle.”

The release of Plug Computer 3.0 opens up additional applications and usage in key new markets:
• Smart Grid
• Home Automation
• Medical Monitoring
• Multimedia content sharing
• Security and Access Control
• Industrial automation
• Agricultural
• Mesh and Grid Computing

The Plug Computer 3.0 development kits will be available through Plug Computer vendors such as Universal Scientific Industries Co., Ltd, Ionics EMS, and Globalscale Technologies Inc.

For more information on the products, please visit www.plugcomputer.org or visit the Plug Computer Pavilion at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this week (South Hall 30344).

About the Plug Computer 3.0 Development Platform

The award-winning Plug Computer 3.0 is designed to make high-performance, always on, always connected, and green computing readily available for developers and end-users. Plug Computer 3.0 uses a 2 GHz Marvell ARMADA 300 processor, a built-in hard-disk drive and embedded Marvell Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technologies. Additional peripherals such as Direct Attached Storage (DAS) can be connected using a USB 2.0 port. Multiple standard Linux 2.6 kernel distributions are supported on the Plug Computer 3.0 development platform enabling rapid application development. The enclosure is designed to plug directly into a standard wall socket and is designed to draw less than one tenth of the power of a typical PC being used as a home server.

Video demo after the cut

Inside the box itself is an ARM Cortex A8 processor, WiFi 802.11n, a serial connection for debugging and console connectivity, USB 2.0 port for the webcam and two servo control ports.  The whole thing measures 10 x 6 x 2 cm and draws 3-5W.

Once set up, you can remotely view what the R/C vehicle is seeing, together with control it, from any internet-enabled computer or even your iPhone.  A limited number of units will be released this year – we don’t yet know pricing – followed by a full launch in 2010.

[via HobbyMedia.it]

That Nehalem-series processor draws just 45W at full blow, but will soon be replaced by a a dual-core Clarkdale requiring 30W.  The individual server board is designed to sit into an 8.75-inch-tall chassis that has the network and power connectivity together with responsibility for actively cooling the system; up to 16 microservers can fit into each chassis.

Running along the bottom, meanwhile, are 16 2.5-inch HDD sleds that connect to each microserver.  While unlikely to be capable of supporting a mainstream site, the microservers will be ideal “for the low-end, scaled-out Web hosting space” Jason Waxman, general manager of Intel’s high-density computing group explained.  The new range of relatively frugal CPUs means “[Intel] think we can put enough power in a low enough power envelope” Waxman continued.

Eventually, the goal is to achieve a 25W idle draw for the entire microprocessor.  Intel will be offering the design specification to the Server System Infrastructure Forum before the end of 2009.

Video demo after the cut

The device isn’t actually the official work of Dell; it’s actually the self-made prototype of one of the company’s engineers, Jimmy Pike, director of system architecture at Dell’s Data Center Solutions division, and he put it together in his garage.  He squeezed two servers into the box, each with dual-core 2.5GHz Intel Harpertown processors, along with 32GB of memory, 4TB of disk space for storage, a handful of SSDs for system files, a PSU and a 5-port gigabit ethernet switch.

According to Pike, the system – which requires a reasonable 325W – is perfect for use as a DNS server or a data center for a small business, and he himself uses it to prototype for custom servers for Dell’s commercial clients.  He reckons you could build your own for around $2,000; more details in the video below.