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Showing posts with label starts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label starts. Show all posts
Saturday, 7 September 2013
Samsung starts mass production of DDR4 memory
IDG News Service - Samsung Electronics has started mass producing DDR4 memory that it expects will go into enterprise servers in next-generation data centers.
A successor to the DDR3 (Double Data Rate 3), DDR4 memory is expected to offer higher performance, reliability and lower power consumption than its predecessor.
However, there have been doubts as to whether the market is ready to transition in volumes from DDR3, which is still being designed into servers and other products. Some analysts have forecast that the component will be designed into servers and later PCs only by 2015.
Samsung said on Thursday that early market availability of the 4-gigabit (Gb) DDR4 devices, which use 20-nanometer process technology, will create demand for 16GB and 32GB memory modules.
The 4Gb-based DDR4 has a data transmission rate of 2,667 mbps, a 1.25-fold increase over 20nm-class DDR3, while lowering power consumption by more than 30%, Samsung said.
Samsung did not immediately provide information on the schedule for shipment of the new memory. The pricing information is not available, a spokesman said.
Microelectronics standards body JEDEC Solid State Technology Association published in September 2012 the initial DDR4 standard.
Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2012 International Data Group. All rights reserved.Wall Street Beat: Tech starts off season on mildly upbeat note
IDG News Service - With the U.S. Labor Day holiday marking the unofficial end of summer on the markets, tech stocks got off to a fairly positive start in the new season as several major deals and the mobile phone market came under especially intense scrutiny.
Major exchanges and market indexes were mixed Friday in the wake of a tepid government jobs report. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 14,922.50, down by 14.98 points, while the Standard and Poor's 500 index and the tech-heavy Nasdaq both closed up slightly higher for the day.
The Dow, the S&P and the Nasdaq were all in positive territory for the week, however. The Nasdaq Computer Index of more than 100 tech-related stocks closed Friday at 1755.4, up by 3.82 for the day and also in positive territory for the week.
Tech stocks were among the most heavily traded shares Friday, with Microsoft and Nokia in the top five volume leaders of the day. This is not surprising, given the announcement Tuesday that Microsoft will buy the Finnish company's mobile phone business. Microsoft will pay $5 billion for Nokia's Devices & Services business and about $2 billion to license Nokia's patents.
Some analysts said that the deal is a necessary risk for Microsoft, which counts Nokia as its only major ally in the mobile OS battle against Google's Android and Apple iOS. Microsoft's mobile OS market share number is foundering in the single digits, and it may need the acquisition to assure that a major manufacturer will continue to produce Windows-based phones.
But the market appears to be sour on the deal, which pairs two tech giants that are so far on the losing side in the mobile market. Nokia shares, which at first jumped on the news, closed Friday at $5.37, down by $0.12. Microsoft shares dropped $1.55 on the news Tuesday, closing at $31.20, and drifted down during the week to end up at $31.15.
Many parts of Microsoft's broad product portfolio are doing well, but it's not a stretch to say that future success rests in large part on how well it does in the mobile market. "Never have as many mobile phones been sold worldwide as in the first half of 2013," according to a report from market research firm GfK this week.
"In the period January to June 2013, global demand for smartphones rose by 66% compared with the same period in the previous year," the report said. "Of all mobile end devices sold, 59% are smartphones."
Meanwhile, erstwhile smartphone leader BlackBerry wants to proceed as quickly as possible with a plan to sell the company in an auction process that could end by November, according to a story in The Wall Street Journal that cited sources close to the company. The company announced in August that it had formed a committee to explore "strategic alternatives."
Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2012 International Data Group. All rights reserved.Wednesday, 21 August 2013
Outlook.com and Skype integration starts to roll out
Microsoft has integrated Outlook.com with Skype in several countries, including the United Kingdom, the United States, and Germany, offering users the ability to tap Skype functions and contacts from within the interface of the webmail application.
The link between the two products lets Outlook.com users do Skype video chats, audio calling, and instant messaging. Other countries where this is now available are Brazil, France, and Canada. Microsoft plans to offer this integration worldwide "in the near future," Microsoft said in a blog post on Monday.
[ Also on InfoWorld: Microsoft restores Outlook.com after three-day outage -- sort of | For a quick, smart take on the news you'll be talking about, check out InfoWorld Tech Brief -- subscribe today. ]
Microsoft is pursuing this integration because email exchanges are often escalated to audio and video communications, so bridging the interface gap between Outlook.com and Skype makes sense, the company said.
"Email is an important and personal tool for most people, but there are moments when you want to be able to speak live or chat face-to-face," wrote Dawn Martynuik, group product manager of Outlook.com, in the blog post.
Ironically, Outlook.com already has links with Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
Outlook.com hit a rough patch last week, when it malfunctioned in various ways for an undisclosed number of users between Wednesday and Sunday. The glitches impacted mobile access to the inbox and the ability to share SkyDrive files via email.
Outlook.com has had other stability, availability, and performance problems in recent months, including a high-profile outage in mid-March.
Microsoft launched a preview of Outlook.com in July 2012, billing it as a reinvention of webmail from the user interface to the back end designed to let the company better compete against Gmail and Yahoo Mail. Outlook.com eventually replaced Hotmail as the company's webmail service.
Last month, Microsoft celebrated Outlook.com's 1-year anniversary, rattling off a long list of positives, but also acknowledging that the service hasn't been as stable as expected.
"We had some bumps over the last year and there were places where our performance hasn't met the high standard we set for ourselves," Dick Craddock, group program manager of Outlook.com, wrote in that blog post, published on July 31.
Juan Carlos Perez covers enterprise communication/collaboration suites, operating systems, browsers and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Juan on Twitter at @JuanCPerezIDG.
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