As much as it's important to have every component of a PC stuck together in a laptop, that same monolithic strategy is a major liability for server clusters: if one part breaks or grows obsolete, it can drag down everything else. Facebook and its Open Compute Project partners have just unveiled plans to loosen things up at the datacenter. A prototype, Atom-based rackmount server from Quanta Computer uses 100Gbps silicon photonics from Intel to connect parts at full speed, anywhere on the rack. Facebook has also garnered support for a new system-on-chip connection standard, rather affectionately named Group Hug, that would let owners swap in new mini systems from any vendor through PCI Express cards. The combined effect doesn't just simplify repairs and upgrades -- it lets companies build the exact servers they need without having to scrap other crucial elements in the process. There's no definite timeframe for when we'll see modular servers put to work, but the hope is that a cluster's foundations will stay relevant for years instead of months.
Source: Open Compute Project
Source: http://gizmodo.com/5976446/listen-to-150000-different-animal-sounds-in-this-humongous-online-library
More or less. The Macaulay Library just went live with 150,000 sounds (7,500 hours-worth) from 9,000 different animals—totally centered around birds, as you'd expect from an Ornithology department. The library also contains almost 50,000 videos—and you can contribute your own field recordings too. It's a perfectly geeky way to waste an hour or 7,000 today. [Cornell via PopSci]
Image Credit: Dan Kitwood / Getty Images News
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/16/fusion-io-brings-fusion-ioscale-ssds-to-smaller-servers/
Fusion-io has made a name for its Fusion ioDrive solid-state drives by selling them to the largest of enterprises -- the sort that crave thousands of servers. Not everyone wants that level of computing muscle, though, which is why the pro-grade storage firm is now selling the Fusion ioScale to a much wider audience. Cloud service hosts and other, smaller companies just have to buy a (relatively) paltry 100 or more of the PCI Express-based drives, which include both slim 1.6TB and full-size, 3.2TB versions. Neither will be cheap for datacenters when prices start at $3.89 per gigabyte, although Fusion-io is vowing better deals for those buying in buik. We also suspect that the time saved by moving to fast flash storage could be worthwhile in itself.
Continue reading Fusion-io brings Fusion ioScale SSD to small, speedy server clusters
Filed under: Storage
Source: Fusion-io
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/16/samsung-chromebox-series-3-pops-up-in-online-stores-with-core-i5/
No one would accuse Samsung or other Chrome OS supporters of hardware overkill: the Chromebox Series 3 and other Google-based PCs often carry just enough processing grunt to browse the web properly. Imagine the resulting surprise when a Liliputing reader discovers an unannounced Core i5-equipped model listed as in stock at multiple retailers. The XE300M22-A01US carries a 2.5GHz, Sandy Bridge-era dual-core chip on top of the usual 4GB of memory and 16GB solid-state drive. That's far from cutting edge, but more powerful than the creaky Celeron reserved for those who didn't receive a Google I/O edition. Samsung hasn't confirmed the existence of the quicker Chromebox, and there's some question as to whether the system incorporates the sleeker 2013 redesign or sticks to the tried-and-true 2012 layout; we've reached out to both Google and Samsung and will let you know if there's more concrete information. Quoted prices suggest there's a premium over the original at $405 or more, as of this writing. It's a lot to pay for a PC without native apps, although those who want only the unfettered web might have something close to their dream desktop.
Filed under: Desktops, Internet, Samsung, Google
Via: Liliputing
Source: Amazon, CompSource
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