When will servers powered by Calxeda’s ARM-based EnergyCore SoC finally start to appear in data center racks? Soon, according to Karl Freund, the vice president of marketing for the technology startup. But you may not even realize it, and that suits the company just fine, at least in the near term. In a few short years, Calxeda […]
Is ARM the future of green servers?
ARM is getting a lot of attention lately. The chip designer, whose energy efficient processor technology powers the vast majority of the world’s smartphones and tablets, is benefiting greatly from the popularity of the iPad and other ARM-based devices. Even Microsoft, a long-time x86 devotee, has jumped on the ARM bandwagon for its Windows RT operating system […]
OpenStack to float ARM-powered clouds
ARM processor-based cloud servers are big on potential, but for now, they fall a bit short on actually powering cloud services. That’s about to change, and quickly too, judging by the meteoric rise of the open source cloud platform that’s just now making the jump from x86 processors to ARM chips. First, a little background. […]
Windowfarms: Social, crowdsourced hydroponics bring fresh food home
Got a window? Then you can grow your own food. A group of driven, DIY-types from around the world are helping to bring hydroponic systems home. In her TED talk “A Garden in My Apartment” (below), Britta Riley of Windowfarms — vertical food gardens, if you will — shows how a socially-driven community of 24,000 hydroponics buffs […]
Sourcemap: Rattle (and tattle on) those supply chains
Where do your gadgets really come from? The folks behind Sourcemap, a crowdsourced, open source project, hope to answer that question by cataloging where the components that make up our devices originate. It’s an effort to provide a measure of supply chain transparency, according to project founder Leo Bonanni (see his Greener Gadgets 2010 talk […]
Facebook shares its secret to green data centers
Literally, in fact. Today, Facebook took a dramatically different course than its peers and let the world look behind the curtain. Whereas other big Internet firms consider the “nuts and bolts” details of their IT infrastructure a competitive advantage, Facebook open sourced its custom, energy efficient server and data center tech under the Open Compute […]
Can Cloud Computing Trigger Broader Open Source Adoption?
Cloud computing services may just be providing the nudge SMBs need to migrate to open source platforms and trim costs. At least that’s the thinking of Alex Vuchnich at AccountingWEB.com. He makes a good case. After all, web services hide…
Government IT: Open Source, Virtualization and Clouds on the Rise
The U.S. Government, despite its massive appetite for IT, doesn’t conjure images of a forward thinking or nimble entity when it comes to adopting technology – cutting-edge research arms notwithstanding. But things are changing. Kim Hart of The Washington Post…
SiCortex – Green, Open Source High Performance Computing
Curious about the vendor mentioned in the story about the new computers used by Royal Military College of Canada aircraft engineers, I pointed by browser to Maynard, MA-based SiCortex. I’m glad I did… Befitting the affinity many scientists and researchers…
Nimbus: Open Source and Virtualization for Data Crunching Clouds
Science Daily has a neat article on Nimbus, a cloud computing platform that the project’s team describes as an “infrastructure-as-a-service” (IaaS). To date, organizations are largely adopting the cloud computing model to offload storage and host applications with Web-based front…
