In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team looks at the latest server market numbers from IDC. The takeaway? The Server industry up 43 percent year over year. Component prices have gone up, so there may be multiple contributing factors implying richer configurations are being deployed. Dan thinks IDC might be adjusting their model, but we can’t be sure from here. He doesn’t see how a company like Inspur can jack their business by 112 percent in a single year. This is simply unprecedented growth. Welcome to the Server Business in the Age of Cloud.
Rich notes that Intel’s terrific earnings recently were a bellwether for this “bullish” server market. As an interesting data point, something like 50 percent of all Intel chips made worldwide today are custom chips going to the hyperscale cloud market. Apparently, the Googles of the World don’t want the off-the-shelf parts. And since they buy in such high volume, Intel is reaping big rewards.
After that, we do our Catch of the Week:
- Henry points us to a Krebs on Security story on how the very latest cyberattack vector comes from fake Browser Extensions.
- Shahin likes the article about EvilSocket.net. This site describes how to build your own rogue GSM BTS for fun and profit, which I’d say is Fun for the Whole Family.
- “In this blog post I’m going to explain how to create a portable GSM BTS which can be used either to create a private ( and vendor free! ) GSM network or for GSM active tapping/interception/hijacking … yes, with some (relatively) cheap electronic equipment you can basically build something very similar to what the governments are using from years to perform GSM interception. I’m not writing this post to help script kiddies breaking the law, my point is that GSM is broken by design and it’s about time vendors do something about it considering how much we’re paying for their services.”
- Dan points us to a story about how Huawei got caught cheating on smartphone benchmarks. While Henry points out that cheating on benchmarks is nothing new in the industry, Huawei also got caught trying to pass off a photo taken from a $4500 DSLR camera as a shot from one of their lousy smartphones. Nasty boys!
- Rich reports on a great presentation he recorded at the HPC User Forum about the European Processor Initiative. Many new details were revealed, and the number of viewers of this talk so far is off the charts!
