IT Expert Voice

After a lengthy gestation period, the third generation of the Universal Serial Bus is making its way to the market. But is it already obsolete? READ MORE

HyperThreading has become a key differentiator between Intel and AMD. It could be a determining factor in the CPUs you deploy.

Intel and AMD have done their best to differentiate the x86 architecture as much as possible while retaining compatibility between the two CPUs, but the differences between the two are growing. One key differentiator is hyperthreading; Intel does it, AMD does not. READ MORE

After several years of trying, graphics processing units (GPUs) are beginning to win over the major server vendors. Dell and IBM are the first tier-one server vendors to adopt GPUs as server processors for high-performance computing (HPC). Here’s a manager’s view of the hardware change and what it might mean to your data center. (Hint: faster servers.)

GPUs are normally used in desktop PCs, where they serve as high-speed graphics accelerators, primarily for games. But it’s slowly dawning on both server makers and end-users that GPUs make great math co-processors for more tasks than just gaming.

In May, IBM announced plans to offer a pair of Tesla M2050 GPUs in its iDataPlex dx360 M3 scale-out servers. Dell followed with an early June announcement that its PowerEdge M610x blade servers would come with a pair of Tesla GPUs. The M610x, equipped with an Intel Xeon 5500 or 5600, can generate up to 400 gigaflops of performance. READ MORE

People have dug deep into Windows 7, in the several months since the operating system’s release, and they found all kinds of hidden gems. One big surprise is the major overhaul given to the most modest of built-in applications: Windows Calculator.

Yes, the native calculator. We’ve all used it to do some quick math. Microsoft keyboards even have a hotkey mapped to the calculator. But did you ever think you could do scientific or financial calculations on it? You can now.

In Windows Vista, Microsoft basically didn’t do anything except give the calculator an Aero skin, but this version in Windows 7 is in fact quite different. It has a new layout to support multi-touch displays, since Microsoft built a lot of touch screen support and functionality into Windows 7.

You now have four modes to choose from when operating the calculator: Standard, Scientific, Programmer, and Statistics. Let’s cover them individually. READ MORE

Microsoft has finally gotten its client and server teams into a cadence that encourages building strong connections between client and server. Once you learn the combined strength of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, you may get off the fence about migrating.

Even though Microsoft shifted to a common core technology for both its client and server Windows software a decade ago, the two development teams were never quite in sync when it came to releases, and therefore, it was difficult to coordinate special features that tied the desktop OS to the server.

But with Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, Microsoft finally got the two on a very close release schedule. Both entered beta in late 2008 and were commercially available in October 2009. They share quite a few common technologies, including:

• Scaling to 256 cores
• Fewer hardware locks and improved parallelism
• Timer coalescing, where multiple tasks can be executed at once, rather than one at a time, so the processor can go into a low power mode
• Windows Installer 5.0 supports installing and configuring Windows Services and provides developers with more control over setting permissions during software installation
• Usually the kernel handles all thread scheduling, but 64-bit Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 only allow for applications with large concurrent threading requirements, such as a database to do its own scheduling.

That’s just scraping the surface. Let’s dive into some of the major features wherein Windows 7 takes advantage of the server OS, and ways in which Windows Server turns on new functionality in the client OS. READ MORE

Moving to 64-bit Windows is not a necessity and may prove a headache if not done right. Here’s what to keep in mind when deciding which version of Windows 7 to deploy. READ MORE

Microsoft began the process of adding multi-core processor support in Windows Vista, but it really improved the underlying technology with Windows 7. Here’s what it means for you. READ MORE