The post of systems administrator could soon become little more than a memory as IBM is planning to create a highly evolved computer - a machine working like the human central nervous system to become the world's first self-healing computer.

IBM is progressing in the future, entitled this as "Autonomic Computing", a call for researchers and developers worldwide to create a computer system that will make the problems and the complexities of IT systems a thing of the past.

Autonomic computing will see most systems maintaining higher levels of automation by working in a similar way to a human's central nervous system, which takes care of the basic maintenance of the human body, such as breathing, digestion and heart rate.

Similarly computers will evolve to become automatically configured for example a machine that will correct any human errors made during programming.

Mandy Chessell, master innovator at IBM, said: "Our aim is to create computer systems and software which can respond to the digital environment so systems can adapt and even heal themselves which will result in less work for humans and the IT departments. We will aim to develop our hardware and software with built-in autonomy," she said.

IBM compared the mechanisms of an autonomic computer with the human brain. For instance, if a child burns his hand, his brain automatically sends a message to the hand to pull it away. Similarly, a computer will be able to self-diagnose any fault in the network automatically.

IBM's concept of autonomy consists of many different components, such as the pervasive computing model which sees high-speed access anywhere at anytime and grid computing, which aims to treat computing power like an electrical utility network and involves sharing huge database files and programs across network connections.

Dr Daron G Green, EMEA manager of Grid technologies, gave a more practical example of autonomic computing:

"Presently computers come with manuals to describe how to configure the system, creating a certain mindset for the IT worker. One of our first aims is to try to build computers that can configure themselves without human intervention," he said.

For more rock solid predictions for the future, check out silicon.com's new hot topic, Beyond the Processor at http://www.silicon.com/btp

Microsoft Corp. will change how users activate Windows XP when Service Pack 3 launches in the first half of 2008, a company white paper said.

New installations of Windows XP SP3 will give users the same 30-day grace period currently offered to Windows Vista customers before they're required to enter a product activation key, the 25-character code that proves the copy is legitimate.

"As in Windows Server 2003 SP2 and Windows Vista, users can now complete operating system installation without providing a product key during a full, integrated installation of Windows XP SP3," the Microsoft paper stated. "The operating system will prompt the user for a product key later as part of Genuine Advantage."

With earlier editions of Windows XP, users must enter the activation key during the installation process itself; failing to do so, or using an invalid key, would result in the installation being blocked.

The white paper, however, noted that the change does not apply to existing Windows XP installations upgraded to SP3. Those copies, which have presumably passed the activation stage previously, will not request the key again, Microsoft said.

Ed Bott of ZDNet, who created a "slip-streamed" Windows XP SP3 installation CD from the release candidate issued 10 days ago to simulate a fresh installation, noted that after the 30-day grace period expired, Windows masked the log-on screen with a message demanding a valid activation key.

"If you click No, you're returned to the log-on screen," said Bott. "Click Yes and you go to a desktop where your only option is to enter a product key. If you click Remind Me Later in that box, you'll also be sent back to the log-on screen."

The change is the second this month that Microsoft has made to its product activation and anticounterfeit technology, collectively dubbed "Windows Genuine Advantage." In early December, for example, the company softened its stance on Windows Vista and Windows Server by promising to kill the "kill switch," and stop turning off features or restricting access to files when a copy fails validation.

Microsoft has eliminated what it called "reduced functionality mode" in both Vista SP1's final form, which will be available in early 2008, and Windows Server 2008 Release Candidate 1 (RC1). Rather than disable some features (as Vista did) or block most applications (as Windows Server did), the new editions simply post more persistent notices to nag users into upgrading to a valid, licensed copy.

Other than to hint that Windows XP users will see no changes to activation after upgrading their existing copies to SP3 next year, a Microsoft spokeswoman was unable to answer several questions about the modifications, including queries about whether the 30-day grace period will be able to be extended, as is Windows Vista's, and what prompted the new process.

After proving its mettle in areas like steel, automotive and IT services on the global arena, corporate behemoth Tata group has now developed the world's fourth fastest supercomputer EKA that can do 117.9 trillion calculations per second.

EKA - A supercomputer developed by Computational Research Laboratories (CRL), a subsidiary of Tata Sons Ltd, at a cost of $30 million (Rs118.11 crore) has been ranked the fourth fastest in the world by Top500, a project that ranks world’s 500 most powerful computers.ka, the supercomputer, is also ranked the fastest computer in Asia, and is based on a Hewlett-Packard Co. system.This is the first time that an Indian supercomputer has been ranked among the top 10 in this list.

International Business Machines Corp.’s (IBM) super computer Blue Gene/L, installed in the US, ranked first in the list with a benchmark performance of 478.2 teraflops.CRL develops applications in areas such as neural simulation, molecular simulation, computational fluid dynamics, crash simulation and digital media animation and rendering.

the open source (Linux)- based supercomputer Eka is housed at the Computational Mathematics Laboratory (CML) of TIFR, located at the Pune University campus. The computer has a speed of one tera floating point operations per second (flops), equivalent to Param Padma, the fastest and most powerful in the Param series of supercomputers developed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), and allows CML to run various complex algorithms with upto one billion variables. It is cool to see India's fastest supercomputer under top 10 in the tentative list of 500 . Surely , We will build fastest supercomputer in the world in recent years .

The supercomputer rankings are compiled by Hans Meuer of the University of Mannheim, Germany; Erich Strohmaier and Horst Simon of NERSC/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; and Jack Dongarra of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.Bloomberg’s Mathew Miller contributed to this story.source : IBEF

I see lots of people talking about Intel and AMD processors . After the release of Intel core 2 duo processors it seems to all that AMD is far behind Intel in the field of processors. But If you will see the real benchmarks between AMD processors ( talking about athlon ) and intel processors you will find AMD better in each aspects ranging from calculation per seconds to power consumption . But Many People won't believe me . So for those people I am presenting here a perfect comparison in these processors so that they can also know How and why AMD is better?

First of all I am concentrating on it's design .AMD and Intel have concurrent design and manufacturing contests going on - with AMD ahead in design and Intel ahead in manufacturing, but both already committing to taking x86 evolution back to the megahertz race.

Thus AMD's on-board hypertransport -and the forthcoming "barcelona" evolution - is clearly better than Intel's reliance on bridging hardware, while Intel's lead to both 65nm and 45nm manufacturing gives it clear advantages on both processor cycles and processor power use. Basically, AMD's design lead produces more throughput per cycle while Intel's manufacturing lead allows it to produce more cycles per second for less input power.

So what does this mean in real life? I think it means that, on average, AMD boards are likely to perform closer to their potential in the hands of ordinary users than Intel boards because the defaults are pretty good and you don't need a lot of hardware expertise to tune them for specific uses.

With hypertransport, for example, you don't need to debottleneck the bridge for large shared memory applications by tweaking the BIOS to create a kind of faux NUMA -arranging for large objects to be spread across multiple SIMMS, and therefore channels.

Since Intel has that expertise and the average user hasn't, you'd expect their benchmark results to be unapproachable in ordinary use - but, of course, we can't really test for that effect from published data. A corolary effect we can test for, however, suggests that AMD's benchmarking efforts should show better returns to power input than Intel's -i.e. less loss of processing efficiency per cycle as the number of cycles per second rises.

And, in fact, you do see that effect in published results. Consider, for example, a number of late 2006 results for the 100GB the TPC/H benchmark, all on Dell PCs using Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edt (x64) and Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 Edition.

The best of the Intel dual core results shows a Dell PE6800 with 64GB and four dual core Intel Xeon MPs at 3.4Ghz scoring 16,320 QphH or 1.66Mhz/QphH, while the top rated Dell 6900 with dual Intel X5355 "quad" core packs at 2.66Ghz achieved 15,724QphH or 1.353Mhz/QphH.

In comparison the result for a Dell PE6950 with 64GB and four AMD dual core Opteron 8220SE at 2.8GHz shows 17,180 QphH or 1.30Mhz/QphH - 27% better per cycle ( and 5% better in absolute terms) than the comparable Xeon and trivially better (4%) per cycle but almost 10% better in absolute terms than the Intel quad pack.

And if all of that leaves you confused, think about it this way: all of these comparisons pit 90nm AMD processors against 65nm Intel products - meaning that AMD should jump to a 25% or greater lead when both are made at 65nm, and Intel will catch up again when they go to 4Ghz and 45nm.

So finally coming to conclusion that at present for the normal user better choice should be AMD rather than Intel not because AMD is cheaper than Intel but according to benchmarks which we have developed above. Normally people believe only in written data but don't go through the facts , which is the main reason why people divert their mind from AMD to Intel .

After the release of Microsoft Dream Project Windows Vista in the world market it seems to have tough fight between linux vs. windows. On the one side we have a well establish Windows , and on the other hand we have Linux still fighting for it's existence but have the power of open source.

If You will ask whether I will prefer windows or linux I will have only one line to say : "I'll believe Linux is ready for the desktop as soon as you can give me a Linux distribution that even my grandmother can run."


For some time, the folks at Ubuntu have been trying their best to make Granny -- and most everyone else -- happy. They've attempted to build a Linux distribution that's easy to install, use, configure, and maintain -- one that's at least as easy as Windows, and whenever possible, even easier. As a result, Ubuntu is one of the Linux distributions that has been most directly touted as an alternative to Windows.

In this feature, I'm going to compare the newly-released Ubuntu 7.04 (codenamed "Feisty Fawn") with Microsoft Windows Vista in a number of categories. To keep the playing field as level as possible, I'm looking wherever I can at applications -- not just in the sense of "programs," but in the sense of what the average user is going to do with the OS in a workday. Sometimes the differences between the two OSes are profound, but sometimes the playing field levels itself -- OpenOffice.org, for instance, is installed by default in Ubuntu, but adding it to Vista isn't terribly difficult.

I tried to stick whenever possible with preinstalled software, although this rule sometimes had to be bent a little -- for instance, to see what backup solutions were available for Ubuntu through its own software catalog.

Also, while I was tempted to compare Vista's Aero interface to the Beryl window manager (which has a similar palette of visual effects), I decided that pretty graphics, while nice, had more to do with personal preference than efficiency. In addition, Beryl isn't installed by default in Ubuntu, and Aero isn't available on all PCs.

In each case, I've tried to look at practical benefits rather than theoretical ones -- what works, what doesn't, and what you have to do to get certain things done. I should also note that, despite being a big fan of Vista, I've tried to keep my enthusiasm for it from overriding my judgment. Everyone needs something different, and not everyone needs (or wants) Vista -- or Ubuntu -- so I've done my best to keep my mind, and my eyes, wide open.