The supercomputer at the Thor Data Center is based on a cluster of 288 HP ProLiant BL280c servers. The Intel Xeon Processor L5530-powered cluster is comprised of 3,456 compute cores with 71.7 terabytes of usable storage, and pumps out 35 teraflops of performance.

While building and shipping the machine’s parts to Icelandic-produced CO2, the machine — and in fact all of Iceland — is powered 24/7/365 by a mix of nothing but renewable hydro and geothermal power. To light up Iceland’s electrical grid, no fossil fuels puff, smoke or burn.

3 Notes   freepress.intel.comSource   Comment

Over a couple hours, the participants were told to go through a number of common computer scenarios, including formatting a picture, creating a PowerPoint presentation and even resetting the Wi-Fi connection. They had the option of using the touchscreen, the mouse, the track pad or the laptop’s keyboard. Participants were allowed to make whatever choice best suited their needs.

“We weren’t doing it to prove whether one mode was better than another,” Loi said. “We had no preconceived ideas.”

But the results were “astonishing,” she said. More than 77 percent of the time, the focus group participants chose to use touch for the various tasks assigned to them.

“As soon as I reviewed my tracking documents, there was no ambiguity about users’ strong preference for touch — I was blown away,” Loi said.

0 Notes   freepress.intel.comSource   Comment

An Apple for lunch by chrisschuepp on Flickr.

Turkey has a young, internet-savvy population and government investing in educational technology. Combined these are helping the Euro-Asian crossroads country boost economic prospects http://j.mp/KPXHqD.

Here two young Muslim women in the heart of Istanbul are having the Internet for lunch. This photo was taken in April 2007, an example that people in Turkey are early adopters of new technologies.

0 Notes   j.mpSource   Comment

As CIO, Kim Stevenson leads an IT organization of more than 6,500 employees located across 54 different sites. What’s Stevenson’s No. 1 job? Keeping Intel, and its more than 75,000 servers, almost 30,000 handhelds and over 100,000 PCs online and running.

Stevenson succeeded Diane Bryant as Intel’s CIO in January, and like Bryant before her is one of only 24 women CIOs at Fortune 100 companies. Before taking on the role, Stevenson was vice president and general manager of Intel’s global IT operations and services. Prior to joining the company in 2009, she spent 7 years at the former EDS, now HP enterprise services, and 18 years at IBM.

Stevenson discusses her role at Intel, including common misconceptions about IT, if employees should be permitted to stream content, the potential for voice-activated content services and the “unruly productivity” of the Intel culture.

0 Notes   freepress.intel.comSource   Comment

A high-tech medicine cart loaded with a fast PC and A/V links is helping doctors across Mexico to dialed up specialists located hundreds of miles away and talk via high-definition video.

Designed and outfitted by the Mexico-based company Medicina a Distancia, the telemedicine carts, called the Medikart, are designed so that patients not only receive more thorough and immediate care, but also save time and money.

“We’ve reached a point where patients are only traveling one time for surgery,” said Dr. Carlos Iglesias, CEO of Medicina a Distancia. “The rest is happening in that town.”

0 Notes   freepress.intel.comSource   Comment

Groundbreaking as the “Ivy Bridge” chips may be, their codename isn’t, according to the man who came up with the initial moniker for Intel’s next Core processor family. Ivy Bridge is the internal codename for Intel’s third-generation Core processors, the first of which will be unveiled in April.

0 Notes   freepress.intel.comSource   Comment

Design and feature-rich smartphones may be the sweet spot for innovation and profits, but the mobile phone industry is shifting to bring more affordable smartphones to market.

According to John Jackson, vice president of research at CCS Insights, “smartphones moving down the value chain” has been a reoccurring theme in the industry for years, but at the Mobile World Congress event last month this theme grew louder and more forceful. He said that Warren East, CEO of ARM, talked about taking smartphones down to the sub-$100 range, and Google Chairman Eric Schmidt talked about putting an Android in every pocket.

“It’s a race to enable aspiring users just as it was a race to connect them in the first place with their first mobile phones,” said Jackson.

0 Notes   freepress.intel.comSource   Comment

From farm boy to global chip head.

There’s little room for error when you are in charge of factory startups, thousands of engineers and technicians, and millions of dollars’ worth of tools that must work 24/7 so products can get in the hands of customers. Since 2008, Steve Megli has overseen thousands of Intel Assembly Test Manufacturing employees running factories in China, Malaysia, Costa Rica and Vietnam.

Megli grew up on a farm in Rock Falls, Ill., where he learned all about hard work. It was good preparation for a 25-year career with Intel’s Technology & Manufacturing Group, where today he’s a vice president and co-general manager of Assembly Test Manufacturing. Recently, Megli took a moment to talk about the need for so-called “possibility thinking” and how farming prepared him for Intel.

0 Notes   freepress.intel.comSource   Comment

wiredinsider:

Image via Smarter Upstarter

A few years ago, I got hooked on the fixed gear trend: There’s no freedom like that lightweight speed and given how mobile my life is these days, I need everything to be that ultra portable—and fast. Enter the Asus Ultrabook with a 2nd generation Intel® Core

1 Notes   wiredinsiderSource   wiredinsiderReblogged   Comment

Intel and GE set a goal to bring the compute time to get an image from a low-dose CT scan down from 100 hours per image to less than 1 hour. They did it — an improvement of 100x — by creating a better algorithm.

1 Notes   freepress.intel.comSource   Comment

Brazil voters use compact, portable voting devices connected to a centralized process that tabulates even close elections within hours.

Brazil implemented an all-electronic voting system more than a decade ago and has made improvements since. The municipal elections in October, for example, will employ an upgraded version of an Intel Atom-based voting machine that incorporates advanced fingerprint identification capacity.

0 Notes   freepress.intel.comSource   Comment

By day, Jeffrey Stephenson works as an information technology professional, but in his free time, he’s better known as “slipperyskip.” That’s his Twitter handle and the name he uses on computer hardware forums where he posts about how he transforms retro furniture and antique appliances — he once turned an Elvis microphone into a fully functioning PC. His handcrafted designs have made him a celebrity in many computer hardware circles and a living legend among PC modders.

“Sometimes an idea hits me that I just can’t shake,” he said. “It starts to dominate my every thought until the only way to get rid of it is to act on it. The Shure 55 microphone is an example. The idea of using it in a computer design ran in the back of my head for nearly a year. One day it all clicked and I just started building what became the Unidyne PC.”

He believes that most people like their technology to look like technology. But that’s not his audience. “I speak to those who like to express their style in everything they come in contact with,” he said.

Stephenson built his first homemade PC when he was a teenager. “It was a Digicomp mechanical 3-bit computer, an educational toy designed to teach about binary numbers,” said Stephenson.

Since then he’s created 30 unique computers, each a masterpiece blending modern technology and design styles ranging from Art Deco to Mission to Mid-Century Modern. He has never sold any of them, but he did enter his Decomatic living room entertainment PC in the 2007 Intel PC Design Challenge. One of his biggest joys is when his wife uses his creations to decorate their Live Oak, Florida area home.

1 Notes   freepress.intel.comSource   Comment

Russia will become the fourth-largest PC market in the world in 2012, according to IDC research director Stefania Lorenz.This means that for the first time more PCs will be sold in Russia than in Germany, Europe’s decades-long epicenter of PC demand.

“Certainly Russia is a driving force in PC growth in Europe, and consumers are driving the growing volume of sales,” Lorenz said in an interview for this story. “Between the first quarter of 2010 and the third quarter of 2011, consumer notebook sales in Russia grew from a staggering 241 percent [growing from a relatively small base of 273K units first quarter 2009 to 932K units first quarter 2010] to 21 percent in third quarter of 2011,” she said. “And if you look at just the third quarter of 2011, of the 2.6 million PC units sold, 2.2 million of those were sold to consumers.”

Improved living standards, computer literacy and Internet access across Russia, combined with a significant drop in prices, are making PCs attractive and accessible to more people, according to Lorenz.

0 Notes   freepress.intel.comSource   Comment

MIT looks at research being done by HP social networking scientist.

0 Notes   Comment