• Wow ...A Constellation is an own architecture type in the Top 500 list
• The are just 9 Itanium systems left in the list.
• The total sum of Gigaflop per second increased from 11705491,49 on 2415203 to 16958600,19 on 3121579 procs. Thus the yield per CPU increased from 4,85 to 5,43 Gigaflops per proc.
• By the way: Ten year ago, the list sumed up to 29367,61 gigaflops. That´s an performance increas of over 577 times in 10 years.
• When compare the actual increases with Moores law in it´s first derivation (Moore talked about transistor count, not performance), we see some interesting developments.Moores law suggests in it´s first derivation an increase in perfomance very 18 months. Over the 10,5 years period Moore´s law suggested an increase by the factor of 128. So the performance increase of the top 500 clusters was higher than Moores law suggest. The Top500 lists suggests a doubled performance in a little over 12 month instead on the long run.
• But this doubling is just correct when you look at the whole cluster. Let´s look at the CPU level and the list of 06/2007. In this list every CPU yielded 4.05 Gigaflop. The number of 06/2008 ist just increased by the factor of 1.3 in 18 month.
• Back to cluster level: In 06/2007 the TOP500 yielded 6974873 Gigaflop/second. In the following 18 months the the list showed an increase of 2.43 (as already mentioned, the total computing power of the Nov 2008 list was 16958600 GF/s)

Japanese electronics conglomerate Fujitsu Ltd will buy Siemens AG's 50 percent stake in their computer joint venture for 450 million euros ($567 million), aiming to boost its presence

The Power 560 can save up companies up to $840,000 and 80-percent in energy by consolidating 13 Sun Fire V490 servers on a single Power 560 server with PowerVM, as compared to consolidating the same number on four Sun SPARC Enterprise M5000 servers with dynamic system domains."

Der "IBM Power 560 Express"-Server verbindet laut Hersteller die Power6-Prozessor-Technologie mit verbesserter Virtualisierungsfähigkeit und Energieeffizienz. Er eigne sich insbesondere als Server-Konsolidierungs-Plattform oder als Datenbank- oder Applikations-Server. Wie der IT-Riese erklärt, können nun Mittelständler durch die Konsolidierung von dreizehn "Sun Fire V490"-Servern auf einem einzigen Power-560-Server mit PowerVM-Technologie bis zu 80 Prozent der Energie sparen im Vergleich zu einer eventuellen Konsolidierung derselben Server auf vier "Sun Sparc Enterprise M5000"-Servern mit Dynamic System Domains.

NetApp was unable to comment immediately on this story. Sun's win - if it is a win - and the PTO decisions potentially turn NetApp's WAFL IP into, well, IP waffle. Sun gets a welcome PR boost to its ZFS and open source credentials, leaving NetApp with a bloody nose and a 22-patent IT infringement case to deal with. Oh, and the economy is going down the tubes too. It isn't so sunny in Sunnyvale right now.

Big Blue’s financing unit, which leases hardware and finances projects, is big enough that the Securities and Exchange Commission put IBM on the “do not short” list. This list is designed to get shorts–folks that bet against stocks–off the backs of financial services companies long enough to raise capital or at least survive.

Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin had two words to describe the article - "sensational and regrettable."

Growth for high-end servers was strong, with banks, telcos, and manufacturers picking up lots of iron and with Power6 and Sparc machines doing particularly well, according to IDC
[...]
Sun Microsystems came in third in EMEA, helped hugely by sales of the Sparc Enterprise M line of rebadged Fujitsu iron, with $577 million in sales, up 1.9 percent.

Windows servers had a 10.3 percent growth in the quarter in EMEA, but Linux server sales actually fell by 1.8 percent, the first time since early 2002 when Linux showed a decline.

Als Hersteller für Telefonzubehör wurde die Fujitsu Limited 1935 in Tokio unter dem Namen Fuji Tsūshinki Seizō (富士通信機製造) gegründet. Sie entstand aus dem Kommunikationsbereich der Fuji Electric Company und war ein Joint Venture mit dem deutschen Unternehmen Siemens. Hieraus entstand auch der Name Fujitsu, der sich aus Fuji Electric, Jīmenzu (Siemens auf Japanisch) und Tsūshin, dem japanischen Wort für Kommunikation, zusammensetzt

Bei den Vierprozessorsystemen konnte sich HPs ProLiant DL580 G5 mit Windows Server 2003 und Microsoft SQL Server 2005 mit 5155 SD-Usern(1,97 s, 25.380 SAPS) klar vor Suns Fire X4450 mit Solaris 10 und MaxDB 7.6 behaupten, das nur auf 4600 SD-User (1,94s, 23120 SAPS) kommt.

Siemens betreibt die Trennung von Fujitsu Siemens weiter. Wie die Wirtschaftszeitung Euro am Sonntag aus informierten Kreise erfahren hat, wird derzeit ein Modell diskutiert, nachdem der japanische Fujitsu-Konzern den Anteil von Siemens im ersten Schritt übernehmen und das Endkunden-Geschäft später abstoßen wird. Als möglicher Interessent gelte der chinesische Computerhersteller Lenovo, der bereits das Notebookgeschäft IBMs übernommen hat. Fujitsu ist offenbar "vor allem an der Geschäftskundensparte interessiert", so das Blatt weiter.

Lehman Brothers’ real estate, including two data centers, proved central to a deal yesterday in which Barclays agreed to pay $1.75 billion to acquire most of Lehman’s North American operations. The data centers and Lehman’s headquarters building accounted for $1.5 billion of the deal’s value, with the British bank paying just $250 million in cash for Lehman’s North American investment banking and capital markets businesses.

Since it can’t afford to do this anymore, AMD plans to spin off its chip manufacturing operations by year’s end, probably by hawking them outright or by inking a partnership with a larger chipmaker – a maneuver akin to selling a house and leasing it back.
[...]
“We’re going to go away from a captive fab model to more of a fables model for the CPU part of the business,” Meyer says. “Longer-term, it relieves us of the burden of having to shell out cash for these gigantic factories. So it will be more of a pay-as-you-go model like a traditional fables semiconductor company.”

Reg reader Duncan said VMWare's FAIL represented a "fantastic bug for a company trying to embed itself into the modern computing world." While another reader, Eric, said the "time bomb" contained in the update was causing a lot of panic among businesses.

"Customers were fuming this morning having planned downtime for weeks. Vmware have alot of answering to do on this and no doubt share price will take a hit again," he said.

In a move that could set the stage for the sale or dismantling of a leading European maker of personal computers, Siemens AG has informed Fujitsu Ltd. that it wants out of their nine-year-old joint venture, people familiar with the matter say.