I was happy to see four different solutions following my Google search. I would like to share the one which stood out with a very strong recommendation. The client is called MidpSSH and it is available in various versions that support telnet,ssh1 and ssh2. A full version that contains all the three versions is also available and it is only 119kBytes in size. This was the choice I made. I was able to establish an ssh2 connection with a remote server in no time. The MidpSSH client allows the screen to be rotated in order to provide a nice, easy to read display on my S500i. This could suite any Linux Admin on the move with any MIDP 2.0 compliant mobile device.

Intel Core i7 Logo

Intel has come up with a promising new core design that does a few very innovative things. It is the fastest desktop x86 processor available today. It has made this feat possible via the following.

1.   It eliminates the notorious FSB (front side bus) and the bottlenecks caused by it.
2.   It makes use of three channel DDR3 RAM, the memory controller is on the processor die.

3.   The cores are intelligently over-clockable by upto 400MHz. So the performance hungry applications can get extra CPU cycles when needed the most.
4. Ensures greener computing by switching off idle cores when they are idle.

The most interesting feature is the replacement for FSB, Intel calls it the “Quick Path” technology. QuickPath reminds me of the revolutionary Hypertransport bus used by AMD. The initial models of Core i7 only have a single QuickPath link, which means they are not meant for multiprocessor machines. Newer models are yet to come.

Intel’s decision to put the memory controller on CPU die has increased the package pin count to 1366 !. Ths chip comes in an LGA1366 package.

Home automation systems need to be very user friendly, safe and energy efficient. Crimzon Connects from Zilog fulfills all these requirements. One has to see the Crimzon Connects Video to believe it. You can use an iPhone to control and command all the electronic appliances and lighting in your home connected via Crimzon Connects.

Yet another achievement by Zilog Corp. Hats Off to you !!

gOS or “good OS” is an operating system created by ‘Good OS LLC’, a Los Angeles-based corporation. The company initially advertised it as “An alternative OS with Google Apps and other Web 2.0 apps for the modern user.” The first version gOS was based on Ubuntu 7.10 and the Enlightenment window manager.

Based on the idea of cloud computing, all versions of gOS lean heavily on on-line applications built on Web 2.0 and AJAX technology so they also do not use much hard disk space for applications. The whole gOS-1 system fits comfortably in less than 2 GB of disk space. Also many of the documents created with gOS, such as Google Docs documents, can be saved on Google servers instead of on the local hard disk, so gOS can work with very small hard disks. In gOS V2 Rocket, Good OS introduced the use of Google’s “Google Gears” technology which promises to make Google’s web applications usable without an internet connection. Currently, Google Reader and Google Docs are the only supported Google applications.

Recently we have been seeing a lot of netbook and netPC vendors adapt various light-weight versions of different Linux distributions for use as the Netbook OS. gOS provides a very good alternative for Windows CE and Symbian. It can do much more than these operating systems. Everex and Sylvania have come up with the most prominent products that make use of this cute little OS. 

Hifn have created a first of its kind Network Processor 5NP4G. The 5NP4G is a programmable network processor optimized for packet processing at speeds up to OC-48. The 5NP4G implements copper  interconnect technology and integrates a switching engine, search engine, frame processors, and multiplexed MACS. Designed to satisfy enterprise, core, edge networking, and Internet service requirements at wire speed, the 5NP4G network processor can deliver complex functions, such as (QoS), scheduling, flow control, and differentiated services.

5N4PG Block Diagram

The exceptional processing capability of the Hifn 5NP4G is enabled from its embedded processor complex, which is made up of 16 picoprocessors, multiple hardware accelerators, and a PowerPC™ microprocessor.  A pair of picoprocessors share hardware accelerators in a configuration that can process up to 32 frames in parallel and provide an aggregate 2,128 MIPS. The hardware accelerators perform tree searches, frame forwarding, frame filtering, frame alteration, and other functions. The “run to completion” programming model, with zero-overhead hardware based thread switching, provides a single threaded programmer’s view on top of a multi-threaded, multiprocessor platform.

The embedded PowerPC gives manufacturers the flexibility to support custom functions, such as enhanced frame processing, configuration, management, and higher-layer protocols. The integrated PCI interface enables connections to new peripheral devices to help meet customer needs.

The 5NP4G’s multiplexed MACS can simplify designs for diverse protocols and enable more compact and lower power products. The 5NP4G supports 40 10/100 Ethernet ports or 4 Gigabit Ethernet ports. Alternatively, it can support 1 OC-48, 4 OC-12 POS, 16 OC-3 POS, or link aggregated POS ports. In Ethernet applications, the 5NP4G supports IEEE 802.3ad link aggregation, IEEE 802.1q VLAN detection, and jumbo frames.

Centaur Technology have come up with a very interesting way of evaluating the energy efficiency of micoprocessor products. It is called the TreeMark™ Tree Rating. Centaur defines it as “The number of trees that need to be planted to counter the amount of carbon dioxide created as a by-product of the electricity generated to power the processor over its operational lifetime”. The good thing is, Centaur’s processors rate very well on this benchmark when compared with their Intel or AMD counterparts.

I still keep on wondering what would be the TreeMark rating for the components other than the processor in a computer. If a processor’s TreeMark rating is 7 trees, the rest of the electronics in the computer could raise the bar by 14-20 more trees. Not to mention the amount of thermal cooling required in the datacenters.

The situation demands more involvement in the process of creating energy efficient compute appliances on part of the industry leaders. I would like to mention the good work done by IBM for the Power6 Processor.

The figure below shows how the TreeMark Tree rating can be calculated for an electrical load.

Yes, the buzz is getting stronger every day… I still remember buying my first book on IPv6 around 8 years ago. It did discuss the theoretical aspects of the successor of the prevalent IPv4 protocol. I kept wondering what happened to IPv5 though

I have started planning my move to IPv6 already,I would suggest we all take it seriously.

The two features, namely faceted drilldown and tabbed search for related terms are shown in the figures below.

One has to use it to believe its effectiveness. Highly recommended Search Engine, good job Cuil team… !

um-FPU block diagram

MicroMegacorp have created an FPU that comes in two versions an 8-pin DIP and an 18-pin DIP package. They can be connected via an I²C or SPI interface with virtually any micro controller that supports either of these interfaces. An IDE is provided by Micromegacorp that allows convenient translation of mathematical expressions into uM FPU code. The uM FPU is also capable of performing fixed point,floating point,long integer addition, multiplication,division and type casting functions. Not just that, it comes with flash memory that can be used for user defined functions.

I’ll definitely recommend using this space saving number cruncher for your next project. Do share your experience in replies to this post.

If you have ever wished that Windows XP / 2000 would install unattended and you had control over which components would install…. there is a tool just right for you. nLite allows you to customize & automate the windows install process with amazing flexibility. nLite comes with the following features:

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• Service Pack Integration
• Component Removal
• Unattended Setup
• Driver Integration
• Hotfixes Integration
• Tweaks
• Services Configuration
• Bootable ISO creation

I find Driver integration and Service pack integration the most useful features, not to mention the ability to create ISO images for installation, which is indeed very useful from a systems administrator’s point of view. nLite requires .Net 2.0 framework to run and supports all the above mentioned features for Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows 2003. It also supports the 32 bit (x86) and 64 bit (x64) version of these operating systems out of the box.