October 17, 2012, Storage Network Industry Association, Santa Clara, CA—We met with Wayne Adams, the chairman of the SNIA, to talk about his organization. In addition to working on standards and training certification programs, they also are the hosts for number of storage-related shows, such as Storage Network World and the Storage Developers Conference. The…
September 11, 2012, San Francisco—ARM described their efforts in increasing efficiency in their processor cores and their roadmap for the various segments they support. Their focus continues to be on power efficiency and now adds performance segments. For example, in the Cortex family the A5 is for small, power-efficient processors in embedded functions. The A7…
August 7, 2012, Siggraph, Los Angeles—We talked with Maxon about release 14 of their flagship tool, Cinema 4D. The latest version includes many new functions and integration with other commonly used tools for 3D motion graphics, visual effects, painting, and rendering. One new feature is the sculpting application for changing object shapes. Meshing can be…
August 20, 2012, Palo Alto, CA–We talked with Sheryl Connelly, a futurist at Ford Motor company who focuses on trends, scenario, and understanding buyer behaviors related to brands and technology. She has been working in this space for the past 8 years, and has access to multiple corporate resources. One of the directions she is…
August 21, 2012, Flash Memory Summit, Santa Clara, CA—We talked with Shaun Kung from Marvell about their latest memory platforms, called DragonFly. The storage division of Marvell makes turn-key adapters, controllers, and bridges for high-performance memory systems. The new board addresses three main functions; non-volatile RAM, non-volatile cache in front of SSD RAID, and as…
August 7, 2012, Siggraph, Los Angeles—We talked with Zoran Veselic from Christie about their HoloStation. The system is intended for scientific visualization and simulation where interactive immersion is needed. This is a four projector personal-sized CAVE (Computer Assisted Virtual Environment) for users who need a smaller environment than the traditional caves, which are the size…
August 8, 2012, Siggraph, Los Angeles—We talked with Barthold Lichtenbelt from Nvidia and Khronos at their 20th anniversary celebration. In addition to looking at their accomplishments in the past two decades, they continue to drive open standards into the industry. The latest releases include OpenGL ES 3.0, OpenGL 4.3, texture compression for both Open GL…
August 8. 2012, Siggraph, Los Angles—We talked with Larry Paul from Christie about high frame rate projectors for cinema. The changes in projection will be as significant as those from film to digital, and will focus on perceived image resolution. This transition is being driven by the oncoming changes in cinema from 2k to 4k…
August 7, 2012, Siggraph, Los Angeles—We talked with Adam Glick from AMD about their accelerated processor products. The new integrated processors can accelerate the workflows for graphics workers by offering high performance at low power. AMD is positioning the latest chip as the first part in this next generation of computing. The entry-level workstation platform,…
July 2012 – We had a chance to meet with the folks from Smart Storage and tour their domestic prototype and special products manufacturing facility in Newak, CA that they share with parent company Smart Modular. The enterprise storage supplier recently split from the parent company to a new facility due to their high growth…