At SC16, AMD announced that Radeon GPU technology will be available to Google Cloud Platform users worldwide. Starting in 2017, Google will use AMD's fastest available single-precision dual GPU compute accelerators, Radeon-based AMD FirePro S9300 x2 Server GPUs, to help accelerate Google Compute Engine and Google Cloud Machine Learning services. AMD FirePro S9300 x2 GPUs can handle highly parallel calculations, including complex medical and financial simulations, seismic and subsurface exploration, machine learning, video rendering and transcoding, and scientific analysis. Google Cloud Platform will make the AMD GPU resources available for all their users around the world.

"Graphics processors represent the best combination of performance and programmability for existing and emerging big data applications," said Raja Koduri, senior vice president and chief architect, Radeon Technologies Group, AMD. "The adoption of AMD GPU technology in Google Cloud Platform is a validation of the progress AMD has made in GPU hardware and our Radeon Open Compute Platform, which is the only fully open source hyperscale GPU compute platform in the world today. We expect that our momentum in GPU computing will continue to accelerate with future hardware and software releases and advances in the ecosystem of middleware and libraries."

Vulkan, the new-generation cross-platform 3D graphics API governed by the people behind OpenGL, the Khronos Group, is gaining in relevance, with Google making it the primary 3D graphics API for Android. AMD said that it's actively promoting the API. Responding to a question by TechPowerUp in its recent Radeon Technology Group (RTG) first anniversary presser, its chief Raja Koduri agreed that the company is actively working with developers to add Vulkan to their productions, and optimize them for Radeon GPUs. This, we believe, could be due to one of many strategic reasons.

First, Vulkan works inherently better on AMD Graphics CoreNext GPU architecture because it's been largely derived from Mantle, a now defunct 3D graphics API by AMD that brings a lot of "close-to-metal" API features that make game consoles more performance-efficient, over to the PC ecosystem. The proof of this pudding is the AAA title and 2016 reboot of the iconic first-person shooter "Doom," in which Radeon GPUs get significant performance boosts switching from the default OpenGL renderer to Vulkan. These boosts aren't as pronounced on NVIDIA GPUs.

Game developer CryTek is planning to implement Vulkan API support for its in-house game-engine, CryEngine. To be released in November 2016 as CryEngine 5.3, CryTek will implement Vulkan across platforms, including PC (Windows desktop/notebook), and mobile (smartphones, tablets). The decision to implement Vulkan could have been fueled by Google's decision to make Vulkan the primary 3D graphics API of Android.

CryTek will also expand its support for DirectX 12, which it implemented in March 2016. With CryEngine 5.4, scheduled to be released in February 2017, along the sidelines of the Game Developers Conference (GDC), CryTek is introducing support for DirectX 12 native multi-GPU; deferred shading in sandboxed viewports, and multi-threaded rendering in sandbox.

Google is reportedly working on a new operating system it codenamed "Fuchsia" on the project's Git repository. Some of the oldest comments read "pink + purple = fuchsia (a new operating system)." The Verge speculates that looking at the focus on lightweight code, Fuchsia could be a cross-platform operating system that unifies the Android and ChromeOS ecosystems. Another theory holds that the OS could drive the company's routers and IoT devices. The OS is based on Magenta, a heavily stripped down micro-kernel based on Linux. Magenta's lightweight design favors embedded applications.

DisplayLink, the leading provider of USB graphics technology, today announced its docking stations and adapters work with Chrome OS Release 51 onwards. A demonstration of the native plug-and-display capability will be shown at Interop 2016, Las Vegas showcasing the latest Chromebooks from industry leaders such as Dell and HP. For a demo, visit the DisplayLink booth at Interop Las Vegas Expo, between May 4th and May 5th.

"DisplayLink is truly excited to announce native OS support in Google's Chrome OS from today onwards," said John Cummins, Senior Vice President Sales and Marketing. "No driver is required, just plug in any DisplayLink device and it just works. As Chromebooks have expanded across education and corporate markets, we've experienced strong demand to enable Chromebooks with the DisplayLink installed base of millions of devices. A Chromebook and DisplayLink multi-head docking station enables multiple monitors for a true productivity desktop experience. We are proud to have worked closely with Google to deliver this new functionality to customers worldwide."

A FAST '16 paper titled "Flash Reliability in Production: The Expected and the Unexpected," by Professor Bianca Schroeder of the University of Toronto, and Raghav Lagisetty and Arif Merchant of Google, studied the reliability data from millions of SSD drive-days over a period of 6 years, to come up with some very interesting conclusions on SSD reliability. One of the study's biggest findings is that high-end (read: enterprise) SSDs with single-level cell (SLC) NAND flash memory are no more reliable than cheaper multi-level cell (MLC) drives. Besides millions of drive-hours, the group also studied 10 different models of enterprise and consumer SSDs, from three different memory types - MLC NAND, SLC NAND, and eMLC NAND.

The study also shows that RBER (raw bit error rate) is a more dependable measure of reliability than UBER (uncorrectable bit error rate) mentioned in drive specs or datasheets. RBER increases slower than expected from wearout, and isn't correlated with UBER. However, the measured/real-world UBER is higher for SSDs than HDDs. This means that while SSDs are less likely to "fail" than HDDs, they're more likely to lose portions of their data. Keep your SSDs regularly imaged. Age, rather than usage, affects reliability of SSDs. A disturbing 30-80% of SSDs in the study developed at least one bad-block, and 2-7% of the SSDs developed at least one bad chip, within the first 4 years of deployment.

HP Inc. today announced the HP Chromebook 11 G4 Education Edition (EE) -- a durable, lightweight Chromebook designed to meet the needs of students and educators. "The popularity of Chromebooks in the classroom offers a simple, secure, and manageable solution to enable technology-based learning," said Gus Schmedlen, vice president of Worldwide Education, HP. "With the HP Chromebook 11 G4 Education Edition (EE), we are bringing innovation, design and HP's legendary quality to students and teachers in a durable device built to survive the rigorous school environment while enabling students to achieve more both in and out of the classroom."

Because students can be some of the most demanding users when it comes to technology, HP designed the HP Chromebook 11 G4 EE with their environment in mind. At 20 mm thin and just 2.7 pounds, the fanless HP Chromebook 11 G4 EE is the thinnest rugged Chromebook for Education designed to pass MIL-STD testing. With rugged construction accents like co-molded rubber edges, the device passes HP's 70 cm drop test to help protect it from occasional bumps with lockers and drops from desks.

Qualcomm, which holds a ton of ARM SoC patents, and put them to good use with its Snapdragon line of SoCs for smartphones, tablets, and convertible notebooks, is foraying into enterprise computing market. The company is ready with its first prototype of a 24-core high-performance CPU based on the 64-bit ARM machine architecture. ARM-based processors are picking up momentum in the server and micro-server markets owning to their low cost, low cooling requirements, and high energy-efficiency; and Qualcomm wants a slice of that pie. Most enterprise Linux and FreeBSD distributors have versions of their server operating systems for the 64-bit ARM architecture, as do most popular server software providers.

The prototype 24-core CPU is socketed, and ships in a large land-grid array (LGA) package, much like Intel's Xeon chips. The first production chips will have a lot more than 24 CPU cores, said Qualcomm senior vice president Anand Chandrasekhar. As a proof of concept, Qualcomm assembled three server blades using these chips, which were running Linux with a KVM hypervisor, streaming HD video to a PC using a LAMP stack (Linux + Apache + MySQL + PHP) built with OpenStack. Qualcomm's target consumers are big Internet companies like Google and Facebook, which purchase hundreds of thousands of CPUs each year to cope with growing user- and content-traffic.

There's the ordinary travel routers that function as their names suggest, and then there's this extraordinary new device that outdoes the rest of the gang - ASRock H2R (HDMI 2-in-1 router). Besides working as a travel router, it can also be used as an Ethernet adapter, or even an HDMI dongle substitute for Apple TV or Google Chromecast.

Imagine yourself on a lonesome odyssey. Weary and burdened from the excursion, you reluctantly relinquish and check in at a shabby hostel. Flipping through foreign channels mindlessly makes you feel even more disconnected. But deep down you know it isn't the solitude that's devouring your consciousness bit by bit. What you're facing is one of human's primal fears, fear of the absence of a strong and perpetual WiFi signal. Your only salvation lies within ASRock H2R and a functioning RJ45 LAN cable.

TP-LINK, a leading global provider of consumer and business networking products, has collaborated with Google to introduce OnHub, a router for the new way to Wi-Fi. OnHub is a new kind of router designed to keep up with the latest technology in the home, and help make Wi-Fi faster, more secure, and easy to use.

OnHub addresses some of the most significant challenges associated with Wi-Fi today. It's designed to be out in the open, where it works its best. It has fewer wires, a shell to keep cords tidy and lighting that is subtle and useful. OnHub's innovative antenna design combined with smart software continually work to enhance users' Wi-Fi connection. With its extensive router heritage, TP-LINK's expertise was an integral contribution to OnHub's design, in particular its unique circular antenna with 13 built-in, hidden antennas that reduce network interference and optimize network connectivity.

Lenovo today, announced at its Accelerate 2015 Partner Forum in Las Vegas, the newest addition to the ThinkCentre Tiny business desktop family: the ThinkCentre Chromebox. Purposefully-designed for education and small business users looking to leverage the benefits of a cloud-based solution. This space-saving, one litre desktop is versatile, easy to manage and has a full ecosystem of optional accessories while Google's Chrome operating system offers a wide range of easy to use applications to learn, share, and collaborate in a highly secure environment. Furthermore, the new ThinkCentre is the first and only Chromebox on the market that can combine with the ThinkCentre Tiny-in-One to instantly offer a 23-inch all-in-one experience.

ThinkCentre Chromebox helps education institutions and small businesses who want to deploy secure and easy to manage technology within manageable budgets. The simplicity and flexibility of Chrome OS devices offer a fast and easy way to manage computing and provide access to the web's vast education and collaboration resources. Teachers and IT Managers can also take advantage of centralized device management providing asset tracking, easy deployment of new applications, system updates or enabling safe-browsing policies for users through a simple management console.

Two years ago, Google introduced the first Chromebook Pixel. The idea was to bring together the best in hardware, software and design to inspire the next generation of Chromebooks. It's been exciting to see how the entire range of Chromebooks-from classroom-proof to high-end-has made a difference to people at school, at home, and at work. Today, we're introducing an updated and more powerful Pixel to fuel the imaginations of another wave of Chromebook enthusiasts. Plus, we've created a new, online Google Store where you can get the Pixel and other devices made with Google, all in one place.

These days, packing for a trip means remembering to bring all your different chargers-for your phone, laptop, tablet, watch, etc. We think you should be able to use just one charger for all your electronics. So for the new Pixel, we've joined forces with some of the biggest names in the industry to create a new standard for charging, called USB Type C. The Pixel is one of the first products to launch with this new standard, with more Chromebooks and Android devices following suit soon.

Lenovo and Google announced today that Lenovo's acquisition of Motorola Mobility from Google is complete. The acquisition of the Motorola brand and Motorola's portfolio of innovative smartphones like Moto X, Moto G, Moto E and the DROID series, as well as the future Motorola product roadmap, positions Lenovo as the world's third largest maker of smartphones.

Lenovo will operate Motorola as a wholly-owned subsidiary. Motorola's headquarters will remain in Chicago. With the completion of the acquisition, Lenovo welcomes the addition of a new portfolio company with nearly 3,500 employees around the world - including about 2,800 in the U.S. - who design, engineer, sell and support Motorola's outstanding devices.

HP today announced a new lineup of sleek consumer PCs including, two new powerful HP ENVY x2 detachable PCs designed to deliver a notebook experience for productivity, but quickly transform to a tablet for entertainment and apps; the ultra-portable HP Pavilion x2 detachable PC designed for customers who want to simplify their life with a single device that transforms from tablet to laptop; and two new colorful HP Chromebooks that bring the power of the Chrome OS for a fast, simple, protected internet experience.

"Customers have told us they want devices that offer flexibility and performance while reflecting their personal sense of style," said Mike Nash, vice president, Product Management, Consumer Personal Systems, HP. "The products we are announcing today include innovative designs, vibrant color options, choice of operating system and computing power to enable the way that customers communicate, play and live."

Today at VMworld 2014, VMware, NVIDIA and Google announced a collaborative effort to deliver high-performance virtual desktops and workstation-class graphics to Google Chromebooks. Showcased as a technology preview, the solution demonstrates the next generation of VMware Blast Performance and NVIDIA GRID vGPU technology to satisfy customers' most demanding visual computing needs. The joint effort is expected to expand the hardware options for high-performance virtual desktops, enabling customers to select their system of choice without compromise.

"We are breaking down traditional barriers to adopting virtual desktops and offering new economics for the delivery of graphics-intensive applications through the power of the cloud," said Sanjay Poonen, executive vice president and general manager, End-User Computing, VMware. "Organizations of all industries and requirements will soon be able to embrace the mobile-cloud using a solution that offers a new way to work from three proven industry leaders."

Google Inc. today announced financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2014.

"We completed another great quarter. Google's revenue was $15.4 billion, up 19% year on year", said Larry Page, CEO of Google. "We got lots of product improvements done, especially on mobile. I'm also excited with progress on our emerging businesses."

Q1 Financial Summary
On January 29, 2014, we entered into an agreement with Lenovo Group Limited providing for the disposition of the Motorola Mobile business. As such, financial results of Motorola Mobile are presented as "Net loss from discontinued operations" on the Consolidated Statements of Income for the quarter ended March 31, 2013 and 2014; and assets and liabilities of Motorola Mobile to be disposed of are presented as "Assets held for sale" and "Liabilities held for sale", respectively, on the Consolidated Balance Sheet as of March 31, 2014.

LG Electronics will unveil the first-ever LG Chromebase, an all-in-one computer powered by the Google Chrome operating system, at next month's 2014 International CES. The LG Chromebase (Model 22CV241) offers the highly efficient Chrome operating system for a fast, simple, secure and affordable computing experience. Along with the unique operating system, a 21.5-inch widescreen Full HD IPS display and a raft of advanced features, this innovative new desktop computer comes packaged in a chic, space-saving design.

The LG Chromebase all-in-one computer is underpinned by a simple yet powerful architecture and comes with several outstanding Google applications. It also serves as a gateway to tens of thousands of web apps in the Chrome Web Store, many of which work just as well offline as they do online.
The LG Chromebase allows users to write emails and documents, read the latest news and Ebooks, edit videos and photos and play entertaining games. The streamlined platform makes almost any task effortless and is the perfect device for taking advantage of Google products such as Gmail, Drive, Search, Maps, YouTube, Play or
Google+ Hangouts.

Google and HP, together with the US Consumer Product Safety Commission have today announced a recall plan targeting the charger bundled with the HP Chromebook 11. One month ago the two tech giants stopped selling the Chromebook after getting reports that the charger would overheat and melt, thus posing a fire and burn hazard. To date the companies know of one person who suffered minor burns from a faulty charger.

People who purchased the HP Chromebook 11 are advised to stop using the charger and contact Google for a free replacement. In all there are some 145,000 units that will need to be replaced. For more info check out this page.

Launched just about a month ago, the Chromebook 11 is now no longer available for purchase due to issues with the included charger. According to Google and HP, they received a 'small number of user reports' saying that the charger got damaged due to overheating while in use.

Chromebook 11 owners are advised to stop using the original charger and instead use a third-party micro-USB charger, at least until further notice. The two companies are currently working with the Consumer Product Safety Commission to find 'the appropriate corrective action' which could mean an exchange program, swapping the potentially faulty chargers with new ones (for free of course).

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, today introduced an SSD management application that centrally monitors and manages OCZ enterprise drives connected to network servers, storage arrays or appliances. Developed as a network-accessible management system, OCZ's new StoragePro XL 1.1 provides IT managers with a cross-platform view of their enterprise flash resources for centralized management, monitoring, maintenance and reporting.

StoragePro XL securely connects to multiple host systems across the network and allows IT managers to centrally monitor and administer their enterprise flash resources from a web-based management interface. Supporting enterprise hosts running Linux and Windows operating systems, and featuring an easy-to-use web-based centralized GUI (graphical user interface), IT managers are afforded specific drive details on performance, reliability and operation. Along with the monitoring functionality, a user configurable alerting systems is provided that enables identification of any potential system and/or storage issues in advance enabling corrective actions to be initiated at an early stage.

Google Inc. today announced financial results for the quarter ended September 30, 2013.

"Google had another strong quarter with $14.9 billion in revenue and great product progress," said Larry Page, CEO of Google. "We are closing in on our goal of a beautiful, simple, and intuitive experience regardless of your device."

Q3 Financial Summary
Google Inc. reported consolidated revenues of $14.89 billion for the quarter ended September 30, 2013, an increase of 12% compared to the third quarter of 2012. Google Inc. reports advertising revenues, consistent with GAAP, on a gross basis without deducting traffic acquisition costs (TAC). In the third quarter of 2013, TAC totaled $2.97 billion, or 24% of advertising revenues.

HP and Google have today announced a new Chrome OS-powered mobile solution, the Chromebook 11. Priced at $279, HP's creation weighs 2.3 pounds and features a thermal-bonded magnesium chassis, an 11.6-inch (1366 x 768) IPS display, a full size keyboard, and a battery enabling up to 6 hours of use.

The Chromebook 11 packs a Samsung Exynos 5250 dual-core processor, 2 GB of RAM, 16 GB of flash storage (backed by 100 GB of Google Drive cloud storage which is free for two years), a webcam, and two USB 2.0 ports.

HP is working on its next big [well, little] thing, the Chromebook 11. Details of the lightweight notebook for people who just can't stay offline, surfaced in leaked documents by the company and retailers. The 11.6-inch notebook will be both slimmer and lighter than Chromebook 14. Specifically, it will be just 0.7-inch (17 mm) thick with the lid closed, and weigh just 1.08 kg. Its battery will be designed to keep the notebook running for up to 6.5 hours on a full charge. Neither HP nor the retailer in question, BestBuy, disclose hardware specs, but we don't expect them to be too different from those of the Chromebook 14. Freebies from the retailer include 100 GB of Google Drive cloud storage for 2 years (a $120 value).

Google, IBM, Mellanox, NVIDIA and Tyan today announced plans to form the OpenPOWER Consortium - an open development alliance based on IBM's POWER microprocessor architecture. The Consortium intends to build advanced server, networking, storage and GPU-acceleration technology aimed at delivering more choice, control and flexibility to developers of next-generation, hyperscale and cloud data centers.

The move makes POWER hardware and software available to open development for the first time as well as making POWER IP licensable to others, greatly expanding the ecosystem of innovators on the platform. The consortium will offer open-source POWER firmware, the software that controls basic chip functions. By doing this, IBM and the consortium can offer unprecedented customization in creating new styles of server hardware for a variety of computing workloads.

HP today announced the HP SlateBook x2 and the HP Split x2, two detachable PCs that offer the full functionality of a notebook with a removable screen that also is a sleek tablet. Powered by the Android and Microsoft Windows 8 operating systems (OS), respectively, these versatile two-in-one devices combine power and portability, giving customers the flexibility to create, consume and share content in more places.

HP's unmatched portfolio of next-generation PCs is designed to enable users to connect with their information on devices that easily adapt to their needs. By releasing the magnetic hinge, users can move elegantly between the two form factors -- tablet and notebook PC -- all in one device.