HP announces ARM-based servers

1 November 2011 Last updated at 14:41 ET

Hewlett Packard plans to make computer servers using low-energy processors based on ARM Holdings' designs.

HP said the equipment would be cheaper to run than current alternatives.

UK-based ARM's chip architecture was originally developed for use in smartphones and other mobile devices.

The British firm said the deal was "a first step" towards increasing its presence in a sector dominated by Intel's X86-based processors.

Lower bills

The chips will be manufactured by Texas-headquartered Calxeda.

It said its Energycore server-on-a-chip would use as little as 1.5 watts. It claimed that is less than a tenth the power of today's most energy-efficient server processors.

Since the chips give off less heat, HP is able to put more of them in a single enclosure. As a result, it said, some companies would find their equipment took up to 94% less space.

But HP stresses the chips should not be viewed as an alternative, rather than a replacement, for Intel's more powerful products.

"There is always a trade off, you have less electrical draw but you have less processing power," David Calmers, HP UK's chief technology officer for servers, storage and networking, told the BBC.

He said the ARM-based chips would be suitable for delivering static web pages, but not tasks that involved heavy number crunching.

HP also plans to offer Intel's energy-efficient Atom processors as an alternative.

Test runs

To help customers decide what best suits their needs, the US firm also plans to open "discovery labs", so they can match their chips to their workload.

The first lab will open in Houston, Texas, and others are planned in Asia and Europe.

Mr Chalmers said he expects that by 2015, the low powered technology would account for about 10% of all servers' workload.

"Energy demands are a growing concern across our customer base. It's being felt most keenly at the hyperscale end - companies like LinkedIn or Facebook with hundreds of millions of users," he said.

"But also applications in more normal scale institutions."

ARM's designs are most commonly found in smartphones, such as Samsung's Galaxy S2, as well as televisions and tablet computers.

If Calxeda's use of its technology proves popular, it could become another lucrative licensing revenue stream. A recent report by research firm Gartner suggested HP was the world's largest server vendor, claiming about 30% of the market.

"We commend HP's innovation in this space and the investment being made to accelerate the development of a new class of compelling, energy-efficient servers," said Lance Howarth, ARM's executive vice president of marketing.

"[We] believe that ARM low-power technology and broad partner ecosystem will provide the ideal foundation for HP to drive a new wave of innovation in the server market."

However, industry watchers are more guarded, noting some customers may find the chips problematic.

"It's encouraging that HP is breaking away from the Intel monopoly. But that is what the software is designed to run on," said Chris Green, principal technology analyst at Davies Murphy Group.

"It's all very well them rolling out an ARM-based chip, but the fact is that the technology isn't necessarily going to be 100% compatible with all the software needed to run on it."

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Ofcom reveals Britons' data diet

1 November 2011 Last updated at 12:30 ET

British households download about 17 gigabytes of data on average every month over their home broadband connections, suggests a report.

Regulator Ofcom's study takes a high level look at the state of the UK's digital communications.

The monthly data diet is equivalent to streaming 11 movies or 12 hours of BBC programmes via iPlayer.

The report reveals which regions are rich in broadband, mobile and digital radio coverage and which lag behind.

As part of the research, Ofcom has produced maps which grade each county or conurbation on how well they support different technologies.

The technologies are fixed broadband, local TV, mobile base stations, digital TV, mobile coverage and digital radio.

Variation

The report divides the UK in 200 areas which are graded on a scale of 1-5 on how well particular technologies fare in that location.

For instance, on fixed broadband speeds only a few areas are ranked as 1 for their high take-up of broadband, higher than average wire speed, and availability of superfast broadband.

Good grades for many of the technologies centre on Birmingham with the broad patch of decent coverage or usage stretching north to Lancashire and south to West Sussex.

Hilly, sparsely populated areas such as mid-Wales and the Scottish highlands rank low for their support of different technologies.

Even within those regions that are relatively well-served by communications technologies not everyone gets as much choice as they should, said the report.

It estimates that about 900,000 premises cannot get 2G signals from all the UK's operators and 7.7 million UK places do not have 3G signals from the five operators that offer it.

The data collected will be used to work out how to spend �150m of government money to tackle mobile not-spots.

The Digital Economy Act requires Ofcom to carry out such studies once every three years.

The regulator says the data collected for this first report would be used as a benchmark by which future surveys would be measured.

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Central London to get free wi-fi

1 November 2011 Last updated at 07:29 ET

Nokia has switched on a trial of a free wi-fi service in central London.

From today until the end of 2011, the public will be able to use the high-speed service in certain parts of the city courtesy of the phone firm.

If the two-month trial is deemed a success, the Finnish company plans to turn it into a fully fledged free wi-fi service early in 2012.

The initiative is one of many that will eventually see London dotted with hotspots offering free net browsing.

Trial run

Nokia has set up 26 hotspots to support the service and these are largely concentrated around West End shopping areas. Victoria, Marylebone and Westminster will also get access points. The firm said people would not need to register or sign in to use the wi-fi.

The offer is the largest such project Nokia has set up. It said it was considering repeating the exercise in cities in Africa and India where telecoms infrastructure is poor.

The hotspots will be located on phone boxes owned and operated by project partner Spectrum Interactive. It said that the full service would involve using many more of its 1,000 sites in London.

The hotspots are built around web links that run at 20 megabits per second but download speeds will be limited to a maximum of 1 megabit per user to ensure others can get at the service.

"The trial is going to help us understand what people are using it for so we can improve it in the future," said Craig Hepburn, Nokia's director of digital and social media.

Free wi-fi is widely already widely available in London. In particular, London's financial district, the Square Mile, has had free wi-fi provided by The Cloud for years.

In Central London free wi-fi is available generally via solitary access points in shops, hotels, pubs and bars. In addition some ISPs, such as BT, give their subscribers free wi-fi via their own-brand wireless services.

The fragmented nature of existing services has led the Greater London Authority to encourage boroughs to set up free wi-fi along the busiest streets. Projects for wi-fi in Westminster, Kensington & Chelsea as well as Hammersmith & Fulham and other regions are believed to be in the closing stages of negotiation.

There are also ongoing talks to put wi-fi on London tube stations so passengers can browse the web while they wait for a train.

There is also a plan to provide free wi-fi in and around London for the 2012 Olympics to help visitors and tourists find their way around and to make it easier for the sights and sounds of the games to be shared.

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London to host cyberspace summit

1 November 2011 Last updated at 04:16 ET

London is preparing to host a major international conference on the threat from cyber security attacks.

Representatives of 60 nations are gathering to discuss how to tackle the rising levels of cybercrime.

It comes a day after intelligence agency GCHQ warned that cyber attacks on the UK were at "disturbing" levels.

Foreign Secretary William Hague convened the London Conference on Cyberspace, and urged a "global co-ordinated response" on policy.

Experts attending the two-day conference include EU digital supremo Neelie Kroes, with leading cybersecurity experts and technology entrepreneurs such as Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, Cisco vice-president Brad Boston and Joanna Shields, a senior executive at Facebook.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had been due to attend, but cancelled the trip on Monday night after her 92-year-old mother fell ill.

'Very real threat'

On Monday, Baroness Pauline Neville Jones, the prime minister's special representative to business on cybersecurity, said Russia and China - who are both attending the conference - were some of the worst culprits involved in cyber-attacks.

And Iain Lobban, the head of GCHQ, warned that a "significant" attempt was made to target the computer systems of the Foreign Office and other government departments over the summer.

Some reports at the time quoted intelligence sources as saying China was responsible for that attack.

With cybercrime estimated to cost (�600bn) a year worldwide, Mr Lobban, writing in the Times ahead of the summit, warned that the "disturbing" levels of illegal activity online represented "a very real threat to our prosperity".

Britain said it wanted to develop a set of international "rules of the road", establishing "norms of acceptable behaviour" in cyberspace, while stopping short of a full treaty advocated by some countries.

Mr Hague said a "collective endeavour" was needed to tap into the "enormous potential" of cyberspace.

"How to ensure we can all reap the benefits of a safe and secure cyberspace for generations to come is one of the greatest challenges we face," said Mr Hague.

"The response does not lie in the hands of any one government or country but it is too important to be left to chance. This needs to be a collective endeavour, involving all those who have a stake in cyberspace.

"The ideas and proposals we hope to emerge from the conference will develop into the 'London Agenda' - an inclusive and focused approach to help us realise the enormous potential cyberspace offers for a more prosperous, safe and open networked world."

The government has put aside �650m of additional funding to help tackle computer-based threats over the next four years, Mr Hague added.

'Drain the swamp'

Ross Anderson, professor of security engineering at Cambridge University, said there had been a "great growth" in cybercrime over the past six years.

As many as 5% of PCs are infected with malware - short for malicious software - Prof Anderson said, and there was a one in 20 risk that any given computer was sending spam without the owner's knowledge.

"If you want to defend against this kind of threat it's not enough to just shoot a few crocodiles, you have to drain the swamp," Prof Anderson told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"We need action against the whole ecology of cybercrime, not purely defensive measures to protect, for example, the Foreign Office."

Misha Glenny, author of Dark Market, which looks at the issue of cybercrime, said those involved were not, on the whole, engaged in traditional organised criminal activities.

But he added: "We're seeing a migration of traditional organised crime groups over into cyber, exploiting a new type of person engaged in crime who tends to be young, technically sufficient, very good at maths and physics, but perhaps not your traditional criminal figure in the outside world."

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