Content in Intel Communities

Setup and Configuration Software 8.0 training

webadmin@intel.com — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 15:21:12 GMT

With the release of the Setup and Configuration Software version 8, we have introduced a lot of changes. First, there are a lot of technical changes to how SCS 8 works compared to the previous version. Second, this is the first release of the software that’s geared towards wide use. Previously, we targeted this software towards software development companies interested in including Intel® vPro™ Technology capabilities in their software products. So, in order to help organizations adopt and use SCS 8 I have put together some training videos to help you get up to speed with the SCS. They videos are available at http://www.intel.com/go/scs.

We have six videos that will give you an overview of the Intel® vPro™ Technology platform, the SCS and how they work together. In total, it’s about an hour’s worth of video total. Here’s a brief summary of each of the videos.

Intel® SCS 8 Training Introduction
- A brief overview of the training videos in this series.
Module 1: Introduction to Intel® vPro™ Technology
- This module gives you an overview of the capabilities of Intel® vPro™ Technology, Intel® Active Management Technology and the Intel® Setup and Configuration Software that we discussed in the other modules in this series.
Module 2: Intel® SCS Overview
- This module discusses the components of the Intel® Setup and Configuration Software, including the Configurator and the Remote Configuration Service.
Module 3: Intel® AMT Configuration
- This module discusses how to create AMT configuration profiles with the SCS tools and the methods to apply those configurations to clients with Intel® vPro™ Technology.
Module 4: Jobs & Maintenance
- This module discusses the types of maintenance jobs and when they need to be performed against your Intel® vPro™ Technology clients after they have been configured.
Module 5: Environmental Pre-requisites

This module discusses the various pre-requisites that ease the setup and configuration process of Intel® vPro™ Technology clients.

Please share your feedback on these videos. If there is enough interest in topics not covered, or enough interest in deeper discussion of specific topics, I can look into creating additional videos.

Roadshow Unveils Next Gen Mobile Health IT Devices

webadmin@intel.com — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:51:13 GMT

If you were at HIMSS this year, you saw how mobility is dominating the current health IT landscape. Today’s healthcare industry demands the latest technology and solutions from companies that are in touch with complex IT challenges. That’s why Toshiba, Intel and Microsoft have joined forces to provide next-generation mobile devices, applications and solutions that improve quality of care while reducing costs and meeting all compliance and security requirements.

The best way to understand the advancements in mobile devices is to see them for yourself. If you live or work near Dallas, Chicago, Los Angeles, or San Jose, you are invited to attend our special healthcare mobility events in June. These mobility roadshows are great opportunities to join other healthcare IT professionals in your area and hear from a panel of experts as they present the latest innovations in applications and devices. You’ll also have an opportunity to ask questions, demo new products and even win an Ultrabook™.

What will you learn? The healthcare panel will give you insight on:

• The latest breakthroughs in mobile healthcare technology

• Deciding which clinical workflows are most relevant for a secure mobile solution

• How to provide a range of hardware solutions that clinicians will love

• How the right management infrastructure can support both existing and new devices as you roll them out

Find out more about the events, which start June 4 in Dallas, and register here. The event will move to Chicago on June 5, Los Angeles on June 11, and San Jose on June 12.

What questions do you have?

La primera computadora surgió en el año 100 A.C

webadmin@intel.com — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 15:46:08 GMT

La Grecia Antigua era una civilización admirable, de eso no caben dudas. Lo que no todos saben es que fueron los creadores de la primera computadora del mundo, analógica, por supuesto. Se trata del mecanismo de Anticitera, un sistema de engranajes interconectados capaz de predecir el movimiento de diferentes astros celestes, como el sol, la luna, y cinco planetas de importancia para los griegos. Muy probablemente, el mecanismo de Anticitera se usaba para poder establecer un seguimiento de las fechas en las que debían tener lugar los antiguos juegos olímpicos.

(Restos del original Antikythera que data entre 150-100 antes de Cristo. Credito y Copyright: Wikipedia)

Según investigadores, que pasaron décadas analizando el mecanismo con rayos X y escáneres 3D, el sistema era tan complejo que la precisión con la que se lo construyó sólo es comparable con las técnicas avanzadas de armado de relojes vistas en el siglo XVII. Su tamaño es comparable al de una netbook actual, aunque más pesada y aparatosa. Fue encontrada dentro de un barco romano hundido en 1900 por unos buzos, junto a muchos tesoros, joyas y elementos de alfarería.

(Un visitante observa una réplica del Antikythera Mechanism, en el Muso Arqueológico de Atenas. Credito y Copyright: AP Photo.)

En 2005, un grupo de científicos se puso a trabajar en el Antikythera Mechanism Research Project (Proyecto de investigación del mecanismo de Anticitera) y lograron producir una réplica muy fiel al original. Pueden ver una animación en la que se explica detalladamente como estaba formado el sistema y Michael Wright, el encargado del museo de de ciencias en Londres, muestra cómo interpretar los diferentes cuadrantes que el dispositivo incorpora.

Funte: Intel Newsroom

At TDWI: Finding a middle way between Hadoop and relational data warehousing

webadmin@intel.com — Fri, 17 May 2013 22:25:53 GMT

If you’re thinking big data analytics will solve all your BI challenges, you may be looking at it wrong…

I realized this when I was in Chicago the first week of May, attending The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI) conference, where the theme was “Preparing for the Practical Realities of Big Data.”

There are high expectations around big data at the moment. Many people in marketing, product development, and analytics teams can’t wait to get their hands on big data intelligence to better understand and target audiences.

However, TDWI isn’t their show. At TDWI, the focus instead is on traditional database administrators, data analysts, and data scientists, and it’s a very technical conference firmly based on OLAP and OLTP analytics and hands-on issues of data warehousing.

With this in mind, I attended the keynote address by Ken Rudin, director of Analytics at Facebook—a leader in cool, cutting-edge big data processing and analysis addressing a conference of (what some would consider) old-school DBAs. The message from Rudin, who has held senior leadership positions at Zynga, Salesforce.com, and Oracle, was fascinating: Don’t get caught in the tyranny of either/or when it comes to data analysis—businesses need both traditional relational database processing and Hadoop*-based big data analysis.

@krudin said that Facebook started out relying almost solely on Hadoop and big data when the social media giant first launched, but now is increasingly incorporating OLAP and OLTP processes into its analytics. Hadoop is best at exploring huge data sets—putting all the data into one system to discover patterns. Traditional relational data analytics is best at business, looking at focused data to derive metrics and more actionable, granular analysis. Both are valuable technologies: which one is best depends on what kind of impact you are looking for.

So the question is not, how do you get from old-school to cutting edge as soon as possible. Rather, ask which technology is right to generate impact out of data.

This was a conclusion that appealed to many at TDWI, as several people I spoke to registered a bit of skepticism about the value of Hadoop as an engine for analytics. For them, the main attraction of Hadoop is its potential to act as a backend data storage mechanism, where unstructured data can be warehoused.

Then the question becomes: What’s the best way to integrate data stored in Hadoop into a traditional OLAP or OLTP infrastructure for processing? The answer is just around the corner.

At the SAP booth, I presented a discussion of the newly released joint solution from SAP and Intel that has optimized Intel^® Distribution of Apache Hadoop* software for the SAP HANA* in-memory database. Using SAP Smart Data Access* (watch for availability in coming weeks), this big data solution is able to leverage all types of data for processing in analytical applications.

And since it’s built on Intel^® architecture, and leverages the full power of Intel^® Xeon^® E7 processors, HANA has hardware-enhanced performance and security built in, with solid-state drives and cache acceleration for blazing speed and stability. Watch this interview from TDWI to learn more about SAP HANA and how the database helps address big data challenges.

If you’re looking for the technology to get the most impact out of analytics, look no further.

Follow Tim and Twitter @TimIntel and the SAP analytics team at @SAPAnalytics.

Additionally, @TDWI has some very interesting DW feeds.

Transmisión inalámbrica de energía, lo volvimos a hacer

webadmin@intel.com — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 03:21:57 GMT

Hola, hoy les traigo detalles sobre uno de los desarrollos más sorprendentes de los investigadores de Intel Labs Seattle. Se trata de la transmisión inalámbrica de energía a receptores móviles a través de enlace resonante de energía (WREL, del inglés Wireless Resonant Energy Link Technology).

Lo cierto es que Intel mostró por primera vez la tecnología WREL en funcionamiento en 2008: el Senior Fellow y Director de Tecnología de Intel, Justin Rattner, mostró en escena una lámpara de 60 W iluminada, sin cables conectados, en el Intel Developer Forum (IDF). Desde entonces Intel también mostró cómo la tecnología WREL puede alimentar un netbook sin baterías o hacer que un altavoz emita sonido sin cables de alimentación conectados.

Lo novedoso en este momento es que los investigadores del Intel Labs acaban de lograr que ahora se puede mover un receptor dentro del “área mágica” (es decir, 70 cm alrededor del emisor WREL). Un algoritmo especial de seguimiento asegura un nivel de energía constante. Además, el receptor ya no necesita estar alineado en paralelo al emisor. Los algoritmos de autoajuste adaptativos ahora le permiten a las espirales emisora y receptora permanecer en un ángulo de hasta 70 grados, mientras que la eficiencia de la transmisión permanecerá estable en un 70 por ciento.

Qué se me ocurre como posible aplicación? Bueno, en principio, los cables y los sistemas de conexión en los escritorios serán cosa del pasado.
También se podría integrar el dispositivo WREL a mesas para que carguen automáticamente teléfonos, laptops y cualquier dispositivo movil sólo con apoyarlo. Los marcapasos podrían obtener su energía por medio de WREL y, por lo tanto, volver los cables subcutáneos obsoletos. Los controles remotos, auriculares, y teclados son dispositivos que también se beneficiarían mucho de la alimentación inalámbrica.

Intel® 82574L Gigabit Ethernet Controller Statement

webadmin@intel.com — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 02:41:02 GMT

Recently there were a few stories published, based on a blog post by an end-user, suggesting specific network packets may cause the Intel® 82574L Gigabit Ethernet Controller to become unresponsive until corrected by a full platform power cycle.

Intel was made aware of this issue in September 2012 by the blogs author. Intel worked with the author as well as the original motherboard manufacturer to investigate and determine root cause. Intel root caused the issue to the specific vendor’s mother board design where an incorrect EEPROM image was programmed during manufacturing. We communicated the findings and recommended corrections to the motherboard manufacturer.

It is Intel’s belief that this is an implementation issue isolated to a specific manufacturer, not a design problem with the Intel 82574L Gigabit Ethernet controller. Intel has not observed this issue with any implementations which follow Intel’s published design guidelines. Intel recommends contacting your motherboard manufacturer if you have continued concerns or questions whether your products are impacted.

How do you explain the cloud to your parents?

webadmin@intel.com — Wed, 15 May 2013 16:54:56 GMT

How important is storage to your business? My name is Ilene Aginsky and I work in the Storage Division. I’m new to this community and I think this is the perfect place to talk about how the explosion of digital data is changing the way businesses and even consumers need to manage this incredible growth.

It seems that storage should be a relatively easy concept however when data is being created at such a rapid pace it starts to get complicated very quickly. Given this complexity, I will reach out to my colleagues here at Intel and ask them to help explain the technology that surrounds the concept of storage.

For my first foray, I have asked my colleague, Gary McCulley, a Product Line Manager for the Storage Division to explain the concept of Cloud in storage. Below, in Gary’s own words, is that explanation.

How I would explain the “Cloud” to my parents

My parents recently asked me how work was going. Being a Product Marketing Engineer at Intel, I tend to give them vague, (yet accurate) feedback, like “oh, it’s going well” or “Intel as a company is doing well”, etc. In other words: “blah, blah, blah”; I tend not to get into the specifics, fearing I would be in long conversation that would span a diverse range of topics, including explaining how Al Gore really didn’t invent the Internet all the way to how the “Cloud” really has very little to do with the weather. But it got me asking myself if I could coherently tell them about important concepts like the “Cloud” and wondering if they would have a better understanding after my explanation.

Gartner Inc. recently forecasted that one-third of consumers' digital content would be stored in the “Cloud” by 2016. It's an interesting statistic that certainly would impress my parents, even though they may not initially understand it.

Aside -- My parents love me and are impressed by most anything I do or say– sort of like Ben Stiller’s parents in Meet the Fockers, who created a shrine in their son’s honor, including his 9^th place ribbon. By comparison, my mom has a framed picture of a duck that I painted when I was in 5^th grade hanging on their bathroom wall – I earned 2^nd place in my 5^th grade class of 25 students!

Upon telling my parents the “Cloud” statistic, they would likely ask the following questions:

“OK, what is digital content and what is the “Cloud”?

First, I would give them examples of digital content: pictures of their grand kids taken with a digital camera, email they send and receive songs they listen to on Pandora, videos of puppies on YouTube, and other examples. Then I would tell them why the “Cloud” is important. I would tell them the growth of multiple connected devices, most of which have cameras (my mom’s cell phone even has a camera), has led to a massive increase in digital content that users have created. And all that content has to be stored somewhere. I would tell them that people used to store content on their PCs (and still do), but with all this new digital content, people now like to store their data on social media sites, like Facebook, which offer free storage space for uploading videos and photos for social sharing.

I would explain to them that every time they access anything that isn’t stored in their computer they are engaging the “Cloud” - like when they access their Yahoo! email account, Facebook, Google, or YouTube. Basically, the “Cloud” allows anyone with an Internet connection to access information that is contained in a network of computers and servers (i.e. a data center) located around the world. This makes it easier to share pictures and videos, for example, of their kids and grand kids.

In addition to Facebook , Google, YouTube, and Apple - companies that provide free storage, I would also explain that some of them charge customers (on a monthly basis) to store their data – typically to customers that have a lot of data to store. Companies like those above and like Amazon Web Services, which have locations with server farms, (i.e. data centers), will store data for customers for a monthly service-based subscription.

Side note: while online backup services like Amazon Web Services, Google Drive, and others, are well-known cloud storage providers, their total storage allocated to consumers and "pro-sumers" is still small relative to that maintained by social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and other sites.

Anyway, at this point, my parents would be losing interest, but would still act like they are really interested. So I would try and wrap it up by saying the term “Cloud”is really just a metaphor for the cloud-like shape used to represent the Internet’s infrastructure when engineers draw it.

And then I would tell my Mom that I took a picture of my duck picture and uploaded it to Facebook, where she could enjoy it on her smart phone anytime she liked. I would then be told that the picture isn’t that great, and there was a good reason it is displayed in the bathroom...

Gary McCulley is a product line manager in the Data Center and Connected Systems Group at Intel ® Corporation. Prior to joining Intel, Gary held strategic planning and product marketing positions at Broadcom Corporation, Philips Semiconductors, and General Dynamics. He earned a B.S. in Engineering from Arizona State University, an M.S. in Engineering from San Diego State University, and an MBA from the University of Arizona.

IBM Impact 2013: Heroes of IT, Please Take a Bow

webadmin@intel.com — Thu, 16 May 2013 16:45:24 GMT

At last week’s IBM Impact conference, the focus was on “Technology in Motion,” and the keynote presentations were both inspiring and thought-provoking. The program celebrated some of the 400 IBM Champions from around the world who, as heroes of IT, help open new horizons and new audiences to technology.

Wednesday’s keynote kept with the “tech in motion” theme, and the most stirring presentations involved how IBM is helping open up access to computing for underserved communities. Doug Schmidt of Pearson Publishing described how his company uses innovative technologies based on IBM WebSphere MQ*, IBM Message Broker*, and IBM Operational Decision Management* to bring higher education to students in over 70 countries and in a variety of formats.

We also viewed a video presentation from P-TECH, the Pathways in Technology Early College High School, an innovative collaboration between New York public schools, the City University of New York, and IBM. The P-TECH schools (which include branches in Chicago and Idaho in addition to the original location in Brooklyn) bring together private-sector partners to design an academic program that’s heavy on high tech workplace skills. Students all have IBM mentors to help make sure they get the skills to land good, technology-oriented jobs. P-TECH program has been so successful that President Obama highlighted it in this year’s State of the Union Address: “We need to give every American student opportunities like this,” he stated. Is there a P-TECH school in my town for my kids?

As the focus of Impact is WebSphere middleware, IBM highlighted some recent testing between generations of Xeon^® processors and just upgraded IBM WebSphere* 8.5 vs. 8.1 performance gains. The nearly 260% performance gain with newer versions of software and hardware is huge for the middleware community and hopefully will be sufficient reason to upgrade both processor middleware versions. Details of new SPECjEnterprise2010 test results are detailed here: spec.org/jEnterprise2010.

Intel and IBM have worked together for over 15 years to optimize software performance on the Intel infrastructure, and their collaboration and co-engineering on IBM WebSphere 8.5 has led to very impressive performance gains. And when it comes to technology in motion, it’s this kind of optimized joint engineering that creates new IT heroes. Watch this interview with our Intel hero, Pauline Nist (@panist), general manager of Enterprise Software Alliances, and learn more about the growing collaboration between Intel and software partners such as IBM.

Follow Tim on @TimIntel and @IntelAdrenaline.

SAP and Intel Showcase Big Data Solutions at Sapphire 2013

webadmin@intel.com — Wed, 15 May 2013 22:10:48 GMT

Intel and SAP have worked closely together for years. But, our co-engineering has reached a new level of integration with the recent launch of our Big Data solution based on the SAP HANA^® platform and Intel^® Distribution for Apache™ Hadoop^® software. The joint solution will be demo’d at SAP Sapphire 2013, SAP’s flagship conference in Orlando, held May 14 – 16.

Stop by the Intel booth #3215 and experience our Big Data solution.

The Intel Distribution of Apache Hadoop running on SAP HANA represents more than a typical collaboration. It’s a great example of how co-engineering can result in a “more-than-the-sum-of-its parts” success that changes the game by vastly improving the speed and resilience of Big Data analytics.

HANA is SAP’s blindingly fast database platform that consolidates transactional and analytical workloads into a single, in-memory process. Combining OLAP and OLTP structures into a unified landscape eliminates traditional relational limitations that have restricted the development of real-time business applications, and in particular Big Data analytics.

Apache Hadoop is the industry’s open source standard for managing Big Data, but to ensure that Hadoop’s data-intensive workflows can provide real-time analytics on an enterprise scale requires a comprehensive computing platform with muscle and intelligence.

The Intel Distribution for Apache Hadoop is specifically optimized for the advanced features of SAP HANA and the Intel® Xeon® processor E7 family. Intel’s version of Hadoop can leverage SAP HANA in-memory technologies to accelerate data analytics and also tap into extra performance and scalability that the Intel processor E7 family is optimized for. In turn, SAP HANA’s in-memory processes help eliminate the latencies found in Hadoop’s underlying file system to enable on-demand data analysis.

Through joint-engineering, SAP and Intel have delivered a breakthrough Big Data solution that can store and analyze massive volumes of structured and unstructured data in real time. The underlying platform has the performance to scale to continued exponential data growth and deliver rapid-fire insights to help boost business productivity and profits.

For more information go to: http://hadoop.intel.com/resources

Our New PC Delivery Process Cuts Employee Downtime

webadmin@intel.com — Wed, 15 May 2013 19:49:16 GMT

Getting a new PC used to take valuable time out of the workday. But as part of our focus on a user-centered model of delivering IT services, Intel IT recently optimized our PC delivery process, resulting in improved employee productivity, a better employee experience, and reduced operational costs. These process improvements allow our employees to return to work more quickly, reducing their downtime from an average of 4.5 hours to 1 hour, a 77-percent reduction. Read the paper "New PC Delivery Process Cuts Employee Downtime" to learn about the changes we made.