Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Nov 9, 2015 (II)

choi

(3) Ian King, Cisco Tries to Make a Different Switch.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/ar ... -embraces-the-cloud

Note:
(a) summary underneath the title in print: The company isn’t letting go of its high-end services, but it’s selling more networking equipment with custom software
(b) "Cisco’s pricey combination of hardware and software is becoming a tougher sell, partly because major data center operators, including Google, Facebook, and Amazon.com, are designing their own stripped-down hardware and writing their own code. In August a group of Google’s hardware boffins said they’ve been working for a decade to try to replace traditional data center networking equipment. The market for so-called white boxes—meaning generic models—is still a sliver of the networking industry, but it’s growing rapidly. Researcher IDC estimates that annual sales of white-box network switches will rise about 50 percent by yearend, to top $400 million."

boffin (n: origin unknown: First Known Use 1945): “chiefly British:  a scientific expert; especially :  one involved in technological research
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/boffin
(c) "Cisco is investing in the development of whiz-bang features such as software that can analyze network traffic in real time to detect cyber attacks."

whizz-bang or whiz-bang
http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/whizz-bang


(4) Dina Bass and Jack Clark, Data Migration.
www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/ ... -build-data-centers

My comment:
(a) summary underneath the title in print: Why the clouds float in clusters
(b) Surprisingly, Neither Korea nor Japan has one data center (owned by those American tech companies, that is). But I do not know whether it is a good or bad thing.

choi

(5) Ian King, Chips Aren’t Getting Much Smaller.
www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/ ... at-stinks-for-intel

Quote:

presently: "Many circuit lines are narrower than the wavelengths of light used to create them.

"Three companies—Intel, Samsung Electronics, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC)—will account for about half of the $32 billion in spending on new chip plants and equipment next year, estimates investment adviser Stifel Nicolaus. A decade ago, the top five spenders accounted for 40 percent of the industry’s capital expenditures.

"The company’s [Intel's] remaining rivals haven’t seriously challenged its 99.3 percent market share in server processors or its 89 percent of PC chips. * * * The next logical step for giants such as Facebook, Google, and Amazon.com is to consider designing their own [server] chips for their data centers[, thus becoming potential customers of TSMC or Samsung].

Note:
(a) summary underneath the title in print: Intel says Moore’s Law is slowing, and that could make it tougher for the company to elbow its way into mobile
(b) "For Intel, the industry’s high-table stakes have been an advantage, a way to force out those who couldn’t spend enough to keep up. "

For "high-table," see table limit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_limit
(c) "Ultimately, though, a slowing of Moore’s Law could give TSMC and Samsung more time to catch their mobile chips up to Intel’s PC and server models."

I do not trust forecasts. Yet both TSMC and Samsung have provided a road map to 10nm: 2Q16 for the former and "possible" at the end of 2016 for Samsung. Intel repeatedly put off 10nm (by pushing dates into future each time)  and since last spring has not said when it might come out.
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