Intel's Market Share Further Ahead of the Pack after Crossing Sandy Bridge

Intel's obscene share of the microprocessor market has grown even more grotesque, at least if you're AMD or any other chip maker fighting for scraps. If you're Intel, well, life just keeps getting better. New numbers are in, and according to data from market research firm IHS iSuppli, Intel now dominates the competition by accounting for 81.8 percent of global microprocessor revenue. If you work for AMD, you just threw up a little bit in your mouth.

Intel claiming the lion's share of the market isn't anything new, it just so happens that the Santa Clara chip maker took a bigger bite in the second quarter. Intel increased its lead by 1.1 percentage points, which had double the impact on AMD as it slid by the same amount.

"Intel in the second quarter benefited from the combination of a recovery in PC demand and strong shipment growth for its new Sandy Bridge line of microprocessors," said Matthew Wilkins, principal analyst for compute platforms research at IHS. "Strong corporate PC sales were particularly beneficial to Intel, as the enterprise computing segment has been outperforming the consumer market."

IHS iSuppli says Intel got a boost by increasing production of its Sandy Bridge processor line, and that it represented the fastest ramp-up of any product in the company's history. Meanwhile AMD's Bulldozer platform on the consumer side is taking its sweet time to make it to market.

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Intel Commemorates Nokia N9 By Killing MeeGo, Launching Tizen

Nokia's ill-fated N9 launched today and may have already made history as the first phone to debut on the same day as its OS is canceled. The N9 will go down as the only MeeGo phone ever created and is the last major Nokia launch before the company transitions to an all windows Phone 7 lineup. It's hard to imagine the N9 will ever go anywhere given that both Nokia and Intel have abandoned its operating system.

As for MeeGo, Intel announced today that it would partner up with Samsung and launch a new project:  Tizen. Imad Sousou discussed the move at Intel's MeeGo blog.

This new project is first and foremost open source, and based on Linux. So it begs the question: why not just evolve MeeGo? We believe the future belongs to HTML5-based applications, outside of a relatively small percentage of apps, and we are firmly convinced that our investment needs to shift toward HTML5. Shifting to HTML5 doesn't just mean slapping a web runtime on an existing Linux, even one aimed at mobile, as MeeGo has been. Emphasizing HTML5 means that APIs not visible to HTML5 programmers need not be as rigid, and can evolve with platform technology and can vary by market segment.

Much like MeeGo, the Tizen project will support multiple device categories, including Tablets, Netbooks, Handsets, Smart TV, and In-Vehicle Infotainment systems. Over the next couple of months, we will be working very hard to make sure that users of MeeGo can easily transition to Tizen, and I will be working even harder to make sure that developers of MeeGo can also transition to Tizen.

Judging by the comments on the MeeGo blog, a number of developers are concerned about the future of Qt support. Current scuttlebutt indicates the Qt development framework will be supported, though Intel seems set on pushing apps to use HTML5 for future projects rather than Qt. The new OS targets the same types of devices as MeeGo--the preferred development framework may have changed, but the device types the OS targets hasn't.

From MeeGo to ItWent

Meanwhile, in related news, Samsung has signed a cross-licensing agreement with Microsoft that covers development and marketing of Windows phones as well as a broad patent agreement. This is likely a move by Samsung to protect itself from the Android-related lawsuits currently dogging other manufacturers like HTC.

As for Tizen, it's hard to work up too much enthusiasm for the third iteration of a project that began as Moblin, transitioned to MeeGo, and has just been rescued and retitled for the third time. Samsung's decision to invest in the OS project could be seen as a hedge bet against future legal issues with Android, but no one seems willing to commit to MeeGo as a front-and-center product as opposed to a sidelined developer hobby. In this case, we're dubious that the third time will turn out to be the charm.

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Kingston Expands Secure USB Drive Line With DataTraveler 6000 Series

Kingston Digital, Inc. (an affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc.) is not messing around with its ultra-secure USB flash drives. Today, the company announced that the DataTraveler 6000 series is now available, joining Kingston Digital’s already robust crop of secure USB flash drive products.

The 6000 series features a slew of security features, including Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2 Level 3 Validation, 256-bit AES encryption enabled by Spyrus using XTS block cipher mode, and military-grade elliptic curve cryptography (ECC).

Additionally, the drives feature secure channel communication, firmware updates that are digitally signed with Suite B SHA-384 and ECDSA P-384, tamper-free AutoRun enforcement, and the ability to run with AutoRun disabled.

Users must set their own password, and Kingston designed the drives to force users to actually use strong ones; there are no pathetically weak “admin”, “password”, or “123456” passwords allowed. In fact, the passwords have to have at least three of the following: lowercase, uppercase, characters, and numbers. Once that password is set, users had better remember it, because after 10 intrusion attempts, the drives lock down and kill the encryption key.

Even the casing is designed to be impervious to tampering. It’s also waterproof up to four feet, has a titanium-coated stainless steel casing, and comes with a five-year warranty.

Despite all the powerful features built into these drives, the DataTraveler 6000 series don’t support USB 3.0. Kingston claims read/write speeds of 11MBps and 5MBps, respectively.

The DataTraveler 6000 series flash drives are compatible with Windows XP/Vista/7 and Mac OS X 10.5 through 10.6 and come in 2GB, 4GB, 8GB, and 16GB capacities.

How much will all this secure goodness run you? The 2GB version is $100, and you’ll pay $116 (4GB), $147 (8GB), or $208 (16GB) for the larger-capacity versions.

For as useful as USB flash drives are, they cause their fair share of problems for enterprises and government agencies. Unsurprisingly due to their diminutive size, flash drives are frequently misplaced, whether they’re left plugged into a computer in lab, fall off of a keychain, or slide out of a pants pocket in a taxi, leaving their contents exposed to whomever stumbles across the little device next. Flash drives also tend to be vulnerable to user-inflicted destruction; if you’ve never accidentally dropped a flash drive or sent one through the laundry cycle, you’re in a very small minority.

When you consider how sensitive the information on a flash drive can be, especially in financial companies and government agencies, the preceding two paragraphs are deeply unsettling. However, the Kingston DataTraveler 6000 series of USB flash drives protect users (and by proxy, organizations) from much of the aforementioned maladies. In that light, $100 for a 2GB drive may be well worth the cost.

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