'Broadwell'-based chip to help Intel challenge low-power rivals

Intel has updated its road map with a new, low-power server chip to help it ward off competition from Calxeda and other makers of low-power chips.

The new chip will be based on Broadwell, a microarchitecture to be introduced next year as the successor to Intel’s Haswell design. But this processor will be a system-on-chip, setting it apart from Intel’s other Xeon server products.

More on Intel’s modded chips make your smartphone a better listener

SOCs combine several components onto a single chip to reduce power consumption and space requirements. In the server market, they’re often used in micro-servers, a type of low-power server used for large-scale, online workloads.

Intel already offers SOCs in its Atom family of chips, but Atom has its own microarchitecture. The new chip announced Monday will be Intel’s first SOC that uses the same microarchitecture as its more powerful Xeon chips.

Intel roadmapIntelIntel’s roadmap for low-power server chips, presented Julu 22. It shows the upcoming Broadwell SOC straddling the Xeon and Atom families.

“With this new product, we’ll be delivering the best of both worlds: high performance and high density,” said Diane Bryant, general manager of Intel’s data center and connected systems group, at an Intel event in San Francisco.

She didn’t give a name for the new chip but said it will ship next year. It will be manufactured on a 14-nanometer process and include integrated I/O, networking, and application accelerators, Bryant said.

The chip essentially allows Intel to straddle the gap between its current Atom processors, which focus on low power consumption, and its Xeon processors, which are tuned for higher performance but use more electricity.

“They’re trying to cover the whole market. They’ve decided it’s better to have a little bit of overlap than to have any gaps,” said industry analyst Nathan Brookwood of Insight64.

The chip comes at a time of heightened competition in the server market. Rivals such as Calxeda and Advanced Micro Devices are building low-power SOCs using designs from UK chip architecture company ARM, and the new chip from Intel is its latest response to that trend.

Intel didn’t say on Monday if the new chip will be branded as a Xeon or an Atom. Its place between the two product lines could create some confusion for customers, Brookwood said, though he thinks Intel will eventually decide on Xeon.

It’s not the only chip Intel has for low-power servers. The company recently began shipping a Xeon E3 processor based on the Haswell core, and versions of that chip based on Broadwell are expected next year. They will be “general-purpose” Xeons, as opposed to SOCs specifically for low-power, high-density systems.

In its Atom family, Intel will begin shipping a new chip later this year code-named Avoton, based on a new chip core known as Silvermont. Compared with the current Atom core, Avoton will offer “a 3x improvement in power at the same performance level, or a 5x increase in performance at the same power,” according to Bryant.

“Also with Avoton, we’re adding ethernet functions and accelerators for various workloads,” she said.

Avoton will be manufactured using a 22-nanometer process. It will be followed next year by Denverton, a similar chip but manufactured on a 14-nanometer process. The numbers refer to the dimensions of circuits printed on the chips, and smaller numbers generally mean faster, lower-power transistors.

Wikileaks accused loses challenge

Bradley Manning has denied that his leaks helped terror groups such as al-Qaeda

A military judge has refused to dismiss the most serious charge facing Bradley Manning, the US soldier who allegedly leaked thousands of secret documents.

Lawyers for the 25-year-old argued there is no proof he "aided the enemy", a charge carrying a life prison term.

Prosecutors have argued he "systematically harvested" documents eventually seen by Osama Bin Laden.

The case, allegedly involving 700,000 files, is considered the largest-ever leak of secret US government documents.

"He [Pte Manning] was knowingly providing intelligence to the enemy," said Judge Colonel Denise Lind at Thursday's hearing in Fort Meade, Maryland.

The decision does not exclude the possibility of Pte Manning being ultimately acquitted of the charge.

No 'evil intent'
The accused, who appeared to be following the proceedings closely, showed no reaction to the ruling.

He has previously pleaded guilty to 10 of the more than 20 charges he faces.

Continue reading the main story
Today's ruling from the judge on the charge of "aiding the enemy" was highly anticipated. Outside the court at Fort Meade, Pte Manning's supporters said the case could deter other "whistleblowers" from sharing classified information which might be in the public interest. One of them asked whether, if someone leaked something to a newspaper, they too could be seen as "aiding the enemy".

If found guilty on this count, Pte Manning faces life in prison. For him to be convicted, it needs to be proved that he gave potentially damaging information to an enemy, knowingly, and with evil intent. It is this last clause that could be the trickiest to ascertain. Prosecutors argue they have proof al-Qaeda accessed information from Wikileaks, and that by posting the information Pte Manning would have known terror groups could see it.

But on Thursday, Judge Lind also denied a defence request to drop a computer fraud charge.

She is still considering a motion by Pte Manning's lawyers to dismiss five charges of theft.

Some two dozen of his supporters sat quietly in the courtroom, some wearing t-shirts printed with the word "truth".

"We're disappointed," Jeff Paterson, head of the Bradley Manning Support Network, told the Associated Press news agency outside court.

On Monday, defence lawyer David Coombs argued that the Army private was guilty of negligence, but not the "general evil intent" required to justify the life charge.

He said the government had offered no evidence to show that Pte Manning knew the leaked files could fall into the hands of al-Qaeda militants.

Pte Manning's lawyer has sought to show that he was "young, naive and good-intentioned" when he arrived in Iraq, but became disillusioned.

The accused told a pre-trial hearing in February that he had divulged the documents to spark a public debate about US military and foreign policy.

Prosecutors have argued the leaks damaged national security and endangered American lives, and said Pte Manning used his military training and access to gain notoriety.

Among the items sent to Wikileaks was graphic footage of an Apache helicopter attack in 2007 that killed a dozen people in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, including a Reuters photographer.

Other files leaked included thousands of battlefield reports from Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as secure messages between US embassies and the state department in Washington.

MTV's The Challenge: Rivals II First-Look: Exes CT Tamburello, Diem Brown Reunite

The new season of MTV's The Challenge: Rivals 2 will present 32 new and familiar faces with a whole new slew of challenges starting on Wednesday, July 10. But one thing that will undoubtedly remain the same?

The season -- shot in Thailand -- will be filled with plenty of drama between ex-lovers, longstanding enemies, and new and old players.

PHOTOS: Reality TV love gone bad

"It was old school kids versus new school kids," newcomer Theresa Gonzalez told Us Weekly. "From the very beginning it was a battle of veterans and us rookies."

"There was a lot of judgment going into it because we'd seen each other on TV before," Jemmye Carroll told Us (the Mississippi-bred reality star was previously on Real World: New Orleans). "It was one big mosh pit."

PHOTOS: Biggest reality TV bombshells

And a rowdy one at that! In an exclusive preview clip from the season, the guys partner up with their rivals in a challenge that forces them to literally cling onto one another for dear life. While one half of each pair hangs by a rope several feet over a huge body of water, their partner leaps at them from increasingly long distances on a pier.

"If I'm going to get the opportunity to repeatedly run into him as hard as I can and squeeze him as hard as I can, I'm going to go ahead and strap the ginger up," resident bad boy CT Tamburello says in the clip, referring to partner Wes Bergmann.

PHOTOS: The reality curse

"Unnecessary," Wes shoots back, later telling the cameras, "I really don't feel all that happy about having CT run into my arms, but it is what it is. It's therapeutic, and we're gonna work this sh-t out."

"CT and I have the longest relationship of anyone in the house and it didn't start well from day one," Wes told Us Weekly. "So now it's going into a decade of us going country to country, not getting along."

The series will also see CT reuniting with ex Diem Brown, who finished up chemotherapy for her second bout of ovarian cancer just two weeks before filming the show, which will make for a "roller coaster" ride of a season, according to Brown.

PHOTOS: Celebrity health scares

"I really wanted to come back because I never wanted cancer to take away an opportunity and I wanted to feel passionately alive, to jump off buildings and be as active as other girls," she told Us. "I had a hard time feeling normal. …I started realizing I have a lot more battle scars from the second time with cancer that I didn't realize."

"Putting yourself in this show, a lot of your insecurities are brought to the forefront," she added. "There were some deja vu moments."

MTV's The Challenge: Rivals 2 will premiere on MTV on Wednesday, July 10 at 10 p.m. EST.

News Analysis: The Challenge of Creating a Unified Organizational Strategy

To be clear, it is hard to do. The default behavior for human beings is to think in terms of tribes. If you work in a small department in a big company, you’re naturally going to identify most closely with your immediate colleagues. You’ll have lunch or coffee together, and maybe even socialize with them outside the office.

Other colleagues you see in the hallway and on the elevator can seem like total strangers, even though you work for the same company. Divisions fighting for resources and attention can exacerbate the problem.

It’s a theme that has come up often in my interviews with more than 200 leaders for my column, Corner Office, and smart leaders recognize that us-versus-them behavior can ultimately destroy companies.

So what should leaders do? A few tips have emerged from my interviews.

Create a ‘One Company’ Culture

Symbolism is important, in both the language that leaders use and the organizational chart they create.

Here’s how Kathleen L. Flanagan, the chief executive of Abt Associates, tackled the issue.

“We’ve grown from $180 million in annual revenue a few years ago to $425 million today. As the company grew, more business units were created, and so we had more silos in the organization. My objective two years ago in coming into this job was to take down the silos. So I reorganized the company. It used to be organized around lines of business — international, U.S.-based, data collection — and there used to be senior vice presidents who led each of those big businesses. I took those senior V.P. positions away and hired one executive vice president for global business who shared my vision for what I call One Global Abt.

At the heart of that is taking down the walls so people can collaborate more freely, so that we can leverage all of Abt. We now ask people to pick their heads up out of their project work or their division focus and look across the whole company. So I now ask my managers to wear two hats. Everybody’s got their job in the big picture of the company, but they all have to wear an Abt hat. It’s really easy, given the time pressures and the pace of our work, to put blinders on and be very project-focused. It’s harder to take a step back and ask, “How does this apply to the whole company?”

Simplify the Scoreboard

A big part of a leader’s job is to establish a simple set of performance metrics so that everyone in the company can feel as if they’re part of a broader team, and can understand how the work they do contributes to the broader goals. Chief executives have to choose those metrics carefully because, as the saying goes, what gets measured gets managed.

A powerful example of this came from Shivan S. Subramaniam, the chief executive of FM Global, a commercial and industrial property insurer, who shared with me how his team worked hard to develop very simple goals.

“We call them key result areas, or K.R.A.’s. We’re multinational — we’ve got 5,100 people, 1,800 of whom are engineers. We’re very analytical. But we have three K.R.A.’s, nothing terribly fancy. And everybody focuses on them. One is on profitability. One is on retention of existing clients. And one is on attracting new clients. That’s it.

You can talk to people in San Francisco, Sydney or Singapore, and they’ll know what the three K.R.A.’s are. All of our incentive plans are designed around our K.R.A.’s, and every one of those K.R.A.’s is very transparent. Our employees know how we’re doing. And, most importantly, they understand them, whether they’re the most senior manager or a file clerk, so they know that ‘If I do this, it helps this K.R.A. in this manner.’”

Communicate Relentlessly to the Entire Staff

There’s a reason that so many companies hold regular all-hands meetings (and with technology, it’s possible to do them in large and sprawling companies now). Again, it’s about tribal behavior. You have to bring everybody together and speak to everyone as a group for people to identify themselves with the broadest group. Leaders then have to take their simple plan and hammer it home, again and again, even if they feel like everybody has heard it before a hundred times.

It’s a lesson that Christopher J. Nassetta, the Hilton Worldwide chief, told me that he learned over time.

“You have to be careful as a leader, particularly of a big organization. You can find yourself communicating the same thing so many times that you get tired of hearing it. And so you might alter how you say it, or shorthand it, because you have literally said it so many times that you think nobody else on earth could want to hear this. But you can’t stop. In my case, there are 300,000 people who need to hear it, and I can’t say it enough. So what might sound mundane and like old news to me isn’t for a lot of other people. That is an important lesson I learned as I worked in bigger organizations.”

Steve Ballmer’s challenge as the chief executive of Microsoft is not unlike the challenge that it faces with technology: how to take something very complicated — be it a software program or a sprawling organizational chart — and make it simple to operate. This may be the toughest task of his career.