GlobalFoundries woos customers with expansion plans

The acquisition of Chartered Semiconductor by Advanced Technology Investment Co. (ATIC) and its planned integration with GlobalFoundries will help the contract chip maker win more customers, GlobalFoundries CEO Doug Grose said Wednesday. "This enhances our ability to then service a much broader and deeper range of customers" Grose said during a presentation at Advanced Micro Devices' 2009 Analyst Day. The company is a joint venture between AMD and ATIC and the microprocessor vendor remains its biggest customer. GlobalFoundries, formerly the manufacturing arm of AMD, was spun off as an independent company and began operating on its own earlier this year. In September, ATIC offered to acquire Singapore's Chartered Semiconductor, which uses the same manufacturing process technology as GlobalFoundries.

Besides adding manufacturing capacity through ATIC's acquisition of Chartered and the construction of a new plant in New York, GlobalFoundries is counting on advanced process technologies to help it win customers and compete with rivals like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Nearly all of GlobalFoundries' current production uses its 45-nanometer process, reflecting AMD's role as the company's dominant customer, Grose said, adding that the more advanced 32 nanometer process is in pilot production and is "ready to go" next year. Chartered shareholders voted to approve the deal earlier this month. "We have one more regulatory approval to get in the world and we're working towards year end to close this ... and to do the planning to integrate, on an operational basis, Chartered and Global Foundries into a single face to the customer," Grose said. GlobalFoundries has also started pilot production using its 28-nanometer process technology, which will be used for commercial production starting late next year.

Intel, Numonyx create breakthrough in phase-change memory

Intel Corp. and Numonyx B.V. announced a breakthrough in the development of phase-change memory today that has the potential to allow developers to stack multiple layers of chips atop each other, thereby greatly increasing the density of the nonvolatile memory medium. Greg Atwood, a senior technology fellow at Numonyx, said the breakthrough in stackable PCM, which is being called PCM-stackable (PCMS), has the potential to create products that can replace DRAM, NOR and NAND flash memory because it will have better bandwidth, greater density and a cost per gigabyte of capacity comparable with today's solid state disk (SSD) drive products. "We believe it enables the possibility of combining the functionality and performance of phase-change memory with more NAND-like cost structure," Atwood said. "And, it's of particular interest given the challenges the existing non-volatile memory technologies are facing over the next decade as well as the continued expansion of [PCM] usage." The two companies have been working on development of PCM products since 2000, and a stackable PCM product since 2002. Al Fazio, an Intel fellow and director of memory technology development, said it's not unusual for a new memory type to take as many as 10 years to develop. Calling the discovery a "milestone" in phase-change memory (PCM) development, the researchers said they have so far only been able to build a single-layer, 64Mbit chip with the potential to be stacked with other 64Mbit chips.

Atwood said that because the stacking breakthrough builds on top of PCM, a technology already in production, "it's a leading candidate amongst the various stackable memory concepts, most of which have no basis in a proven technology." Other non-volatile memories in development include graphite memory , and race track memory . Atwood added that Intel and Numonyx have no current time line for bringing PCMS products to market. Current NAND flash memory lithography technology resides at the 32-nanometer level. Phase-change memory is made up of a glass-like material called chalcogenide that can be can be switched between a crystalline and random state using very low-voltage electricity. Future roadmaps scale NAND flash to 20 nanometers, but physical limitations present a barrier to creating anything more dense than that. The structure of a typical non-volatile memory cell includes a storage element combined with a selector element. PCM, however, currently has the ability to scale to 5 nanometers in size, and the potential of even greater densities, Fazio said.

The function of the storage element is nonvolatile storage of data and the purpose of the selector element is to connect storage elements into a cross-point array of cells. Unlike NAND flash memory, which requires a entire block of memory cells to be rewritten each time new data is stored on a device like a SSD drive, PCM allows for single bits to be changed, greatly increasing the efficiency and performance of a device. "It has features of a low-latency memory and high bandwidth so we can combine many of the good attributes ... of NAND flash, DRAM and NOR flash," Fazio said. The connection allows for the selection of a single storage element inside of a large array of cells - a billion or more. The breakthrough in stacking PCMS came with the use of a thin film selector substance that is in the same class of materials as chalcogenide and is built above the silicon substrate. It has a low current in the off state and a high current in the on state," Atwood said. "Combining the OTS with the thin film storage material, a similar material used in phase-change memories today, enables a cell that can be stacked multiple layers high." Additionally, since the silicon substrate that isn't being used as a selector, as it is in today's PCM product, can now be used for building the support circuitry used that's required to decode, read and write to the cells. "So the combination of these two advantages results in a much smaller die size that's a lower potential cost structure for the memory," Atwood said. The companies are calling the thin film selector an Ovonic Threshold Switch (OTS), which acts like a resister between the stacked layers of PCM chips. "This switch demonstrates a diode-like behavior.

On Dec. 9, the two companies plan to present a paper on their discovery at the 2009 International Electron Devices Meeting, titled "A Stackable Cross Point Phase Change Memory."

Apple probes iPhone battery woes

Continued complaints by iPhone owners about fast-draining batteries have prompted Apple to ask some users to install power-logging software on their smartphones in an effort to diagnose the problem, according to messages on the company's support forum. "Some of you may already have been informed via e-mail [by Apple], but for those of you that haven't, I can assure you that Apple is trying to get to the bottom of this problem," said a user identified as "mikefradette" Friday on a support thread dedicated to poor battery performance. "Let's just say they have selected a beta group to help solve this issue." Others reported that technical support representatives had asked them to install Apple software that logs application usage and power consumption. I'd bet that Apple missed some key interactions between the iPhone's software and the processor in the last update that causes it to over-utilize the CPU, especially since [the complaints] came after the software update." Vronko was referring to the iPhone 3.1 update that Apple shipped two weeks ago. Apple technical support has also used an 11-item questionnaire in its discussions with users in an attempt to figure out the cause of rapid battery drain, including questions are about Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and e-mail use. "There's still no smoking gun," said Aaron Vronko, the CEO of Michigan-based Rapid Repair, an iPhone repair shop. "But the processor in the iPhone 3GS can use 50% more power in some situations than its predecessor. Most of the users grousing on the Apple support forum who identified their iPhone's model said they were using the 3GS, although some said they had seen battery life drop off on their iPhone 3G smartphones as well.

The clamor grew even louder after users installed iPhone 3.1, and shows no sign of abating. In fact, complaints about battery consumption started in June, when "http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9135181/iPhone_users_harangue_Apple_over_battery_life?">Apple rolled out the iPhone 3.0 software. One thread on the topic, which debuted Sept. 10, has more than 570 individual posts, and has been read by over 40,000 people, an extremely high number for Apple's forum. "I'm glad this is an actual problem. I have to charge the iPhone in the middle of the day to be able to have enough battery to get home," added "help with iPhone." "Same problem here," reported "cathjock12345" on the same thread Monday. "The battery was completely drained after about 1 hour of Internet use, 10 text messages, and 2 quick (5 minute-ish) phone calls over the course of 5 hours. I thought I was just going crazy," said "iPhil" Monday afternoon on that well-trafficked thread. "After [iPhone] 3.1, battery sometimes doesn't even last an entire day with no additional talk than I had using 3.0." "The day after I installed the 3.1 firmware, everything changed.

Unacceptable." "I think this is exactly the kind of thing you'd see from an unexpected software interaction with the processor," argued Vronko today. But Apple's doing the right thing by asking iPhone owners how they're using their smartphones, and requesting that some install logging software. "Some of these [people] are probably heavy application users, though they may think they're light users," said Vronko. "But [the logging software] is likely looking not just at the applications being used and the power consumption, but recording down to the last processing thread what's occurring." Vronko was optimistic that Apple would get to the root of the problem. "Diagnostics like that should make it pretty easy for them to narrow it down," he said.

Hacker leaks thousands of Hotmail passwords, says site

More than 10,000 usernames and passwords for Windows Live Hotmail accounts were leaked online late last week, according to a report by Neowin.net , which claimed that they were posted by an anonymous user on pastebin.com last Thursday. Neowin reported that it had seen part of the list. "Neowin has seen part of the list posted and can confirm the accounts are genuine and most appear to be based in Europe," said the site. "The list details over 10,000 accounts starting from A through to B, suggesting there could be additional lists." Hotmail usernames and passwords are often used for more than logging into Microsoft 's online e-mail service, however. The post has since been taken down. Many people log onto a wide range of Microsoft's online properties - including the trial version of the company's Web-based Office applications , the Connect beta test site and the Skydrive online storage service - with their Hotmail passwords.

Accounts with domains of @hotmail.com, @msn.com and @live.com were included in the list. It was unknown how the usernames and passwords were obtained, but Neowin speculated that they were the result of either a hack of Hotmail or a massive phishing attack that had tricked users into divulging their log-on information. Microsoft representatives in the U.S. were not immediately able to confirm Neowin's account, or answer questions, including how the usernames and passwords were acquired. Last year, a Tennessee college student was accused of breaking into former Alaska governor Sarah Palin's Yahoo Mail account in the run-up to the U.S. presidential election. The BBC , however, reported early Monday that Microsoft U.K. is aware of the report that account information had been available on the Web, and said it's "actively investigating the situation and will take appropriate steps as rapidly as possible." If Neowin's account is accurate, the Hotmail hack or phishing attack would be one of the largest suffered by a Web-based e-mail service.

Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee at the time, lost control of her personal account when someone identified only as "rubico" reset her password after guessing answers to several security questions. Kernell's case is ongoing. David Kernell was charged with a single count of accessing a computer without authorization by a federal grand jury last October. Shortly after the Palin account hijack, Computerworld confirmed that the automated password-reset mechanisms used by Hotmail, Yahoo Mail and Google 's Gmail could be abused by anyone who knew an account's username and could answer a single security question.

Juniper's relationship with Packet Design

In our Oct. 26 WAN newsletter we discussed the fact that there were a number of rumors circulating about a dramatic move that Juniper would soon announce. We are going to use this newsletter to focus on one piece of the Juniper announcements – Juniper's establishment of a close relationship with Packet Design. On Oct. 29 Juniper used the New York stock exchange as a backdrop to make a series of announcements.

Juniper Networks: a brief history In the Oct. 26 newsletter we pointed out that the most common rumor we were hearing was that Juniper would acquire Riverbed. We stated, for example, that although Riverbed certainly does sell into service providers, it is primarily a fast moving enterprise-focused company. In that newsletter we stated that for a number of reasons we didn't believe that Juniper would acquire Riverbed. In contrast, Juniper's DNA is clearly in the service-provider market. As part of their announcement, however, Juniper also announced that it will offer a development platform referred to as Junos Space.

Part of the agreement that Juniper announced with Packet Design is the standard OEM relationship by which Juniper's direct sales and distribution partners will sell Packet Design's route analytics products. Packet Design's Route Analyzer product will be one of the first solutions that resides in Junos Space. That follows because Packet Design's route analytics product are targeted at some of the challenges that occur in large complex networks – both enterprise and service provider. Unlike the rumored acquisition of Riverbed, Juniper's recently announced relationship with Packet Design makes a lot of sense. For example, one of the functions of Packet Design's route analytics products is to enable IT professionals to accurately model network changes before implementing them.

In order to do this, a route analytics solution has to have an understanding of precisely how IP networks deliver application traffic. Another function of these products is to provide visibility, analysis and diagnosis of the issues that occur at the routing layer. This requires continuous, real-time monitoring as well as the creation and maintenance of a map of networkwide routes and of all the IP traffic flows that traverse these routes. We said that this relationship makes a lot of sense in part because networks are continually getting more complex, Packet Design's route analytics products help manage that complexity and Juniper definitely understands large complex networks. This in turn means that a route analytics solution must be able to record every change in the traffic paths as controlled and notified by IP routing protocols. The Juniper announcements are interesting in part because they show that in spite of appearances, that there is a lot of innovation happening in networking.

The panel is entitled "Breakthrough Network Technologies". If you are going to be at the conference, try to attend the panel as it should be very insightful. To reinforce that concept, Packet Design will be on one of Jim's panels at the forthcoming Interop conference in New York.

Microsoft to patch IE zero-day bug next week

Microsoft today said it will deliver six security updates on Tuesday, including one that will patch a vulnerability in Internet Explorer (IE) the company admitted only last week. The update will address an IE zero-day vulnerability that Microsoft confirmed Nov. 23 in a security advisory. "I want to point out that Internet Explorer 8 is not affected on any platform and that running Protected Mode in Internet Explorer 7 on Windows Vista mitigates this issue," said Jerry Bryant, a spokesman for the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC), in a blog post announcing the advisory last week. The updates will patch a total of 12 flaws in Windows, IE and Microsoft Office, the company said in a follow-up entry to its security response center's blog . At the top of the patch list, even Microsoft's own, will be an update for IE 5.01, IE6, IE7 and IE8 that has been pegged as "critical," the firm's highest severity rating in its four-step scoring system.

Microsoft's advisory was its reaction to proof-of-concept attack code that had gone public several days before, when it was posted to the popular Bugtraq security mailing list. Next Tuesday's update, however, will quash bugs in all still-supported versions of IE, not just IE6 and IE7, a fact Microsoft confirmed today . "We want to make customers aware that we will be addressing the vulnerability discussed in Security Advisory 977981 in the IE bulletin on Tuesday," Bryant said in another blog post. The sample code exploited a flaw in IE's layout parser, and could be used to hijack fully-patched Windows machines. The advisory Bryant called out was the one Microsoft issued last week. "We know that customers are concerned about this issue and we are also aware that Proof of Concept (PoC) code is available publicly." Microsoft's advance notification spelled out the significance of the problem with IE: All versions of its browser contain one or more flaws when run on Windows 2000, Windows XP, Vista, Server 2003 and even Windows 7. Only the company's newest server products - Server 2008 and Server 2008 R2 - are somewhat safer. Microsoft confirmed to Storms that the IE update contains fixes for multiple vulnerabilities; it's not unusual for Microsoft to quash several bugs in a single update. "Last week's zero-day is still not applicable to IE8," Storms said after he consulted with MSRC. "Some other bug is also being patched in the same bulletin." The attack code that went public Nov. 20 was not only unreliable, according to security experts who dived into the exploit, but was touted as only affecting IE6 and IE7 on Windows XP. Later, Microsoft said that Vista users would be protected to a degree not enjoyed by XP customers because the former's "sandbox" would limit the ability of the exploit to compromise the PC. Most outside security researchers, including Storms, were pessimistic last week when asked whether Microsoft could scramble fast enough to fix the flaw in IE6 and IE7. Today, he was impressed. "I would have wavered last week [on] whether they would fix it," he admitted. "But given the impact [of the vulnerability] and the fact that there's code out there, I'm not surprised that they managed it." Other updates slated for release on Dec. 8 include patches for bugs in Windows; Office 2000 and Office 2003; and Microsoft Project 2000, 2002 and 2003. Three of the six updates will be tagged critical, while the remaining trio will carry the "important" label. "Frankly, the rest don't matter at this point," said Storms, referring to the non-IE updates. "IE is the top of the news for Microsoft today, and will be next week." The bright spot, said Storms, is that Microsoft keeps ladling more information onto its pre-Patch Tuesday notification , a preview customers rely on to plan their patching strategy for the following week. "They're blogging and telling us the number of vulnerabilities and the [affected] applications now, which is great," Storms said, applauding Microsoft's moves. "They continue to increase the amount of information they provide. However, that doesn't mean IE 5.01 and IE8 are suddenly vulnerable to last week's zero-day exploit, said Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Network Security.

They're setting a real trend here." Microsoft will release the six updates at approximately 1 p.m. ET on Dec. 8.

Chip sales to grow in 2010, iSuppli says

Worldwide semiconductor sales will grow in 2010 as chip sales gain steam in response to stabilizing economies, analyst firm iSuppli said on Wednesday. Chip sales could total $282.7 billion in 2012; sales tallied close to $273.4 billion in 2007. However, global chip sales will decline in 2009, albeit at a lower rate than iSuppli first projected. Semiconductor sales could grow by 13.8 percent on a year-over-year basis to reach US$246 billion in 2010. Chip revenue will keep growing through 2012 and could reach levels of 2007, after which chip revenue skid began. The analyst firm predicted year-over-year global chip sales would decline by 16.5 percent in 2009. Earlier in the year, iSuppli projected a 23 percent drop.

Semiconductor sales and inventory levels in the PC and mobile-handset markets - which account for a majority of semiconductor sales - improved in the second quarter, iSuppli said. Chip sales in 2009 will total US$216 billion, compared to $258 billion in 2008. Chip sales have "gained clarity" as economies stabilize and supplies improve in key markets after an unstable first quarter, iSuppli said in a statement. Major vendors have also increased their outlooks for PC and mobile-handset sales, which has given more clarity to project overall chip sales for the year. "Semiconductor shipments rebounded as inventories were replenished and modest forward-looking purchases were made," said Dale Ford, senior vice president, market intelligence services for iSuppli, in a statement. Otellini's comments were stronger than conservative outlooks provided for an expected PC industry recovery from companies like Advanced Micro Devices and Dell earlier in the year. Intel CEO Paul Otellini last week said that its chip shipments were stabilizing as PC shipments start to take off.

The companies said that PC shipments would grow as users look to buy new PCs with Microsoft's upcoming Windows 7 OS, which is due next month, and as companies look to refresh PCs. The global economy was partly boosted in the second quarter by worldwide economic stimulus efforts, especially in China, iSuppli said. The U.S. stimulus effort - the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act - has a lesser effect as it wasn't implemented on a wide basis, iSuppli said. China's stimulus efforts resulted in a massive increase in consumer purchasing, which benefitted worldwide economic conditions, iSuppli said. An economic stimulus package of $787 billion to spur economic activity was passed in February by Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama.