ITNEWS !!

ARM, the company that designs chips for the world’s smartphones, said handset makers will deliver the first models using more than one processor core next year, as high-end mobile phones begin to mimic the hardware attributes of PCs.

Palm Pre

(Credit: Palm )

And that means top smartphone suppliers such as Apple and Palm, which both use ARM-based processors, will likely deliver models packing at least two cores inside the main processor–referred to as an application (or applications) processor.

This is a natural progression for high-end smartphones like the iPhone and Palm Pre as the software those phones run gets increasingly sophisticated.

“You’ll definitely see handsets shipping with a dual-core A9 in 2010,” James Bruce, wireless segment manager for ARM, said in a phone interview earlier this week, referring to the next-generation Cortex-A9 processor from ARM.

The Palm Pre uses a processor based on the current-generation Cortex A8. The iPhone also uses an Apple-branded chip that is based on an ARM design.

“The A8 is just a single core while the A9 will be dual-core, all the way up to quad-core to give smartphones an even bigger performance boost,” Bruce said.

He said the move to dual-core phones should happen relatively quickly. “It’s very aggressive. It’s only going to be in a year’s time that you’re going to get these phones,” he said.

And what about power consumption, a critical concern for smartphones looking to deliver all-day battery life? “What we’ve done on the A9 is actually make it more power efficient than the A8. The dual-core A9 will be coming out on 45-nanometer rather than the (current) 65-nanometer process,” Bruce said. Generally, the smaller the geometries, the faster and more power-efficient the processor is.

Bruce continued. “With the dual-core running at maximum load there’s probably going to be an increase of about 10 to 20 percent in power consumption but in general day to day use you’re actually going to see better battery life.”

Manufacturers are very strict about power-consumption caps, he said. “The manufacturers lay down the law that maximum power consumption of the processor is 300 milliwatts. In the mobile space, this is one of those golden rules that we have to live within,” he said, speaking about the upcoming Cortex A9 processor.

An ARM diagram showing a quad-core Cortex-A9 processor

(Credit: ARM)

By comparison, Intel’s power-sipping Atom processor–used widely in Netbooks–is generally rated at more than 2 watts (2,000 milliwatts), though Intel is expected to get this down to smartphone territory with the future “Moorestown” processor.

Bruce also spoke about the speed of the current Cortex-A8 versus the previous ARM design. The principal reason for the performance boost is the A8’s superscalar design, which means the processor can execute two separate instructions per clock cycle.

“You’re getting a 2X increase (over the previous ARM design). “And actually the A9 takes that even further, It’s a superscalar design but it’s also an out-of-order design as well. There is some out-of-order aspects with the A8 but the A9 is a very aggressive out-of-order processor,” he said. The ability to process instructions using an advanced out-of-order architecture typically results in better performance.

And graphics will follow suit. The upcoming multi-core OMAP 4 processor from Texas Instruments (the OMAP 3 is used in the Palm Pre) is based on the ARM Cortex-9 and will boast graphics that support 1080p video and high-definition record and playback, larger screen resolutions, and “digital SLR-like performance with 20 MP (megapixel) imaging,” according to TI documentation.

Launch of the shuttle Endeavour, grounded by a gaseous hydrogen leak during fueling Saturday, is off until Wednesday at the earliest, NASA officials say. But because of the already planned launch of NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter satellite Wednesday, the shuttle team could be delayed to June 20, the last day this month Endeavour can be launched.

Mission managers plan to meet later this weekend to discuss troubleshooting and to assess their options, including negotiations with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter project and the Air Force Eastern Range that provides telemetry and tracking support for all rockets launched from Florida.

“Obviously, the 17th is a range problem, there’s a conflict out there with LRO/LCROSS,” said Mike Moses, shuttle integration manager at the Kennedy Space Center. “We haven’t even begun to work that yet…We’ll start those negotiations tomorrow and see where we get, both with the Range and with the NASA payload.”

In the meantime, shuttle engineers are pressing ahead with troubleshooting to figure out what went wrong during Endeavour’s fueling.

Engineers began the three-hour fueling process at 9:52 p.m. Friday. As the hydrogen section of the tank fills up, some of the liquid turns into a gas that is carried away by a vent line. As Endeavour’s tank was being topped off, sensors indicated higher-than-allowable levels of gaseous hydrogen at the ground umbilical plate, or GUP, that connects the vent line to the side of the shuttle’s external tank.

A television view of the vent line umbilical plate on the side of the shuttle Endeavour’s external tank that leaked during fueling, delaying launch on a space station assembly mission.

(Credit: NASA TV)

The problem, which shows up only when supercold cryogenic propellants are flowing, was virtually identical to a leak in March that grounded the shuttle Discovery for four days, NASA officials said. In that case, engineers disassembled the umbilical and replaced a critical seal. While the “root cause” of the problem was never determined, the system worked normally during Discovery’s subsequent launch attempt.

“We got into tanking on time,” senior Launch Director Mike Leinbach said early Saturday. “Everything was going perfectly fine, per plan. But just like on the STS-119 mission, we suffered a leak at the ground umbilical carrier plate just as soon as we got into the topping part of the sequence on the hydrogen load.

“The signature was almost identical to what we had two flows ago. The guys on console cycled the valve as they did previously, they cycled the valve four times trying to clear up that leak. In the past, every now and then that’ll work for us. This time, again, it didn’t work for us. We were out of spec leakage at that disconnect.”

It will take four days to replace an internal seal, test the umbilical and ready Endeavour for another launch attempt.

“That’s a preliminary plan, but I would not expect it to be any shorter than that,” Leinbach said. “It’s going to be very, very similar to what we went through last time on STS-119.”

Moses said engineers were surprised to encounter the same problem in two out of three launch campaigns. After the March leak, “we measured how that seal fits, we looked at it under a microscope, we looked at it under cryo conditions, we didn’t really find anything that would tell us what common cause is.”

“But obviously, something is going on, the second time in three flights, something is going on. So teams are being kicked off to go look at that…But really, our plan is going to be pretty much what it was last time, which is just R-and-R (remove and replace) that seal and then we really have to tank again to see what happens.”

That means Endeavour will be grounded until Wednesday at the earliest. But NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter currently is scheduled for launch atop an Atlas 5 rocket at 3:51 p.m. Wednesday.

It takes the Eastern Range two days to reconfigure its systems to support a different launch. If the LRO mission stays on track and takes off Wednesday afternoon as planned, the next opportunity for Endeavour would be before dawn on June 20.

But in that case, NASA would only have one day to get Endeavour off the ground or the flight would slip to July 11 because of temperature constraints related to the orbit of the International Space Station.

NASA managers want to get Endeavour off as soon as possible to avoid downstream delays for upcoming space station assembly missions as the shuttle program winds down toward retirement in 2010. But the LRO mission is a high priority as well and it’s not yet clear how NASA might ultimately resolve the conflict.

“They only have a four-day window, it’s a lunar rendezvous, so they have those four days and if they don’t make that they have to wait two weeks before they could go again,” said Moses.

“So there are two parts to that. One, we don’t want them to miss their lunar rendezvous window because that’s very difficult to replan around. The other thing is, the Range is kind of backing up, especially on the Atlas pad, there are a lot of payloads that are waiting for LRO to get going and having a payload that needs to wait every two weeks for its launch window to reopen could cause some problems. We’re going to have those negotiations, I can’t begin to foretell how they’re going to go.”

Moses said “we had pretty much agreed ahead of time that we would probably not bump them off the Range, but it would all depend on why we needed to scrub in the first place.”

“We didn’t really talk about a failure like this, we were mostly thinking weather,” he said. “So we’ll go and re-talk again. But I don’t expect that we’ll make them go away and we’ll take that whole window. But if we do, we’d try the 17th and could go all the way through the 20th.”

The Twitterati are stocking their bomb shelters with Twinkies in preparation for the “Twitpocalypse,” the time at which the number of tweets sent passes the 2,147,483,647 mark, which is the maximum value of a 32-bit signed integer (technically, it’s one-half of 2 to the 32nd, minus 1). Each Twitter message has a unique identifier based on that counter.

When the total number of tweets passes that mark, poorly-written Twitter client apps that use 32-bit signed integers may fail or crash, as they will be unable to deal with the values.

(Credit: Twitpocalypse.com)

The Twitter platform itself will not be affected, we hear.

Seesmic Desktop and Twhirl, two client apps made by Seesmic, are “totally safe,” Seesmic CEO Loic LeMeur told me.

The time that the tweet counter passes the 32-bit limit is fast approaching, but to take some control of the situation, Twitter engineers were discussing forcing the issue by incrementing the tweet counter to that number at 2 p.m. PDT today. That has not happened yet, according to one developer who contacted me (on Twitter).

Update, 3:25 p.m. PDT: Twitter’s attempt to hotwire its system to roll it past the dangerous milestone has been delayed. Doug Williams in the Twitter Development Talk group recently posted, “Just an update, there is a lot of coordination that it takes to pull something like this off…the deadline may slip a bit as we work to ensure that we’ve covered our bases, and that the engineering team is ready to react to unforeseen problems.”

Update, 3:55 p.m. PDT: The Tweetdeck client for Twitter has been updated, according to a tweet from the company: “If you need it there is a patched version of TweetDeck (v0.25.1) click on the ‘Download now’ button at http://tweetdeck.com #twitpocalypse.” The “If you need it” clause is cryptic. Will an unpatched Tweetdeck installation fail when the Twitter counter reaches the noted number? A query sent to the company has yet to be answered.

Update: 5 p.m. PDT: Two recent posts debunk this whole thing. Ars Technica says Twitter apps are just technically not likely to fail due to the identified problem, in “No fail-whale purgatory for us.” The L.A. Times says the whole thing was a bit of a marketing stunt by the application developer that put up the Twitpocalypse.com site, in “Twitpocalypse? Nah.”

The Twitpocalypse site also says that we are now past the key 2,147,483,647th tweet. The site links to Tweet #2,147,483,649 by user @nk. It said, “The Tweets must flow,” and linked to a picture of a kitten.

My unpatched version of Tweetdeck is still working.

Update 5:30 p.m. PDT: Believe it or not, there are reports that one app, the iPhone Twitter client Twitterific, is not working. I heard reports that another AIR-based client was giving “weird results,” but have not been able to confirm it. Search for #twitpocalypse on Twitter for the latest.

Amazon.com must pay Toys “R” Us $51 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the toy retailer in May 2004.

Back then, Toys “R” Us sued Amazon for violating the terms of the 10-year partnership the companies forged in 2000. Toys “R” Us claimed Amazon violated the agreement by allowing other vendors to market toys and baby products on its site.

On Friday, Amazon said in a document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission that the money must be paid in the third quarter of 2009 and that the sum was “unanticipated.”

The Web’s largest retailer said that Toys “R” Us has agreed to dismiss all claims and counterclaims.

Not long after Toys “R” Us filed its original claim, Amazon filed a counterclaim as well as an official request to terminate the partnership.

The retailer asked for $750 million in damages and claimed the toy retailer failed to meet its end of their bargain. Toys “R” Us, according to Amazon, was unable to meet demand for top-selling toys, games, and baby products, especially during the holidays.

In 2006, the court entered a decision favoring Toys “R” Us that terminated the contract.

The two companies joined forces during the dot-com era, after Toys “R” Us stumbled badly trying to build an online franchise. The toy giant turned to Amazon, agreeing to pay the retailer a $200 million premium for exclusive rights to sell toys and baby items through its site.

A spokeswoman for Toys “R” Us declined to comment.

Imran Khan, a J.P. Morgan analyst, lowered his second quarter forecast for Amazon but said “We do not see the settlement as representing anything other than a one-time item,” Khan wrote in a note sent Friday afternoon. “We believe Amazon’s continued market share gains justify the stock’s premium valuation.”

Parthasarathy

(Credit: Microsoft)

Parthasarathy, the corporate vice president in charge of Microsoft’s Startup Business Accelerator program, plans to retire from the company in September, a Microsoft representative said. Microsoft said his departure had been planned for some time and that it is unrelated to recent job cuts at the company.

His responsibilities will be taken over by Amit Mital, who runs the “Unlimited Potential” unit that handles emerging markets. Mital will handle duties for both units, though they will remain separate operations. Mital, like Parthasarathy, reports to chief research and strategy officer Craig Mundie.

Prior to heading the start-up unit, Parthasarathy had been running Microsoft’s developer and platform evangelism team–the group responsible for efforts such as Channel 9 and the Imagine Cup competition.

He joined Microsoft in August 1990 as a product manager in the Windows multimedia group.

Parthasarathy’s departure was reported earlier Friday by PaidContent.org.

Marketer and avid Twitterer Ian Schafer gives his perspective.

(Credit: Twitter)

The servers didn’t crash, the system didn’t go haywire, and no locusts started spewing out of anyone’s monitors when Facebook let its 200-million-plus members reserve customized URLs on Saturday at 12:01 AM Eastern. 200,000 user names were reserved in a matter of three minutes, according to Twitter posts from Facebook employees.

“Well, that was anti-climactic. Worked, no bugs, and I got my name,” someone told me in an instant message. “Was exciting for a hot second though!”

I did notice some Facebook pages loading more slowly than usual. After all, the whole thing was hyped beyond belief, at least in certain circles. My Twitter feed was bogged down with “countdown”-related tweets and people proudly announcing their new URLs, but it’s unclear how many people who aren’t affiliated with the tech or media industries actually cared. Regardless, Facebook appears to have carried this out very smoothly, undoubtedly with beefed-up server power in place to streamline the process.

But it’s not over for Facebook. Now, the social network will have to deal with an invariably bloated degree of customer service complaints, as well as a likely stream of legal inquiries pertaining to copyrights and trademarks.

For the moment, however, it appears to have been even less eventful than the so-called “Twitpocalypse” that freaked out the blogosphere earlier on Friday.

UPDATE (9:33 p.m. PT): We’ve heard from a few people who were trying to grab their first names and couldn’t–even though the names didn’t appear to be reserved already. One of them speculates that Facebook may have simply “cancelled out” some popular names.

The Twitterati are stocking their bomb shelters with Twinkies in preparation for the “Twitpocalypse,” the time at which the number of tweets sent passes the 2,147,483,647 mark, which is the maximum value of a 32-bit signed integer (technically, it’s one-half of 2 to the 32nd, minus 1). Each Twitter message has a unique identifier based on that counter.

When the total number of tweets passes that mark, poorly-written Twitter client apps that use 32-bit signed integers may fail or crash, as they will be unable to deal with the values.

(Credit: Twitpocalypse.com)

The Twitter platform itself will not be affected, we hear.

Seesmic Desktop and Twhirl, two client apps made by Seesmic, are “totally safe,” Seesmic CEO Loic LeMeur told me.

The time that the tweet counter passes the 32-bit limit is fast approaching, but to take some control of the situation, Twitter engineers were discussing forcing the issue by incrementing the tweet counter to that number at 2 p.m. PDT today. That has not happened yet, according to one developer who contacted me (on Twitter).

Update, 3:25 p.m. PDT: Twitter’s attempt to hotwire its system to roll it past the dangerous milestone has been delayed. Doug Williams in the Twitter Development Talk group recently posted, “Just an update, there is a lot of coordination that it takes to pull something like this off…the deadline may slip a bit as we work to ensure that we’ve covered our bases, and that the engineering team is ready to react to unforeseen problems.”

Update, 3:55 p.m. PDT: The Tweetdeck client for Twitter has been updated, according to a tweet from the company: “If you need it there is a patched version of TweetDeck (v0.25.1) click on the ‘Download now’ button at http://tweetdeck.com #twitpocalypse.” The “If you need it” clause is cryptic. Will an unpatched Tweetdeck installation fail when the Twitter counter reaches the noted number? A query sent to the company has yet to be answered.

Update: 5 p.m. PDT: Two recent posts debunk this whole thing. Ars Technica says Twitter apps are just technically not likely to fail due to the identified problem, in “No fail-whale purgatory for us.” The L.A. Times says the whole thing was a bit of a marketing stunt by the application developer that put up the Twitpocalypse.com site, in “Twitpocalypse? Nah.”

The Twitpocalypse site also says that we are now past the key 2,147,483,647th tweet. The site links to Tweet #2,147,483,649 by user @nk. It said, “The Tweets must flow,” and linked to a picture of a kitten.

My unpatched version of Tweetdeck is still working.

Update 5:30 p.m. PDT: Believe it or not, there are reports that one app, the iPhone Twitter client Twitterific, is not working. I heard reports that another AIR-based client was giving “weird results,” but have not been able to confirm it. Search for #twitpocalypse on Twitter for the latest.

Amazon.com must pay Toys “R” Us $51 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the toy retailer in May 2004.

Back then, Toys “R” Us sued Amazon for violating the terms of the 10-year partnership the companies forged in 2000. Toys “R” Us claimed Amazon violated the agreement by allowing other vendors to market toys and baby products on its site.

On Friday, Amazon said in a document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission that the money must be paid in the third quarter of 2009 and that the sum was “unanticipated.”

The Web’s largest retailer said that Toys “R” Us has agreed to dismiss all claims and counterclaims.

Not long after Toys “R” Us filed its original claim, Amazon filed a counterclaim as well as an official request to terminate the partnership.

The retailer asked for $750 million in damages and claimed the toy retailer failed to meet its end of their bargain. Toys “R” Us, according to Amazon, was unable to meet demand for top-selling toys, games, and baby products, especially during the holidays.

In 2006, the court entered a decision favoring Toys “R” Us that terminated the contract.

The two companies joined forces during the dot-com era, after Toys “R” Us stumbled badly trying to build an online franchise. The toy giant turned to Amazon, agreeing to pay the retailer a $200 million premium for exclusive rights to sell toys and baby items through its site.

A spokeswoman for Toys “R” Us declined to comment.

Imran Khan, a J.P. Morgan analyst, lowered his second quarter forecast for Amazon but said “We do not see the settlement as representing anything other than a one-time item,” Khan wrote in a note sent Friday afternoon. “We believe Amazon’s continued market share gains justify the stock’s premium valuation.”