Azul puts itself on the block
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Vega, what has become of you? Exclusive Things at Azul Systems are as bad as we feared, according to numerous sources.â¦
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The drug maker is poised to speed past its rivals.
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Padraic Brady has posted a manifesto of sorts about the work that he's been doing on his PHPSpec library and trying to work it into the approval process for the Zend Framework.   I'll be attempting to pound the Zend Framework into submission so I can apply Behaviour-Driven Development (BDD) using PHPSpec when I write a Controller. Why? Because I feel like it, and it gives me an excuse to promote one possible incarnation of PHPMock and the PHPSpec Zend Framework extension. See? Perfectly reasonable selfishness!   He hopes to move it past the typical test-driven development process that PHPUnit offers and "kick your ass into high-TDD gear" without having to have worked much with it before then (the key is simplicity).   He includes some code examples (how it should flow) and describes some of the challenges that he's coming across so far, specifically with the way that the Zend Framework works with the Controllers and what he wants to accomplish.
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A company based in Pakistan offers a challenge to a market dominated by Microsoft, Google and Yahoo.
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NEW YORK -- It was anything but a knockout punch, but there is much to say about a good, solid decision, especially when a team displays its unit versatility.
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The Mexican cement maker looks to be an attractively priced opportunity, despite housing market concerns.
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(InfoWorld) - Azul Systems Inc. is doubling the capacity of its "computing appliance," a device that uses multiple multicore processors and is a departure from the typical server-based approach to large scale computing. Azul Thursday is scheduled to launch two new models of its Vega 2 computing appliances that feature up to 16 chips with a total 768 cores for running Java software applications. Rather than add more servers with dual- or quad-core chips as computing needs grow, Azul describes its product as a pool of processing power that applications can dip into as needed. The company calls it "network-attached processing," because of its similarity to network-attached storage. Besides the Vega 2 7280, Azul is also launching the model 7240 with eight chips and a total 384 cores. This follows the December 2006 launch of the Vega 2 3210 with two chips and 96 cores and the 3220 with 4 chips and 192 cores. Network-attached processing is more energy-efficient than the multiple servers that would be needed to deliver the same performance, said Stephen DeWitt, CEO of the 5-year-old firm. He compares the concept to that of an electric utility. "Imagine, if you will, in New York City trying to power every light, toaster or refrigerator with a battery. It's incredibly inefficient. Instead, what everyone does is tap into a big [electrical] grid," De Witt said. In an Azul system, one server could be loaded with multiple Java applications and would connect to the appliance to do the processing. Azul is taking a contrarian approach to delivering processing power, said Cal Braunstein, CEO of the research firm Robert Frances Group. Azul processors act as attached processors to the server and only handle the Java code, Braunstein explained, which allows the server processors to perform more work by shifting the Java execution to the Azul appliance. Although Azul's approach shares similarities with IBM Corp. mainframe computers, there are also important differences. "Azul's model is unique," Braunstein said in an e-mail interview. "I am not aware of any other companies pursuing this particular model." But since Azul is new and small, big companies that could use it may be reluctant to buy technology they're not familiar with, he said. An Azul Vega 2 is running part of the network at Pegasus Solutions Inc., a company that provides the back-end technology for making hotel reservations through online travel sites, hotels and travel agencies. The Azul system easily handles the workload of nine servers, said Steve Lapekas, chief technology officer for Pegasus. "I can't get the box to sweat," Lapekas said. Pegasus limits its use of Azul to a portion of its data center, though he said it may expand its use elsewhere. DeWitt and the founders of Azul started the company after leaving Sun Microsystems Inc. The two companies are embroiled in a patent dispute dating back to March 2006 in which Sun accuses Azul executives of taking Sun's patented technology with them to start Azul. A lawsuit is still pending in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, DeWitt said. Â
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Company competes in Baja 1000 as a way to build its name and test its technology.
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This time, it was Robin Lopez's turn to shine.
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Paul Jones has run some benchmarking on four different frameworks - CakePHP, Solar, Symfony, and the Zend Framework - to check for overall speed and has come up with some interesting results.   Anger-inducing broad-brush overview: Solar is 4x faster than Zend, and almost 2x faster than Symfony. Read on for all the nuances and caveats.   Throughout the rest of the post he talks about the methods that he took for testing the frameworks and that his goal was the fastest response time only, nothing about the actual functionality. The test was as simple of a "hello world" that he could get in each one.   He's provided the benchmarking results, as provided by Apache's ab testing script for the base (just PHP manually) and then for each of the frameworks, providing the code used as well. There's also a helpful bit on which classes get loaded for each of the frameworks to see what the overhead is. Symfony tops off this list with 43 total libraries for what ends up as a simple echo statement.
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A goal in each half by Bonaventure Kalou was enough to give Auxerre the points and enable them to qualify while a win for Graz AK against AZ Alkmaar sent the Austrian side through at the expense of the SPL side.
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A Silicon Valley start-up called Azul Systems plans to start selling hardware next year designed to make it faster and more efficient to run Java programs.
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As the settlement turns Did Sun Microsystems acquire a stake in Azul when the two companies settled their patent infringement dispute earlier this week? We're guessing yes.â¦
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In a new blog post Richard Thomas takes a deeper look (well continues his ) at the performance of the Zend_Loader component of the Zend Framework.   When you use Zend_Loader your files are wrapped in conditional statements. These statements prevent APC and all other cache/accelerator programs to have problems properly caching your file. [...] Now here is the catch-22. Depending on the size of your application and how often different classes are used you can run into problems.   His result doesn't have much to do with the component, though - he points out that conditionals of any type can slow things down in an application and that "benchmarking is your friend".
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(InfoWorld) - Azul Systems Inc., a maker of appliances that enhance the performance of servers running Java software applications, is boosting the performance further with new models introduced Monday. The Vega 2 appliance features up to 768 processor cores, up from a maximum of 384 cores in the Vega 1 appliance introduced in 2005, Azul said. The appliances operate as a sort of a turbocharger for servers. Azul is launching the new product while continuing to defend itself in a patent infringement lawsuit against it by Sun Microsystems Inc. Azul calls its technology "network-attached processing" because, the way it functions, Java-based computer workload is diverted from a database to the Vega appliance for processing before being piped into the server for distribution to end users on the network. "It is able to run through the Java code and give you the responses in the work effort consistently and at a much faster rate than normal servers can do Java," said Cal Braunstein, an analyst with the information technology consulting firm Robert Frances Group Inc. The Azul appliance provides data center managers an order of magnitude increase in computer processing power compared to what's available with the typical array of servers, said Stephen DeWitt, president and chief executive officer of Azul. Data center processing needs to keep growing but for some, new server capacity comes online too slowly. "Right now it's 'Here's a thimbleful, here's a thimbleful, here's a thimbleful','' DeWitt said. "We give you a straw that is attached to an ocean." By offering as many as 768 processor cores, Azul's uses parallel processing rather than faster processors to move data, he said. It's like adding more lanes on the freeway instead of giving everyone a faster car. The 768-processor model, coupled with 768G bytes of memory, is at the high end of the Vega 2 line and will be shipped beginning in 2007, said Scott Sellers, chief operating officer and a cofounder of Azul. An entry-level Vega 2 with up to 192 processors and multiple memory configurations is available now in the Americas and Europe. Prices in the new series start at US$49,995. The maximum capacity Vega 1, introduced 18 months ago, featured 384-way processors and 256G bytes of memory, Sellers said. Azul has been engaged in a legal dispute with Sun Microsystems since last March when Azul sought an injunction in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to block Sun from suing Azul for patent infringement. Sun filed a suit anyway in May, alleging patent infringement and abuse of trade secrets. Sun claims Azul is using Sun-patented "speculative locking" and transactional memory technology in Azul products, according to the lawsuit. It also says Azul hired 10 former Sun executives, including DeWitt, while they were still bound by a noncompete contract clause by Sun. Analyst Braunstein doesn't think the suit poses a real threat to Azul: "I don't think there's a smoking gun at the moment." Attorneys for Sun did not return calls seeking comment.ADVERTISEMENTNEW IT SERVICES FROM IBM: EASIER TO BUY AND IMPLEMENTDiscover a simpler, more cost-effective way to get the solutions your company needs to grow more flexible and efficient.
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A popular financial portal has its say.
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In a new post to his blog today, Matthew O'Phinney dives in to some of the more advanced features that the Zend_Form component of the Zend Framework has to offer.   I've been working on  for the past few weeks, and it's nearing release readiness. There are a number of features that Cal didn't cover in his DevZone coverage (in part because some of them weren't yet complete) that I'd like to showcase.   These additional features include internationalization, element grouping and array support. He looks at each of these, including some sample code where needed, and shows you how they can be useful to you and your ZF application.