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Acer constructs 177 TFLOP supercomputer, ranks 42nd on latest TOP500 list.

After being awarded the contract in November 2010, Acer constructed the supercomputer for the National Center for High-performance Computing (NCHC) in Taiwan. The 177 TFLOPS ALPS (Advanced Large Parallel System) supercomputer, nicknamed Windrider, utilizes the latest AMD Opteron 6000 Series processors. It features a total of 8 compute clusters, 1 large memory cluster and 25,000 compute cores.

As the leading research institute in Taiwan for high-performance computer (HPC), the NCHC works with enterprise and academic institutes to take part in joint research. The new system, the fastest of its kind in Taiwan, will be used for research in science and engineering, disaster simulations, alternative energy, biotechnology, chemistry and more.

NCHC's director, Kuo-Ning Chiang
"The decision to build this machine was made out of necessity. NCHC provides supercomputing resources to Taiwan's many research groups and universities, and our previous machine with only 20 TFLOPS had a long waiting list for running computing jobs. The new system by Acer not only satisfies the current demand, but gives us a lot of room to grow."

Viacom has sued Cablevision today over its mobile streaming content, alleging it is unauthorized.

In April, Cablevision launched its "Optimum App," giving subscribers a chance to stream TV programs via their iPad.

Viacom claims the app violates the two company's current agreement to distribute Viacom programing only on cable TV systems.

The media company is demanding a halt on the streaming and $2 million in damages for each trademark violation.

Cablevision says the Optimum App "falls within our existing cable television licensing agreements with programmers, including Viacom," and will fight the charges.

The cable operator has 3.7 million customers in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

Hulu has announced today that they have expanded their Hulu Plus premium service to a number of Android devices.

The app is available now for the Nexus One, Nexus S, HTC Inspire 4G, Motorola Droid II, Motorola Droid X, and the Motorola Atrix.

More devices will be added as the year progresses, says Benzinga.

Hulu Plus costs $8 per month and gives access to full back catalogs of popular shows.

The service is available via many devices including gaming consoles.

Nvidia and VIA follow AMD out of BAPCo consortium.

The Business Applications Performance Corporation (BAPCo) is a non-profit consortium tasked with developing performance benchmarks for computer systems based on widely used software applications and operating systems. BAPCo has been developing the SYSmark 2012 benchmark intended to be used by businesses and governments to make spending decisions.

On Tuesday (June 21), AMD publicly announced that it has left the BAPCo consortium, and said it cannot endorse the SYSmark 2012 benchmark. AMD's Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Nigel Dessau, had questioned some aspects of the benchmark in a blog post last year titled "Have you Paid the 'SYSmark Tax'?", in which he estimated that government and educational institutions had needlessly spent over $7 billion during the preceding five years as a result of the SYSmark benchmark.

According to Dessau, BAPCo's response to the blog was a threat to expel AMD from the consortium. Nowadays most of us use applications that run HTML 5, use Javascript and other elements that benefit greatly from GPU acceleration. Internet Explorer 9, Microsoft Office, Windows Movie Maker and Adobe Flash are examples of applications given by AMD that benefit from GPU acceleration and are widely used.

J.K. Rowling, the billionaire author behind 'Harry Potter' has confirmed that the global blockbuster series is finally coming in e-book form.

The news comes with the launch of the "Pottermore," the interactive site built around the series.

Says the author (via NYT):

I wanted to give something back to the fans that have followed Harry so devotedly over the years, and to bring the stories to a new digital generation.

Because Rowling has all digital rights to the series, she has waited years to release the e-books and will now bypass traditional retailers and sell them directly from Pottermore.com. Scholastic will keep its revenue share of the series.

There was no word on pricing, but the books will go on sale in October.

Seven years after they first filed suit against Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, it seems the legal drama between Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and the social networking giant is coming to an end.

The twins have dropped their appeal and settled the case, two months after a judge bluntly told them they must accept the deal.

Along with Harvard classmate, Divya Narendra, the twins filed suit against Facebook in 2004 alleging that the concept for Facebook was stolen from them and their early work on HarvardConnection.

In 2008, Facebook agreed to settle, giving the trio a deal worth $65 million ($45 million in stock), with the majority in Facebook stock. At the time, the group was given $45 million in stock with Facebook valued at $15 billion. The twins filed suit again last year claiming Facebook had internally given itself a $3.7 billion valuation, and so the group was conned out of many more shares in the company.

The federal Judge, Alex Kozinski, killed the appeal in April:

At some point, litigation must come to an end. That point has now been reached. The Winklevosses are not the first parties bested by a competitor who then seek to gain through litigation what they were unable to achieve in the marketplace. They made a deal that appears quite favorable in light of recent market activity.

Facebook has just named Netflix CEO Reed Hastings to its Board of Directors, opening up a flood of speculation as to whether the two companies will join up in the future on content.

Says Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg of the move:

Reed is an entrepreneur and technologist who has led Netflix to transform the way people watch movies and TV. He has built a culture of continuous rapid innovation, something we share and work hard to build every day.

Adds Hastings:

Facebook is propelling a fundamental change in how people connect with each other and share all kinds of content. I'm looking forward to working with Mark and the rest of the board to help Facebook take advantage of all the opportunities ahead.

Facebook has 600 million users worldwide and Netflix is the top Internet subscription service in the world, with 23 million users in Canada and the U.S.

Other notable members of Facebook's Board are Zuckerberg, Marc Andreessen, Jim Breyer, Donald Graham and Peter Thiel.

Following an investigation into their search business, the FTC is set to subpoena Google, in a move that has sent Google's share price tumbling even further.

Google has fallen another 11 points after having a rough month to $476 per share following the news.

Competitors have accused Google of favoring its own Google-backed service in search results.

Complaints have come from smaller companies like Yelp, and from much bigger companies like Expedia and Microsoft, who each claim Google's behavior "starves" them of traffic, says the WSJ.

The search giant is already under investigation by European regulators for the same anti-trust behavior.

Jack Tretton, President and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment of America (SCEA), addresses PlayStation 4 (PS4) in Forbes interview.

There has already been hints that Sony is working on the development of the next generation PlayStation home console, generally referred to as the PS4. The PlayStation 3 (PS3) has been on the market since 2006, and Sony promised a ten year life-cycle for the system at the time.

The PS3 has had a mixed experience on the market so far, with early supply and cost problems, increased competition from Nintendo and Microsoft for home consoles and other notable problems such as the PSN breach. Still, Tretton thinks that the PS3 is just getting started and has warned not to get your hopes up if you are looking for a PS4 anytime soon.

"PlayStation 3 is really just hitting its stride. And technologically, I don't think it's possible to provide any advancement beyond what we have. What we've seen from the competition is trying to add features that already exist in PlayStation 3," Tretton said. "We invested heavily in that, we rolled a very heavy rock up a steep hill, through the launch period. But now I think that all pays off, and we've got a long run way behind it. So, I wouldn't look for any discussion of a next generation PlayStation for quite some time."

Mozilla hit June 21 target for the release of Firefox 5.

Compared to past upgrades to the Mozilla Firefox web browser, the release of version 5 was much more muted. Mozilla said that it made over 1,000 improvements to the web browser, although most are just minor bug fixes and tweaks. The user interface is virtually the same as Firefox 4.

Among the biggest changes in Firefox 5 are improvements to HTML 5 support, and the CSS Animations standard to enable developers to build more visually-enhanced Web applications and websites.

The release of Firefox 5 comes after March's much louder release of Firefox 4, under a new rapid release strategy that has been likened by observers to Google's Chrome release policies. Security firms in general recommend that browser refreshes are carried out more often by vendors.

Of the changes to Firefox 5, there were ten bug fixes, seven of which were deemed "critical" by the company. One "moderate" bug fix was targeted at WebGL, a 3D graphics rendering standard that was recently (and very publicly) criticized and snubbed by Microsoft due to serious security concerns.

The latest reports speculate that Nokia will unveil their first Windows Phone 7 smartphones on October 26th, months after their deal with Microsoft was made public.

If accurate, the launch date should coincide with Microsoft's release of the Mango update for the operating system, which should add some much needed features.

October 26th is when Nokia World begins in London, where the company will unveil the future of its mobile handsets.

There are still no clear details on what the first Nokia WP7 devices will look like, their specs or how they will stack up against the upcoming Android "superphones" and Apple's iPhone 5.

Nokia has said they will begin mass producing Windows Phone 7 devices in 2012.

Apple rebuilds popular pro video editing software from the ground up.

Final Cut Pro X is a 64-bit application designed to work on the latest Mac systems in the market. The new iteration of the popular software tours a new Content Auto-Analysis feature that categorizes content on import by shot type, media and people, and a new Magnetic Timeline that lets you add and arrange clips wherever you want them, while other clips instantly slide out of the way.

Using Clip Connections, you can link primary story clips to other elements such as titles and sound effects, so they stay in perfect sync when you move them along the Timeline. Related story elements can be combined into a Compound Clip that can be edited as a single clip.

The Content Auto-Analysis feature scans media upon import and tags the content with information that helps it organize the clips into Smart Collections letting you filter clips easily by the type of shot (close, medium, wide) or by the amount of people in them. An Auditions feature lets you swap between a collection of clips to compare alternative takes easily.

"Final Cut Pro X is the biggest advance in Pro video editing since the original Final Cut Pro," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "We have shown it to many of the world's best Pro editors, and their jaws have dropped."

PopCap, the company behind blockbuster games like Plants vs. Zombies and Bejeweled, has denied reports today that it is being sold for $1 billion to an unnamed bidder.

Reads a tweet from Jennifer Kye of PopCap:

@MrPope Sorry, I might not have been clear. I was simply stating that @TechCrunch‘s article is not true,” Kye said on her Twitter account. “I’ll be working there next week! My boss confirmed it for me.

In the original article, speculation had been that Zynga was an early bidder but the price got too high, but Google, EA or an Asian company may have been the bidder.

PopCap has 4.3 million active daily gamers, and made $100 million in revenue last year, making it one of the most successful independent gaming outfits in the world.

For now, it appears PopCap's expected IPO is still on track for later this year.

A Competition Commission of India official has said today that a complaint was filed against Apple alleging anti-competitive practices in regards to sales of the iPhone 4 in the nation.

The complaint alleges that Apple has broken the law by only offering the phone via two carrier, Bharti Airtel and Aircel.

Speaking anonymously, the official says the Commission is looking into the complaint and whether it requires further action.

Apple says it has not received notice from the Commission yet but waved off the complaint, adding they sell the iPhone unlocked through the operators and that all data plans bundled by the operators are optional.

As long as you have a GSM SIM card, you can use the unlocked iPhone 4 in India.

Earlier this year, Amazon announced an unlimited movie and TV streaming service that is free to Amazon Prime users and would rival Netflix's Watch Instantly service.

Today the company has added 1000 new movies and TV show episodes, including a good portion in HD.

Amazon says they have added, for example, the last 7 seasons of Sesame Street, with 3 in HD, along with Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles in HD, as well.

Among some of the movies added (from quick glance at the list here) are Training Day, the Right Stuff and Superman: The Movie.

Amazon Prime Instant Videos are available for playback on desktops and over 300 devices including HDTVs, Blu-ray players, and set-top boxes.