You can now get up to 60% higher query throughput (as measured by standard benchmarks TPC-DS, 3TB) in Amazon Redshift as a result of improved memory allocation, which reduces the number of queries spilled to disk. This new improvement is available in version 1.0.1056 and above. Combined with the I/O and commit logic enhancement released in version 1.0.1012, it delivers up to 2 times faster performance for complex queries that spill to disk, and queries like SELECT INTO TEMP TABLE that create temporary tables. 

Luc van den Hove, CEO of Imec, opened ITF2016 in Brussels this morning on the theme of ‘daring to take a different view’. He instanced companies which have taken a different view e.g: The company which provides the most taxi rides in the world does not own any taxis; the company which rents more rooms …

ITF2016: The Future Is Good, says Imec

This morning, in Brussels, at Imec’s ITF2016, Imec and Infineon announced a cooperation in CMOS sensor chip development. Infineon and Imec are working on highly integrated CMOS-based 79 GHz sensor chips for automotive radar applications. Imec contributes its advanced expertise in high- frequency system, circuit and antenna design for radar applications thus complementing Infineon’s radar …

ITF2016: Imec, Infineon team for 79GHz CMOS auto radars

Imec and Holst Centre presented a wide-area (LPWA) multi-standard radio chip today at Imec’s annual technology forum in Brussels this morning. The new radio chip is a best-in-class product, which can operate with a lower level of power consumption than any other radio chip technology released to date for long range connectivity in sensor networks. …

ITF2016: Imec presents sub-GHz LPWA radio chip

Thanks to IHS for this one – the world’s top 25 semiconductor companies:

Top 25 Semiconductor Companies 2015

The eBike in question is made by FLUX. It’s a Tesla battery bike only in the sense that the 17A extended lithium battery, available as an option, is the same as those used in the Tesla model S.

Crowdfunding Watch: Tesla Model S battery powers the FLUX eBike

There is plenty of talk about IoT in general, but case studies of real-world implementations are less common. You may want to check out this free Intel whitepaper about Digital signage for transit systems.

Real world IoT implementations – Digital signage for transit systems

Gordon Moore was presented with Imec’s lifetime achievement award at ITF2016 in Brussels this morning. Imec CEO Luc van den Hove went over to Hawaii to talk to Moore and extracts of their conversation were shown to ITF delegates. Modest as always, Moore said Moore’s Law had little effect on the industry. He was observing …

Gordon Moore’s Three Heroes

You can now use Amazon Elastic Transcoder to create MPEG-DASH streams. MPEG-DASH is a standard for HTTP based adaptive bitrate streaming of video. With Elastic Transcoder support for MPEG-DASH, you can now reach a wide range of DASH-compatible devices (from desktop to mobile and OTT) with fewer output renditions created using the same easy workflows that Elastic Transcoder supports for HLS and Smooth Streaming. This enables you to simplify your video processing workflows and helps improve cost efficiency. 

Instance Console Screenshot provides an on-demand screenshot of the instance console, conveying valuable debug information. This capability is particularly useful when diagnosing instances that have become unreachable via RDP (Windows) or SSH (Linux) due to in-progress software updates, VM Import issues, or other blocking system events. Screenshots can be viewed in the AWS console or accessed via the AWS API or CLI, with both Linux and Windows instances supported .