"The first quarter continued a quarterly trend of year-on-year growth in both shipments and vendor revenue," said Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president at Gartner. "All regions showed growth in both shipments and vendor revenue, with the exception of Japan.”

All the top five global vendors except Fujitsu had revenue increases for the first quarter of 2011. HP was the market leader, based on worldwide server revenue. The company posted just over $3.8 billion in worldwide server vendor revenue for a total share of 30.2 percent for the first quarter of 2011. This share was down 1.2 percent year-on-year.

In server shipments, HP remained the worldwide leader in the first quarter of 2011 with a year-on-year shipment increase of 2.3 percent for the quarter. This growth was driven by increases produced from HP's ProLiant brand. HP's worldwide server shipment share was 29.8 percent, representing a 1.8 percent drop in share from the same quarter in 2010.

“x86 servers forged ahead and grew 8.6 percent in units for the year and 17.5 percent in revenue,” Hewitt said. “Following earlier trends, the x86-based server market provided an increase in average selling prices that pushed revenue higher than shipments, and this was the case in the first quarter for all regions. RISC/Itanium Unix servers finally exited their slump and grew 5.2 percent in shipments and 20.7 percent in vendor revenue, compared with the same quarter last year. The "other" CPU category, which is primarily mainframes, showed a growth in vendor revenue of 19.6 percent."

Of the top five vendors in server shipments worldwide, HP and IBM posted year-on-year increases in units for the first quarter. In terms of server form factors, x86 blade servers rose 6.1 percent in shipments and 24.6 percent in revenue for the quarter of 2011. The rack-optimized form factor had the highest shipment growth at 11.2 percent and climbed 19.6 percent in revenue for the first quarter.

Worldwide server shipments are up in the first quarter of 2011, with the exception of Japan. Eastern Europe also posted the highest vendor revenue growth at 36.0 percent for the period. Photo: www.imagine-your-world.com

The 22nm 3-D Tri-Gate transistors provide up to 37 percent performance increase at low voltage versus Intel's 32nm planar transistors. This gain means that they are ideal for use in small handheld devices, which operate using less energy to "switch" back and forth. Alternatively, the new transistors consume less than half the power when at the same performance as 2-D planar transistors on 32nm chips.

The three-dimensional Tri-Gate transistors represent a fundamental departure from the two-dimensional planar transistor structure that has powered not only all computers, mobile phones and consumer electronics to-date, but also the electronic controls within cars, spacecraft, household appliances, medical devices and virtually thousands of other everyday devices for decades.

"Intel's scientists and engineers have once again reinvented the transistor, this time utilizing the third dimension," said Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini. "Amazing, world-shaping devices will be created from this capability as we advance Moore's Law into new realms."

Scientists have long recognized the benefits of a 3-D structure for sustaining the pace of Moore's Law, named for Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, as device dimensions become so small that physical laws become barriers to advancement. Intel's 3-D Tri-Gate transistors enable chips to operate at lower voltage with lower leakage, providing a combination of improved performance and energy efficiency compared to previous transistors.

"The performance gains and power savings of Intel's unique 3-D Tri-Gate transistors are like nothing we've seen before," said Mark Bohr, Intel Senior Fellow. "This milestone is going further than simply keeping up with Moore's Law. The low-voltage and low-power benefits far exceed what we typically see from one process generation to the next. It will give product designers the flexibility to make current devices smarter and wholly new ones possible. "

The 3-D Tri-Gate transistor replaces the traditional "flat" two-dimensional planar gate with a three-dimensional silicon fin that rises up vertically from the silicon substrate. Control of current is accomplished by implementing a gate on each of the three sides of the fin rather than just one on top, as is the case with the 2-D planar transistor. The additional control enables as much transistor current flowing as possible when the transistor is in the "on" state, and as close to zero as possible when it is in the "off" state, and enables the transistor to switch very quickly between the two states.

Intel's 3-D Tri-Gate transistor structure provides a new way to manage density. Since these fins are vertical in nature, transistors can be packed closer together, a critical component to the technological and economic benefits of Moore's Law. For future generations, designers also have the ability to continue growing the height of the fins to get more performance and energy-efficiency gains.

"For years we have seen limits to how small transistors can get," said Moore. "This change in the basic structure is a truly revolutionary approach, and one that should allow Moore's Law, and the historic pace of innovation, to continue."

Intel demonstrated working prototypes of the 22nm microprocessor in a laptop, server and desktop computer earlier this week. Intel Core family processors will be the first high-volume chips to use 3-D Tri-Gate transistors. Ivy Bridge is slated for high-volume production readiness by the end of this year.

The illustration compares a conventional transistor (on the left) with the new 22nm transistor. The current (represented by the yellow dots) flows in a plane underneath the gate in 32nm planar transistors. On the right is the 22nm 3-D Tri-Gate transistor with current flowing on 3 sides of a vertical fin. Illustration: Intel

Olsen was actively involved in building the first transistorized research computer while studying at MIT, and he did help the Office of Naval Research to build a flight simulator. Spending $70,000 in seed money, he was a founding member of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), the world’s second largest computer company after IBM at a point in time.

Later, Microsoft founders Bill Gates and Pau Gardner Allen used a DEC computer to write some of their early software for PC’s. Olsen received the The Franklin Institute’s Vermilye Medal. However, he missed the trend towards personal computers as president of DEC and was ask by its board to step down in 1992. DEC was acquired by Compaq in June 1998, and eventually merged with Hewlett-Packard in May 2002, the largest merger in the history of the computer industry at that time.

Olsen became the chairman of Advanced Modular Solutions, a company dedicated to high-performance client-server solutions. In 2006, the Ken Olsen science center at Gordon College was named after him. In a letter to the college, Bill Gates wrote: "An inventor, scientist, and entrepreneur, Ken Olsen is one of the true pioneers of the computing industry. He was also a major influence in my life and his influence is still important at Microsoft through all the engineers who trained at Digital and have come here to make great software products."

"Employees are willing to break the rules to achieve greater work-life balance, more flexibility in the workplace and improved mobility," Cisco says in a statement.  "As organizations struggle to accommodate these employee needs while keeping their networks safe and secure, it’s clear that IT departments and users must work together to create sensible policies that all users can adhere to."

Most employers restrict the use of personal devices like iPads and iPhones to some degree. Globally, almost one in five employees complain that they are not allowed to use their iPods at work, and almost 18 percent say that they are restricted from using other personal devices like laptops or phones. The majority of employees (66 percent) believe they should be able to connect freely with any personal or company-issued device and access the applications and information that they need around the clock.

"Mobility is going mainstream and IT policy makers should be prepared to accommodate it" is one of the key findings outlined in the report. As workers become more mobile and distributed, there is a major disconnect between IT policy and worker behavior, according to the report. More than two-thirds of workers believe their company’s IT policies could be improved, and 41 percent of respondents admitted to actually breaking those policies to meet their needs.

The survey, which included 2,600 workers and IT professionals in 13 countries, revealed that while 82 percent of companies do have IT policies, 25 percent of their employees don’t realize they exist. An additional 23 percent claimed their company did not have a policy on acceptable mobile device usage. For those employees who were aware of an IT policy in their organization, 35 percent said their IT department does not provide ample rationale for their policy.

"One of the great advantages of PC gaming is the rapid pace at which the experiences evolve and improve, and the AMD Radeon HD 6800 series delivers on the promise of DirectX 11 gaming with significantly improved visuals and enhanced performance," said Craig Owens, marketing director, EA. "With Medal of Honor, EA is pushing the boundaries of gaming technology to deliver a whole new online experience, and it only makes sense that we leverage the latest DirectX 11 technology supported by AMD Radeon graphics cards to deliver an amazing experience for gamers."

The new cards utilize Accelerated Parallel Processing for better performance, and offer improved image quality through new morphological anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering, AMD says. A dedicated video playback accelerator for Blu-ray 3D movies and other HD video formats, called Unified Video Decoder 3 (UVD), provides post-processing and scaling, dynamic contrast enhancement, and color correction.

The Radeon 6850 and 6870 require a PC with a 500-watt or greater power supply and two 75W 6-pin PCI Express power connectors. They have a suggested retail price of $179 and $239 respectively.

The picture shows the Radeon HD 6870 graphic card. Photo: AMD