Category Archives: software development

adobe, design, development, professional, software development, Web

Adobe: why the big business shift when financial results look so good?

Adobe released its quarterly and full year results last week; I am catching up with this now after a week in China.

The company is doing well. Revenue is up by 11% year on year and it generated $1.5 billion in cash. It is buying back shares, usually a sign that a company has more money than it knows what to do with.

Here is the comparison with the equivalent quarter last year:

  Q4 2010 Q4 2011
Creative and interactive 404.8 437.2
Digital Media 165.9 186.4
Digital Enterprise 273.3 342.4
Omniture 109.0 131.1
Print and publishing 55 55.1

In other words, all business segments grew – impressive in uncertain economic times. See this earlier post for a rough breakdown of the segments.

A couple of observations. First, Adobe is benefiting from the big trend in IT towards web, cloud and device. Many companies regard apps (as in mobile apps) as vehicles for marketing, and Adobe’s tools are a natural fit, with or without Flash. We are in a more design-centric IT world than was the case a few years back, driven by Apple, SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), and just because we can: technology now performs basic computing functions with ease so design becomes the key differentiator.

Adobe is nevertheless remarkable in the way it has managed the transition from print to digital. Few companies manage that kind of fundamental shift in their market successfully.

The other point that interests me is why Adobe announced a major change in its business model in November. Digital media and marketing will be the focus, while it winds down its enterprise development platform, as well as moving away from Flash and focusing on HTML5 for delivery.

Unless the announced figures disguise future problems that are only visible on the inside, this move was driven by bad results. Digital Enterprise, which includes the middleware business, increased revenue by 25% over the same quarter last year.

In 2012 the Digital Enterprise segment is being renamed Digital Marketing Solutions, expressing the company’s intent.

Adobe’s change of direction caught me by surprise, as it was not really flagged at the MAX conference the previous month, though there was evidence of struggle with regard to Flash versus HTML5.

I would describe Adobe’s moves as bold. Taking action ahead of when it becomes inevitable is a good thing, but there are significant risks. Adobe’s platform is all about synergies, and chopping off bits that still have a significant following may have unexpected consequences.

Another curious facet of Adobe’s move is that its normally excellent PR department has done little, as far as I am aware, to brief the press. Major news concerning what will be donated to Apache, or the discontinuation of Flash Catalyst, has emerged from sporadic reports instead. Normally that is a sign of a company under stress, rather than one which is about to deliver excellent results.

I guess this time next year we will have a clearer picture.

development, open source, professional, software development

Android: good or bad for Java? Oracle claims harm but I am sceptical

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Patent blogger Florian Mueller quotes a statement filed by Oracle in its legal dispute with Google over its use of the Java language in Android:

Android’s growth in the mobile device market has been exponential, steadily diminishing Java’s share. For instance, Amazon’s newly-released Kindle Fire tablet is based on Android, while prior versions of the Kindle were Java-based. Android has been gaining in other areas as well, with Android-based set-top boxes and even televisions appearing this year. These are markets where Java has traditionally been strong but is now losing ground to Android. The longer Android is allowed to continue fragmenting the Java ecosystem, the more serious the harm to Java becomes, and the more difficult it is to try to unwind. Oracle suffers harm in the form of lost licensing opportunities for its existing Java platform products, and the enterprise-wide harm from fragmentation of Java, which reduces the ‘write once, run anywhere’ capability that has historically provided Java such great value.

The Kindle is an interesting example. I had not realised that the pre-Fire Kindle runs Java, but Oracle shows it as a case study and indeed, here are the javadocs.

Android infuriates Oracle because it uses the Java language, but has its own virtual machine called Dalvik. Dalvik bytecode is different from Java bytecode.

I have no expertise on the legal position, but while I can see Oracle’s point it is also true that Android has greatly boosted interest in Java development. Although Google has fragmented Java, the fact that the language is the same benefits Oracle insofar as it increases the pool of Java developers who may also be inclined to create Java applications on the server or in other contexts.

The interesting question to ask is where Java would be without Android. On mobile, it would likely be close to death. Apple’s iOS platform is equally as resistant to Java as to Adobe Flash. RIM Blackberry used to be a Java platform, but is moving away:

While we will continue to support our BlackBerry Java developer community as they build for BlackBerry smartphones, after further investigation we decided against supporting BlackBerry Java on BlackBerry BBX. We concluded that the BlackBerry Java experience on the BlackBerry PlayBook platform would ultimately not satisfy us, our development community, or our customers as the platform continues to evolve.

Microsoft has no interest in Java on the Windows Phone OS or in the Windows 8 OS that will likely replace it on devices.

Oracle’s claim is in the context of a legal dispute, and as Mueller observes, the company is happy to show off growing interest in Java in its press releases – though without mentioning the A word.

Of course you can understand why Oracle might want to enjoy the benefit of Java’s Android boost as well as the reward of a legal victory over Google.

PS: interesting that Oracle’s Java press release seems to be served by Microsoft .NET:

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adobe, development, flash, professional, software development, web authoring

Adobe discontinues Flash Catalyst, clarifies Flex and Flash Builder futures

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Adobe has told a group of Flex developers, invited to San Francisco for a special reconciliatory summit following the sudden announcement that Flex is moving to the Apache Foundation, that Flash Catalyst will be discontinued. Developer Fabien Nicollet was there and posts:

CS5.5 version of Catalyst is the latest version of Flash Catalyst. It is compatible with Flex 4.5, but compatibility will not be ensured for future versions.

Flash Builder will also have features removed in future versions. Adobe’s slide talks of:

Removing unpopular and expensive to maintain features: Design View, Data Centric Development (DCD) and Flash Catalyst workflows.

The Monocle profiler, shown at the MAX conference as a sneak peek, “continues as a priority”.

The FalconJS project, to compile Flex to HTML5, will be discontinued, though possibly donated to Apache at a date to be determined.

AIR on Linux will not be given to Apache because it would mean sharing the proprietary Flash Player code. This is bad news in the Apache context.

Nicollet concludes:

Flex still has a bright future for companies who want to build fast and robust applications . Not to mention the people who will have a hard time building complex applications on HTML5, for whom Flex will always be a viable and mature alternative.

That is the optimistic view. What is clear from the summit is that Adobe is greatly reducing its investment. I guess we knew this already; but hearing about how Flash Builder will be cut-down, Catalyst discontinued, and so on, will not improve developer confidence.

A lot depends on the progress of the Apache project. My concern here is that since the Flash player, which is the Flex runtime, remains proprietary, this will dampen enthusiasm in the open source community and limit its ability to innovate around Flex.

hardware, intel, software development, windows

NVIDIA plans to merge CPU and GPU – eventually

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I spoke to Dr Steve Scott, NVIDIA’s CTO for Tesla, at the end of the GPU Technology Conference which has just finished here in Beijing. In the closing session, Scott talked about the future of NVIDIA’s GPU computing chips. NVIDIA releases a new generation of graphics chips every two years:

  • 2008 Tesla
  • 2010 Fermi
  • 2012 Kepler
  • 2014 Maxwell

Yes, it is confusing that the Tesla brand, meaning cards for GPU computing, has persisted even though the Tesla family is now obsolete.

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Dr Steve Scott showing off the power efficiency of GPU computing

Scott talked a little about a topic that interests me: the convergence or integration of the GPU and the CPU. The background here is that while the GPU is fast and efficient for parallel number-crunching, it is of course still necessary to have a CPU, and there is a price to pay for the communication between the two. The GPU and the CPU each have their own memory, so data must be copied back and forth, which is an expensive operation.

One solution is for GPU and CPU to share memory, so that a single pointer is valid on both. I asked CEO Jen-Hsun Huang about this and he did not give much hope for this:

We think that today it is far better to have a wonderful CPU with its own dedicated cache and dedicated memory, and a dedicated GPU with a very fast frame buffer, very fast local memory, that combination is a pretty good model, and then we’ll work towards making the programmer’s view and the programmer’s perspective easier and easier.

Scott on the other hand was more forthcoming about future plans. Kepler, which is expected in the first half of 2012, will bring some changes to the CUDA architecture which will “broaden the applicability of GPU programming, tighten the integration of the CPU and GPU, and enhance programmability,” to quote Scott’s slides. This integration will include some limited sharing of memory between GPU and CPU, he said.

What caught my interest though was when he remarked that at some future date NVIDIA will probably build CPU functionality into the GPU. The form that might take, he said, is that the GPU will have a couple of cores that do the CPU functions. This will likely be an implementation of the ARM CPU.

Note that this is not promised for Kepler nor even for Maxwell but was thrown out as a general statement of direction.

There are a couple of further implications. One is that NVIDIA plans to reduce its dependence on Intel. ARM is a better partner, Scott told me, because its designs can be licensed by anyone. It is not surprising then that Intel’s multi-core evangelist James Reinders was dismissive when I asked him about NVIDIA’s claim that the GPU is far more power-efficient than the CPU. Reinders says that the forthcoming MIC (Many Integrated Core) processors codenamed Knights Corner are a better solution, referring to the:

… substantial advantages that the Intel MIC architecture has over GPGPU solutions that will allow it to have the power efficiency we all want for highly parallel workloads, but able to run an enormous volume of code that will never run on GPGPUs (and every algorithm that can run on GPGPUs will certainly be able to run on a MIC co-processor).

In other words, Intel foresees a future without the need for NVIDIA, at least in terms of general-purpose GPU programming, just as NVIDIA foresees a future without the need for Intel.

Incidentally, Scott told me that he left Cray for NVIDIA because of his belief in the superior power efficiency of GPUs. He also described how the Titan supercomputer operated by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the USA will be upgraded from its current CPU-only design to incorporate thousands of NVIDIA GPUs, with the intention of achieving twice the speed of Japan’s K computer, currently the world’s fastest.

This whole debate also has implications for Microsoft and Windows. Huang says he is looking forward to Windows on ARM, which makes sense given NVIDIA’s future plans. That said, the I get impression from Microsoft is that Windows on ARM is not intended to be the same as Windows on x86 save for the change of processor. My impression is that Windows on ARM is Microsoft’s iOS, a locked-down operating system that will be safer for users and more profitable for Microsoft as app sales are channelled through its store. That is all very well, but suggests that we will still need x86 Windows if only to retain open access to the operating system.

Another interesting question is what will happen to Microsoft Office on ARM. It may be that x86 Windows will still be required for the full features of Office.

This means we cannot assume that Windows on ARM will be an instant hit; much is uncertain.

professional, software, software development

NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang beats the drum for GPU computing

In his keynote at the GPU Technology Conference here in Beijing NVIIDA CEO Jens-Hsun Huang presented the simple logic of GPU computing. The main constraint on computing is power consumption, he said:

Power is now the limiter of every computing platform, from cellphones to PCs and even datacenters.

CPUs are optimized for single-threaded computing and are relatively inefficient. According to Huang a CPU spends 50 times as much power scheduling instructions as it does executing them. A GPU by contrast is formed of many simple processors and is optimized for parallel processing, making it more efficient when measured in FLOP/s (Floating Point Operations per Second), a way of benchmarking computer performance. Therefore it is inevitable that computers make use of GPU computing in order to achieve best performance. Note that this does not mean dispensing with the CPU, but rather handing off processing to the GPU when appropriate.

This point is now accepted in the world of supercomputers. The computer at Chinese National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin has 14,336 Intel CPUs, 7168 Nvidia Tesla GPUs, and 2048 custom-designed 8-core CPUs called Galaxy FT-1000, and can achieve 4.7 Petaflop/s for a power consumption of 4.04 MegaWatts (million watts), as presented this morning by the center’s Vice Director Xiaoquian Zhu. This is currently the 2nd fastest supercomputer in the world.

Huang says that without GPUs the world would wait until 2035 for the first Exascale (1 Exaflop/s) supercomputer, presuming a power constraint of 20MW and current levels of performance improvement year by year, whereas by combining CPUs with GPUs this can be achieved in 2019.

Supercomputing is only half of the GPU computing story. More interesting for most users is the way this technology trickles down to the kind of computers we actually use. For example, today Lenovo announced several workstations which use NVIDIA’s Maximus technology to combine a GPU designed primarily for driving a display (Quadro) with a GPU designed primarily for GPU computing (Tesla). These workstations are aimed at design professionals, for whom the ability to render detailed designs quickly is important. The image below shows a Lenovo S20 on display here. Maybe these are not quite everyday computers, but they are still PCs. Approximate price to follow soon when I have had a chance to ask Lenovo. Update: prices start at around $4500 for an S20, with most of the cost being for the Tesla board.

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c++, development, professional, software development

GPU computing with NVIDIA in Beijing

I’m in Beijing for NVIDIA’s GPU Technology Conference; I attended last year’s event in San Jose and found it fascinating, partly because it has an academic and research flavour with a huge variety of projects on display.

This year the event is in Beijing, reflecting the level of HPC (High Performance Computing) activity in this region.

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NVIDIA’s business is graphics processors, though it has expanded into the SoC (System on a chip) business with its ARM-based Tegra chipset. This conference though is focused at the other end of the scale: Tesla GPUs that are primarily designed not for driving a display, but for rapid processing using massively parallel computing.

The Tesla business is relatively small for NVIDIA; less than 5% of its overall revenue, I was told; and I was told that the company treats it partly as research and development. That said, GPU computing is coming into the mainstream and the business is expected to grow. NVIDIA’s desktop GPU cards also support GPU computing.

I recently reviewed a video format converter from Cyberlink; the product was unexceptional except that it can take advantage of GPU computing when available to speed processing when converting from one video format to another. Since I do have a suitable graphics card (though sadly not a Tesla) this made a substantial difference, converting several times faster than another format converted I tried.

Of course NVIDIA is not the only player; there is an open standard (OpenCL) for GPU computing and other GPU vendors such as AMD implement OpenCL. NVIDIA implements OpenCL but also has its own CUDA architecture, which tends to be the focus of its conference as you would expect.

More reports soon.

flash, microsoft, professional, silverlight, software development

Silverlight 5 is done. Is Silverlight also done?

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Microsoft has has announced the release of Silverlight 5.0.

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Silverlight is a cross-platform, cross-browser plug-in for Windows and Mac. It is relatively small size – less than 7MB according to Microsoft, though the Mac version seems to be bigger, with a 14MB compressed setup .dmg and apparently over 100MB once installed:

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Never mind, it is a fine piece of work and has considerable capabilities, including the .NET Framework, the ability to render a GUI defined in XAML, multimedia playback, and support for applications running inside the browser or on the desktop. New in version 5 is better H.264 performance, 3D graphics, and Platform Invoke support on Windows enabling trusted applications to call the native API. Another change is that in-browser applications can also run with full trust, again only on Windows. The cross-platform idea has become increasingly diluted.

If Microsoft had come up with Silverlight early in the .NET story it might have become a major application platform. As it is, while still useful in some contexts, the technology has been side-lined by new things including HTML 5 and the Windows Runtime in the forthcoming Windows 8.

While I have huge respect for the team which created Silverlight and rapidly improved it, it now looks a sad story of reactive technology that failed to capture sufficient developer support. Microsoft invented Silverlight when Adobe Flash looked like it might take over as a universal runtime for web applications. The outcome was that Adobe evolved Flash with renewed vigour, keeping Silverlight at bay. Then Apple invented a new platform called iOS that supported neither Flash nor Silverlight, and the whole plug-in strategy began to look less compelling. Adobe has now reduced its focus on Flash, while Microsoft has been signalling a reduced role for Silverlight since its Professional Developers Conference in October 2010.

The question now is whether there will ever be a Silverlight 6.

Microsoft itself uses Silverlight across a number of products, such as administrative consoles for various server applications. Silverlight will be around for a while yet. Of course it is also the runtime for Windows Phone 7. Visual Studio LightSwitch generates Silverlight applications, and this one I am rather sad about, because it is an interesting tool that now seems to target the wrong platform. Perhaps the team will create an HTML 5 version one day.

microsoft, software development

Not allowed in Windows 8 Metro: porn, ads in live tiles, bugs, or opt-out data collection

Microsoft’s newly published Certification Requirements for the forthcoming Windows 8 store includes some notable points. Here are a few that caught my eye.

2.3 Your app must not use tiles or notifications for ads

No complaints about that one.

3.2 Your app must not stop responding, end unexpectedly, or contain programming errors

Hmm, this could be a tough one.

3.3 Your app must provide the same user experience on all processor types

OK, no “Intel-only” features. However you could by implication submit an “Intel-only” version of your app as long as it is called something different than than the ARM version.

3.7 Your app must not use an interaction gesture in a way that is different from how Windows uses the gesture

This is interesting as an example of enforcing application style guidelines. The intent is a consistent user experience, but is this heavy-handed?

4.1 Your app must obtain opt-in or equivalent consent to publish personal information

No stealthy personal data collection. A good thing; though if opt-in means “Hand over your data or you cannot run the app” it can still be difficult for users to avoid.

4.4 Your app must not be designed or marketed to perform, instruct, or encourage tasks that could cause physical harm to a customer or any other person

What a relief!

5.1 Your app must not contain adult content

Windows Metro a porn-free zone? This could be troublesome though. No games beyond PEGI 16? This is a preliminary document and it would not surprise me if there is some change here; maybe this is a restriction for the beta period only.

microsoft, professional, software development

Windows Store: Microsoft explains another piece of its new platform

Microsoft’s Ted Dworkin, Partner Progam Manager, has posted details of how the forthcoming Windows Store will work. There is also detailed new information on MSDN. It is a key piece if you care about the next version of Windows, including details of how enterprises will be able to deploy apps as well as the terms of business for independent developers.

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Here is a quick summary:

  • The store is both an app and a web site. The same content will automatically appear in both.
  • The store is for Metro-style apps, which run on the Windows Runtime. No word about desktop apps; my presumption is that they are excluded. The certification requirements refer only to Metro-style apps.
  • Apps can be offered as full-featured, limited or unlimited trial, upgradeable via in-app purchases.
  • Enterprise apps can be deployed through the store with access limited to employees.
  • Enterprise apps can also be deployed outside the store, using PowerShell scripts to domain-joined machines. Apps must be signed.
  • App vendors can use their own transaction engine and/or ad service if they choose, or use the built-in services for sale, in-app purchase and advertising. Subscriptions do not have to go through the store. My impression is that the initial sale does not have to be transacted through the store either but this is not 100% clear to me.
  • Developer registration for the store costs $49.00 for individuals or $99.00 for companies.
  • Revenue share is 70%, rising to 80% if you achieve over $25,000 revenue for an app.
  • Apps are subject to approval, but developers are given the App Certification Kit as part of the SDK. There is still scope for disagreement over the interpretation of policies.

 

There is an initial beta preview period during which all apps will be free. Microsoft has also annoyed most of the world’s developers by restricting a First Apps Contest to those who:

… are a developer – professional, hobbyist, or student – and you are a legal resident of the 50 United States and District of Columbia, France, Germany, Japan, or India

development, java, microsoft, professional, software development, visual studio

Oxygene for Java released: develop for Android and Java runtime with Delphi language in Visual Studio

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RemObjects has released Oxygene for Java, a new version of its Object Pascal compiler. Object Pascal is pretty much the Delphi language though with some additional features of its own. Previous versions target the .NET runtime, and a version of this is marketed by Embarcadero as Prism. The IDE for Oxygene is Microsoft’s Visual Studio. This new version targets both the Java Runtime and the Android Dalvik VM. The obvious target market is Delphi developers who now want to create apps for Android, or cross-platform Java applications.

I downloaded the trial and ran the supplied Hello World in the Android emulator … it works.

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A few further notes from the RemObjects announcement. While only Visual Studio is supported initially, an Eclipse version is also in preparation. Oxygene directly consumes .JAR libraries so you can use both first and third-party libraries. There is also a tool called Oxidizer that lets you import Java language code, which will be converted to Oxygene Object Pascal.

A point to note is that Embarcadero has already announced that its cross-platform FireMonkey framework will support Android as well as Apple iOS. This means that developers who want to code for Android in the Delphi language will have two choices. It looks to me as if Oxygene will be more suitable if you want to stay close to the Android SDK, whereas FireMonkey has its own custom-drawn user interface widgets and effects and should come into its own if you want the same code to run on both iOS and Android.

Given that a skilled Delphi developer would probably learn Java fairly quickly, how much value is there in Oxygene for Java? I guess factors include how much more productive you can be in Oxygene and the value of sharing code across projects targeting different platforms, presuming that you do not want to run Java everywhere.