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Microsoft Research Introduces Record-Beating MinuteSort Tech
mikejuk writes "A team from Microsoft Research has taken the lead in the MinuteSort data sorting test using a specially-devised technology: Flat DataCenter Storage. The figures are impressive — 1401 gigabytes in 60 seconds, using 1033 disks across 250 machines. Not only is this three times as much as the previous record, but also, it uses only one sixth of the hardware resources, according to a blog post about the test from Microsoft. One thing that's interesting about the success is the technology used. While solutions such as Hadoop and MapReduce are traditionally used for working with large data sets, Microsoft Research created its own technology called the 'Flat Datacenter Storage,' or FDS for short. This isn't just academic research, of course. The team from Microsoft Research has already been working with the Bing team to help Bing accelerate its search results, and there are plans to use it in other Microsoft technologies."
Sorted by Microsoft
Google doesn't really innovate or do any research. The closest you get is the 20% time they give to engineers (note that not for other personnel). In fact, the only real products Google has made in-house are their search engine and gmail. Everything else (YouTube, Google Earth, Maps, Android) have been buy-outs of startups or copied, like Google+.
What about their self-driving cars? What about their glasses and stuff? They have a lot of secret research projects that they are allegedly spending billions on. Are you trolling, or am I misunderstanding you?
The team from Microsoft Research has already been working with the Bing team to help Bing accelerate its search results, and there are plans to use it in other Microsoft technologies.
So Bing is going to scrape their search results from Google *and* other search engines? :-)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
From the Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Research#Laboratories), all of the following have come from MS Research
C#
Comic Chat (IRC Client)
F#
Sideshow (Became Desktop Gadgets)
Surface (TouchLight)
SenseCam
ClearType
Group Shot
Allegiance (Game)
Songsmith
I'd say C#, F#, and ClearType are pretty big contributions
The big difference is that Microsoft Research is one of the last large corporate research labs focused on pure research. That is, research done for the sake of the research, not to drive product development. Research done at MSR doesn't have to be product driven (it has to be in the general space of software and computers, but that's about the only requirement). MSR is well funded by Microsoft and an integral part of the company's culture.
Sure, IBM, HP, and Intel all have research labs, but their charters have been re-written over the last ten years to focus more on product-centric research. Most research projects at these companies must start with a business plan that shows how the work will be commercialized within 5 years before being approved. This is not the pure research these labs were once known for.
Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and many other internet companies have some interesting projects (self driving cars, for instance), but these tend to be one-off projects and aren't part of a larger, long lived research organization.
Another interesting aspect of MSR is that they encourage all MS developers to take a stint in the organization, not just specially recruited Ph.D.s. It's not uncommon for someone to go from working on a product for a few years, take some time in MSR, then go back to product work.
I've worked directly with many of the research groups mentioned in this post over the last 20 years. Based on my experiences, MSR is truly the last real corporate research group (in the spirit of 20th century PARC/Watson/et al). The others are just part of the product funnels or whims of the founders.
-Chris
You immediately lose credibility by citing Steve Gibson.
The type of subpixel rendering done on old Apple IIs essentially treats the color display as a monochrome display of triple the resolution. This is clever and useful, but causes color fringing.
ClearType takes the concept substantially further by applying perceptual modelling to determine how the subpixels can be used. It's similar to MP3 audio, in that the process adds artifacts, but some artifacts will be invisible (or inaudible in MP3's case) to a human. The trick is minimizing the visible artifacts.
For example, if you have a one pixel wide line, it is always safe to shift it one third of a pixel to the left. RGB becomes BRG, which still appears the same.
However, if you have a one third pixel width line, you cannot just use one third of the subpixels. A "white" vertical line would be all red, all green, or all blue, depending on which subpixel it fell on. ClearType would render it using all three subpixels but in the correct color.
There's quite a bit more to it - sometimes you can use a single subpixel depending on what neighbors it, and/or you can adjust adjascent subpixels to mask fringing artifacts.
So yes, sub-pixel rendering isn't a wholly new concept, but saying ClearType isn't novel is willfully ignorant.