Philippine Pres. Duterte visits Myanmar and Thailand to boost industry partnerships

President Duterte speaks during his departure ceremony before a visit to Myanmar at Davao city international airport, in Davao, Philippines, 19 March 2017.

(EPA/CERILO EBRANO / MANILA BULLETIN)

President Rodrigo Duterte said he will be anchoring its friendship and possible deals on the similarities between the Philippines and Myanmar, during a departure speech delivered at the Francisco Bangoy International Airport in Davao City.

Duterte said he is scheduled to visit Myanmar and Thailand in the latest leg of his visits to the ASEAN member states.

In a prepared speech, President Duterte said that the synergies between the two nations could form the basis of strengthened cooperation. “As developing countries with similar historic experiences and facing the same challenges, we can use the synergies of our interests as basis for strengthened cooperation,” Duterte said. The President cited “traditional and emerging transnational crimes” such as terrorism, violent extremism, piracy, and illicit drug trade. “We also have a common interest in sustaining inclusive growth and development for our peoples,” Duterte added.

“Myanmar’s economic development is recognized as one of the fastest in our region and therefore bilateral trade and investment will be a key area of discussion,” he said.

Duterte said that the Philippines and Myanmar could likely partner in several industries such as pharmaceuticals, and food and beverage. According to the leader, the visits to the ASEAN member states help the Philippines prepare for the scheduled hosting of the 30th ASEAN Summit and related meetings in Manila this April.

“Myanmar is our ASEAN neighbor and friend with whom we’ve had relations for more than six decades now. My visit will underscore our commitment to deepen partnership with Myanmar towards a brighter and better future,” Duterte said. After Myanmar, Thailand will also be honored as a co-founding nation which started the ASEAN 50 years ago.

“There is much at stake in relations. We have to move forward together on shared interests in securing security and stability in the region as we seek to sustain growth and development for our peoples.”


Source: manilabulletin

AMD previews ‘Naples’ server processor

Resurgent chip maker AMD has taken a significant step into the server and datacenter market with its most detailed look yet at the upcoming high-performance CPU for servers, codenamed “Naples”.

Purpose-built to disrupt the status-quo and to scale across the cloud datacenter and traditional on-premise server configurations, “Naples” delivers the highly regarded “Zen” x86 processing engine in industry-leading configurations of up to 32 cores. Superior memory bandwidth and the number of high-speed input/output channels in a single-chip further differentiate “Naples” from anything else in the server market today. The first processors are scheduled to be available in Q2 2017, with volume availability building in the second half of the year through OEM and channel partners.

“Today marks the first major milestone in AMD re-asserting its position as an innovator in the datacenter and returning choice to customers in high-performance server CPUs,” said Forrest Norrod, senior vice president and general manager for enterprise, embedded and semi-custom business unit at AMD.

“’Naples’ represents a completely new approach to supporting the massive processing requirements of the modern datacenter. This groundbreaking system-on-chip delivers the unique high-performance features required to address highly virtualized environments, massive data sets and new, emerging workloads.”

The new AMD server processor exceeds today’s top competitive offering on critical parameters, with 45% more cores1, 60% more input/output capacity (I/O), and 122% more memory bandwidth.

“It is exciting to see AMD back in the server conversation with a new CPU and a sound strategy for why it is the right processor for the modern datacenter and the cloud computing era,” said Matt Eastwood, senior vice president for enterprise infrastructure and datacenter at IDC.

“Looking at the product details announced today, it sounds like a compelling combination that will give IT buyers a unique new option to consider when making their next upgrade.”

“Naples” features:

• A highly scalable, 32-core System on Chip (SoC) design, with support for two high-performance threads per core

• Industry-leading memory bandwidth, with 8-channels of memory per “Naples” device. In a 2-socket server, support for up to 32 DIMMS of DDR4 on 16 memory channels, delivering up to 4 terabytes of total memory capacity.

• The processor is a complete SoC with fully integrated, high-speed I/O supporting 128 lanes of PCIe 34, negating the need for a separate chip-set

• A highly-optimized cache structure for high-performance, energy efficient compute

• AMD Infinity Fabric coherent interconnect for two “Naples” CPUs in a 2-socket system

• Dedicated security hardware

Source: newsbytes

Super Mario Run reaches Android on March 23rd

Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Nintendo has made good on its earlier promise and revealed that the Android edition of the touchscreen runner will arrive on March 23rd, in sync with version 2.0 of the game. Android users won't have to wait much longer to find out whether or not Super Mario Run has justified any of the hype. That update will give you more character choices beyond the current six, and will throw free players a bone by letting them tackle World 1-4 if they complete a challenge. There's more to 2.0 than that, Nintendo teases, but you'll have to wait to learn the rest.


Source: engadget

Google Street Maps takes cameras inside Volcanoes

Google Maps has added volcanoes to their list of Street View projects. Image: Google Maps via AFP Relaxnews

For the mission, Google Maps dispatched explorers Geoff Mackley and Chris Horsley to repel 400 meters into the belly of the Marum volcano on Ambrym island, and collect 360-degree imagery of the molten lava lake which spans the size of two football fields.

In line with the growing popularity of volcano tourism, Google Street View has gone into the bowels of the earth to capture images of what locals in Vanuatu call “a hot-headed husband and wife pair with a tendency to erupt in public spats.”

“Standing at the edge and feeling the heat lick your skin is phenomenal,” said Chris Horsley after returning from his descent into the crater. “I hope that by putting this place on the map, people will realize what a beautiful world we live in.” Vanuatu is located about 1,600 kilometers off the coast of Australia and is made up of 80 islands and nine active volcanoes. On Ambrym, locals believe that volcanoes Benbow and Marum are a pair of husband and wife devils, with hot tempers.

“If you go up to a volcano you have to be very careful because the two volcanoes could get angry at any time,” said Chief Moses of the local village of Endu. “We believe that Benbo is the husband and Marum is the wife. Sometimes when they don’t agree, there’s an eruption which means the spirit is angry so we sacrifice a pig or fawel to the volcano.”
Ambrym is home to 7,000 people who live mostly in the rainforest down the mountain.
Virtual visitors can also take a stroll through Endu Village, which has been rebuilding its infrastructure after being hit by a cyclone a few years ago.


Source: inquirer