Perform a Zero Touch Installation of Windows Vista

One of the evolved aspects of Windows Vista includes the installation experience of the operating system. In this regard, Vista is a huge leap forward compared to Windows XP, and this is valid for both home and business users. And while a zero touch installation of Windows Vista might have a certain ring to it, it is in fact a process designed to respond to the infrastructure management needs of corporate environments starting with reducing complexity, streamlining the deployment process and reducing Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). But in the end, zero touch installations of Windows Vista are aimed at IT administrators and are

in no way meant for the general public. Richard Smith, Senior Consultant Microsoft UK Consulting Services, has put together a video demonstration of the entire process associated with performing a zero touch installation of Vista in this 35-minute video offered by TechNet Edge. You will need Business Desktop Deployment 2007 (or the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, the latest version of which fully supports Vista Service Pack 1) and System Center Configuration Manager (ConfigMgr) 2007. "Business Desktop Deployment 2007 provides planning, building, and technical guidance, templates, and scripts to facilitate deployment of Windows Vista and the 2007 Microsoft Office system. This release includes updates to support Windows Vista SP1 in addition to previously supported platforms," reads Microsoft's description of the Business Desktop Deployment 2007."System Center Configuration Manager 2007 is the solution to comprehensively assess, deploy and update your servers, clients, and devices – across physical, virtual, distributed and mobile environments. Optimized for Windows and extensible beyond, it is the best choice for gaining enhanced insight into and control over your IT systems," Microsoft added. The video will walk you through setting up the server environment for ConfigMgr 2007 operating system installation, and also configuring the settings for the ConfigMgr 2007 site; the ConfigMgr 2007 Computer Management; the ConfigMgr 2007 Operating System Deployment, according to TechNet Edge's Joey Sno. In addition, users will also have to connect and integrate MDT with ConfigMgr 2007 and put together a machine object in System Center Configuration Manager which will later be used as reference. A mass deployment of Vista via ConfigMgr 2007 automatically involves a reference image which has to be created.

Benchmarking the Multicore CPUs - Multicore API

As the annual MultiCore Expo opens this week, the first few steps taken towards improving the techniques for programming and measuring multicore processors begin to show their early fruits. More and more efforts are invested into multicore API, and the number of companies interested in the matter rises as well. Although the API was defined through the collaboration of several companies like Intel, Texas Instruments, Freescale or Impera, none of them announced the usage of the interface yet.The MultiCore Expo (April 1-3) is focused on finding answers and solutions for the issues that the multicore implementations has brought with it. Some of the participants will present

their achievements in the multicore API, including Multicore Association, Polycore Software and Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium. The Multicore Association started the research on defining a standard for embedded virtualization, after completing its work on a standard application programming interface for communications. Polycore Software developed a working version of the new multicore communications API and will try to demonstrate it in one of its tools. The Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium developed a new multicore processor benchmark and will show the results for running it on a variety of processors with 2 to 16 cores, yet the names of chips will not be revealed, but to the vendors.The linking and synchronizing different kinds of cores in a processor is what API aims to provide. "The demo itself may not be very sexy, but it's fully functional and we're starting to get some traction," said Markus Levy, president of the Multicore Association. The setting of a standard for hypervisors that will control the way embedded processors virtualizes hardware resources is another goal for the Association. The group will first focus on issues as on-chip communications and debugging, in its way to defining what areas are fully developed for standards in the area. "There are more companies interested in the hypervisor issues than I expected," said Levy. "The processor guys are really into and the whole effort that was kicked off by Nokia Siemens Networks," he added. One of the demos presented by EEMBC will show the results of running the same workload over two different dual-core processors and the way these results vary. Also, the way some workloads will not scale or scale linearly when run on the same multicore chip will be shown in other demos. "This is some of the most interesting benchmark data I have seen because very complex," said Levy who is also president of EEMBC. "You are dealing with systems-level issues such as OS scheduling techniques, context switching and varying peripheral sets," he said."The point right now is that to understand multicore performance you have to look at a lot of different things," Levy also said. According to him, "The HPC system developers, although long involved in multiprocessing designs, are challenged by new programming and debug complexities associated with practically unlimited scalability of cores. Embedded system developers are challenged by similar issues, but are also faced with very fundamental decisions such as determining when is the right time to convert their legacy applications to multicore."As currently there is a set of benchmarks in use for the multicore chips, "Everybody is still struggling to determine what the right benchmarks are," said Jack Browne, vice president of marketing at MIPS Technologies. Dhrystone Mips on set-top boxes and Specmarks or Java user interface metrics are just some examples of them. Yet, the real-world applications-based benchmarks are more useful than synthetic ones, but system makers do not enjoy the idea of releasing their applications code for open testing. In order to get feedback, EEMBC has released the benchmarks to one user. Through this, the terms of licensing its benchmarks will be decided in a meeting in mid-April. According to Levy, the new metrics seem to particularly interest system makers. "Some of the telecoms OEMs are really struggling because they are finding in the shift from using two single-core chips to one multicore chip performance is going down. That's because they now have to share resources like caches," he said.