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Breaking Intel RAID: what happens to your data?

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I am upgrading my desktop PC, wondering as I do if this is the last time. I did this four years ago; maybe four years from now cloud, mobile and virtualisation will make this unnecessary.

But I digress. My PC is creaking and I am replacing most of its innards. I use an Intel motherboard with its embedded RAID controller to mirror the data on the main 1TB drive. Since I am now getting new, faster drives, I want to break the RAID. The question though: will this delete all the data?

The puzzle here is that the Intel Matrix Storage Manager insists that when you delete a RAID volume, all its data is lost. But why should you lose data if you are breaking a mirrored (RAID 1) volume? In this configuration, each of two drives maintains identical data. In fact, Intel’s User’s Manual says:

All data on the RAID drives will be lost unless the volume that is selected is a RAID 1 volume.

The utility itself is less comforting though, and when I go to break the RAID it says data will be lost unless it is a “Recovery volume”, which is something slightly different.

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Now, if you are like me you set up the RAID in the first place because you would rather not lose that data. On the other hand, my suspicion was that the data would in fact be preserved. Caution prevailed, and I made a Windows system image backup of the entire thing, which took most of a day.

Then I deleted the volume. No data was lost and Windows booted perfectly, though it did reconfigure its storage drive and ask for a restart.

The second drive also retained all the data. Windows made it offline, because according to disk manager:

The disk is offline because it has a signature collision with another disk that is online

which is fair enough.

I can confirm, then, that in my experience you can delete an Intel RAID mirror without losing the data. Still, if this is data you care about, I guess you are going to take a backup anyway before pressing Y.

intel, professional, software development, systems

When will Intel’s Many Integrated Core processors be mainstream?

I’m at Intel’s software tools conference in Dubrovnik, which I have attended for the last three years, and as usual the big topic is concurrent programming and how to write code that takes advantage of the multiple cores in today’s computers.

Clearly this remains a critical subject, but in some ways the progress over these last three years has been disappointing when it comes to the PCs that most of us use. Many machines are only dual-core, which is sub-optimal for concurrent programming since there is an overhead to multi-threading programming that eats into the benefit of having two cores. Quad core is now common too, and more useful, but what about having 50 or 80 or more cores? This enables massively parallel processing of the kind that you can easily do today with general-purpose GPU programming using OpenCL or NVidia’s CUDA, but not yet on the CPU unless you have a super computer. I realise that GPU cores are not the same as CPU cores; but nevertheless they enable some spectacularly fast parallel processing.

I am interested therefore in Intel’s MIC or Many Integrated Core architecture, which combines 50 or more CPU cores on a single chip. MIC is already in preview, with hardware codenamed Knight’s Corner and a development kit called Knight’s Ferry. But when will MIC hit the mainstream for servers and workstations, and how long is it until we can have 50 cores on a commodity desktop PC? I spoke to Intel’s chief evangelist James Reinders.

Reinders first gave me some background on MIC:

“We’ve made those bold steps to dual core, quad core and we’ve got even ten core now, but if you look inside those microprocessors they have a very simple structure. All the cores are hooked together and share their connection to memory, through a shared cache usually that’s on the chip. It’s a simple computer structure, and we know from experience when you build computers with more and more processors, that eventually you go to more sophisticated connections between the cores. You don’t build a 1000-processor super computer and hook them all together with a bus to one memory.

“It’s inevitable that on a chip we need to design a more sophisticated connection. That’s what MIC’s about, that’s what the Larrabee project has always been about, a belief that we should take a bunch of x86 cores and hook them together with something more sophisticated. In this case it’s a ring, a bi-directional, 512-bit wide high performance ring, with multiple connections to memory off the chip, which gives us more bandwidth.

“That’s how I look at MIC, it’s putting a cluster-type of design on a chip.”

But what about timing?

“The first place you’ll see this is in servers and in workstations, where there’s a lot of demand for a lot of computation. In that case we’ll see that availability sometime by the end of 2012. The Intel product should be out late in that year.

“When will we see it in other devices? I think that’s a ways off. It’s a very high core count part, more than 50, it’s going to consume a fair amount of power. The same part 18 months later will probably consume half the power. So inside a decade we could see this being common on desktops, I don’t know about mobile devices, it might even make it to tablets. A decade’s a long time, it gives a lot of time for people to come up with innovative uses for it in software.

“We’ll see single core disappear everywhere.”

Incidentally, it is hard to judge how much computing power is “enough”. Although having many CPU cores may seem overkill for everyday computing, things like speech recognition or on-the-fly image processing make devices smarter at the expense of intense processing under the covers. From super computers to smartphones, if more computing capability is available history tells us that we will find ways to use it.

microsoft, mobile, professional

Single chipset religion unhelpful to Microsoft-Nokia alliance

Here at Mobile World Congress all the big system-on-a-chip (SoC) vendors are jostling for position, including Freescale, Intel, Nvidia, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments. Of course Nokia’s recent announcement that it will focus on Windows Phone for its smartphone platform is a big discussion topic; and without mentioning names I can tell you that many of the execs are talking down the announcement and expressing scepticism.

Plenty of reasons to be sceptical; but one of the issues is that Qualcomm’s Snapdragon is currently the only chipset which Microsoft supports. This is in contrast to Android, which runs on all these platforms.

The talk is that Microsoft was forced to specify Snapdragon in order to get its new phone to market quickly. That said, the long-term consequences of this focus are not good for Microsoft, since it has in effect driven all the other SoC vendors towards Android. Much effort goes into optimizing these chipsets for specific software, whether that is an OS, a video codec, or a runtime such as Flash or Java.

Windows Phone 7, or its successors, will not necessarily remain Qualcomm-only, particularly in the light of Nokia’s plans. Right now though, you can understand the lack of enthusiasm for Microsoft’s mobile OS among these other vendors. Even if the policy changes, it will take years before they can catch up, presuming that they want to.

Change the subject to full Windows though, and eyes light up. The prospect of Windows on Arm, announced at CES in January, is a good one for these manufacturers, since with the exception of Intel they all use Arm processors.

intel, linux, mobile, nokia, professional

Intel disappointed with Nokia’s Microsoft move, still backing MeeGo

Intel’s Suzy Ramirez has posted about the future of MeeGo Linux following Nokia’s decision to base its smartphone strategy on Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system. Nokia was Intel’s key partner for MeeGo, which was formed by merging Intel’s Moblin with Nokia’s Maemo.

Although Nokia has been an important partner to Intel and MeeGo and we are disappointed by this decision, it’s important to know that this is by no means the end of MeeGo or the end to Intel’s commitment

says Ramirez, adding that “MeeGo is not just a phone OS”.

True; but with the focus also moved away from netbooks it is getting hard to see where MeeGo will have an opportunity to shine.

Intel promises to outline its mobile strategy this week at Mobile World Congress. I will be reporting from Barcelona in due course.

.net, apple, google, microsoft, mobile, silverlight, software development, windows 7

Talk of Windows 8 on an smartphone shows Microsoft’s mobile confusion

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During a conference call to discuss Intel’s latest financials, CEO Paul Otellini raised the possibility of putting the full Windows OS onto a smartphone, running a low power Intel SoC (System on Chip). The matter came up with Otellini was asked about the impact of Windows on ARM, announced at CES earlier this month:

The plus for Intel is that as they unify their operating systems we now have the ability for the first time: one, to have a designed-from-scratch, touch-enabled operating system for tablets that runs on Intel that we don’t have today. And secondly, we have the ability to put our lowest-power Intel processors running Windows 8 – or ‘next-generation Windows’ – into phones, because it’s the same OS stack. And I look at that as an upside opportunity for us.

The reasoning seems to be: if Windows 8 is designed to run well on mobile devices with ARM, it will also run well on mobile devices with an Intel SoC, which will let us put it on phones.

Note the point he highlighted: Microsoft unifying its operating systems. No more full Windows vs Windows CE; one OS from mobile to desktop.

Although that sounds compelling, the snag is that Windows is not well suited to low-power mobile devices, which is why Windows CE was invented in the first place. Microsoft can fix this to some extent by fixing the things that make it unsuitable, but it carries a heavy compatibility burden.

It also throws up the question: just what are Microsoft’s long-term plans for Windows Phone 7, which is built on Windows CE, has its own GUI mostly written in native code, and a development platform based on .NET – Silverlight and XNA – plus a native code SDK that only mobile operators and device manufacturers get to use?

At CES Microsoft Steven Sinofsky sort-of denied that Windows will encroach on Windows Phone 7 territory. “Windows Phone 7 is uniquely focused on the small form factor that Windows doesn’t focus on,” he said.

Nevertheless, the company’s decision not to use the Windows Phone 7 OS for tablets may make that inevitable. What is the difference between a smartphone and a small tablet? Does Microsoft expect developers to write apps designed for Windows on a small tablet and then rewrite them for Windows Phone 7 using Silverlight?

It does not make sense; and despite the Windows Phone 7 promotion included in CEO Steve Ballmer’s CES keynote, I was left wondering whether Microsoft’s new mobile OS really has a future.

That said, Silverlight abstracts the OS, so in principle Microsoft could use it to form a consistent mobile development platform irrespective of whether the underlying OS is Windows CE or full Windows. I am not getting that sense from the company though, and I’d expect the primary Windows SDK to remain based on C++.

I am struggling to understand how Microsoft expects this to work. App compatibility is the obvious benefit of full Windows; but two big issues are that most Windows apps are not touch-friendly and are not designed for small screens. Putting Windows on a tablet with a decent screen size and the dreaded stylus works to some extent, but will never compete with Apple’s iPad for usability. On smaller screens most existing apps will not work properly; and if Windows on small devices sprouts a completely new touch-friendly GUI, or borrows the one from Windows Phone 7, then app compatibility with desktop Windows will be limited.

It feels as if Microsoft’s Windows team is saying one thing, the Windows Phone 7 and developer teams saying another, and partners like Intel saying yet another. Windows Phone 7 was meant to be the thing that made belated sense of Microsoft’s mobile strategy, but even that now looks doubtful for the reasons stated above.

Microsoft is still a long way from having a coherent strategy for mobile devices, and that lack is damaging the company and helping Apple and Google to establish their competing operating systems.

Update: Mary-Jo Foley writes about Microsoft “Jupiter” which is a rumoured new user interface and application model designed for Windows 8 and its app store:

Jupiter is going to be a new user interface (UI) library for Windows, built alongside Windows 8. It will be a thin XAML/UI layer on top of Windows application programming interfaces and frameworks for subsystems like graphics, text and input. The idea is Jupiter will bring support for smoother and more fluid animation, rich typography, and new media capabilities to Windows 8 devices.

Is Jupiter a .Net technology, or XAML adapted for native code, or both? Is it one and the same as, say, Silverlight 6? That is not stated, though Senior VP Soma Somasegar helpfully (or not) said that:

some of the information in this post is not right and out of date, not reflecting Microsoft’s current thinking.

That seems to tacitly confirm that it fairly represents Microsoft’s thinking at some time in the not-too-distant past.

It would make sense to me if Microsoft used Silverlight to unify its application platform as mentioned above, and combining the XAML presentation layer with native code could address performance and memory usage concerns with .NET. This is the kind of news that would really give confidence to Silverlight developers, rather than the damage limitation PR that Microsoft has put out since PDC late last year.

On the other hand, I believe Somasegar when he says the information is out of date, so for the time being it is just another dose of uncertainty.

microsoft, professional, windows

NVIDIA’s first CPU, Project Denver, aims to bring ARM to desktops and servers

At CES in Las Vegas today NVIDIA’s CEO Jen-Hsun Huang announced the company’s first CPU: Project Denver. This is a partnership with ARM, to create “a full custom processor” targeting “high performance computing – servers, PCs, super-computers, cloud computing.” NVIDIA will still licence ARM processors for mobile computing.

Since ARM has in the past focused on the mobile and embedded market, and NVIDIA on GPUs, it is a departure for both companies.

Why? Huang says it is because ARM is “the new standard microprocessor architecture.” Judging by this chart, shown at the press briefing, it is hard to disagree:

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In a few years, said Huang, “There will be more ARM processors shipped than all the x86 chips ever shipped.”

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NVIDIA’s press release explains that the purpose of Project Denver is to extend the range of ARM systems upwards:

For several years, makers of high-end computing platforms have had no choice about instruction-set architecture.  The only option was the x86 instruction set with variable-length instructions, a small register set, and other features that interfered with modern compiler optimizations, required a larger area for instruction decoding, and substantially reduced energy efficiency.

Denver provides a choice.   System builders can now choose a high-performance processor based on a RISC instruction set with modern features such as fixed-width instructions, predication, and a large general register file.   These features enable advanced compiler techniques and simplify implementation, ultimately leading to higher performance and a more energy-efficient processor.

The other interesting aspect of Project Denver is its integration with the GPU – as you would expect from NVIDIA:

An ARM processor coupled with an NVIDIA GPU represents the computing platform of the future.  A high-performance CPU with a standard instruction set will run the serial parts of applications and provide compatibility while a highly-parallel, highly-efficient GPU will run the parallel portions of programs.

While we tend to focus most on power efficiency for mobile devices, because we notice how long our batteries last, it is equally important for larger systems. Power consumption and dealing with heat is a key issue for datacentres, while in everyday desktop computing power consumption is a significant proportion of the running cost of an IT system.

Project Denver puts a different spin on Microsoft’s Windows-on-ARM announcement today. The assumption is that Microsoft has in mind a mobile future for Windows; but if Denver takes off it could be important on desktops and servers as well.

Before getting too excited, it is worth recalling how Intel’s Itanium, cruelly dubbed the Itanic, mostly failed in the market. That was partly thanks to design problems, and partly because the industry was too deeply hooked into x86 applications. I also recall Motorola’s doomed attempts to sell Windows NT on PowerPC in the mid Nineties.

Denver could fare better, thanks to the ubiquity of ARM in the mobile world. That said, much will depend on whether a Denver-based system really does offer significant benefits over whatever Intel and/or AMD will have come up with by the time it ships. If it is less than spectacular, Denver will be a hard sell.

adobe, intel

Intel AppUp is Up, but underwhelming.

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Intel has launched AppUp, its application store for Windows and Moblin/MeeGo Linux.

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Isn’t Moblin obsolete, and now merged into MeeGo? That is the plan, but AppUp still talks about Moblin:

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Apparently:

The Intel AppUp developer program will support MeeGo. The current Moblin SDK for the Intel AppUpSM developer program is MeeGo ready and is upward compatible for Moblin and MeeGo.

The web site is pretty confusing, even though it is supposedly out of beta. Click Frequently Asked Questions, and you get a document dated December 2009, though “Last Modified” in August. It does seem to be out of date though, referring throughout to the Beta and stating that only Windows is supported by the AppUp client.

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I downloaded the client and had a look. The client is a simple affair, with apps in various categories, though the current selection of apps is uninspiring. Prices currently range from free to £28.19 for Easy Flyer Creator (Desktop Publishing), the most expensive I could find. All the “Featured apps” are games, though the other categories are populated to some extent.

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If you want to develop for AppUp you need the SDK, which provides the tools and libraries to link your app to the AppUp client. The SDK is native code, and the natural developer platform for AppUp is the cross-platform Qt, but the main requirement is that you can link to the SDK; there is also an approval process.

Adobe has done the work to support AIR applications, which use the Flash runtime, in AppUp. Adobe has also come up with an interesting project to address the coming proliferation of app stores. The Melrose project, now in beta, targets multiple app stores:

Melrose provides a repository that distributes applications to multiple application stores so that publishers can reach millions of users.

Intel AppUp Center and the Adobe AIR Marketplace are the first two storefronts available in Melrose. Melrose also provides analytics that let publishers measure success of their applications.

It is a shame that Melrose does not yet include Android Market.

Who knows, AppUp may have a bright future, but Intel could have done better with the launch. There is a poor selection of apps, confusing Moblin/MeeGo branding, and out of date information on the site. Of these, the biggest problem is the lack of apps themselves. The main target is netbooks, and Intel will need a greatly improved selection before AppUp comes close to enhancing netbooks in the way that Apple’s App Store enhances iPhone, iPad and iTouch, which is the obvious model.

How many app stores will there be? Alongside Apple, there is AppUp, Nokia’s Ovi, Android Market, as well as older app stores like handango. Microsoft is rumoured to have big plans for an App Store for Windows 8, and of course Windows Phone 7 will have its own store – and these are just the ones which come to mind immediately.

Not all these app stores will succeed, and Intel should have made more effort with this launch.

linux, Uncategorized

What chance for MeeGo in the age of the iPad?

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Today is Apple iPad day in the UK; but the portable device I’ve been playing with is not from Apple. Rather, I downloaded the first release build of MeeGo, proudly labelled 1.0, and installed it on my Toshiba NB 300 netbook, which normally runs Windows. You can choose between the evil edition with Google Chrome; or the free edition with Chromium – I picked the Chrome version. I did not burn any bridges: I simply copied the image to a 2GB USB memory stick and booted from that. There was one oddity: the USB boot only worked when using the USB port on the right by the power socket, and not from the one on the left edge of the netbook. It is a common problem with USB, that not all ports are equal.

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MeeGo is a joint project from Intel and Nokia, formed by the merging of Intel Moblin and Nokie Maemo. It is a version of Linux designed for mobile devices, from smartphones to netbooks, though this first release is only for netbooks. Further releases are planned on a "six-month cadence", and a wider range of devices including handsets and touch-screen tables is promised for October.

First impressions are mixed. Starting with the good news: performance is great, the user interface is smooth and polished, and less child-like and cutesy than the last Moblin I looked at. The designers have really thought about how to make the OS netbook-friendly. Applications run full-screen, making the best use of the limited screen size. Navigation is via a toolbar which slides into view if you move the mouse to the top of the screen. From here, you can switch between "Zones" – in effect, each zone is a running  applications. Not difficult but laborious; I found myself using Alt-Tab for switching between applications. I also miss the Windows taskbar, despite the screen space it occupies, since it helps to have a visual reminder of the other apps you have running.

There is also a home page which is a kind of local portal, showing showing current Twitter status (once I had added my Twitter account), application shortcuts, current appointments, recent web history, and other handy shortcuts.

Getting started was relatively quick. I soon figured out that the Network icon in the toolbar would let me configure wireless networking. It look me a little longer to find the system preferences, which are found by clicking the All Settings button in the Devices menu. Here I was able to change the keyboard layout from US to GB, though since it does not take effect until you logout, and I was using the live image which does not save changes, I was still stuck with the wrong layout.

A terminal – essential for serious Linux users – can be found in the System Tools section of the Application menu. I needed a password to obtain root access, which I discovered is set by default to "meego" in the live image. I presume this is a feature of the live image only, as this would otherwise be a serious security risk.

I soon found annoyances. This may be version 1.0, but it is described as a "core" release and seems mainly intended for software developers and I presume device manufacturers who are getting started. The selection of pre-installed applications is very limited, and does not include a word processor or spreadsheet.  There is a "Garage" utility for installing new apps, but although it seems to offer Abiword and Gnumeric, I could not get the links to resolve. I cannot find an image editor either. Without basic apps like this, MeeGo is not something I could rely on while out and about.

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I was surprised to find no link to the Intel AppUp store, which will offer applications for MeeGo, and when I tried to install the AppUp beta I got failed dependencies. I optimistically tried to install Adobe AIR; no go there either.

There must be other ways of getting apps installed – this is Linux after all – but I was looking for a quick and easy route.

Adobe Flash 10.1 is installed and works, though not on my first attempt. Trying to play a Youtube video made Chrome unresponsive, and I could not get Flash content to play on any site. Rebooted and all was well.

A big irritation for me is that you cannot disable tapping on the touchpad. There is a checkbox for it in settings, but it is both ticked and grayed so you cannot change it. I detest tapping since you inevitably tap by accident sometimes, on occasion losing work or just wasting time. No doubt there is some setting you can change though the terminal but I haven’t had time to investigate. It  is also possible that doing a full install to hard drive would fix it, as the live image does not save changes.

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Nevertheless, the progress is encouraging and if development continues at this pace I can see MeeGo becoming a strong alternative to Windows on netbooks: faster, cheaper, and better optimized for this kind of device. Even against the Apple iPad, I can see the attraction of something like a MeeGo netbook: freedom, Flash, value for money, and a keyboard.

The big question though: what chance has MeeGo got in the face of competition from Apple, Google with Android, and Microsoft with Windows? It seems to me that all these three are safe bets, in that they are not going away and already have momentum behind them. Will the public also make room for MeeGo? I like it well enough to hope it succeeds, but fear it may be crowded out by the competition, other than for Nokia Smartphones.

adobe, intel, microsoft, silverlight, software development

What is happening with Silverlight on Intel Moblin/Meego?

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Last September, Microsoft and Intel announced a port of Silverlight to Moblin Linux. I posted on the subject here, including a quote from Microsoft’s Brian Goldfarb:

Microsoft and Intel announced today that the two companies have agreed to work together to bring support for Silverlight 3 to Intel’s Atom-based Mobile Internet Devices (MID). These Atom-based devices run on Windows and Moblin, an open source, Linux-based operating system targeted at Atom-based devices. In order to help bring Silverlight content to these devices, Microsoft has provided Intel with Silverlight source code and test suites, and Intel will provide Microsoft with an optimized version of Silverlight for Moblin devices that Microsoft can then redistribute to OEMs.

Since then, Moblin has merged with Novell’s Maemo to form MeeGo (though this is still work in progress), and we’ve heard very, very little about Silverlight on either platform. The only snippet of news I have is that it was mentioned at the Intel Developer Forum in Beijing and reported by Char Zvolanek, who said that it came up in the Meego Q&A after regular sessions ended, and Silverlight will be supported in Meego  version 1.1 in October:

In May, the 1.0 version will be released, and with 1.1 coming out in October, there will be support for Silverlight, Java, and Air. Developers can write native or runtime apps that can be Java-based, Web-based, Silverlight-based, or Air-based.

Today, another clue, but not a good one for Silverlight. Intel is holding an application lab on May 26th in San Jose, for developing for the Intel AppUp store, either on Windows or Moblin. On the agenda: C/C++ and Adobe AIR, and the upcoming Adobe AIR SDK for Moblin. No Silverlight.

If anyone is going along, and can discover any news about Silverlight on Moblin, I’d be interested to know.

adobe, intel, silverlight, software development

Silverlight (and AIR) for MeeGo Linux coming in October?

Back in September 2009, Intel and Microsoft announced an official port of Silverlight for Linux, or at least for what was then Intel’s Moblin project, a Linux distribution tailored for netbooks. It was surprising to learn that this would be an official port using Microsoft’s code, as opposed to something based on Moonlight, the open source and also somewhat officially blessed version of Silverlight for Linux.

Since then I have been watching for more news about this Silverlight port, but heard nothing. Then in February Moblin merged with Nokia’s Maemo to become MeeGo. What next for the Silverlight port?

Earlier this week I met Intel’s Uli Dumschat at the company’s software conference in Barcelona. He spoke on Intel’s software development products for Atom-powered devices such as those running MeeGo. I asked him about Silverlight for MeeGo and he knew nothing about it.

It seems I was at the wrong conference. Today I spotted this post from Charlene Zvolanek at Intel’s Developer Forum in Beijing:

In May, the 1.0 version will be released, and with 1.1 coming out in October, there will be support for Silverlight, Java, and Air. Developers can write native or runtime apps that can be Java-based, Web-based, Silverlight-based, or Air-based. Even though it’s open source, Intel has been working closely with Microsoft to make sure that MeeGo and Windows are friends.

I also watched the keynote from Intel’s Renee James, who said that MeeGo devices are expected in the “second half of this year”, though I imagine they will be 1.0 devices – who knows, maybe 1.1 will be an upgrade option later.

So Silverlight on MeeGo now has a date. Is this Silverlight 4.0? Will it run out of browser? Access to local resources? Does this date apply to MeeGo Smartphones as well as netbooks? All good questions, about which I know nothing. Watch this space.