tors many times their size. They can pre-
serve capital by renting IT services instead
of investing in hardware and applications
or hiring programmers to design custom
applications.
It might seem odd that Amazon, perhaps
the world’s largest e-commerce merchant
with $17 billion in annual revenue, would
stake out a major position in the cloud
computing market, but it’s actually a very
shrewd move. The company has built up a
huge information technology infrastructure
over the years, with massive amounts of
computing power and digital storage. But by
some estimates, the company utilizes just
10 percent of its total capacity much of the
time. The reason it needs so much headroom
is to handle infrequent periods of peak
demand; the rest of the time, the hardware
largely sits idle.
Amazon jumped into cloud comput-
ing with its Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute
Cloud) service in an effort to increase its re-
turn on its IT investments by taking advan-
tage of the excess idle time on its servers.
Amazon EC2 is based on virtual machine
technology, software-based computers that
share their host’s hardware resources.
An Amazon EC2 customer creates and
uploads to Amazon’s servers something
Amazon calls an Amazon Machine Image.
This image consists of the operating system
and application software the customer
needs to run, plus the data associated with
it. The customer then orders up whatever
number of virtual machines they need for
their computing environment.
Each virtual machine is called an
instance, and each instance can be one of
three sizes, based on memory, storage, and
CPU power. A small instance, for example,
is equivalent to a server outfitted with a
1.0GHz to 1.2GHz Opteron or Xeon CPU,
1.7GB of memory, and 160GB of storage.
A large instance is equivalent to a server
outfitted with four of those CPUs, 7.5GB of
memory, and 850GB of storage. Small in-
stances are capable of running 32-bit appli-
cations, while large instances can run 64-bit
environments. Other configurations are also
available. The “elastic” in Elastic Compute
Cloud refers to the flexibility the system has
to offer: Customers can tap fewer or more
instances as their needs ebb and flow.
It’s possible that cloud computing could
even render the personal computer obsolete.
Rather than buying a computer, one day you
might purchase only a display, mouse, and
keyboard and connect to virtual comput-
ing resources somewhere on the Internet.
Wouldn’t that be boring?AUTOPSYMagellan RoadMate GPS
The RoadMate 6000T is a bit hefty, but who can argue with its integrated
traffic alerts, Bluetooth, and full text-to-speech capabilities? We crack
open a unit to find out what’s in a GPS these days.http://www.maximumpc.com | HOLIDAY 08 |MAMAMAXIMXIMXIMXIMUUUUMMPPPCC| 65
SUBMIT YOUR IDEA Ever wonder what the inside of a power supply looks like?
Don’t take a chance on destroying your own rig; instead, let us do the dirty
work. Tell us what we should crack open for a future autopsy by writing to
[email protected].THE CONCEPT BEHIND
CLOUD COMPUTING
ACTUALLY PREDATES
THE MODERN INTERNET.
FLIPSIDETOUCH SCREEN A GPS without a touch screen
isn’t a GPS—it’s a sad throwback to the ’90s. The
RoadMate features a bright, sunlight-readable
LCD screen with an embedded touch sensor. CPU As most folks
know, the RoadMate
is actually a small com-
puter—an Intel/Marvell
Xscale PXA270 Wireless
MMX chip at up to
520MHz—that runs
Windows CE. The chip
features an integrated
LCD controller, USB
host controller, and
memory card reader.GPS The popu-
lar GSC3-7875
SirfStar III
GPS gives the
RoadMate fast
acquisition
times and very
good sensitivity
using just the
onboard patch
antenna.ANTENNA Old-
time GPS users
will remember
having to run
antennas outside
of the car just to
maintain reliable
satellite locks.
With today’s
super-sensitive
receivers, a
simple patch an-
tenna will hold a
lock in all but the
most challenging
terrain.AUDIO A
WM9713 Wolfson
AC97 audio
codec handles
audio output
and input and
features an
integrated
touch-screen
controller.HARD DRIVE
A CF-size 4GB
Seagate hard
drive stores all
the map, point-
of-interest, and
waypoint info for
the RoadMate
6000T.