A trademark application from Apple for the word “Macroscalar” was published by the US Patent & Trademark Office last week.

Apparently, the Cupertino tech giant is getting ready to implement the technology on its upcoming products, which many assume to be the highly-anticipated iPhone 5 and iPad 3.

Macroscalar provide better support for the performance of a processor, while consuming less power.

Last year in July, ZDNet wrote an article in which they detailed Apple’s macroscalar architecture, explaining how the technology could help to improve the processor efficiency.

“The macroscalar processor addresses this problem in a new way: at compile-time it generates contingent secondary instructions so when a data-dependent loop completes the next set of instructions are ready to execute. in effect, it loads another pipeline for, say, completing a loop, so the pipeline remains full whether the loop continues or completes. It can also load a set of sequential instructions that run within or between loops, speeding execution as well.”

The patent summary describes an example of where “a processor receives instructions of a program loop having a vector block and a sequence block intended to be executed after the vector block, where the processor includes multiple slices and each of the slices is capable of executing an instruction of an iteration of the program loop substantially in parallel. For each iteration of the program loop, the processor executes an instruction of the sequence block using one of the slices while executing instructions of the vector block using a remainder of the slices substantially in parallel.”

Here are some examples of software that Apple believes this processor might be featured on in the future:

“Computer software for personal information management; database management software; database synchronization software; character recognition software; voice recognition software; speech to text conversion software; voice-enabled software applications.”

Apple is likely to develop this type of architecture since the company designs its own processors, software and hardware.

iPhone 5 rumors: “macroscalar” architecture to be featured on iPhone 5 and iPad 3?

CBR Staff Writer Published 05 December 2011

SuccessFactors’ team and technology will be added to SAP’s cloud assets

SAP subsidiary SAP America has signed an agreement to acquire cloud-based human capital management (HCM) offerings provider SuccessFactors.

Under the acquisition, SuccessFactors’ team and technology will be added to SAP’s cloud assets and the combination of SAP and SuccessFactors will establish an advanced end-to-end offering of cloud and on-premise solutions for managing all relevant business processes.

SuccessFactors’ offerings are complementary to SAP’s core HCM offerings as well as SAP’s strong cloud assets: SAP Business ByDesign for the suite cloud market and SAP’s line of business cloud offerings for large enterprises such as SAP Sales on Demand.

The combination of SuccessFactors and SAP will create a comprehensive HCM offering, combining strength in enterprise applications with people-focused cloud applications.

The SuccessFactors’ applications are designed for businesses of all sizes and offer easily adopted solutions for customers of SAP Business Suite, SAP Business ByDesign, SAP Business All-in-One, and SAP Business One. Under the acquistion, SuccessFactors’ cloud expertise and know-how, rapid cloud innovation and proven success running large scale cloud deployments will help SAP customers adopt cloud applications and the SuccessFactors’ mobile applications combined with the mobile expertise of SAP and Sybase will offer customers a powerful business-to-employee mobility portfolio. In addition, the SuccessFactors enables business insight and execution fits well with SAP’s business analytics platform, promising new levels of real time decision making across the enterprise.

SAP Co-CEO bill McDermott said the cloud is a core of SAP’s future growth and the combination of SuccessFactors’ team and technology with SAP will create a cloud powerhouse.

"The acquisition will help us address the top priority for CEOs globally – managing people and talent. Together, SAP and SuccessFactors will create tremendous business value for customers, with potent synergies to accelerate our growth in the cloud," said McDermott.

SuccessFactors founder and CEO Lars Dalgaard said expanding relationships with SAP’s 176,000 customers with SuccessFactors speed to value, friendly user interface, on mobile devices and the web, and delivering more SAP offerings in the cloud to improve SAP’s business.

"SuccessFactors has proven we have the technology and people to deliver the world’s biggest cloud deployments in terms of users and countries per customer, and also the most applications per customer from the same flexible scalable cloud platform. The business world is ready for enterprise-class cloud applications and together, we can deliver incredible new innovation for global businesses," said Dalgaard.

SAP acquires SuccessFactors

Sprint Nextel Corp., the third-largest US wireless operator, had its credit rating cut further into junk by Moody’s Investors Service and may face more downgrades due to risks related to a planned network upgrade.

The ranking was cut to B1, four steps below investment grade, from Ba3, new York-based Moody’s said yesterday in a statement.

The company is on review for an additional possible downgrade as there are “significant execution risks” related to Sprint’s plans to upgrade its wireless network, Moody’s said.

“the management team has outlined very aggressive buildout targets for a company that has historically failed to realize the full benefits from previous major strategic initiatives,” Dennis Saputo and John Diaz said in the statement for Moody’s.

the downgrade reflects Sprint’s decision to invest in its own fourth-generation, or 4G, wireless network and likely shift away from the partnership with Clearwire Corp., the ratings firm said.

Sprint’s planned network investments, combined with the financial expense of selling Apple’s iPhone, will strain liquidity before the benefits come, Moody’s said.

Sprint, based in Overland Park, Kan., may need $6 billion to $8 billion in additional capital to pay for 4G, iPhone subsidies and debt maturities, the credit-rating firm said.

Sprint rose 0.4 percent to $2.79 at the close in new York and has dropped 34 percent this year.

Moody’s downgrades Sprint