Thursday, April 24, 2008

Age Old Madras

Recently, I had a chance to enjoy this Photo gallery.

How nice it would be to roam around with your Hero Honda, TVS Star City, Bajaj Pulsar and Kinetic Boss, if Chennai is like this… :-)

1.Pycrofts Road(1890) 2.Central Railway Station(1925)
3.Esplanade(1910) 4.First Line Beach(1915)
5.Marina(1890) 6.Moubrays's Road(1885)
7.Mount Road(1905) 8.Mylapore(1906)
9.Napier Bridge(1895) 10.Parry's Corner(1890)



Saturday, April 19, 2008

New flash memory breaks speed barriers


Intel and Micron Technology have unveiled a high-speed NAND flash memory technology claimed to offer up to five times the performance of conventional flash memory. The new high-speed flash reportedly can achieve read and write speeds of 200MB/sec and 100MB/sec, respectively.
The new high speed NAND technology was developed by IM Flash Technologies (IMFT), an Intel/Micron joint venture. IMFT’s high-speed flash design is said to leverage the Open NAND Flash Interface (ONFi) Working Group’s ONFi 2.0 draft specification for high-speed flash memory, and was implemented by combining a four-plane architecture with higher clock speeds.


Among other applications, Intel and Micron expect the new technology to enable hybrid hard drives — drives that integrate high-speed flash memory with magnetic media — to achieve between two and four time the performance of conventional hard drives.

The Intel/Micron announcement follows the ONFi Working Group’s November 2007 release of a draft of its high-speed NAND specification. The group currently boasts 71 member companies, and expects to release final version of its ONFi 2.0 specification early this year.

ONFi 2.0 defines a high-speed NAND interface that’s expected to offer an upward migration path to 400MB/sec transfer rates in a future third-generation implementation, according to the group.

According to
Micron’s website, engineering samples for 1, 2, and 4 gigabyte parts are now available, but the devices are not yet in production.

Reference: www.deviceguru.com

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Top ten disruptive technologies

Market researcher Gartner Inc. has forecast the top ten disruptive technologies for the next five years. Included in the list are multicore processors, social networking, web mashups, cloud computing, augmented reality, and more.

“Multicore processors are expanding the horizons of what’s possible with software, but single-threaded applications won’t be able to take advantage of their power,” according to Gartner Fellow David Cearley.

The research firm predicts that by 2010 web mashups, “which mix content from publicly available sources,” will be wend their way into around 80 percent of enterprise applications. “Because mashups can be created quickly and easily, they create possibilities for a new class of short-term or disposable applications that would not normally attract development dollars,” Cearley explains. “The ability to combine information into a common dashboard or visualise it using geo-location or mapping software is extremely powerful.”

Gartner believes that over the next five years, UIs (user interfaces) will evolve significantly from a hardware perspective. New and emerging UI hardware technologies cited by Gartner include OLEDs (organic light-emitting displays), digital paper and billboards, holographic and 3D imaging, and smart fabric.

A variety of innovations are expected to come from the incorporation of accelerometers into devices, especially with the cost of accelerometer chips falling to around $1. For example, “Acceleration and attitude (tilt) can be combined with technologies such as wireless to perform functions such as ‘touch to exchange business cards,’” suggests Cearley.

Regarding the potential impact of social networking on enterprise applications, Cearley notes that “Social software provides a platform that encourages participation and feedback from employees and customers alike. The added value for businesses is being able to collect this feedback into a single point that reflects collective attitudes, which can help shape a business strategy.”


Here’s Gartner’s complete list of what it expects to be the top ten disruptive technologies over the coming five years:
  • Multicore and hybrid processors
  • Virtualization and fabric computing
  • Social networks and social software
  • Cloud computing and cloud/Web platforms
  • Web mashups
  • User Interface
  • Ubiquitous computing
  • Contextual computing
  • Augmented reality
  • Semantics
Reference:www.deviceguru.com