Someday, they’ll build wireless Internet into every building, just the way they build in running water, heat and electricity today. Someday, we won’t have to drive around town looking for a coffee shop when we need to check our e-mail.
If you want ubiquitous Internet today, though, you have several choices. They’re all compromised and all expensive.
You could get online using only a smartphone, but you’ll pay at least $80 a month and you’ll have to view the Internet through a shrunken keyhole of a screen. You could equip your laptop with one of those cellular air cards or U.S.B. sticks, which cost $60 a month, but you’d be limited to 5 gigabytes of data transfer a month (and how are you supposed to gauge that?). You could use tethering, in which your laptop uses your cellphone as a glorified Internet antenna — but that adds $20 or $30 to your phone bill, has a fixed data limit and eats through your phone’s battery charge in an hour.
Last year, you could hear minds blowing coast to coast when Novatel introduced a new option: the MiFi. It creates a personal Wi-Fi bubble, a portable, powerful, password-protected wireless hot spot that, because it’s the size of a porky credit card, can go with you everywhere. The MiFi gets its Internet signal from a 3G cellphone network and converts it into a Wi-Fi signal that up to five people can share.
You can just leave the thing in your pocket, your laptop bag or your purse to pump out a fresh Internet signal to everyone within 30 feet, for four hours on a charge of the removable battery. You’re instantly online whenever you fire up your laptop, netbook, Wi-Fi camera, game gadget, iPhone or iPod Touch.
The MiFi released by Virgin Mobile this week ($150) is almost exactly the same thing as the one offered by Verizon and, until recently, Sprint — but there’s a twist that makes it revolutionary all over again.
The Virgin MiFi, like its rivals, is still an amazing gizmo to have on long car rides for the family, on woodsy corporate offsite meetings, at disaster sites, at trade show booths or anywhere you can’t get Wi-Fi. If you live alone, the MiFi could even be your regular home Internet service, too — one that you can take with you when you head out the door. And it’s still insanely useful when you’re stuck on a plane on a runway.
But three things about the Virgin MiFi are very, very different. First, Virgin’s plan is unlimited. You don’t have to sweat through the month, hoping you don’t exceed the standard 5-gigabyte data limit, as you do with the cellular-modem products from Verizon, Sprint, AT&T and T-Mobile. (If you exceed 5 gigabytes, you pay steep per-megabyte overage charges, or in T-Mobile’s case, you get your Internet speed slowed down for the rest of the month.)
If you hadn’t noticed, unlimited-data plans are fast disappearing — but here’s Virgin, offering up an unlimited Internet plan as if it never got the memo.
Second, Virgin requires no contract. You can sign up for service only when you need it. In other words, it’s totally O.K. with Virgin if you leave the thing in your drawer all year, and activate it only for, say, the two summer months when you’ll be away. That’s a huge, huge deal in this era when every flavor of Internet service, portable or not, requires a two-year commitment.
Third, the service price for this no-commitment, unlimited, portable hot spot is — are you sitting down? — $40 a month.
That’s no typo. It’s $40 a month. Compare that with the cheapest cellular modems from AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint: $60 a month. T-Mobile also charges $40 a month for its cellular modems. But all four of those big companies require a two-year contract, and come with those scary 5-gigabyte monthly data limits.
(There’s actually another Virgin plan available, too: you can pay $10 for a 100-megabyte chunk of Internet use that expires in 10 days. It’s intended for people who are heading out for the weekend and just want to keep in touch with e-mail without having to fork over a whole month’s worth of money — and without paying $15 or $25 for each night of overpriced hotel Wi-Fi. And speaking of options, Virgin also offers a standard U.S.B. plug-in cellular modem with exactly the same pricing details.)
I’ve pounded my head against the fine print, grilled the product managers and researched the heck out of this, and I simply cannot find the catch.
Is it the speed? No. You’re getting exactly the same 3G speed you’d get on rival cellular modems and MiFi’s. That is, about as fast as a DSL modem. A cell modem doesn’t give you cable-modem speed, but you’ll have no problem watching online videos and, where you have a decent Sprint signal, even doing video chats.
Is it the coverage? Not really; Virgin uses Sprint’s 3G cellular Internet network, which is excellent. You’re getting exactly the same battery life and convenience of Verizon’s MiFi — for two-thirds the monthly price.
(Why would Sprint allow Virgin to use its data network but undercut its own pricing in such a brazen way? Because Sprint is focused on promoting its 4G phones and portable hot spots — even faster Internet, available so far only in a few cities. For example, its Overdrive portable hot spot is $100 after rebate, with a two-year commitment. The service is $60 a month for 5 gigabytes of 3G data and unlimited 4G data.)
That’s not to say that there’s no fine print whatsoever.
First, the Virgin plan doesn’t include roaming off Sprint’s network; the old Sprint MiFi plans did. According to Virgin, that’s not a big deal — the regular Sprint network covers 262 million people, whereas roaming would cover 12 million more — but it means that you might be out of luck in smaller towns.
Second, the Virgin MiFi can’t plug directly into your computer’s U.S.B. port to act as a wired cellular modem, like other carriers’ MiFi units. You can connect to it only wirelessly, if you care. (You can still charge it from your computer’s U.S.B. jack, but very slowly. A wall outlet or car adapter is a much better bet.)
Finally, remember that the Virgin MiFi is still a MiFi, so it’s a bit uncommunicative. It has only a single, illuminated button that serves as the on-off switch and an indicator light that blinks cryptically in different colors. You have to press that button and wait about 20 seconds before you can get online.
But come on: $40 a month? With no commitment or contract?
I did a little survey of broadband Internet prices among my Twitter followers. Turns out $40 a month is not only a great price for cellular (portable) Internet service — it’s among the lowest broadband prices in America, period. In some areas you can pay $35 a month for DSL service. But most people pay $50 to $60 for high-speed Internet, which makes the Virgin deal seem even more incredible.
And unlike those plans, Virgin lets you turn on service only when you want it. You can buy service — as with a prepaid phone —either by calling an 800 number or visiting a Web site. Handily enough, you can get onto the Virgin Web site to re-activate your MiFi, even if you’d previously stopped paying for service.
The MiFi’s portability has always made it an exceptionally flexible and useful little gadget — and Virgin’s prepaid model, unlimited data plan and dirt-cheap pricing just multiply that flexibility. And if Virgin can make money with a plan like this, the mind boggles at just how overpriced the similar offerings from its rivals must really be
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Microsoft to spend a fortune on Windows 7 push
Microsoft's marketing and development costs could reach $1 billion as it pushes its new mobile platform. Also, the more you use your smartphone, the more damage you may cause to your brain.
Emptying deep pocketsWhile Apple wows us with design, and Google panders to the open-source set, Microsoft plans to push its new mobile operating system onto the masses and developers with a familiar tactic: cash.
According to TechCrunch, Microsoft is planning an aggressive and expensive campaign to push Windows 7 -- arriving on phones this fall -- to give the platform some leverage as it battles Apple and Google's Android for customers. Microsoft "could spend a half-billion dollars or more in marketing costs and payments to developers and handset manufacturers to subsidize the expense of building phones and apps, so that the Windows Phone 7 ecosystem is well-seeded at launch," writes Kim-Mai Cutler in a TechCrunch guest post.
Those costs could reach $1 billion, the story notes, with half spent on marketing and half for other development costs.
“We have a long-term view and Microsoft has been in this position before in other businesses where we’ve had to take a long-term view,” said Microsoft senior product manager Greg Sullivan. He would not comment on the estimates. “The mobile phone market is growing by leaps and bounds, but it’s still in the early stages.”
The story details troubles Microsoft may be having with hardware manufactures for the Windows 7 phones. Only HTC, LG and Samsung will offer Windows 7 phones, down from as many as eight partners when Microsoft started discussing the operating system earlier this year. Yet despite Microsoft's noted phone problems over the years and even this year -- remember the Kin line-up of phones? -- all that money might buy some love.
Here's how Cutler concludes her fine piece: "The $100 million (Deutsche Bank analyst Jonathan) Goldberg estimates that Verizon, Motorola and Google collectively spent on marketing helped turn the Droid line of phones into a serious stable of competitors against the iPhone."
Will it work? One has to believe that Microsoft freed a lot of marketing dollars when it yanked the Kin from the market. We shall see, but it is wise to go after the developers who can create a boatload of apps. Without apps, Microsoft will start looking more like Research in Motion, where sales are falling fast because BlackBerry phones are not offering anything close to the sizable app library that Apple and Android have built.
Brain failAs much as we love our phones, there is growing concern that our need to constantly check email or play a casual game while waiting in line for lunch is not allowing our brains to breathe, so to speak. Therefore, we may be negatively impacting our ability to "learn and remember information, or come up with new ideas," according to a recent piece in the New York Times.
That piece was the latest installment of a fascinating series titled "Your Brain on Computers." In this one, reporter Matt Richtel points to emerging research that "even though people feel entertained, even relaxed, when they multitask while exercising, or pass a moment at the bus stop by catching a quick video clip, they might be taxing their brains, scientists say. 'People think they’re refreshing themselves, but they’re fatiguing themselves,' said Marc Berman, a University of Michigan neuroscientist."
The story is fascinating, but I may have overlooked the piece had I not heard Richtel, a Pulitzer Prize winner, talking to Terry Gross on the PBS show Fresh Air. Richtel spoke of all the emerging research surrounding our constant need for communicating with technology and the side effects that result. Not all of those are bad, he pointed out, but there appears to be unintended consequences we are just now starting to understand.
Listen to this Ironically, that Fresh Air interview reminded me of one of my favorite Android Apps: Google's Listen. With Listen, you can search for Fresh Air and a list of recent episodes will pop up on your phone. You can then listen to the program as well as subscribe to a feed for new episodes of the show. Basically, Listen searches the web for audio content, much like a Google search scours websites for relevant information.
Emptying deep pocketsWhile Apple wows us with design, and Google panders to the open-source set, Microsoft plans to push its new mobile operating system onto the masses and developers with a familiar tactic: cash.
According to TechCrunch, Microsoft is planning an aggressive and expensive campaign to push Windows 7 -- arriving on phones this fall -- to give the platform some leverage as it battles Apple and Google's Android for customers. Microsoft "could spend a half-billion dollars or more in marketing costs and payments to developers and handset manufacturers to subsidize the expense of building phones and apps, so that the Windows Phone 7 ecosystem is well-seeded at launch," writes Kim-Mai Cutler in a TechCrunch guest post.
Those costs could reach $1 billion, the story notes, with half spent on marketing and half for other development costs.
“We have a long-term view and Microsoft has been in this position before in other businesses where we’ve had to take a long-term view,” said Microsoft senior product manager Greg Sullivan. He would not comment on the estimates. “The mobile phone market is growing by leaps and bounds, but it’s still in the early stages.”
The story details troubles Microsoft may be having with hardware manufactures for the Windows 7 phones. Only HTC, LG and Samsung will offer Windows 7 phones, down from as many as eight partners when Microsoft started discussing the operating system earlier this year. Yet despite Microsoft's noted phone problems over the years and even this year -- remember the Kin line-up of phones? -- all that money might buy some love.
Here's how Cutler concludes her fine piece: "The $100 million (Deutsche Bank analyst Jonathan) Goldberg estimates that Verizon, Motorola and Google collectively spent on marketing helped turn the Droid line of phones into a serious stable of competitors against the iPhone."
Will it work? One has to believe that Microsoft freed a lot of marketing dollars when it yanked the Kin from the market. We shall see, but it is wise to go after the developers who can create a boatload of apps. Without apps, Microsoft will start looking more like Research in Motion, where sales are falling fast because BlackBerry phones are not offering anything close to the sizable app library that Apple and Android have built.
Brain failAs much as we love our phones, there is growing concern that our need to constantly check email or play a casual game while waiting in line for lunch is not allowing our brains to breathe, so to speak. Therefore, we may be negatively impacting our ability to "learn and remember information, or come up with new ideas," according to a recent piece in the New York Times.
That piece was the latest installment of a fascinating series titled "Your Brain on Computers." In this one, reporter Matt Richtel points to emerging research that "even though people feel entertained, even relaxed, when they multitask while exercising, or pass a moment at the bus stop by catching a quick video clip, they might be taxing their brains, scientists say. 'People think they’re refreshing themselves, but they’re fatiguing themselves,' said Marc Berman, a University of Michigan neuroscientist."
The story is fascinating, but I may have overlooked the piece had I not heard Richtel, a Pulitzer Prize winner, talking to Terry Gross on the PBS show Fresh Air. Richtel spoke of all the emerging research surrounding our constant need for communicating with technology and the side effects that result. Not all of those are bad, he pointed out, but there appears to be unintended consequences we are just now starting to understand.
Listen to this Ironically, that Fresh Air interview reminded me of one of my favorite Android Apps: Google's Listen. With Listen, you can search for Fresh Air and a list of recent episodes will pop up on your phone. You can then listen to the program as well as subscribe to a feed for new episodes of the show. Basically, Listen searches the web for audio content, much like a Google search scours websites for relevant information.
Apple TV poist for the Living Room
Apple (AAPL) failed to make a case Wednesday that Apple TV could replace cable TV. Instead, it did something smarter: It introduced an Apple TV that consumers will want alongside their cable boxes.
Which, for the first time, is a winning strategy to get Apple on the big family room screen. Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the new Apple TV at the company’s press conference Wednesday, along with a new iPod Touch and a music-centered social network called Ping.
But the star of the show was Apple TV – a product that has so far been a glaring failure for a company that does so much right. Jobs even introduced the segment by saying Apple TV has been a “hobby” for Apple, and that the company has learned a lot about what consumers want.
So the new Apple TV costs $99 – nearly $200 less than the old Apple TV – and the box is the size of two iPhones side-by-side, about one-fourth the size of the previous version. In one shot, that makes Apple TV a no-brainer purchase for many consumers. The price is about the same as dinner for two and wine at a P.F. Chang’s, and the box won’t have to find a chunk of space amid all the DVRs, DVD players and video game consoles piled by the TV.
Big win for Netflix
The content has one killer app that matters: Netflix (NFLX) streaming. Yeah, Apple will sell streaming movies for $4.99, but you’d be a dope for paying that much. For $8.99 a month, you can watch unlimited streaming movies on Netflix (and still get DVDs by mail). If you have an iPhone or iPad, you can start watching a movie at home, and if you have to go to the kids’ swim meet, pick up where you left off and watch the rest from the bleachers.
Apple TV will also rent streaming TV shows from Fox and ABC for 99 cents. "We think the rest of the studios will see the light and get on board with us," Jobs said. That’s half the price of buying and downloading a show through iTunes or Amazon, and it brings the price down to an impulse buy. Instead of replacing cable and your DVR, just know that if you plunk down in front of the TV and are curious about “Cougar Town,” for a buck you can take that chance.
Ping is no match for Facebook
The rest of Jobs’ press conference was pretty underwhelming. Hard to imagine that Ping is going to set the world on fire. It acts sort of like Last.fm, allowing users to follow the listening habits of other users, and looks a little like Facebook. But it’s built into iTunes. Ping seems to be the one thing Apple got out of its purchase of Lala.com last year.
Otherwise, the new iPod Touch is basically an iPhone 4 without the phone – better screen, front-facing camera. A new Nano is half the size of its predecessor. The new Shuffle isn’t that much different from the old Shuffle.
Apple got those products right from the beginning. It’s interesting that Apple learned from its failures with Apple TV, and the company finally should win a place in the living room.
Which, for the first time, is a winning strategy to get Apple on the big family room screen. Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the new Apple TV at the company’s press conference Wednesday, along with a new iPod Touch and a music-centered social network called Ping.
But the star of the show was Apple TV – a product that has so far been a glaring failure for a company that does so much right. Jobs even introduced the segment by saying Apple TV has been a “hobby” for Apple, and that the company has learned a lot about what consumers want.
So the new Apple TV costs $99 – nearly $200 less than the old Apple TV – and the box is the size of two iPhones side-by-side, about one-fourth the size of the previous version. In one shot, that makes Apple TV a no-brainer purchase for many consumers. The price is about the same as dinner for two and wine at a P.F. Chang’s, and the box won’t have to find a chunk of space amid all the DVRs, DVD players and video game consoles piled by the TV.
Big win for Netflix
The content has one killer app that matters: Netflix (NFLX) streaming. Yeah, Apple will sell streaming movies for $4.99, but you’d be a dope for paying that much. For $8.99 a month, you can watch unlimited streaming movies on Netflix (and still get DVDs by mail). If you have an iPhone or iPad, you can start watching a movie at home, and if you have to go to the kids’ swim meet, pick up where you left off and watch the rest from the bleachers.
Apple TV will also rent streaming TV shows from Fox and ABC for 99 cents. "We think the rest of the studios will see the light and get on board with us," Jobs said. That’s half the price of buying and downloading a show through iTunes or Amazon, and it brings the price down to an impulse buy. Instead of replacing cable and your DVR, just know that if you plunk down in front of the TV and are curious about “Cougar Town,” for a buck you can take that chance.
Ping is no match for Facebook
The rest of Jobs’ press conference was pretty underwhelming. Hard to imagine that Ping is going to set the world on fire. It acts sort of like Last.fm, allowing users to follow the listening habits of other users, and looks a little like Facebook. But it’s built into iTunes. Ping seems to be the one thing Apple got out of its purchase of Lala.com last year.
Otherwise, the new iPod Touch is basically an iPhone 4 without the phone – better screen, front-facing camera. A new Nano is half the size of its predecessor. The new Shuffle isn’t that much different from the old Shuffle.
Apple got those products right from the beginning. It’s interesting that Apple learned from its failures with Apple TV, and the company finally should win a place in the living room.
Computing at the Speed of light
Replacing metal wiring with fiber optics could change everything from supercomputers to laptops.
By Tom Simonite
The world of computing could change rapidly in coming years thanks to technology that replaces the metal wiring between components with faster, more efficient fiber-optic links.
Seeing the light: A chip in the center of this circuit board contains four lasers that convert electrical signals into light pulses. The pulses travel at high speeds along a fiber-optic link.
Credit: Intel
"All communications over long distance are driven by lasers, but you've never had it inside devices," says Mario Paniccia, director of Intel's photonics lab in Santa Clara, CA. "Our new integrated optical link makes that possible."
Paniccia's team has perfected tiny silicon chips capable of encoding and decoding laser signals sent via fiber optics. Today, when data arrives at a computer via a fiber optic connection it has to be moved from a separate photonic device to an electronic circuit. This new system promises to speed things up because everything works in silicon.
Last week, Paniccia's team demonstrated the first complete photonic communications system made from components fully integrated into silicon chips. Electronic data piped into one chip is converted into laser light that travels down an optical fiber and is transferred back into electrical signals a few fractions of a second later. The system can carry data at a rate of 50 gigabytes per second, enough to transfer a full-length HD movie in less than a second.
The silicon photonic chips could replace the electronic connections between a computer's key components, such as its processors and memory. Copper wiring used today can carry data signals at little more than 10 gigabytes per second. That means critical components like the central processing unit and the memory in a server cannot be too far apart, which restricts how computers can be built.
The new Intel setup has four lasers built into its transmitter chip that shine data into a single optical fiber at slightly different wavelengths, or "colors." Chips with even more lasers should make it possible to communicate at 1,000 gigabytes per second.
"Having a chip the size of your fingernail that can deliver a terabit per second changes the way you can think about design," says Paniccia. Such chips could make a big difference inside the sprawling data centers operated at great expense by Web giants like Google, Microsoft, and Facebook. "Data centers today are big piles of copper--that imposes the limits on how you arrange components inside a server," Paniccia says.
"If I could just move the memory a foot away [from the processors], I could add a whole board of memory for a single CPU instead," says Paniccia, whose team is experimenting with prototype servers to work out how to build them with photonics links inside.
Moving a server's memory away from the CPUs would also make ventilating them easier. Since roughly half the cost of running a data center, used for everything from services like Facebook to banking records, comes from cooling, that could have a significant impact.
By Tom Simonite
The world of computing could change rapidly in coming years thanks to technology that replaces the metal wiring between components with faster, more efficient fiber-optic links.
Seeing the light: A chip in the center of this circuit board contains four lasers that convert electrical signals into light pulses. The pulses travel at high speeds along a fiber-optic link.
Credit: Intel
"All communications over long distance are driven by lasers, but you've never had it inside devices," says Mario Paniccia, director of Intel's photonics lab in Santa Clara, CA. "Our new integrated optical link makes that possible."
Paniccia's team has perfected tiny silicon chips capable of encoding and decoding laser signals sent via fiber optics. Today, when data arrives at a computer via a fiber optic connection it has to be moved from a separate photonic device to an electronic circuit. This new system promises to speed things up because everything works in silicon.
Last week, Paniccia's team demonstrated the first complete photonic communications system made from components fully integrated into silicon chips. Electronic data piped into one chip is converted into laser light that travels down an optical fiber and is transferred back into electrical signals a few fractions of a second later. The system can carry data at a rate of 50 gigabytes per second, enough to transfer a full-length HD movie in less than a second.
The silicon photonic chips could replace the electronic connections between a computer's key components, such as its processors and memory. Copper wiring used today can carry data signals at little more than 10 gigabytes per second. That means critical components like the central processing unit and the memory in a server cannot be too far apart, which restricts how computers can be built.
The new Intel setup has four lasers built into its transmitter chip that shine data into a single optical fiber at slightly different wavelengths, or "colors." Chips with even more lasers should make it possible to communicate at 1,000 gigabytes per second.
"Having a chip the size of your fingernail that can deliver a terabit per second changes the way you can think about design," says Paniccia. Such chips could make a big difference inside the sprawling data centers operated at great expense by Web giants like Google, Microsoft, and Facebook. "Data centers today are big piles of copper--that imposes the limits on how you arrange components inside a server," Paniccia says.
"If I could just move the memory a foot away [from the processors], I could add a whole board of memory for a single CPU instead," says Paniccia, whose team is experimenting with prototype servers to work out how to build them with photonics links inside.
Moving a server's memory away from the CPUs would also make ventilating them easier. Since roughly half the cost of running a data center, used for everything from services like Facebook to banking records, comes from cooling, that could have a significant impact.
Computing at the Speed of light ( part 2 )
Further savings may come from the fact that optical links require less power to operate, says Keren Bergman, who leads a silicon photonics research group at Columbia University. "With electrical wires, the longer you go, the more energy you spend in an exponential fashion," she says. Optical fiber allows low-power signals to travel farther faster. Bergman's group has used data on the performance of computers at Lawrence Berkeley and MIT's Lincoln Laboratories to simulate how systems with optical interconnects might perform. "You can get an order of magnitude gain in energy efficiency," she says, with the largest gains seen for applications such as high-bandwidth image processing and video streaming, she says.
Data centers aren't the only things that may see their insides lit up with lasers. "We've developed this technology to be low-cost so we can take it everywhere, not just into high-performance computing or the data center," says Paniccia. The components of the Intel system, including the lasers, are made with the same silicon-sculpting methods used to construct computer chips in vast quantities. "I'm drafting Moore's law," says Paniccia. "We've enabled the benefits of using light with the low-cost, high-volume, scalability of silicon."In consumer computers like laptops, that would allow innovations in industrial design. I could put the memory in the display instead, and change the design of the whole thing."
This could make it easier to swap in new components without having to open up a machine. It would also allow core components to be installed in peripherals. Extra memory could, for example, be hidden in a laptop or smart phone dock to increase a portable device's computing power when plugged in.
Fully exploiting the benefits of the optical age will, however, means changes to the components being linked up. "It's not just a case of whip out the electrical wires and replace them with optical fiber," says Bergman.
Ajay Joshi, an assistant professor at Boston University, who is also exploring design options for high-performance computers with optical interconnects, agrees. "If we speed up the channel between logic [processors] and memory, we need to rethink the way you design that memory."
The speed gap between processors and optical links is smaller, but ultimately, that too will likely change. "It would be nice to also see processors that work optically instead of electronically," Joshi says
Data centers aren't the only things that may see their insides lit up with lasers. "We've developed this technology to be low-cost so we can take it everywhere, not just into high-performance computing or the data center," says Paniccia. The components of the Intel system, including the lasers, are made with the same silicon-sculpting methods used to construct computer chips in vast quantities. "I'm drafting Moore's law," says Paniccia. "We've enabled the benefits of using light with the low-cost, high-volume, scalability of silicon."In consumer computers like laptops, that would allow innovations in industrial design. I could put the memory in the display instead, and change the design of the whole thing."
This could make it easier to swap in new components without having to open up a machine. It would also allow core components to be installed in peripherals. Extra memory could, for example, be hidden in a laptop or smart phone dock to increase a portable device's computing power when plugged in.
Fully exploiting the benefits of the optical age will, however, means changes to the components being linked up. "It's not just a case of whip out the electrical wires and replace them with optical fiber," says Bergman.
Ajay Joshi, an assistant professor at Boston University, who is also exploring design options for high-performance computers with optical interconnects, agrees. "If we speed up the channel between logic [processors] and memory, we need to rethink the way you design that memory."
The speed gap between processors and optical links is smaller, but ultimately, that too will likely change. "It would be nice to also see processors that work optically instead of electronically," Joshi says
Nano Switches that store More Data Head to Market
Products featuring memristors could appear in 2013.
By Katherine Bourzac
An electronic component that offers a new way to squeeze more data into computers and portable gadgets is set to go into production in just a couple of years. Hewlett-Packard announced today that it has entered an agreement with the Korean electronics manufacturer Hynix Semiconductor to make the components, called "memristors," starting in 2013. Storage devices made of memristors will allow PCs, cellphones, and servers to store more and switch on instantly.
Making memories: This colorized atomic-force microscopy image shows 17 memristors. The circuit elements, shown in green, are formed at the crossroads of metal nanowires.
Memristors are nanoscale electronic switches that have a variable resistance, and can retain their resistance even when the power is switched off. This makes them similar to the transistors used to store data in flash memory. But memristors are considerably smaller--as small as three nanometers. In contrast, manufacturers are experimenting with flash memory components that are 20 nanometers in size.
"The goal is to be at least double whatever flash memory is in three years--we know we'll beat flash in speed, power, and endurance, and we want to beat it in density, too," says Stanley Williams, a senior fellow at HP who has been developing memristors in his lab for about five years.
HP makes memristors by laying down parallel metal nanowires onto a substrate, coating them with a layer of titanium dioxide, and placing a second layer of nanowires perpendicular to the first layer. Where the wires cross, a memristor is formed. HP expects the first devices containing memristors to offer about 20 gigabytes of storage per square centimeter, twice the projected capacity of flash at this time. The company has dubbed memristor-based data storage "ReRAM", which stands for Resistive Random Access Memory.
Like other silicon technologies, flash memory is approaching the physical limits of what's possible in miniaturization. Flash memory also wears out after about 100,000 read-write cycles (longer than the lifetime of most gadgets), while lab tests have shown that memristors can withstand up to about a million read-write cycles.
Under the terms of the new agreement, HP will maintain the intellectual property related to memristors. Hynix will make and sell memristor memory to HP and other customers. Williams says the company's goal is to encourage the industry to adopt memristor memory. "The economic benefit to HP will be as the first mover," says Jim McGregor, chief technology strategist at industry analyst firm InStat.
Displacing flash could still take years and billions of dollars, and the industry has other experimental kinds of memory to consider, notes McGregor. Researchers are working on phase-change and ferroelectric materials that can make new forms of memory. McGregor believes that, given the likelihood of speed bumps in manufacturing, it's unlikely a commercial memristor product will be available in 2013, as HP and Hynix predict.
But Williams does not foresee any major manufacturing hurdles. He says HP has been working for the past year on prototype devices with an undisclosed semiconductor manufacturer. Williams adds that memristors can be made with materials and machinery already present in semiconductor factories.
Dan Olds, a consultant with Gabriel Consulting Group in Beaverton, Oregon, is optimistic about the technology. "The sky's the limit if they can deliver on the promise of memristors--the question is at what price, and how fast prices will come down," he says. "Any new technology is a crapshoot, but if it's a matter of engineering and not basic research, then you feel more confident betting on it."
By Katherine Bourzac
An electronic component that offers a new way to squeeze more data into computers and portable gadgets is set to go into production in just a couple of years. Hewlett-Packard announced today that it has entered an agreement with the Korean electronics manufacturer Hynix Semiconductor to make the components, called "memristors," starting in 2013. Storage devices made of memristors will allow PCs, cellphones, and servers to store more and switch on instantly.
Making memories: This colorized atomic-force microscopy image shows 17 memristors. The circuit elements, shown in green, are formed at the crossroads of metal nanowires.
Memristors are nanoscale electronic switches that have a variable resistance, and can retain their resistance even when the power is switched off. This makes them similar to the transistors used to store data in flash memory. But memristors are considerably smaller--as small as three nanometers. In contrast, manufacturers are experimenting with flash memory components that are 20 nanometers in size.
"The goal is to be at least double whatever flash memory is in three years--we know we'll beat flash in speed, power, and endurance, and we want to beat it in density, too," says Stanley Williams, a senior fellow at HP who has been developing memristors in his lab for about five years.
HP makes memristors by laying down parallel metal nanowires onto a substrate, coating them with a layer of titanium dioxide, and placing a second layer of nanowires perpendicular to the first layer. Where the wires cross, a memristor is formed. HP expects the first devices containing memristors to offer about 20 gigabytes of storage per square centimeter, twice the projected capacity of flash at this time. The company has dubbed memristor-based data storage "ReRAM", which stands for Resistive Random Access Memory.
Like other silicon technologies, flash memory is approaching the physical limits of what's possible in miniaturization. Flash memory also wears out after about 100,000 read-write cycles (longer than the lifetime of most gadgets), while lab tests have shown that memristors can withstand up to about a million read-write cycles.
Under the terms of the new agreement, HP will maintain the intellectual property related to memristors. Hynix will make and sell memristor memory to HP and other customers. Williams says the company's goal is to encourage the industry to adopt memristor memory. "The economic benefit to HP will be as the first mover," says Jim McGregor, chief technology strategist at industry analyst firm InStat.
Displacing flash could still take years and billions of dollars, and the industry has other experimental kinds of memory to consider, notes McGregor. Researchers are working on phase-change and ferroelectric materials that can make new forms of memory. McGregor believes that, given the likelihood of speed bumps in manufacturing, it's unlikely a commercial memristor product will be available in 2013, as HP and Hynix predict.
But Williams does not foresee any major manufacturing hurdles. He says HP has been working for the past year on prototype devices with an undisclosed semiconductor manufacturer. Williams adds that memristors can be made with materials and machinery already present in semiconductor factories.
Dan Olds, a consultant with Gabriel Consulting Group in Beaverton, Oregon, is optimistic about the technology. "The sky's the limit if they can deliver on the promise of memristors--the question is at what price, and how fast prices will come down," he says. "Any new technology is a crapshoot, but if it's a matter of engineering and not basic research, then you feel more confident betting on it."
Super Capacitors Could Power Phone, Laptop for Days
If optimized, this new technology could fully charge consumer electronic devices almost instantaneously.
By Eric Bland
Tue Aug 31, 2010 11:05 AM ET
THE GIST
* A new super capacitor inspired by the onion has been developed by scientists.
* Super capacitors are currently used to power small devices such as toys.
* The new tech could provide enough energy to power a cell phone for weeks or a laptop battery for days.
Drawing on the layered design of tear-inducing onions, scientists have created a new super capacitor that is powerful enough -- and cheap enough -- to replace the larger, heavier capacitors used in consumer electronics such as computers and cells phones.
If commercialized, the new super capacitor could be fully charged in a second and, coupled to a normal battery, provide enough energy to power a cell phone for weeks or a laptop battery for days.
"If you open any computer, you will see a lot of these small, cylindrical round capacitors," said Vadym Mochalin, a scientist at Drexel University and a co-author on the new Nature Nanotechnology paper.
Capacitors, like batteries, store energy, but that's where most of the similarities end. Generally speaking, a battery, like the one inside your cell phone or laptop computer, stores energy chemically. That chemical energy is then converted into electrical energy.
Converting electrical energy into chemical energy and vice versa is a relatively slow process, which is why the lithium-ion batteries in laptops and cell phones can last for hours or even days but also require a long time to charge.
A capacitor is different. Simply put, a capacitor stores an electrical charge between two conductive plates separated by an electrical insulator.
Without the chemical-electrical conversion, a capacitor can be charged and discharged much more rapidly than a battery, last longer and weigh less. Capacitors are ideal for camera flashes and other electrically intensive consumer devices.
However, in contrast to batteries, a capacitor cannot store enough energy to power anything that lasts longer than a flash -- some fraction of a second.
Super capacitors, however, store much more energy than their traditional counterparts and are used to power small devices such as toys including model planes and helicopters.
In the future, super capacitors will be more powerful and replace batteries in more and more devices. Super capacitors or "electric double layer capacitors" store charge in a layer of ions adsorbed on the surface of carbon.
The new super capacitor began its electrically charged life with a literal bang. A powerful blast, usually hexagen or TNT, converts carbon contained in the molecules of explosives into a thin sheet of nanodiamonds.
The researchers then transformed those nanodiamonds into dozens or even hundreds of graphene layers, all nestled inside one another like little Russian dolls.
When the graphene "onions" are bathed and charged in an organic electrolyte, they can discharge up to 200 volts every second. If the technology is optimized that number could be further increased several times, said Mochalin. That would be enough to fully charge a cell phone, laptop or other electrical device almost instantaneously, and then dole out that power to a waiting battery for long-term storage.
The performance is excellent, and if commercialized -- something the Drexel scientists are working on -- the price should be right as well. The diamonds found in jewelry are expensive, but nanodiamonds are cheap. A few hundred dollars will get you a pound of nanodiamonds, said Mochalin.
"You need an electrically conductive material for a capacitor, and diamonds are insulators," said Olga Shenderova, a nanodiamond expert at the International Technology Center in North Carolina.
Additionally, by using a material that is relatively inexpensive, said Shenderova, the research could eventually lead to a whole new generation of super capacitors
By Eric Bland
Tue Aug 31, 2010 11:05 AM ET
THE GIST
* A new super capacitor inspired by the onion has been developed by scientists.
* Super capacitors are currently used to power small devices such as toys.
* The new tech could provide enough energy to power a cell phone for weeks or a laptop battery for days.
Drawing on the layered design of tear-inducing onions, scientists have created a new super capacitor that is powerful enough -- and cheap enough -- to replace the larger, heavier capacitors used in consumer electronics such as computers and cells phones.
If commercialized, the new super capacitor could be fully charged in a second and, coupled to a normal battery, provide enough energy to power a cell phone for weeks or a laptop battery for days.
"If you open any computer, you will see a lot of these small, cylindrical round capacitors," said Vadym Mochalin, a scientist at Drexel University and a co-author on the new Nature Nanotechnology paper.
Capacitors, like batteries, store energy, but that's where most of the similarities end. Generally speaking, a battery, like the one inside your cell phone or laptop computer, stores energy chemically. That chemical energy is then converted into electrical energy.
Converting electrical energy into chemical energy and vice versa is a relatively slow process, which is why the lithium-ion batteries in laptops and cell phones can last for hours or even days but also require a long time to charge.
A capacitor is different. Simply put, a capacitor stores an electrical charge between two conductive plates separated by an electrical insulator.
Without the chemical-electrical conversion, a capacitor can be charged and discharged much more rapidly than a battery, last longer and weigh less. Capacitors are ideal for camera flashes and other electrically intensive consumer devices.
However, in contrast to batteries, a capacitor cannot store enough energy to power anything that lasts longer than a flash -- some fraction of a second.
Super capacitors, however, store much more energy than their traditional counterparts and are used to power small devices such as toys including model planes and helicopters.
In the future, super capacitors will be more powerful and replace batteries in more and more devices. Super capacitors or "electric double layer capacitors" store charge in a layer of ions adsorbed on the surface of carbon.
The new super capacitor began its electrically charged life with a literal bang. A powerful blast, usually hexagen or TNT, converts carbon contained in the molecules of explosives into a thin sheet of nanodiamonds.
The researchers then transformed those nanodiamonds into dozens or even hundreds of graphene layers, all nestled inside one another like little Russian dolls.
When the graphene "onions" are bathed and charged in an organic electrolyte, they can discharge up to 200 volts every second. If the technology is optimized that number could be further increased several times, said Mochalin. That would be enough to fully charge a cell phone, laptop or other electrical device almost instantaneously, and then dole out that power to a waiting battery for long-term storage.
The performance is excellent, and if commercialized -- something the Drexel scientists are working on -- the price should be right as well. The diamonds found in jewelry are expensive, but nanodiamonds are cheap. A few hundred dollars will get you a pound of nanodiamonds, said Mochalin.
"You need an electrically conductive material for a capacitor, and diamonds are insulators," said Olga Shenderova, a nanodiamond expert at the International Technology Center in North Carolina.
Additionally, by using a material that is relatively inexpensive, said Shenderova, the research could eventually lead to a whole new generation of super capacitors
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