5/25/2005
1-in. Disk Drive Enabling the Handheld Revolution?
t spoken with Jim Porter in a few months so I called him up today to pick his brain on the 1-in. disk drive market. He started by regaling me on the progress that the disk drive manufacturers continue to achieve in the world of rotating memory. The 1-in. drive of today is soon to be replaced by the 0.85-in drive of tomorrow. Toshiba already has one Jim declares. It’s being targeted at camera cell phones where the conflicting requirements of modest cost, high storage capacity and small size are the critical concerns. Storage capacity is being driven by the demand for higher resolution cameras than the 3 megapixel units found in most phones of today. The 1-in. drives can deliver 5 Gbytes of storage at a lower cost per megabyte than is possible with flash.
s that perpendicular recording is coming. All recording today is horizontal—imagine bits of data as molecular size magnets laying flat to the disk surface with north-south orientation one way for a zero and the opposite way for a one. With perpendicular recording, imagine the magnets oriented vertical into the disk surface. South pole up a zero, north pole up a one. Switching to perpendicular recording will boost storage nearly an order of magnitude. Jim was bragging about having a Toshiba drive using perpendicular recording in his PC that holds a 100 Gbytes of storage, more data storage capacity than a Digital Audio Tape (DAT) used in some digital video recorders. Now imagine the small size digital video recorder possible with a 1-in. disk drive, something that will be commonplace in a few years.
with product about to ship include Hitachi, Toshiba, and Seagate Technology. All plan 1.8-in. and 2.5-in. drives for notebooks and desktops, but the largest potential might be the 1-in. drives that could go into MP3 players with photos and video, cell phones, digital cameras, and digital video cameras. Included in this group of well-known disk drive manufacturers, is little known Chinese start-up GS Magic Inc. Its 1-in. drive announced at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show in January 2004 offers 2.2 GB to 4.8 Gbytes of storage in the 1-inch form factor. GS Magic also announced it had a 0.8 in. drive in development. In the wake of that announcement, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies sued the company for patent infringement and the case is working its way through the legal process.
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The stakes are high in the disk drive battle to ship units into expanding hand held electronics market if the legal battle is any indication. The market for HDD-based portable audio players is forecasted to grow from 13.9 million units produced in 2004 to 54.7 million units produced in 2008 according to Stamford, Conn. market research firm Gartner Group. Apple claimed 4.58 million iPods shipped in 2004. Drive makers see the MP3 player market—shipments on the order of 10s of millions of units—being dwarfed by cell phones. Second to market with a disk drive in their handset, Nokia with its new N91 offers a 4-Gbyte hard drive. Samsung was first to market with a 3-Gbyte hard drive in their phone, the SGH-i300. Its other first is the phone will be first time Microsoft’s Mobile OS will operate with a hard drive. (How do you CTRL ALT DEL on a cell phone?)
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Besides cell phones hoping to capitalize on the extreme storage enable by built in hard drives there’s the PDA vendors. PalmOne, Inc.’s newest device, the LifeDrive incorporates a built in 4GB hard drive. And the at $350, the Internet Tablet from Nokia is being positioned as an alternative to buying an extra personal computer or laptop for different rooms, providing a cheaper, quicker and less-cumbersome way to connect to the Web and e-mail at home. How much of this is al dente marketing (throwing stuff out to see what sticks) is anyone’s guess. However, everyone is angling to be the next iPod, whatever form it takes. And the humble 1-in. drive seems to be the technology enabling this to happen.
5/23/2005
WiFi and WiMAX Battle for Telco Last Mile Access
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I listened to an Intel Webcast on the virtues of WiFi and WiMAX and got excited about the potential of both technologies. I’ve used WiFi on occasion at events or hotels where the connectivity is freely available, but was not keeping up with WiMAX development. Here’s what I learned about the both technologies.
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Since the 1982 consent decree that broke up the AT&T monopoly of nationwide local and long distance telecommunication services, there has been a continuous effort to break the hold Regional Bell Operating Companies have held on the last mile access to the home. Only television cable companies came close but only for one-way video feeds not for two-way communications. That changed once the cable service providers invested tons of money into converting their analog transport system to digital delivery. In the process, they built the infrastructure needed to provide high-speed broadband access to the homes their cable service touched.
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The advent of WiFi and WiMAX communications protocols are holding out the promise of adding other competitors able to provide last mile communications service: AT&T and its new owner SBC Corp. for example would like to provide a competitive alternative in the service areas where they do not own the last mile wires. The other RBOCs and long distance carriers are looking to do the same in service areas where they own no last mile wires as well. For broadband access WiFi has promise. The major concerns with the wireless access protocol have largely been addressed. It has been made secure so that sensitive data—passwords, social security and financial data can be sent without fear of being hacked by someone lurking on the wireless link. It is being deployed though not at a rate that is threatening any service provider currently providing wired broadband access to homes. What may make WiFi a threat is the advent of WiFi mesh networks that create a blanket of coverage extending over larger geographic areas. These are being deployed now. The other threat will come from fixed WiMAX 802.16e, a wireless alternative to DSL and cable modems that will see product rollout the second half of this year.
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Let’s look at each of these alternatives with the aim of understanding how they will provide competition in the last mile market. WiFi has been available for several years and anyone with a laptop computer can find hotspots in coffee shops, airports, hotels, and in some city centers that have installed free WiFi hotspots. WiFi has undergone a number of standards enhancements to boost bandwidth and to fix security concerns that initially allowed others to monitor WiFi communications. The bandwidth changes are reflected in letter suffixes to the IEEE WiFi standard 802.11a, 802.11b, and 802.11g. The a version of the standard operates at the 5 GHz unlicensed spectrum. The b and g versions operate in the 2.5 GHz unlicensed spectrum. The a and g versions can run at the higher data rate of 54 Mbits/s while the b version achieves a fifth of that 11 Mbits/s. The g version is the latest and the one that incorporates much of the functionality of versions a and b.
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Versions a, b, and g of the standard dealt with the physical layer of the standard, the air medium that signal traverse between access point (base station) and client. The 802.11i version of the standard added secure data transport. In fact the encryption employed is equivalent to that used by the U.S. government for wireless document transmission. Another version of the standard 802.11e will add quality of service QOS to the protocol, thus enabling the WiFi network to prioritize packet delivery. This will enable voice, video, and audio traffic to have priority over data packets. Finally, 802.11k will add resource management to help address the ubiquitous problem of interference. The unlicensed WiFi spectrum 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz are used by cordless phones, garage door openers, the electronic keys that lock and unlock cars, etc.; all generating interfering signals on the same wavelength.
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The problem with WiFi is its range is a few 100 feet, ideal for home use where the base station connects to the DSL or cable modem and every computer in the home with a WiFi receiver can log onto the Internet wirelessly. For a service provider to exploit this technology, the problem he has to address is the large number of building and facilities not already wired with CAT-5 or Ethernet cabling. The WiFi mesh is a solution to this problem. It carries bandwidth around obstacles and provides easy set-up when used with omni-directional antennas. Access points (base stations) located throughout the building or facility connect to all adjacent and surrounding clients. In addition, each client connects to all its adjacent and surrounding neighbors. The mesh overlays these interconnect nodes, which resemble the lattice structure of a crystal. A signal to and from an access point at one end of the mesh flows through the mesh via each node. If one node goes down, the signal goes around the failed node by finding neighbors still linked to the access point.
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While this is ideal for a high-density apartment complex, it’s less effective in a suburban neighborhood where the service provider needs to sell clients to each homeowner to build a mesh with access points throughout the neighborhood. Ideally, base stations with wired broadband connections would be located on every street corner and each client would be connected to another client in the neighborhood. Ideally, each house would link to its neighbor front and back, right and left side. Base stations at either end of the neighborhood would provide the high-speed link to the Internet. If the client in any house in the neighborhood fails, the network would find another path to the base station using clients surrounding the failed node just as in the high-rise example.
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WiMAX is the real solution to the last mile problem for service providers wanting to compete with regional bell operating companies and cable providers. At a higher transmit power, the standard will allow a service provider to set up an access point at a location— Speakeasy has set one up atop the Space Needle in Seattle for example—and offer symmetrical broadband at 3 Mbits/s data rates for $500 a month, ideal for small and medium size businesses, who want an alternative or supplement to a wired solution, 100 percent more bandwidth than a T-1 for only 50 percent more in price. WiMAX has a speed up to 75Mbits/s for fixed wireless applications, 15 Mbits/s for mobile applications. The WiMAX IEEE standard 802.11d specifies fixed wireless while 802.11e specifies mobile.
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One big advantage WiMAX has is its broadcast range of 50km versus 100m for WiFi. Another advantage WiMAX has over WiFi is licensed spectrum—although the Speakeasy offering may be provided with unlicensed spectrum (Sprint is the only one in possession of the licensed spectrum at 3.5 GHz.) Licensed spectrum means no interference. WiMAX can be supplied via unlicensed spectrum at 2.5GHz and 5.8 GHz shared with WiFi and everyone else. Sprint plans its WiMAX rollout for 2007 with trials beginning in 2006.
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WiMAX is not the panacea it’s being promoted as, however. The standard is still being finalized—the Speakeasy rollout is being done with pre-standard equipment—and licensed spectrum is not widely available. Nevertheless, there is keen interest in the technology. Intel and others are building products to facilitate the rollout and broadband penetration is still nowhere near the installed base of dial up modems. WiMAX is one more solution that might enable a greater penetration of broadband among business and residential consumers.
1/20/2005
Welcome to your new blog! This is the first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!
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