News in Brief

Samsung launches hard disk drives



NEW DELHI: Samsung Electronics India Information and Telecommunication Ltd.
(SEIIT), have announced the launch of the SpinPoint V30 series of hard disk

drives, for desktop applications. The V30 range offers a maximum of 60GB storage

capacity at the price of Rs 8,000, which is the lowest cost per gigabyte. Part

of the SpinPoint series hard disk drives, the V30 series is a dual-platter

mechanism offering 30GB per platter, connecting via the standard IDE interface.

The drive fully supports UltraDMA-100 as well as the legacy UltraDMA-66 and 33.

These drives come with Samsung's exclusive three-year warranty. - CNS

Vi eTrans launches eTrans Swipe cards



MUMBAI: Vi eTrans's launch of the logistic support service in the form of
eTrans swipe cards has enabled truck owners to keep track of their vehicles on

the roads. This launch is India's first integrated logistic support service.

With the investment done of around Rs 4.5 crore in the project and Rs 10 crore

to be invested in the project over a period of six months. Vi ETrans Company is

a joint venture between Winex Trans, Venture Infotek and Bharat Petroleum

Corporation Ltd. The partners have the equity sharing of thirty three per cent.-

CNS

Commworks adds IPv6 support to gigabit router product line



NEW DELHI: CommWorks Corporation is adding support for Internet Protocol Version
6 (IPv6) to its Total Control 100 enhanced gigabit routers, the company

announced in a press statement. The Total Control 100 enhanced gigabit routers

from CommWorks will support native IPv6 over a 2.4Gbit/s (OC-48c) line

interface, the fastest interface available on any IPv6 router product. Total

Control 100 enhanced gigabit routers with IPv6 support are available today for

customer trials, with general availability scheduled for the third quarter of

2001.



IPv6 increases the address space from 32 to 128 bits, and is able to provide
sufficient address space for next-generation Internet and Intranets as well as

connectivity for consumer and home electronics devices. The Internet Engineering

Task Force (IETF) standardized IPv6 also is designed to fix other shortcomings

of IPv4. For example, IPv4 does not have auto-configuration, security or

real-time stream handling functionsIPv6 offers auto configuration for

plug-and-play capabilities, greater mobility and improved security.- CIOL Bureau

Chip market to shrink 13.5% this year



The highly cyclical and volatile nature of the global semiconductor market will
be clearly evident once again this year as chip sales, which grew 37 per cent in

2000 to $204 billion, will decline 13.5 per cent this year to $177 billion.



That is the latest prediction from the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics
(WSTS) group, which is part of the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) and

represents some 70 of the largest chipmakers worldwide. Just six months ago, the

STS forecasted a 20 per cent growth rate for chip sales in 2001. DRAM memory

sales, instead will suffer a big decline, falling 36 per cent to $18.5 billion.



Key market segments, such as PCs and cell phones have been leading the chip
market decline. The WSTS said it expects a modest 5 to 7 per cent growth rate

recovery in those sectors in the second half of this year. "But demand for

semiconductors that are used in the infrastructure of the Internet, which was a

growth driver last year, may emain sluggish in all of 2001," said Osamu

Yamashiro, head of WSTS Japan.-SVNS

Fujitsu, NEC, Hitachi team up with IBM on Linux



Three leading Japanese computer makers, Fujitsu, Hitachi and NEC have formed an
alliance with IBM to develop a new Linux-based network operating that would

reduce their reliance on either Microsoft or Unix-based servers from Sun

Microsystems and others.



The companies are investing $249.9 million and hope to launch the system by
2003, IBM's Linux Technology Center director Daniel Frye said the project is an

extension of work the four companies have been doing on "an interconnected

set of small projects' to enhance Linux as part of longstanding

partnerships."



Each of the three Japanese companies has reportedly committed 200 engineers each
to the project, with Fujitsu focused on processing capability improvement and

the other two Japanese companies on software upgrade. IBM will use its software

research center in Oregon to improve Linux' basic features such as stability.

They also hope to propose the new system as the industrial standard to a global

body that promotes Linux use.-SVNS