Two Gig breasted: In the battle for the chip speed supremacy, the 2Gigahertz
crown went to Intel. The result was that AMD opted out of the race saying that
performance is not all about speed. Nevertheless, the 2GHz milestone has been a
morale booster for the chip industry that witnessed one of its worst recessions.
Hyperthreading to the rescue: Technologies are being unveiled to keep
Moore’s Law alive. Hyperthreading was one, which, Intel claims, will improve
chip performance by 30 per cent. With the use of registers in microprocessors,
multitasking is given a new definition, improving the chip speed significantly.
The technology will debut on servers in 2002.
Pixie Dust fatens storage capacity: It’s the future technology in
storage devices. Even as your hard disk manufacturers promised increasing
capacity that reached upto 80 Gigabits, you thought, that was the limit. IBM,
the inventor of pixie dust technology for storage devices, claims that it would
allow 100 GB capacity per square inch by 2003. This means that in less than two
years your desktop could have hard disk that can hold 400 GB of memory, while
your notebook could flash a 200 GB hard disk.
DVDs — the big hit: DVD players and drives boosted the sale of
consumer electronics and computer peripherals during the festival season of
2001. So much so that DVDs are now expected to outsell CD ROM drives in desktop
PCs soon. The introduction of rewritable DVD players and drives in the second
half of 2001 by HP was lapped up by the US consumers. As the price of the
rewritable DVD drives fall and a single standard emerges, it will become the
preferred choice of drives in PCs.
3G — the next generation? The word has been more spoken about than
experienced. Finally, Japan’s mobile phone giant NTT DoCoMo in October
unveiled Third Generation wireless Net access services, which gives about six
times more bandwidth than what wired connections offer these days. The launch
was primarily bolstered by the growing number (latest figures say 30 million) of
second generation iMode users in the country. Though most telecom giants in the
US and Europe are ready to offer 3G services, they would rather wait till
2002-03 to learn from NTT’s experience.
Utterly Gingerly Segway: The most secretive invention was revealed
during the fag end of the year, even as speculation on what the device could be,
reached bizarre proportions. The pre-revelation hype of inventor Dean Kamen’s
latest device (officially called Segway) stole much of post-launch excitement
and potential buying interest.
Bluetooth vs Wireless LAN: The battle continues into the next year.
While Bluetooth got a boost this year when Microsoft said that future version of
Windows XP will support the protocol, 802.11b standard for wireless LAN gained
grounds. Bluetooth device manufacturers have been able to reduce the cost, which
is seen as a major factor in its success. Next year, consumers will get access
to both technologies, as gadgets and goods embedded with these technologies
would be launched. And then the winner would be decided. Will they co-exist?
The Internet — An update: The use of the Net surged during the year,
even as newer access technologies were tried. WAP, which had gained popularity
during 2000, went out of news for various reasons during 2001. In the US
broadband technology picked up popularity and despite the demise of Excite@Home,
it seems to be the future of high speed Internet access.
THE DOWNSIDES
Denial of Service: The most popular act among the hackers on the Net, almost all
the big names on the Internet suffered during 2001 due to denial of service
attacks. Not just Yahoo, Microsoft and other commercial sites, but successful
attacks on the well protected White House Web site and US National Computer
Security Web site raised serious concerns on Net security. Fortunately, the
holiday season went off peacefully without major attacks. According to a report,
about 4000 sites come under DoS attacks every week. Though Internet security
firms have come together to find an effective solution to the menace, the
attackers continue to have an upper hand.
US federal law enforcement agencies started getting tough on the hackers with
the use of surveillance systems. It is even reported to have hired hackers to
monitor other hackers that wreck havoc on Internet infrastructure. CIA has
invested in a few software companies, including the desi Stratify (formerly
PurpleYogi), to create a mechanism to make the Internet a safer place. FBI
acknowledged to have launched Magic Lantern, an Internet spying technology. Will
they succeed in 2002?
Viruses and Worms of the year: As in any other year, this year too,
the tech and the Internet world was under the direct attack of virus mongers and
hackers. Some of the major damagers of the year were Melissa (January), Anna
Kournikova (February), Code Red (July), SirCam (July), Nimda (September) and
Goner (December).