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The technology saga of the year: Thirst for more

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CIOL Bureau
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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.

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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.

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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?

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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).

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