Innovations in Notebook Technologies

Sujay V Sarma

Very fast paced developments are happening in the space of technologies that empower a notebook user to perform more tasks in a lesser time and using lesser energy. And these technologies also include a higher degree of data reliability and system stability into notebooks than is available on a standard desktop. Some of these are of course re-invented names and marketing gimmicks, but there are some fascinating new technologies included in every new notebook available today and we take a tour through some of them.

Display

There are three technologies that power LCD screens: transmissive (suitable for indoors), reflective (for outdoors) and transflective (mostly outdoor). All LCD displays use a polarizing film to filter light. The type of film used, can vary the quality of display as well as how the display performs under different lighting conditions. A rough matte finish, common to traditional LCDs, will bounce light off in all directions causing problems with the image's brightness tending to the user's eyes.

LCD technologists are using a chemically treated smooth-finish matte polarizer now to counter this problem and produce better and brighter displays. These new LCDs are called 'anti-reflective' screens.

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HP/Compaq's BrightView, Sony's XBRITE and Toshiba's TruBright are all anti-reflective screens. Anti-reflectives have been around since 2003 on Japan-made notebooks. Such displays are said to have the best and most crisp pictures with wider viewing angles (that's a great plus for LCD screens). You can make out an anti-reflective screen from their glossy appearance and very bright displays when you turn them on for the first time-software or hardware controls need to be used to set them to appropriate viewing brightness.

Power savings

Savings in electrical power used by the notebook are of great benefit to notebook users. One of the ways that notebooks save power is by stepping down the power consumption of the CPU depending on how much of it is being used.

This technology was central to processors for the mobile line up (Pentium M, Celeron M and the Intel Centrino platform). Now with two cores in your notebook instead of one, you don't want to suddenly double your power consumption! Thankfully, the updated version of CPU Stepping within Core 2 processors from Intel features an advanced power management technique.

Samsung's 32 GB solid state drive is NAND Flash driven and works through a PATA interface. SATA versions of the drive are expected soon

For instance, in the older processors only some parts of the CPU could be turned off, since there was only one processing core and more than one task would be running all the time. But with two cores on the die, it is possible that an entire core is idle and it can be fully switched off. In the same way, many areas inside the core can also be turned off. For this, the updated CPU programming language introduces many more CPU power states that the OS can use to command parts of the processor to turn off, depending on the load it expects to put on it.

Compute power

In line with the increments in the number of processing cores, notebooks can be very powerful today. We use the phrase 'can be' for a reason.

Simply having two 64-bit cores in your notebook (like with an Athlon X2) does not instantly guarantee you superior compute-power. You need several things to go with that, not the least of which is 64-bit drivers and OS to run it with. Then, your applications must need 64-bit processing to run better.

Otherwise, it is just overkill. That aside, consider what is available in the market. The latest CPU to get off the blocks is the Intel Quad Core (QC). Though we are yet to see a QC notebook, the potential to have four computing cores in your notebook, along with the ability to supplement it with a good graphics system, like the Nvidia GoForce 8800 GTX (if such a model ever becomes available) is too good a deal. For now, a dual core system is the best bet if you want value for money.

 

Hard disks

About two years ago, the first solid state hard drives meant for notebooks and other mobile computers made an appearance. The first one was from

Samsung and boasted a capacity of 32 GB. This came in two form factors: 1.8 inch and 2.5 inch.

 The Centrino Duo platform for dual-core Intel notebook processors includes additional power states to control and switch electrical state for each core individually

These disks used SLC (Single Level Cell) and MLC (Multi Level Cell) NAND Flash technology. The speeds of these drives are currently 57 MB/s read and 32 MB/s write with a 1ms latency. Using SSDs (Solid State Drives) like these, one can expect lower power consumption in mobile computers as well as completely avoiding damage or loss due to vibration and shocks. It also reduces the size and weight of the unit compared to a conventional hard drive of similar speed and capacity. The current Samsung SSDs are PATA based and SATA versions are expected soon. SanDisk has also introduced 32 GB 1.8-inch versions of SSDs, and claim to boot Vista in as fast as 35 seconds.

An HHD (Hybrid Hard Disk) is a combination of conventional magnetic hard-disk technology with Flash-based cache to provide both long term and longer-short term storage. The HHD has a non-volatile compact-flash cache 128 to 256 MB buffer that can be accessed faster than conventional volatile cache memory when the disk is powered on. The larger cache (conventional HDDs have a cache of 16 MB or less) allows for more data to be accessed faster, reducing power consumption as well as HDD wear and tear. In HHDs, data is read from and written to the cache memory rather than the magnetic part till the file is finally closed, or the cache fills up and the disk logic removes less used content back to the disk. Vendors can also 'pin' applications or data to the Flash (making sure they are protected from erasure) letting them come up faster. Windows Vista includes a new technology called 'ReadyDrive' to take advantage of such features, letting the system resume from a hibernated state from cache memory rather than the hard disk. As of now, HHDs will work only with Vista. HHDs are scheduled to ship as you read this. This doesn't mean traditional hard disks are vanishing. Vendors are now upping the ante with capacity battles with a flurry of high-capacity releases over the past year. The last time we checked, notebook HDDs could hold 300 GB of data in a 2.5 platter, with the honors going to Fujitsu.

Data protection

Three technologies stand out of the cloud when it comes to mobile data protection-EC2, TPM and anti-shock hard drives. Anti-shock is now standard fare on quite a lot of branded notebooks from the likes of Lenovo and HP. Air-bag cushions guard the hard drive from shocks and violent movement while sensors park the drive heads to prevent physical damage.

TPM is old and has been talked about a lot. There is a chip on the system's motherboard that contains a private key and this is used to encrypt all content on the system's hard disks. You remove the drive and it becomes useless anywhere else. If you try to debug the chip to get the key out, it blows up in defense.

EC2 is from HCL and works on the same lines as other snapshot-based data-recovery systems. There are two forms of EC2 available, one requires

hardware and the other is just software. The hardware version is available only on HCL notebooks and desktops, requiring the bundled EC2 software to take a snapshot as well as recover data. The USP is that EC2 takes just a few seconds to snapshot an 80 GB hard disk with a reasonable amount of data, and it can restore everything back to the last snapshot in less than a minute! Snapshots are taken of the raw hard disk and are independent of any hard disk partitions created. When data goes corrupt or you end up with a system that just does not work, reboot and just after the POST screen, hit the key to start the EC2 Recovery Console. The types of loss it can deal with include deleted files, corrupted files, deleted or corrupted registry entries, deleted and formatted disk partitions, unbootable systems. EC2 cannot currently protect systems with more than one physical hard disk. It can also not protect externally connected storage like USB disks and DAS (Direct Attached Storage) at your systems.

Biometrics

Several kinds of biometric security are available for notebooks today-finger-print, face recognition, retina scanners and even palm vein scanning. Finger print recognition is nothing new. Face recognition and retina scanners work using a standard (though plus 1.3 Mega-pixel would be preferable) Web camera that's attached to the notebook to. Software on the notebook will attempt to locate key points in the photograph taken by the Web cam and match it with previously stored photographs. But, this is only as reliable as the lighting conditions and software quirks as we found when

reviewing the Lenovo 3000 Y500 (in the Reviews in this issue) with face recognition abilities. Similarly, the size of the eye can affect how well a retina scan works for granting access to a notebook. Palm vein scanning is yet another tool of Biometrc security that aims to be better than the rest. While inconsistencies in face recognition, retinal scan and finger printing have been discovered, palm vein scanning is by far the safest.

 Source: PCquest