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[RRE]The Rapidly Changing Face of Computing
``` [Forwarded with permission. The cheerful tone of this newsletter clashes with my own personal style, but it's informative and that's what counts.]
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Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1998 11:53:33 -0400
>From: Jeffrey Harrow
The Rapidly Changing Face of Computing
Oct. 19, 1998
"A Million-Fold Rise In Internet Traffic..." --------------------------------------------
by Jeffrey R. Harrow Senior Consulting Engineer Corporate Research & Advanced Development, Compaq Computer Corporation jeff.harrow@compaq.com
Insight, analysis and commentary on the innovations and trends of contemporary computing, and on the technologies that drive them (not necessarily the views of Compaq Computer Corporation).
http://www.compaq.com/rcfoc ISSN: 1520-8117
Copyright (c)1998, Compaq Computer Corporation
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In This Issue:
Quote for the Week. RCFoC Radio! Innovation In Your Wallet! Connectivity Camelot. From the Palm To the Pen. Finding Needles In The Digital Haystacks... Tidbits. Chip Talk. Ecommerce Update. That's A Fine Pickle... About the "Rapidly Changing Face of Computing."
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Quote for the Week.
"Bandwidth is the drug of the day."
Dave House, President, Nortel Oct. 7, 1998 USA Today
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RCFoC Radio!
As always, the RCFoC is also available as a "radio" show utilizing Web-based audio-on-demand "RealAudio" technology from RealNetworks. It's easy to set up and use, and works over even slow modems -- give it a try by clicking on the "Real" icon next to this issue on the RCFoC home page at http://www.compaq.com/rcfoc !
Need help acquiring or setting up the free RealPlayer? Information is a click away at http://www.digital.com/rcfoc/audio/rcfoc_radio_help_realaudio.htm .
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Innovation In Your Wallet!
Perhaps one of the least innovative things around is the common business card. Oh, sometimes new types information printed on the card seems innovative for awhile, such as when telephone numbers, Email addresses, and Web addresses first appeared, but the basic function of the card has remained the same -- to convey a few words of contact information and perhaps an eye-catching logo. Today though, with thanks to RCFoC reader Jos Roling for bringing this to our attention, the folks at McI Technologies have really thought "beyond the nine dots" to extend the standard sized business card in a surprising direction.
Looking at the front of this stiff plastic business card, it seems similar to most, with the notable exception of that hole in the middle...
[Image - Card's Front. Note: see all images in this issue at http://www.digital.com/rcfoc/981019.htm ]
But turning the card over reveals all:
[Image - Card's back]
This business card is actually a -working- CD-ROM!
Of course I was more than a little skeptical -- a rectangular CD-ROM?? How could it work? But it soon became apparent; see those four small bumps on the back of the card? They provide just enough of a guide, at precisely the diameter of the rarely-seen 3-inch CDs that fit into the small circular indentation in most CD-ROM trays, to center the card and allow the drive to spin it around!
[Image - Card in CD-ROM drive]
Now I admit that I first tried this out in an old CD-ROM drive "just in case," but the thing worked! Windows Explorer's standard directory window showed there was a .htm file on this misshapen CD-ROM, and double-clicking it brought up my browser to display this self-contained Web document (no connection to the Internet needed):
[Image - Web page contained within the CD-ROM business card]
I was impressed, especially when you consider that the card can hold 18 megabytes of data in any form at all. It can contain audio, video, trial software, multimedia catalogs, literally anything that can fit within 18 megabytes!
As you'd expect, these cards aren't inexpensive -- they cost about $2.75 apiece in quantities of 1,000. But if you're in a business where you really want to get your material in front of a client in a way so novel that he or she is likely to actually look at it, and considering that the costs are similar to a standard CD-ROM that you might otherwise give out along with a standard business card, this is an intriguing way to combine the two. (McI Technologies' Fred McIntyre Jr. is reachable at 781-431-7030, and their Web site will soon be at http://www.digital-cards.com .)
I'd also like to extend some RCFoC kudos to Joan Jacobs and Donna Curtis for having latched onto this innovative idea and put it to use in a real business context!
Bottom line? How many of us would have imagined the idea of a business-card-shaped CD-ROM, much less carried the idea forward into a commercial reality? (How many of us, instead, would have first come up with all the reasons that a rectangular CD-ROM couldn't possibly work?) This, in my opinion, is exactly the kind of "beyond the nine dots," innovative thinking that opens up opportunities, and keeps things so interesting, as it drives and is driven by -- the rapidly changing face of computing! In fact, looking forward, will we see a similar DVD version, with a gigabyte of on-card storage?
And speaking of 'looking forward,' ask yourself a related question: what could some similar "beyond the nine dots" thinking yield for YOUR business?
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Connectivity Camelot.
I remember when a 9600 baud modem was actually faster than we needed -- at 9600 baud, even without compression, the 1,920 characters on a standard screen flashed across in two seconds, which was far faster than they could be read. For one bright shining moment, we had reached "Connectivity Camelot;" most of us just didn't need any more bandwidth.
Of course as in the story, those golden connectivity days soon passed. With the proliferation of the PC and its graphic user interface, with the birth of multimedia which led to our shipping large files to and fro, and then with the Web, what was once almost an embarrassment of bandwidth riches quickly turned into the evil troll who backed up traffic on the bridge, ruining every traveler's day and slowing commerce. Will this pixilated nightmare ever end?
Bulk It Up.
There are two aspects to bandwidth availability, the first being "bulk bandwidth," if you will, which crisscrosses our nations and the globe and provides the "wholesale" raw connectivity to form the basis for every bit-oriented, value-added service we find higher-up on the digital food chain.
Happily, this shouldn't be a problem. Fiber optics came on the scene, followed by the use of WDM (Wavelength Division Multiplexing, which is the improbable ability to send many full-speed data streams down a single fiber at the same time -- each stream a different "color" of light), which vastly increased bulk capacity.
How much? For example, in 1985 it took six fibers to carry a single live TV broadcast. Today, just one fiber can carry 700 TV broadcasts! And the investment opportunities surrounding bulk bandwidth aren't lost on some forward-thinking companies; the likes of Quest, Level 3, ITXC, and Williams Communications are, according to North River Ventures in the Oct. 7 USA Today (http://search.usatoday.com/plweb-cgi/fastweb?getdoc+default+money+1 9438+2+wAAA+), currently "building the equivalent of 80 AT&Ts in the USA!"
The result of so much bandwidth is predictable -- it will quickly become a commodity, potentially driving,
"...the cost of a long-distance phone call to 1 cent a minute within a year," and making, "full-fledged TV over the Internet possible..."
But can we possibly consume all of this bandwidth? Will there be bandwidth glut? Howard Janzen, CEO of Williams Communications, after talking with the vendors who will be providing future bandwidth-hungry products and services, says,
"All the bandwidth being deployed won't even come close."
I believe that history clearly demonstrates that EVERY time one element of Convergence develops a surplus, we find immediate and ingenious ways to consume every bit of it and still want more (CPU speed, memory, disk space, telephone area codes, and yes bandwidth).
Indeed, venture capital firms are aggressively funding the process of finding new ways of doing old business "the bandwidth way." According to Crosspoint Venture's general partner Rich Shapero in the October Upside,
"I've got a check made out for $10 million for the first senior executive out of SAP, Baan, or Oracle who can reinvent a sector of the applications business and deliver it, not as a software package, but as a revenue service over high-bandwidth pipes."
Based on these and other directions, futurist George Gilder suggests,
"It's not inconceivable that there will be a million-fold rise in Internet traffic by 2005."
[Remember the Saturday morning movie serials? Well, just as in "those thrilling days of yesteryear," join me next week for Part Two of "Connectivity Camelot," where we look at "The Last Mile" and beyond.]
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From the Palm To the Pen.
Today's PDAs and mobile computing devices share a similar structure; they fit in the palm of your hand and you write with a pen or type with a finger or two on their surface. Leading up to today's PDA form factors, we've witnessed some interesting evolutionary changes as several generations of these devices have risen from the primordial lint in our pockets. But now, brought to our attention by RCFoC reader Peter Quodling, British Telecom is exploring a rather revolutionary step, called the SmartQuill, which makes THE PEN THE PDA!
[Image - BT's SmartQuill] http://www.innovate.bt.com/showcase/smartquill/images/gold6a.jpg
Looking at the picture, you can see that this futuristic pen writes directly on paper as with today's CrossPad (http://www.cross-pcg.com/products/crosspad/pad.html). But unlike that electronic pen-on-paper-on-active-clipboard, SmartQuill allows you to write directly on any surface, or on no surface at all (by waving it in the air)! Accelerometers take note of the twists and turns of your handwriting, translating it into text that is displayed on SmartQuill's sleek built-in screen. (There's also the possibility of viewing a full page of text through a special monocular magnified "virtual" screen that could be built into the end of the pen). Your words of wisdom can also be uploaded to your PC through that "digital inkwell," while files that you might want to view on the pen (such as your schedule) are downloaded to the SmartQuill as well.
The SmartQuill is also a 3-D mouse; twist it in the air a certain way and you can scroll around the data on its screen. In fact, move it just the right ways and you have a perfect tool for navigating through 3-D spreadsheets, diving (penning?) down into the detail below a given cell...
This pen, for which BT has already applied for patents, would have 4 megabytes of memory which could also be used to record and playback voice messages. And the SmartQuill would run on a AAA battery.
It's an interesting idea, and it even comes with one attribute that makes the entire history of pens pale by comparison -- if someone else picks up your SmartQuill and tries to write with it -- it won't. Because your handwriting is as unique as your fingerprint, and SmartQuill can be told to only listen to its master's voice -- er, fingers.
Will SmartQuill, when it leaves the lab, write new chapters in how people and machines come together? I'm afraid that that handwriting's not yet on the wall. But SmartQuill is a good reminder that, as computers continue to get vastly smaller and to invade the common "things" around us, the day may come when we lose the distinction between the devices we use to interact with our computers, and the computers themselves. Our "mice" and other input devices may well BE the computers!
But I do wonder just how realistic SmartQuill will become -- will its digital ink bits dry out if we forget to cap it, or leak all over our fingers?
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Your Feedback is Important!
I'd like to understand your interest in the RCFoC, how you make use of it, and the value you feel it provides to you, your career, and to your company.
Please send your comments to me at jeff.harrow@compaq.com
I look forward to hearing from you!
Jeff Harrow
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Finding Needles In The Digital Haystacks...
With over three terabytes of information already on the Web (http://www.digital.com/rcfoc/981005.htm#Three_Terabytes_And), the art and science of searching this vast treasure trove of information needs to catch up to its volume, and a recent upgrade to Compaq's AltaVista provides some interesting new tools to help us tame the Web's chaos into knowledge.
The first thing you'll notice when heading to http://www.altavista.com is that the search box now entices you to ask a question in natural language. Then, after asking your question, you'll find a new series of pop-up menus that lead you to additional related information. What won't be as obvious, until you start perusing the returned "hits," is that AltaVista now does a better job of placing more relevant hits at the top of the list.
Also interesting is "AV Photo Finder;" you describe what you're looking for and AltaVista will search millions of photos on the Web, returning thumbnails with the most relevant at the top of the list. It's then easy for you to bracket-in on what you want, since each photo has a "Visually Similar" link you can click to see other pictures that have similar features. (A companion feature, "AV Family Filter," reduces the chance that AltaVista will return objectionable pictures or text.) The Web is becoming more multimedia by the minute, and this ability to, quite literally, paint pictures with your words, opens, a whole new window into the World Wide Web.
(Additional details on AltaVista's new capabilities are at http://www.news.com/News/Item/0%2C4%2C27472%2C00.html?dd.ne.tx.fs6.1 013 .)
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Tidbits.
Minitel Update -- If you've ever been to France, you probably noticed the ubiquitous Minitel, a small text-only terminal that far-predated the Web. Minitel turned France into the first "wired society" with 35 million people using Minitel's public services, such as telephone directories, as well as numerous very successful private for-fee services. But one negative result of having been first with the Minitel is a low rate of French Internet adoption; 3% to 4% compared to twice that in other European countries, according to the Oct. 7 Wall Street Journal.
However that's about to change now that France Telecom and IBM are working together to integrate the Internet with Minitel through a new generation of screen phones and mobile computing appliances. The results should begin showing up next year, with a focus on making access "simple."
And that's a pretty good focus! Who'd Have Thought -- that we'd see AT&T, the mother of all telephone companies (so to speak), issue a "come one, come all" invitation to ISPs to work with them on global IP connectivity. Yet according to the Oct. 8 Zona Quiniela, that's what they're doing, dangling the carrot of access to AT&T's local network in 140 countries as "on and off" points for IP telephone calls. The Oct. 8 News.com (http://www.news.com/News/Item/0%2C4%2C27299%2C00.html?dd.ne.tx .ts2.1008) calls it "Ma Bell's new IP religion."
Interesting progress from the company that once wouldn't let us attach a telephone, or anything else, to their lines... Think Fast -- That's what a new type of memory from Toshiba may soon be doing -- ten times faster than today's 60 nanosecond memory, according to the Sept. 21 Nikkei English News. Toshiba's MRAM, or Magnetic Random Access Memory, sandwiches tiny bits of cobalt and platinum between magnetic layers, and subtle magnetic machinations can read data in as little as 6 nanoseconds. Oh, and the memory is nonvolatile as well (meaning it doesn't lose its mind when the power goes out.)
MRAM prototypes are due out in 2000. And MRAM reminds us of one reason why our PCs continue to get so powerful, so fast. Unlike vertically integrated products of old where every component had to develop in lock-step, the technology behind every component today can blaze forward at its own speed yet still "plug in," providing some of their potential value as the other components catch up. It's why every bottleneck, in its turn, gets shattered and our PCs get faster/smaller/less expensive every time we turn around.
What -- you don't think you really need 6 nanosecond memory? I recall when today's 60 nanosecond memory was far too fast to even contemplate -- yet today it's hardly fast enough. Just wait... Plastic Chips? -- Today, when people talk about "plastic chips," they're usually talking about one of the packaging options used by integrated circuits, a plastic vs. a ceramic package. However, now brought to our attention by RCFoC reader Alan Maltzman, it seems that Philips and Ormecon Chemie GmbH have succeeded in making the first IC that uses an organic plastic for the actual substrate, instead of silicon!
Now this first silicon-less IC isn't going to find its way into our PCs right away; it contains but 326 transistors (vs. the 19 million transistors in Intel's new Celeron with cache), and ambles along at a pedestrian 30 cycles per second (vs. 450 million cycles per second for today's faster CPUs.) But of course this is only the beginning of this research path, which is probably going to get a lot more attention. Because, according to the Oct. 5 PRNewswire (http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/981005/ormecon_ph_1.html),
"[The plastic IC's] manufacturing process is incredibly simple compared to the conventional procedure,"
which is something that should warm the heart of any company contemplating the next $billion+ silicon chip factory.
Just one more reminder that Things May Well Change... "IE-Micro" -- That's not really its name, but Microsoft is busily getting ready to make its way into our pockets -- at least if that's where we carry our cellular phones. According to the Oct. 13 PC Week Online (http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek/stories/news/0,4153,360663,00.html ), their 100 Kbyte baby browser will enable cellphones to view standard HTML Web pages (unlike Unwired Planet's browser which prefers a specialized subset of HTML called HDML, or Handheld Device Transport Protocol - http://www.unwiredplanet.com/tech/tech_overview.html). Microsoft's micro-browser should enter field-testing by the end of this year.
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Chip Talk.
Intel is at it again, laying out new details of the silicon hearts that will power our computers over the next few years. And between 64-bit vs. 32-bit chips, and server vs. desktop vs. mobile computing targeted chips, it's hard to keep track without a scorecard. So here's an overview, based in part on data from the Oct. 9 Computergram and on the Oct. 9 and 13 News.com (http://www.news.com/News/Item/0%2C4%2C27338%2C00.html?dd.ne.tx.fs10 .1009 and http://www.news.com/News/Item/0%2C4%2C27484%2C00.html?dd.ne.tx.ts1.1 013):
The 64-bit Merced is still intended to be Intel's first 64-bit chip. But when it hits the street around mid-2000 (samples late next year) running at 500 to 800 MHz, it may be eclipsed by the shadow of its early-2002 successor, the 1 GHz McKinley, which will be twice as fast and have a larger cache. And "Deerfield" may be the first 64-bit chip targeted for low-end computers.
Moving both down and up a notch at the same time, Intel's 32-bit chips (like the ones we use today) will continue their headlong growth through implementing a new microarchitecture and, progressively, using advanced manufacturing processes leading to .18 micron elements.
First comes the previously announced early 1999 450 MHz Katmai and then the Tanner (a 500 MHz, KNI or "MMX2" instruction set, Xeon-replacement for early 1999), followed by the 1 megabit cache, 600 MHz Cascade/Coppermine server/desktop pair in the second quarter of 1999. By 2000 to 2001, Foster will hit the server scene at more than twice the speed of today's fastest commodity CPUs (1 GHz), while Willamette will be its desktop sibling. Computergram expects that both of these 32-bit chips may end up running today's 32-bit desktop software faster than the first 64-bit Merceds!
And of course Intel's competitors aren't sitting still. For example there's Cyrix's "M3" chip due out towards the end of 1999 which will run in the 600-800 MHz speed range and integrate common functions such as audio and 3D graphics directly into the CPU (http://www.cyrix.com/html/about/1998/jalapeno.htm).
AMD is touting its chips as "Microsoft Windows compatible" rather than Intel-compatible, and is talking about its future K7 with their own 3DNow! Graphics instructions. K7 should appear in mid-1999 at 500+ MHz and mature to 1 GHz by 2000, powering a 200 MHz system bus from Digital (now Compaq) - twice as fast as today's popular system buses.
Also, Rise Technologies new mP6 will be targeted at low power, low cost notebooks (http://www.rise.com/products.html).
Whew! It's confusing (but a table at http://www.news.com/News/Item/0%2C4%2C27484%2C00.html?dd.ne.tx.ts1.1 013 and additional details on these and other new chips at http://www.news.com/News/Item/0%2C4%2C27497%2C00.html?dd.ne.tx.fs6.1 014 may help.) Nevertheless, whichever way we look at this complex and amorphous silicon landscape, we can be sure of one thing -- that there's lots of life left in Moore's Law!
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Ecommerce Update.
Blazingly Building Brands -- For those of us not into the advertising game, "brands" are something we might only recognize subliminally (but recognize them we do -- note which products you pick out at the store.) And according to a recent study by Opinion Research Corp., described in the Oct. 6 Internet Daily, the Internet "builds brands at warp speed."
James Detorre, president of the Brand Institute, calls the speed with which brands are created and gain recognition on the Internet, "an unbelievable scenario." Talking about the likes of Yahoo!, Netscape, and Amazon.com, he continues,
"These companies have become recognized by one out of four adults in the United States rapidly, some in as little as six months. Such an achievement used to take 10 to 20 years."
And in the brand arena, speed does matter,
"The first-to-market proposition is really important. Usually the first three or so companies into a space capture as much as 90 percent of market share. Then, after that, all the other people are doing is saying 'Me too.'"
I take this as one good indication as to why "sitting on the sidelines" and letting the "other guys and gals" in your industry take the Internet high road may not be a winning strategy... Ecommerce Growth -- Anything medium capable of telescoping the time required to grow "value" from 20 years to six months, such as in building brands (above), is rather likely to grow well, and the latest ActivMedia "Real Numbers Behind Net Profits" survey confirms it for Ecommerce. They found that executives across 17 industry sectors expect Ecommerce revenue to grow 63% this year, compared to 58% last year. They expect the greatest growth, of course, in hardware and software, but those sectors are followed by real estate, publishing, information services, and finance. According to ActivMedia,
"On-line businesses have matured and are flourishing," ... "Web-generated revenues are predicted to exceed $1.2 trillion by 2002." (http://www.activmedia.com/netprofits98.html ; additional data is available through a free registration.) Who Will Be Doing The Lion's Share Of This Ecommerce? -- Speaking of Ecommerce, John Chambers, CEO of Cisco which sold $5.6 billion worth of products over the Web last year out of a total of $8.5 billion in revenue, believes that retail, consumer sales will exceed business-to-business Ecommerce by 2002 (http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB19981013S0016). Interestingly, Cisco doesn't only find the Web to be an exceptional vehicle for making it easier for their customers to purchase their wares, but they "saved 20 percent of our expenses ... by the use of seven Web-based applications."
Numbers like those are very, very hard to argue with... The Numbers -- The latest in Ecommerce numbers have shown up from the Organization for Economic and Cooperative Development, or OECD, indicating that Ecommerce represented .5% of retail sales in 1997. By 2003 however, they expect it to hit $1 trillion, or 15%, yet they consider that it "...won't have a significant impact on the global economy anytime soon."
OECD does admit, however that "e-commerce has the potential to change sales in some product sectors dramatically," and in "the way nonphysical products, such as stock trading and airline tickets, are sold." It will also, "change the rules of international trade, pricing and competition in these areas."
It's always good to get a "somber" viewpoint, especially in the blazingly fast and optimistic world of the Internet. You'll find additional details on this report at http://www.thestandard.com/articles/display/0,1449,1853,00.html ?02 .
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That's A Fine Pickle...
Finally, it's worth remembering that innovation occurs in many fields, some far afield, so to speak, from high tech. For example, I just heard that one of the major condiment manufacturers has succeeded in growing just the right sized cucumbers in its fields, with all the appropriate attributes, so that they can soon market 3-inch diameter pickle slices.
Why? They fit perfectly atop a hamburger without the smaller, traditional pickle slices popping out as you byte, er, I mean bite. I wonder if next, a bit like our multi-layer semiconductors, they'll bond the pickles to the patties...
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About the "Rapidly Changing Face of Computing."
The "Rapidly Changing Face of Computing" is a weekly technology journal providing insight, analysis and commentary on contemporary computing and the technologies that drive them.
The RCFoC is written by Jeffrey R. Harrow (jeff.harrow@compaq.com), a Senior Consulting Engineer with the Corporate Research & Advanced Development Group of Compaq Computer Corporation.
The RCFoC is published as a service of, but not necessarily reflecting the opinions of, Compaq Computer Corporation. Copyright (c) 1998, Compaq Computer Corporation. All rights reserved.
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