Mon, Dec 14
Throughout the computer industry companies of all sizes, from garage startups to Microsoft, are bracing for the possibility that their future will be in the hands of people like Sean Whetstone.
Whetstone recently upgraded his company's 6,000 desktop computers. Chief information officers order new Dells or HPs all the time. But the computers Whetstone brought in for his employees aren't the traditional metal boxes that sit next to desks or under monitors. They are "virtual" computers. Each employee has a keyboard and a screen, but the processors making the calculations and deciding what color goes in each pixel are far away, inside a big computer at Reed's main data center in London.
Windows Through The Decades
In the science fiction staple of virtual reality, people live not in the real world but as ciphers inside a computer somewhere. That's analogous to what happens with the virtual desktops at Reed. To the user, Microsoft Windows looks just as it does coming from a PC. But the electronic desktop doesn't exactly reside on the desk.
Switching to virtualized desktops is often expensive at the outset because the networking software is complicated. But the maintenance costs are a lot lower. When something goes wrong--say, a computer has a software error--Whetstone doesn't need to send someone from tech support out to the employee's desk. Instead, a technician simply logs on to the main computer and tinkers with the program running there. Whetstone expects to save 20%, or $2.4 million a year, off his technology expenses.
Next year will likely be the start of a large upgrade for PCs as big companies switch to Windows 7, Microsoft's latest operating system. With an estimated halfbillion workplace computers around the world and $3 trillion spent each year on corporate computing, that ordinarily would mean a lot of purchase orders for big, brawny new hardware.
Desktop virtualization, however, threatens to break that pattern. Instead of spending $1,000 for a system with the latest Intel chip and a fast hard drive, a company might get by with a virtualized PC running on a screen, keyboard and network connector costing in all only $150. The corporate customer gets the promise of lower support costs plus the security and simplicity that come from having data in one carefully guarded place.
A burgeoning virtualization industry is pushing the technology as the next big thing in computing. Large tech companies like Microsoft and Cisco are bracing themselves in case it turns out to be just that. "In the entire computer industry, no topic is of greater interest right now than desktop virtualization," says Mark Margevicius, analyst at research firm Gartner. "Everyone, everywhere is asking about it."
Desktop virtualization is Act II of a tech shift that began earlier in the decade involving the servers that labor behind the scenes, running databases and hosting Web sites. While crucial to a company's operations, servers tend to be busy only in spurts, spending much of their time sitting idle. At the start of the decade, when a new breed of software made it possible to make one piece of hardware act as if it were several servers, companies embarked on a wave of server consolidation. By next year, estimates Gartner, half of all serverbased computing will be on virtual machines.
If virtualization can work for servers, why not for desktop computers, which outnumber servers by a factor of a hundred? That's the prospect exciting so many companies. Wyse Technology in San Jose, Calif. made computer terminals for places like call centers for 15 years. Four years ago the company switched its emphasis to virtualization-- meaning that it is ready to replace a sea of PCs at a company like Reed Specialist Recruitment with stripped-down keyboard/screen pairs (called "thin clients"). Sales are on pace to grow 40% this year to an expected $250 million.
Showing posts with label future. Show all posts
Showing posts with label future. Show all posts
Monday, June 14, 2010
Hundred times faster, cooler computers on their way
Toronto, Dec 16 (IANS) Indian-origin researcher Sanjeev John and his colleague Xun Ma of the University of Toronto have discovered new behaviour of light which could lead to cooler and faster computing. The two quantum optics researchers have discovered 'new behaviours' of light changes within photonic crystals that could lead to faster optical information processing and compact computers that don't overheat.
They discovered that by sculpting a unique artificial vacuum inside a photonic crystal, we can completely control the electronic state of artificial atoms (light) within the vacuum. This discovery can enable photonic computers that are more than a hundred times faster than their electronic counterparts, without heat dissipation issues and other bottlenecks currently faced by electronic computing.
Added Sanjeev John, "We designed a vacuum in which light passes through circuit paths that are one one-hundredth of the thickness of a human hair, and whose character changes drastically and abruptly with the wavelength of the light." "A vacuum experienced by light is not completely empty, and can be made even emptier. It's not the traditional understanding of a vacuum."
Ma said, "In this vacuum, the state of each atom - or quantum dot - can be manipulated with color-coded streams of laser pulses that sequentially excite and de-excite it in trillionths of a second. These quantum dots can in turn control other streams of optical pulses, enabling optical information processing and computing."
Said John, "This new mechanism enables micrometer scale integrated all-optical transistors to perform logic operations over multiple frequency channels in trillionths of a second at microwatt power levels, which are about one millionth of the power required by a household light bulb. That this mechanism allows for computing over many wavelengths as opposed to electronic circuits which use only one channel, would significantly surpass the performance of current day electronic transistors."
They discovered that by sculpting a unique artificial vacuum inside a photonic crystal, we can completely control the electronic state of artificial atoms (light) within the vacuum. This discovery can enable photonic computers that are more than a hundred times faster than their electronic counterparts, without heat dissipation issues and other bottlenecks currently faced by electronic computing.
Added Sanjeev John, "We designed a vacuum in which light passes through circuit paths that are one one-hundredth of the thickness of a human hair, and whose character changes drastically and abruptly with the wavelength of the light." "A vacuum experienced by light is not completely empty, and can be made even emptier. It's not the traditional understanding of a vacuum."
Ma said, "In this vacuum, the state of each atom - or quantum dot - can be manipulated with color-coded streams of laser pulses that sequentially excite and de-excite it in trillionths of a second. These quantum dots can in turn control other streams of optical pulses, enabling optical information processing and computing."
Said John, "This new mechanism enables micrometer scale integrated all-optical transistors to perform logic operations over multiple frequency channels in trillionths of a second at microwatt power levels, which are about one millionth of the power required by a household light bulb. That this mechanism allows for computing over many wavelengths as opposed to electronic circuits which use only one channel, would significantly surpass the performance of current day electronic transistors."
Future career trends-U.S.
Feb, 2010
Technological advancement and the continued integration of IT and digital communications into the workplace throughout the private, public and voluntary sectors ensures that growth in Computer Technology will continue in U.S. Systems analysts, designers and developers, computer programmers, web developers, consultants and information managers reflect the range of these career areas. Hardware engineers are also needed, working in infrastructure construction and repair, fibre, cable, satellites, etc.
Healthcare sector
The increasing number of healthcare jobs is directly attributable to the growing age of the population – people are living longer so there are more people in the older age groups – and the expansion of treatments available for medical conditions, whether delivered in the primary healthcare sector or within hospitals. Consequently, there is also an expansion in the number of administrative and support roles needing to be filled.
Other Careers
Other careers deemed to be ‘hot’ future career prospects relate to areas of scientific advance, and in particular the “bio” sciences, such as biotechnology. Tissue engineers and gene programmers have been highlighted, but all skill levels are included – as companies grow, so does their administration infrastructure. Other new scientific areas include nanotechnology and energy technology. Demographic changes are leading to other needs in addition to healthcare. Teaching and tourism, training and development, and care of the elderly are all areas where openings are set to increase, as are financial advisors.
Service sector
Services that already exist will grow further as the population ages. Standard professions include the legal sector, police, teachers, tutors, etc. Meanwhile, there is a general return amongst certain income sectors of paying for domestic support with the services of maids and cleaners, drivers, etc. This is increasingly common as the higher divorce levels yield more one-parent families. New services are developing that are opening out into recognized career fields. Many of these are provided directly to the consumer. Counselling and various complementary therapies are obvious examples, as well as physical training instructors and coaches.
Healthcare sector
The increasing number of healthcare jobs is directly attributable to the growing age of the population – people are living longer so there are more people in the older age groups – and the expansion of treatments available for medical conditions, whether delivered in the primary healthcare sector or within hospitals. Consequently, there is also an expansion in the number of administrative and support roles needing to be filled.
Other Careers
Other careers deemed to be ‘hot’ future career prospects relate to areas of scientific advance, and in particular the “bio” sciences, such as biotechnology. Tissue engineers and gene programmers have been highlighted, but all skill levels are included – as companies grow, so does their administration infrastructure. Other new scientific areas include nanotechnology and energy technology. Demographic changes are leading to other needs in addition to healthcare. Teaching and tourism, training and development, and care of the elderly are all areas where openings are set to increase, as are financial advisors.
Service sector
Services that already exist will grow further as the population ages. Standard professions include the legal sector, police, teachers, tutors, etc. Meanwhile, there is a general return amongst certain income sectors of paying for domestic support with the services of maids and cleaners, drivers, etc. This is increasingly common as the higher divorce levels yield more one-parent families. New services are developing that are opening out into recognized career fields. Many of these are provided directly to the consumer. Counselling and various complementary therapies are obvious examples, as well as physical training instructors and coaches.
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