LISTEN To This Issue.
            Give your eyes a rest...

Quote of the Week.
            On the state of software support.

How Small Is "Nano?"
            Trying to grasp what "nano" really means.

CPU Update.
            Amazing changes are in-store, and in not too long!

Tidbits…
            - REALLY Fast Data.
            - A Good Use For "3G."

The Wire IS The Circuit!
            Wires USED to connect components. 
           Now, they ARE the components!

From Out of the Ether…
            An insider's look at Internet security.

Remembering… And Today.
            Fascinating facts about the WTC,
            and the "reality" of cyberspace.

About "The Harrow Technology Report"
            Where to find this journal.

LISTEN To This Issue.

Do you prefer to let your ears do the work of keeping you in-touch with, and thinking about where technology is taking us?  If so, "The Harrow Technology Report" is also available in an audio-on-demand, Web-based, MP3 version. 

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So, if you wish, just click on the following link to listen to this issue!  http://www.theharrowgroup.com/articles/20020401/20020401.mp3 .

 

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Quote of the Week.

 

Commenting on the abysmal support that we often receive from software vendors:

"Only drug dealers and software companies call their customers 'users.'"

Hummm...

David Pogue's "Circuits" column
March 7 New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/07/technology/
circuits/07POGUE-EMAIL.html

 

 

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How Small Is "Nano?"

 

Nano-this and nano-that have been bandied about quite a lot recently, so many of us now know that a nanometer equals one-billionth of a meter.  Therefore, the things that scientists are working on which measure around that size, fall into the realm of the nano. 

It's easy for us to visualize a meter -- about 3 feet.  But a "billionth" of that?  Such a scale eludes most of us.  But this picture, from the Feb. 12 SmallTimes brought to our attention by reader Kenneth LaCrosse, may help.  It graphically represents the size of a nano-coil that's being produced by Nano-Tex LLC (they plan to embed them in fabric to make it stain resistant), next to a grain of beach sand and things far smaller. (http://www.smalltimes.com/
document_display.cfm?document_id=3078)  

(Note that the scale in this graphic is in "micrometers," which are one-millionth of a meter.  Therefore the nano structure at the bottom is sized at .001 micrometers, or 1 nanometer.)

"Nano" is likely to be the next big tiny thing, affecting most everything we do, and like the PC and Internet before it, nanotech is now beginning to grab the attention of some venture capitalists. (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=581&u=/
nm/20020212/tc_nm/biznanotech_dc_1)  So the more we learn about this world of the tiny, the better prepared we'll be to prosper (survive?) as nano devices make the previously inconceivable, commonplace.  And as a pilot nanotube factory soon comes online, industry will have literally tons of nanotubes available at very low cost (http://www.smalltimes.com/
document_display.cfm?document_id=3258).  

(Carbon nanotubes could, eventually, even provide the material to make Arthur C. Clarke's "space elevator" a reality (http://www.msnbc.com/news/730389.asp?cp1=1), as pointed out to us by reader Gerard Wenham.)

If you'd like some additional insight into nanotechnology, check out a good overview with some excellent pointers (courtesy of reader Kenneth LaCrosse), at http://www.fool.com/portfolios/RuleBreaker/2002/rulebreaker020326.htm .

But whatever you do,

Don't Blink!

 

 

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CPU Update.

 

Now that we have a better feel for just how small the nanometer-class elements on our chips are, we can better appreciate what it means when we hear that Pentium 4 chips are made with elements as small as ".13 micron", or "130 nanometers." (To avoid confusion as on-chip elements continue to get smaller, I think it's time for us to change our notation from "microns" to "nanometers" (billionths of a meter) -- that's how I'll normally refer to these tiny sizes in the future.  If you're still of a "micron" mindset, just move the nanometer decimal point three steps to the left.)

First, in the immediate future, Intel plans to release a 2.4 gigahertz version of the familiar Pentium 4, compared to its current 2.2 gigahertz high end chip, the week of this issue - http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-871251.html .  (And I remember when that .2 gigahertz increase (200 megahertz) alone was far faster than any chip in most peoples' wildest fantasies...)

But 2.4 gigahertz from a chip whose 130 nanometer process produces 42 million transistors, may soon feel like the days of the 8086.  Brought first to our attention by reader Sander Olson, we find that Intel has already produced prototypes of a new SRAM (Static RAM) chip that demonstrates the latest trend in miniaturization that will soon make its way into full CPUs -- using on-chip elements as small as 90 nanometers!

This 40 nanometer drop in circuit size from today's Pentium 4's 130 nanometer process, means that a chip smaller than a U.S. dime,

 

now packs 330 million transistors -- almost eight times more than in today's Pentium 4 -- and those tiny transistors deliver 52 megabits of memory.  In one dime-sized chip.  (Additional information from Intel is available at http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20020312tech.htm).

To visualize this level of transistor density, consider this picture of a 300mm wafer from the March 12 AnandTech News (http://www.anandtech.com/news/shownews.html?i=15766&t=an) -- it's made up of many of the individual memory chips pictured above, before they're cut apart into individual units.  This one 11.8-inch wafer contains 120-BILLION transistors!

Intel plans a new 90 nanometer version of the Pentium, code-named "Prescott," for 2003.  Although no specs have yet been released, it's worth noting that the March 12 PCWorld.com (http://www.pcworld.com/news/
article/0,aid,88604,tk,dn031202X,00.asp) reports that Intel has already demonstrated a souped-up Pentium 4 running at 4-gigahertz, due to hit the market next year!  Estimates are that Prescott might contain 100-million closer-together, faster-running transistors.

And all of this implies that the science fiction-sounding estimates for chips with more than a billion-plus transistors by around 2007, may very well come to pass!

Again -- Don't Blink!

 

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Jeff Harrow

 

 

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Tidbits…

 

·        REALLY Fast Data! -- Pushing the envelope for sending data over fiber, Bell Labs had demonstrated sending 2.56 terabits per second over a path 2,500 miles long, which is twice the speed and distance from previous records.  To try and get a handle on just what this capacity means, it's the equivalent of sending the text from 2.5 million novels -- every second!  (http://www.lucent.com/press/0302/020322.bla.html)

The technique is called Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing, where they send 64 different colors (frequencies) of light down the fiber at the same time (the different colors don't interact with each other).  And each of those 64 colors is carrying 40 gigabits/second of data, or 2.56 terabits/second overall!

Just in case you thought that we might be running out of Internet backbone capacity…

·        A Good Use For "3G" -- Now that 2.5G and 3G (somewhat higher to a lot higher-speed data over cellular networks) is showing up in the U.S., more than a few people are yawning, wondering what this might be good for beyond better pocket access to their Email.  According to the March 25 AnchorDesk (http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-867005.html), the Japanese, who have had 3G for some time now, offer one interesting answer -- citizen-assisted law enforcement.

It seems that a growing number of Japanese 3G phones have built-in videophones, and so the Osaka police have set up a "videophone hotline."  Now, citizens who use their phones to capture a crime in progress, can send the video or still images directly to the police!

Just one more example of how technology changes society…

 

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The Wire IS The Circuit!

 

If you were to look at most any electronic circuit, from the old discrete component days of individual resistors and capacitors and transistors, to today's millions of transistors on a chip, the basic structure remains similar -- wires (or traces on a circuit board, or miniscule paths within an integrated circuit), interconnecting various devices.  But down at the nano scale (a billionth of a meter), inquiring scientists are finding that for certain purposes, the wire itself could become the circuit!

Brought to our attention by reader Dana Hoggatt, scientists at University of California Berkeley, and others in Sweden, have now succeeded in creating nanowires with alternating materials along their length.

The significance is that the edges of each light and dark band in this picture are a semiconductor junction that can perform as a transistor, as an LED, and possibly even as a laser.  According to Larry Bock, president of Nanosys, in the Feb. 5 Berkeley Campus News (http://www.berkeley.edu/news/
media/releases/2002/02/05_wires.html),

"Whereas today 'you could cross two different wires - one p-doped and one n-doped - and create a device like a light emitting diode, you could do all this on one wire' with nanowire technology."

Why might this be better, for some purposes, than the laborious way in which we make chips today?  Because, thanks to the wonders of self-assembly,

"...Nanowire devices could soon be routinely and cheaply built using little more than a special mixture of gases deposited on a foundation material... In just one hour, millions of nanowires can be made at minimal expense."

Of course it's hard to say how these techniques will pan out, but Bock expects that nanowire devices will hit the market in three to four years.

Reader Sander Olson recently commented to me that, "It seems like someone makes a molecular electronics breakthrough every month, doesn't it?"  Indeed it does.  And as the breakthroughs accumulate, I believe they will come even faster, as each new breakthrough stands on the shoulders of those before it!

Yet again, Don't Blink!

 

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From Out of the Ether…

 

·        An Insider's View Of Internet Security -- Commenting on our recent discussion about the security (or lack thereof) of Email and other things Internet (http://www.theharrowgroup.com/articles/
20020318/20020318.htm#_Toc3966874), reader Minna Kangasluoma (Minna.Kangasluoma@nixu.com), a security specialist with the Finish firm Nixu, offers us these thoughts as to why we currently live in an insecure online environment:

"I read with interest your opinions on securing the Internet. As something of a professional in the field, I must unfortunately tell you that secure Internet is a long time coming. In the first place, the protocols and systems on which the Internet was built were not designed to be secure. Instead, we have later added-on security functionality to these protocols, with the result that the security may contain huge holes. Patched-together systems are never as good as those designed with security in mind.

Second, security is not only about technology. Security is also about people, who act in ways that may strengthen or undermine security. Part of the problem is that current security technologies are not integrated enough; most security features require active efforts from the user (for example, encrypting an email). Most people won't bother to take that extra step, and if forced to do so by the application, they will actively try to bypass the restriction.

Usability plays a significant role in this. If security were as invisible to users as the mail transfer process, users would happily send their mail and be comfortable in their assurance that security is preserved. Unfortunately, few applications today achieve this sort of invisibility. There are some good examples, like some VPN products, but not where it really matters: at the user interface.

And finally, security is a continuous process. We can never eliminate all risk, we can only manage it. This requires continuous evaluation of the changing situation, exacerbated by the speed at which technology moves. All parts of the security process must function correctly, for as you may have heard, security is only as strong as the weakest link (I tend to repeat that to customers every now and then :).

For what it's worth, here's my prescription for a secure Internet:

- Protocols designed to be secure from the beginning.

- User applications with security functions made as invisible as possible.

- User awareness and training for those features which cannot be made invisible.

- Continuous re-evaluation of the situation.

Well, it seems we have a lot of work ahead of us... ;)"

Indeed we do Minna, but I believe that this work is of utmost importance.  Not only for the future of the Net, but for all of the things in our global society that the Internet touches.  Thanks for your insights!

 

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Remembering… And Today.

 

(Click above for a larger version of the picture.)

Finally, this stunning picture of the temporary "Tribute in Lights" at Ground Zero marks one of many milestones yet to come in the healing of our nation.  Whatever the final memorial, we (had best) never forget.

Towards that end, reader Carl Taylor provides us with a list of fascinating facts about what went into building the WTC.  For example:

-         Sixteen blocks were cleared to house the completed WTC.

-         Sixty-eight miles of steel were used in the construction of the buildings.

-         The concrete poured was enough to build a road from New York to Washington, DC.

-         The building had 20,000 elevator doors.

-         12,000 miles of electrical cable snaked through the building, supplying power to 15 trading floors for stockbrokers.

-         Last year, a man in a micro-light aircraft crashed into the North Tower.

You'll find many more at http://www.theharrowgroup.com/articles/20020401/wtc_facts.htm .

 

Vigilance!

Speaking of terrorism, it's vital that we expand our vigilance into cyberspace, because cyber attacks really are trying very hard to find a chink in our armor!  For example, as described in the March 23 New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-BRF-Air-Base-Hackers.html), 125,000 attempts were made to penetrate an Air Force computer system at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base on March 22.  According to Lt. Col. Ed Worley it was,

"…a concerted and directed attack, and one of the most orchestrated we've seen in about the last six months."

These attacks apparently originated overseas.

As more and more of our infrastructure reaches out to touch the Internet, attending to its security is incredibly important.  Cyberspace IS very real!

 

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