Each passing year our planet sees an ever increasing number of extraordinary gadgets and technologies; which emerges, entices or otherwise gets entombed. The start of this new decade witnesses this trend more than ever before! Smaller form factors, faster speed factors, bigger capacity factors. Buoyed by humongous hype, these shiny new slivers of steroidal silicon shimmy in the success of sunshine or shiver in spurious sheen. After invading virtually all aspects of our lives, technological aids that not so long ago were looked upon as an indulgence, are today becoming a necessity— in virtually every sphere of existence. And this is often happening in unobtrusive ways. Technology is beginning to embed the ordinary, everyday object. Right from your metro pass to the RFID tag on a pair of socks in a clothes store to the toll booths on Expressways. In this kind of “ubiquitous computing” computers are everywhere and in everything. And this trend is going to grow even more rapidly in the near future.
The chip market
In the chip market, AMD is all set to rejig its product lines with its data intensive fusion line of single-die processors called “APUs” for high-definition graphics, 3D processing for visual computing and data crunching. These processors offer the promise of providing 3D geometry processing along with GPU (graphics processor unit). With these (and Intel's rumoured launch of 19 new processors in 2011), you can expect richer and smoother graphics.
Handheld computing
In the form of non-PC devices, there will be a surge in handheld computing. This will lead to a marked increase in media convergence, Internet usage on the move, and also mobile commerce. According to market intelligence firm, IDC, the shipment of mobile devices are set to overshoot PC shipments in the coming months. Even by the end of 2010, an estimated 1.2 billion people had mobile handsets that were “capable of rich, mobile commerce” says a recent report by IT market analyst Garter Research.
Enter flash and cloud
Flash storage is much faster than conventional memory. Although expensive, the volume demand is bound to drive down the prices of flash memory. The gigs of data (documents, photos, music etc.) we are constantly storing online for safe keeping is proof of this. The dependence on the cloud will grow in the 2011 as new services and operating systems like Google Chromium OS sprouts, more space is made available at affordable prices, and reliability improves.
The writer is a part-time publishing
consultant and a full-time devotee of all things tech. Contact him at
ashishone@ gmail.com