Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Users want more disk backup -- right now
Lucas Mearian, Computerworld
23/07/2007 10:24:04
Fed up with slow tape backup systems and under pressure by regulators and auditors to keep data online and readily available, large and midsize businesses are making disk-to-disk backup technology a top priority in their data centers this year.
More than 75% of 150 large companies recently surveyed by TheInfoPro Inc., a New York-based independent research firm, said disk-to-disk backup technology is being used in their data centers; this compares to 67% who were implementing it a year ago.
Still, in the most recent survey, only about a third said they are using virtual tape libraries (VTL), a form of disk-to-disk backup that essentially uses disk arrays to mimic tape for server backup jobs.
One in four IT managers surveyed said they believe poor archiving practices are a key reason for unchecked data growth. The average company has 250TB of active storage space dedicated to archive-related content. Moreover, the survey found that archive capacity among companies is expected to grow by 52% by the end of this year.
Sean O'Mahoney, manager of client/server computing at Norton Healthcare, which has more than 2,000 physicians, rolled out three disk-to-disk backup systems over the past year. It helped the organization deal with a 50% year-over-year archival data growth rate that pushed the backup window to 20 hours a day.
Since connecting the health care firm's Picture Archiving and Communications System to an EMC Clariion Disk Library 710 array and Clariion Disk Library 4100 array, Norton's backup window has been more than halved -- to eight hours a day. O'Mahoney also plugged his company's financial systems into an EMC Centera disk array, which is a WORM permanent archive system.
In all, Norton Healthcare has 200TB of capacity dedicated to disk-to-disk backup, the vast majority of which is used for storing radiological images such as X-rays, which do not lend themselves easily to compression.
Besides shrinking its backup window with disk-to-disk technology, the organization also improved data-restore times by as much as 75%.
It used to take four days to retrieve data from tape because Norton's AIT-2 tape drives have a maximum throughput of 6MB/sec., compared to the Clariion disk array's 60MB/sec. rate. "The speed of the media is vital," O'Mahoney said.
TheInfoPro's survey, released in May, revealed that IT managers consider backup activities among the most time-consuming, adding that staffing remains flat and budgetary pressure to cut costs is at an all-time high.
A study by Gartner earlier this year predicted that by 2010, disk and not tape will be the primary medium for data recovery and that by 2011, the ability to take continuous snapshots of data will be an embedded function in backup and data replication software and will no longer be a separate feature.
Currently, only 17% of companies have deployed continuous data protection, according to TheInfoPro's survey.
"The need for high-performance online recovery of data, combined with the availability of low-cost disk arrays, has influenced enterprises and small and midsize businesses to adopt a disk-based approach for backup and recovery," Dave Russell, author of Gartner's disk-based storage report, wrote.
Tony Asaro, an analyst at the Enterprise Strategy Group Inc. in Milford, Mass., said the driving force behind disk-to-disk backup boom is a combination of massive data growth, which is expanding backup windows, and legal and auditing requirements that force firms to keep records online and accessible for longer periods.
"Everyone we know is doing some sort of disk-to-disk backup," Asaro said.
Most companies, however, are still relying heavily on tape backup for archive, keeping data on disk for 120 days or less, Asaro said.
O'Mahoney said he typically keeps data on his disk-to-disk backup systems for about three weeks. His company's auditors, however, recommend that he keep that data on disk for at least five weeks, something O'Mahoney is now planning to do.
O'Mahoney said the health care industry is struggling with how long to keep data on disk because "there's not a lot" of regulatory oversight. "As far as federal regulation of the health care industry from an IT perspective, we're way behind the public sector," he said.
While the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act addresses the security of patient data, it doesn't speak to data retention. Guidelines for data retention in the health care industry were simply carried over from the outgoing era of paper records, he said.
Some companies are even more aggressive about using disk-to-disk. About nine months ago, flooring manufacturer Shaw Industries Inc., a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.,deployed a NearStore VTL. The disk-based backup system from Network Appliance Inc. appears as a tape library to backup software.
In general, VTLs offload data far more quickly than tape drives do from primary disk arrays, which application servers use for shared external storage capacity. So users no longer have to quiesce application servers for backups.
Instead, customers can take repeated snapshots of data, offload them to the VTL and then at the end of the day -- or week or month -- store those snapshots on a tape library either on-site or off.
In Shaw's case, the VTL consolidates backups on the company's WAN, moving information from 24 remote sales offices around the country to the main data center in Dalton. The system currently has 10TB of capacity, but it will grow by another 20TB this year, according to Ben Worsham, Shaw Industries' infrastructure planning manager.
Worsham said he's been adding up to 40 servers a quarter, both in remote offices and in the main data center, and can no longer keep up with backups without disk-to-disk technology.
"The backup window runs pretty much 24 hours a day. We see adding capacity and servers to the VTL as a way to shrink that," Worsham said.
Like O'Mahoney, Worsham keeps data on his VTL less than 120 days before vaulting it to tape. He has yet to deploy disk-to-disk technology in his data center as a way to consolidate server backups, but he said it's one of the things at top of the list of new technology rollouts.
It's critical to get data backed up from branch offices to the main data center. "Primarily, our need to do this is from a [disaster recovery] perspective. You've got auditing issues," Worsham said.
Worsham said eventually the bulk of his company's backups will go first to his VTL and then be vaulted to a secondary disk array in an off-site location. But he's also convinced that long-term archive will always require some tape.
O'Mahoney said his disk-to-disk systems have shown his firm the potential to use other technologies, including storage resource management tools and storage virtualization. He said he hopes to someday roll out EMC's Invista switch-based virtualization software or IBM's SAN Volume Controller virtualization appliance.
"I think it is technology that has play in our environment, and I'll probably implement it over next couple of years." Being able to manage primary and secondary disk through a single interface allows for consolidation of assets, which will allow his systems administrators to manage greater amounts of capacity than they can currently.
According to TheInfoPro's survey of IT managers, almost 55% have deployed some type of storage resource management (SRM) software, and nearly 66% have deployed storage monitoring software.
SRM software manages physical and logical storage resources, including primary and secondary disk arrays, virtual devices and block and file-based data. Monitoring software provides a view into storage resources and how they're being used, but allows no control over those resources.
After seeing some proof of concepts that apply to his company's infrastructure, O'Mahoney also said his disk-to-disk systems will benefit somewhat from emerging de-duplication technology, which he hopes to roll out over the next year.
De-duplication ensures that only a single instance of structured or unstructured data is copied during backup. In many instances, the vendors claim, de-duplication can reduce capacity needs by as much as 80% on more costly disk-based subsystems.
De-duplication took the No. 1 spot on TheInfoPro's "heat index" of 25 technologies that companies are expecting to deploy more quickly than any other to meet their operating needs. "Forty percent of [Fortune 1,000] storage organizations have indicated that de-duplication is a key IT strategic enabler, given the difficulties of managing storage growth while maintaining flat staffing levels," the report stated.
Most companies said they were deploying EMC's Avamar de-duplication technology, followed by technology from Data Domain Inc. and Diligent Technologies Corp.
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23/07/2007 10:24:04
Fed up with slow tape backup systems and under pressure by regulators and auditors to keep data online and readily available, large and midsize businesses are making disk-to-disk backup technology a top priority in their data centers this year.
More than 75% of 150 large companies recently surveyed by TheInfoPro Inc., a New York-based independent research firm, said disk-to-disk backup technology is being used in their data centers; this compares to 67% who were implementing it a year ago.
Still, in the most recent survey, only about a third said they are using virtual tape libraries (VTL), a form of disk-to-disk backup that essentially uses disk arrays to mimic tape for server backup jobs.
One in four IT managers surveyed said they believe poor archiving practices are a key reason for unchecked data growth. The average company has 250TB of active storage space dedicated to archive-related content. Moreover, the survey found that archive capacity among companies is expected to grow by 52% by the end of this year.
Sean O'Mahoney, manager of client/server computing at Norton Healthcare, which has more than 2,000 physicians, rolled out three disk-to-disk backup systems over the past year. It helped the organization deal with a 50% year-over-year archival data growth rate that pushed the backup window to 20 hours a day.
Since connecting the health care firm's Picture Archiving and Communications System to an EMC Clariion Disk Library 710 array and Clariion Disk Library 4100 array, Norton's backup window has been more than halved -- to eight hours a day. O'Mahoney also plugged his company's financial systems into an EMC Centera disk array, which is a WORM permanent archive system.
In all, Norton Healthcare has 200TB of capacity dedicated to disk-to-disk backup, the vast majority of which is used for storing radiological images such as X-rays, which do not lend themselves easily to compression.
Besides shrinking its backup window with disk-to-disk technology, the organization also improved data-restore times by as much as 75%.
It used to take four days to retrieve data from tape because Norton's AIT-2 tape drives have a maximum throughput of 6MB/sec., compared to the Clariion disk array's 60MB/sec. rate. "The speed of the media is vital," O'Mahoney said.
TheInfoPro's survey, released in May, revealed that IT managers consider backup activities among the most time-consuming, adding that staffing remains flat and budgetary pressure to cut costs is at an all-time high.
A study by Gartner earlier this year predicted that by 2010, disk and not tape will be the primary medium for data recovery and that by 2011, the ability to take continuous snapshots of data will be an embedded function in backup and data replication software and will no longer be a separate feature.
Currently, only 17% of companies have deployed continuous data protection, according to TheInfoPro's survey.
"The need for high-performance online recovery of data, combined with the availability of low-cost disk arrays, has influenced enterprises and small and midsize businesses to adopt a disk-based approach for backup and recovery," Dave Russell, author of Gartner's disk-based storage report, wrote.
Tony Asaro, an analyst at the Enterprise Strategy Group Inc. in Milford, Mass., said the driving force behind disk-to-disk backup boom is a combination of massive data growth, which is expanding backup windows, and legal and auditing requirements that force firms to keep records online and accessible for longer periods.
"Everyone we know is doing some sort of disk-to-disk backup," Asaro said.
Most companies, however, are still relying heavily on tape backup for archive, keeping data on disk for 120 days or less, Asaro said.
O'Mahoney said he typically keeps data on his disk-to-disk backup systems for about three weeks. His company's auditors, however, recommend that he keep that data on disk for at least five weeks, something O'Mahoney is now planning to do.
O'Mahoney said the health care industry is struggling with how long to keep data on disk because "there's not a lot" of regulatory oversight. "As far as federal regulation of the health care industry from an IT perspective, we're way behind the public sector," he said.
While the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act addresses the security of patient data, it doesn't speak to data retention. Guidelines for data retention in the health care industry were simply carried over from the outgoing era of paper records, he said.
Some companies are even more aggressive about using disk-to-disk. About nine months ago, flooring manufacturer Shaw Industries Inc., a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.,deployed a NearStore VTL. The disk-based backup system from Network Appliance Inc. appears as a tape library to backup software.
In general, VTLs offload data far more quickly than tape drives do from primary disk arrays, which application servers use for shared external storage capacity. So users no longer have to quiesce application servers for backups.
Instead, customers can take repeated snapshots of data, offload them to the VTL and then at the end of the day -- or week or month -- store those snapshots on a tape library either on-site or off.
In Shaw's case, the VTL consolidates backups on the company's WAN, moving information from 24 remote sales offices around the country to the main data center in Dalton. The system currently has 10TB of capacity, but it will grow by another 20TB this year, according to Ben Worsham, Shaw Industries' infrastructure planning manager.
Worsham said he's been adding up to 40 servers a quarter, both in remote offices and in the main data center, and can no longer keep up with backups without disk-to-disk technology.
"The backup window runs pretty much 24 hours a day. We see adding capacity and servers to the VTL as a way to shrink that," Worsham said.
Like O'Mahoney, Worsham keeps data on his VTL less than 120 days before vaulting it to tape. He has yet to deploy disk-to-disk technology in his data center as a way to consolidate server backups, but he said it's one of the things at top of the list of new technology rollouts.
It's critical to get data backed up from branch offices to the main data center. "Primarily, our need to do this is from a [disaster recovery] perspective. You've got auditing issues," Worsham said.
Worsham said eventually the bulk of his company's backups will go first to his VTL and then be vaulted to a secondary disk array in an off-site location. But he's also convinced that long-term archive will always require some tape.
O'Mahoney said his disk-to-disk systems have shown his firm the potential to use other technologies, including storage resource management tools and storage virtualization. He said he hopes to someday roll out EMC's Invista switch-based virtualization software or IBM's SAN Volume Controller virtualization appliance.
"I think it is technology that has play in our environment, and I'll probably implement it over next couple of years." Being able to manage primary and secondary disk through a single interface allows for consolidation of assets, which will allow his systems administrators to manage greater amounts of capacity than they can currently.
According to TheInfoPro's survey of IT managers, almost 55% have deployed some type of storage resource management (SRM) software, and nearly 66% have deployed storage monitoring software.
SRM software manages physical and logical storage resources, including primary and secondary disk arrays, virtual devices and block and file-based data. Monitoring software provides a view into storage resources and how they're being used, but allows no control over those resources.
After seeing some proof of concepts that apply to his company's infrastructure, O'Mahoney also said his disk-to-disk systems will benefit somewhat from emerging de-duplication technology, which he hopes to roll out over the next year.
De-duplication ensures that only a single instance of structured or unstructured data is copied during backup. In many instances, the vendors claim, de-duplication can reduce capacity needs by as much as 80% on more costly disk-based subsystems.
De-duplication took the No. 1 spot on TheInfoPro's "heat index" of 25 technologies that companies are expecting to deploy more quickly than any other to meet their operating needs. "Forty percent of [Fortune 1,000] storage organizations have indicated that de-duplication is a key IT strategic enabler, given the difficulties of managing storage growth while maintaining flat staffing levels," the report stated.
Most companies said they were deploying EMC's Avamar de-duplication technology, followed by technology from Data Domain Inc. and Diligent Technologies Corp.
Previous - 1 2 3
[ Printer Friendly Entire Article ]
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Thursday, July 19, 2007
Disney music label offers new CD format
NEW YORK, July 18 (Reuters) - Walt Disney Co. (DIS.N: Quote, Profile, Research) music label Hollywood Records is offering a new CD format with extra features to encourage compact-disc purchases in a bid to reverse declining CD sales.
Hollywood Records on Wednesday unveiled its new CDVU+ (CD View Plus) format with digital magazine extras, song lyrics, band photos and other extras to boost fan loyalty.
The new format also replaces the traditional CD booklet and plastic jewel case with recyclable packaging.
Teen punk band Jonas Brothers will be the first act to use the technology when they release their self-titled album on Aug. 7.
Music companies have been seeking new ways to give buyers more value from recorded music sales in hopes of turning around declining sales trends of regular CDs.
U.S. CD sales were down nearly 20 percent in the first half of 2007 as more young buyers digitally download music and piracy runs rampant.
Disney executives hope to hold the interest of fans by offering content similar to the extras on movie DVDs and convince them that pure music products still offer good value.
Recorded music is also competing with video games and other forms of entertainment for a share of consumers' disposable income.
The content on a CDVU+ can be downloaded and accessed online and off. The label said the extra content had been produced for the new format rather than using the band's outtakes or widely available material, such as existing music videos.
"We really believe if you're going to give consumers what they want, we should do it in a way they're used to," said Ken Bunt, Hollywood Records' senior vice president of marketing.
Hollywood Records is a label within Disney Music Group, which last year had the two biggest selling CDs in the U.S., the High School Musical soundtrack and country singer Rascal Flatts' "Me And My Gang."
Other acts include Hilary Duff and Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus. Bunt said the company is already making plans to release albums from Duff and two other big selling acts -- The Cheetah Girls and Atreyu -- on CDVU+.
(Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)
© Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved. |
Hollywood Records on Wednesday unveiled its new CDVU+ (CD View Plus) format with digital magazine extras, song lyrics, band photos and other extras to boost fan loyalty.
The new format also replaces the traditional CD booklet and plastic jewel case with recyclable packaging.
Teen punk band Jonas Brothers will be the first act to use the technology when they release their self-titled album on Aug. 7.
Music companies have been seeking new ways to give buyers more value from recorded music sales in hopes of turning around declining sales trends of regular CDs.
U.S. CD sales were down nearly 20 percent in the first half of 2007 as more young buyers digitally download music and piracy runs rampant.
Disney executives hope to hold the interest of fans by offering content similar to the extras on movie DVDs and convince them that pure music products still offer good value.
Recorded music is also competing with video games and other forms of entertainment for a share of consumers' disposable income.
The content on a CDVU+ can be downloaded and accessed online and off. The label said the extra content had been produced for the new format rather than using the band's outtakes or widely available material, such as existing music videos.
"We really believe if you're going to give consumers what they want, we should do it in a way they're used to," said Ken Bunt, Hollywood Records' senior vice president of marketing.
Hollywood Records is a label within Disney Music Group, which last year had the two biggest selling CDs in the U.S., the High School Musical soundtrack and country singer Rascal Flatts' "Me And My Gang."
Other acts include Hilary Duff and Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus. Bunt said the company is already making plans to release albums from Duff and two other big selling acts -- The Cheetah Girls and Atreyu -- on CDVU+.
(Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)
© Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved. |
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
It's a high-tech world - - we just plug you into it...
Growing use of nanotechnology stirs hopes, fears
The future is now: Nanotechnology is already in hundreds of everyday products, but questions remain about long-term environmental effects
Ralph Hermansson, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, July 9, 2007
It's a high-tech world - - we just plug you into it...
Bacteria-proof forks and knives. Pants that never get stains. Computer chips with a considerably better memory, making conventional chips seem almost senile. Sports equipment made of materials that are much harder yet more lightweight than today.
Science fiction? Not at all, these products are readily available -- thanks to nanotechnology.
The somewhat outdated mantra "less is more" has probably never been more accurate than when it comes to nanotechnology. In this science, it's all about tiny details (nanos is the Greek word for dwarf). One nanoscale is a billionth of a meter, about 50,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair.
At that extremely small scale, very unusual properties of matter emerge. If you bring aluminum down to 20 nanometers, the surface-area-to-volume ratio changes so dramatically that explosions occur. This is why aluminum is used in rocket fuel to give some additional boost.
When manipulating atoms and molecules at this small level, engineers can build products that are many times stronger than conventional materials and yet lightweight.
New bicycles that are much more robust and still much lighter than most bikes today are but one example. Tennis rackets, skis and golf clubs are other items for which nanotechnology offers great advantages over graphite in strength, durability and weight.
The new technology is also being used to make longer-lasting batteries. Today, there are more than 500 products on the market that use nanotechnology in one way or another.
But critics point out that there are risks inherent in nanotechnology.
One popular use of nanotechnology is adding an ultrathin silver coating on kitchenware such as knives and forks so that bacteria can't stick to the surface. But not all bacteria are bad. Some are beneficial and actually crucial to building the body's immune system. If the environment becomes too clean and too antiseptic, experts say, there can be health hazards.
"There are a couple of concerns," said Andrew Maynard, science adviser at the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, a government-funded policy research institute in Washington, D.C.
"There is a risk if bacteria develop a resistance to antibacterial materials. If and when this product gets out to the environment, there is also a potential risk."
Silver nano particles are of special concern. These germ-killing particles are used in shoe liners, food-storage containers and washing machines, among other things. Since there is a risk that the particles escape into the aquatic environment, beneficial bacteria and other organisms may be killed. For this reason, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is demanding evidence that these kinds of products are not harmful to the environment.
Other areas of concern are transparent sunscreens that block all ultraviolet rays just as efficiently as any zinc paste. When you apply this type of sunscreen to avoid skin cancer, small nanoscale particles can enter your system through the skin. The effects this might have in the long run are hard to predict.
Christine Peterson, vice president of the Palo Alto think tank Foresight Nanotech Institute, also stresses the need for more research.
"There are so many different nano particles that it's misleading to put them under one name," she said.
"All they have in common is the size. It's kind of like comparing butter, basketballs and a boulder -- you just can't. Some particles probably will have issues and some won't be dangerous."
Even if there are risks, Maynard is convinced that nanotechnology, or rather different nanotechnologies, can be revolutionary.
He points to three different areas of special interest. One is that nanotechnology can help build new, high-performance materials already used in sports equipment but which can also be used to build cars or airplanes in the future.
The medical market is also of special interest. With the help of nanotechnology, the hope is to design new, more efficient drugs with fewer or no side effects. Nanotechnology could enhance the precision of drugs that have one highly specialized mission, like finding and killing cancer cells or tumors.
"The research results so far have been totally promising," Peterson said. "The animal testings have been very hopeful, and I think that in five to 10 years there will be new, very efficient drugs to fight cancer on the market."
Computer science is another area where nanotech is said to have a great future. In May, IBM introduced the next generation of powerful computer chips using the technology. Not only will the chips have a 35 percent higher performance, thanks to microscopic vacuum channels, it won't overheat.
"All in all, I think nanotechnologies will mean a profound change in how we are doing things," Maynard said.
Nanotechnolgy is not really a new science. The term was coined back in 1986, and experts have been predicting major breakthroughs ever since.
"Some innovations are coming about slower than people anticipated," Maynard said.
However, in five or 10 years, Maynard thinks we may look back and see the seeds of great change:
"Thanks to nanotechnology, we can today engineer electronic things on a much smaller scale. In the future, I think that some of the rather trivial products you see out on the market now may very well represent the first step for new materials that will be used in much more sophisticated ways."
The future is now: Nanotechnology is already in hundreds of everyday products, but questions remain about long-term environmental effects
Ralph Hermansson, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, July 9, 2007
It's a high-tech world - - we just plug you into it...
Bacteria-proof forks and knives. Pants that never get stains. Computer chips with a considerably better memory, making conventional chips seem almost senile. Sports equipment made of materials that are much harder yet more lightweight than today.
Science fiction? Not at all, these products are readily available -- thanks to nanotechnology.
The somewhat outdated mantra "less is more" has probably never been more accurate than when it comes to nanotechnology. In this science, it's all about tiny details (nanos is the Greek word for dwarf). One nanoscale is a billionth of a meter, about 50,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair.
At that extremely small scale, very unusual properties of matter emerge. If you bring aluminum down to 20 nanometers, the surface-area-to-volume ratio changes so dramatically that explosions occur. This is why aluminum is used in rocket fuel to give some additional boost.
When manipulating atoms and molecules at this small level, engineers can build products that are many times stronger than conventional materials and yet lightweight.
New bicycles that are much more robust and still much lighter than most bikes today are but one example. Tennis rackets, skis and golf clubs are other items for which nanotechnology offers great advantages over graphite in strength, durability and weight.
The new technology is also being used to make longer-lasting batteries. Today, there are more than 500 products on the market that use nanotechnology in one way or another.
But critics point out that there are risks inherent in nanotechnology.
One popular use of nanotechnology is adding an ultrathin silver coating on kitchenware such as knives and forks so that bacteria can't stick to the surface. But not all bacteria are bad. Some are beneficial and actually crucial to building the body's immune system. If the environment becomes too clean and too antiseptic, experts say, there can be health hazards.
"There are a couple of concerns," said Andrew Maynard, science adviser at the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, a government-funded policy research institute in Washington, D.C.
"There is a risk if bacteria develop a resistance to antibacterial materials. If and when this product gets out to the environment, there is also a potential risk."
Silver nano particles are of special concern. These germ-killing particles are used in shoe liners, food-storage containers and washing machines, among other things. Since there is a risk that the particles escape into the aquatic environment, beneficial bacteria and other organisms may be killed. For this reason, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is demanding evidence that these kinds of products are not harmful to the environment.
Other areas of concern are transparent sunscreens that block all ultraviolet rays just as efficiently as any zinc paste. When you apply this type of sunscreen to avoid skin cancer, small nanoscale particles can enter your system through the skin. The effects this might have in the long run are hard to predict.
Christine Peterson, vice president of the Palo Alto think tank Foresight Nanotech Institute, also stresses the need for more research.
"There are so many different nano particles that it's misleading to put them under one name," she said.
"All they have in common is the size. It's kind of like comparing butter, basketballs and a boulder -- you just can't. Some particles probably will have issues and some won't be dangerous."
Even if there are risks, Maynard is convinced that nanotechnology, or rather different nanotechnologies, can be revolutionary.
He points to three different areas of special interest. One is that nanotechnology can help build new, high-performance materials already used in sports equipment but which can also be used to build cars or airplanes in the future.
The medical market is also of special interest. With the help of nanotechnology, the hope is to design new, more efficient drugs with fewer or no side effects. Nanotechnology could enhance the precision of drugs that have one highly specialized mission, like finding and killing cancer cells or tumors.
"The research results so far have been totally promising," Peterson said. "The animal testings have been very hopeful, and I think that in five to 10 years there will be new, very efficient drugs to fight cancer on the market."
Computer science is another area where nanotech is said to have a great future. In May, IBM introduced the next generation of powerful computer chips using the technology. Not only will the chips have a 35 percent higher performance, thanks to microscopic vacuum channels, it won't overheat.
"All in all, I think nanotechnologies will mean a profound change in how we are doing things," Maynard said.
Nanotechnolgy is not really a new science. The term was coined back in 1986, and experts have been predicting major breakthroughs ever since.
"Some innovations are coming about slower than people anticipated," Maynard said.
However, in five or 10 years, Maynard thinks we may look back and see the seeds of great change:
"Thanks to nanotechnology, we can today engineer electronic things on a much smaller scale. In the future, I think that some of the rather trivial products you see out on the market now may very well represent the first step for new materials that will be used in much more sophisticated ways."
Friday, July 6, 2007
1TB optical disks now in prospect
Chris Mellor, Techworld.com
02/07/2007 10:17:49
Manufacturers are being offered the world's highest capacity optical storage technology to license, reportedly, leap-frogging 300GB holographic disks and offering 1TB in a DVD-size disk. But the technology has not been commercialized and product could be three to five years away.
It uses a 2-photon recording process to record bits in a three-dimensional inside a disk's recording media coating. Multiple layers of information can be stored within the 3D volume with less than a 10-micron layer of separation. This effectively allows the equivalent of 250 conventional DVD layers to be put onto one disk platter. The roadmap lays out fivefold capacity increase through greater layer densities. This could enable a disk to store high definition format movies.
It could also enable movies or equivalent data up to 50GB to be stored on 1-inch optical disks inside PDAs and mobile phone-format devices.
Call/Recall says that another advantage of its technology is its use of affordable, commercially available, off-the-shelf components. This approach allows optical hardware manufacturers to extend the roadmap of their existing technologies, such as DVD and Blu-ray Disc, while maintaining backward compatibility with their installed base. Additionally, other key components are designed as molded/replicated parts, enabling low-cost production on industry-standard production lines.
Call/Recall is a military- and commerce-funded very high capacity optical storage research company. A co-founder is Dr. Peter Rentzepis. He is a former head of Bell Laboratories and, according to the company, a world-renowned scientist who has authored approximately 85 patents; his innovations are referenced as prior technology by 45 of the world's top optical technology providers, including IBM, Panasonic and Hitachi. This gives the technology more credibility.
One storage research analysis has offered an opinion on it. ESG analyst Heidi Biggar said: "Advances in optical technologies, such as Call/Recall's 2-photon 3D technology which promises to offer multiple terabyte data capacities and significantly faster data access than tape, hold new promise for users as they look to build more efficient and effective archives."
This is not exactly fulsome as the same sentiments could be applied to future InPhase holographic disks and blue laser UDO disks from Plasmon. In fact, the delay before any commercialization could give InPhase with its holographic Tapestry disks time to deliver on its terabyte disk roadmap. Plasmon's UDO should also be in the terabyte area by then.
02/07/2007 10:17:49
Manufacturers are being offered the world's highest capacity optical storage technology to license, reportedly, leap-frogging 300GB holographic disks and offering 1TB in a DVD-size disk. But the technology has not been commercialized and product could be three to five years away.
It uses a 2-photon recording process to record bits in a three-dimensional inside a disk's recording media coating. Multiple layers of information can be stored within the 3D volume with less than a 10-micron layer of separation. This effectively allows the equivalent of 250 conventional DVD layers to be put onto one disk platter. The roadmap lays out fivefold capacity increase through greater layer densities. This could enable a disk to store high definition format movies.
It could also enable movies or equivalent data up to 50GB to be stored on 1-inch optical disks inside PDAs and mobile phone-format devices.
Call/Recall says that another advantage of its technology is its use of affordable, commercially available, off-the-shelf components. This approach allows optical hardware manufacturers to extend the roadmap of their existing technologies, such as DVD and Blu-ray Disc, while maintaining backward compatibility with their installed base. Additionally, other key components are designed as molded/replicated parts, enabling low-cost production on industry-standard production lines.
Call/Recall is a military- and commerce-funded very high capacity optical storage research company. A co-founder is Dr. Peter Rentzepis. He is a former head of Bell Laboratories and, according to the company, a world-renowned scientist who has authored approximately 85 patents; his innovations are referenced as prior technology by 45 of the world's top optical technology providers, including IBM, Panasonic and Hitachi. This gives the technology more credibility.
One storage research analysis has offered an opinion on it. ESG analyst Heidi Biggar said: "Advances in optical technologies, such as Call/Recall's 2-photon 3D technology which promises to offer multiple terabyte data capacities and significantly faster data access than tape, hold new promise for users as they look to build more efficient and effective archives."
This is not exactly fulsome as the same sentiments could be applied to future InPhase holographic disks and blue laser UDO disks from Plasmon. In fact, the delay before any commercialization could give InPhase with its holographic Tapestry disks time to deliver on its terabyte disk roadmap. Plasmon's UDO should also be in the terabyte area by then.
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