Technology feature of the month
Grid Computing-the power of unity
Foster and Carl Kesselman of the University of Southern California pioneered the concept of grid computing in analogy to the electric grid, and built a community to support it. They along with Argonne’s Steen Tuecke, have led to the development of Globus Toolkit, an open-source implementation of grid protocols that has become the defacto standard. Such protocols give home and office machines the ability to reach into cyberspace and find resources wherever they may be, and assemble them on the fly into whatever applications needed.
In case of a major chemical spill. One would like to know what chemicals are involved? What’s the current traffic situation, and how will that affect the evacuation routes?” If one tried to find answers on today’s Internet, one would get bogged down in arcane log-in procedures and incompatible software. But with grid computing it would be easy: the grid protocols provide standard mechanisms for discovering, accessing, and invoking just about any online resource, simultaneously building in all the requisite safeguards for security and authentication.
Construction is under way on dozens of distributed grid computers around the world-virtually all of them employing globus Toolkit. They’ll have unprecedented computing power and applications ranging from genetics to particle physics to earthquake engineering. The $88 million TeraGrid of the U.S. National Science Foundation will be one of the largest. When it’s completed later this year, the general purpose, distributed supercomputer will be capable of some 21 trillion floating-point operations per second, making it one of the fastest computational systems on Earth. And grid computing is experiencing an upsurge of support from industry heavyweights such as IBM, Sun Microsystems, and Microsoft. IBM, which is a primary partner in the TeraGrid.

Source : (www.technologyreview.com)

IT-Quote

“If computers get too powerful, 
we can organize them into a committee. That will do them in.”


Bradley’s Bromide

IT Snippets

Discerning Scanner
Current face-recognition technology works by matching images obtained from security cameras with two-dimensional pictures of known suspects that exist in a database. The problem with 2D documentation is that any change in the facial angle, lighting condition or expression can lead to the system’s failure.
Russian identical twins, Alex and Michael bronstein, claim to be staring at the face of a solution. Their technique maps the human face in three dimensions, by using algorithms and a 3D facial scanner. The surface of a face is scanned using points of light, and stored within a computer as a 3D-image. The computer uses algorithms to measure the distance between several sample points on the facial surface. These distances are converted into straight lines in 3D space, creating a digital sculpture of the original face, which is almost as unique as a fingerprint. 

Source: (Digit : April 2003)

Cool off with heat pipes
Researcher Mike Rightly at Sandia National laboratories in USA says he has created technology to disperse the heat generated within laptop computers more efficiently than today’s cooling systems. Rightley has developed tiny liquid filled pipes that shift heat to the edge of the computer where air fins or a tiny fan can disperse it into the air. Although chipmakers like Intel have been using pipes to dispel heat for several years now, experts say the technology developed at Sandia is a refinement of existing systems. Current heat pipes are relatively bulky, analysts say, but this one is extremely fine-grained, allowing the tube to be a self-powered mechanism. Here, heat from the chip converts a liquid methanol to vapour. The vapour releases the heat it is carrying in a chosen area, turns back to liquid, and returns to collect more heat. This development could lead to smaller and more efficient notebook computers as engineers and designers eliminate the space needed to house bulky and noisy fan cooling systems. It may also help use desktop processors in notebook systems. 

Source : (Smart Inc. : April 2003)

IT Quiz

1. What is Fire Wire?

2. What is IrDA.

3. What is meant by Dolby sound?

Teja-the new chip
Intel’s new chip Teja, introduced at a clock speed of well over 4 Ghz, is expected to cross the 5 Ghz mark in its lifetime. It will be fed by an 800 Mhz Front Side Bus, and will have a 90 nm fabrication process. Tejas will also bring along new instructions, an enhanced Hyper Threading and an improved Level-1 cache. Perhaps the most visible difference, will be that Tejas will come without pins it will use a 775 contact, Land Grid Array (LGA). The processor will be nestled within a direct
Socket loader, which will serve a triple-purpose -maintaining contact with the motherboard, protection and insulation from the potentially damaging heatsink. The Grantsdale chipset will baby-sit Tejas, and oversee the transition from the Intel Prescott to the new one.

Source :(Digit :April 2003)

IT Humour
The Boss
One day a man goes to a pet shop to buy a parrot. The assistant takes the man to the parrot section and asks the man to choose one. The man asks, “How much is the yellow one?”

The assistant says, “$2000.” The man is shocked and asks the assistant why it’s so expensive. The assistant explains, “This parrot is a very special one. He knows Windows XP”

“What about the green one?” The man asks.
The assistant says, “He costs $5000 because he knows Windows XP and Unix.”

“What about the red one?” The man asks.
The assistant says, “That one’s $10,000.”

The man says, “What does he do?”
The assistant says, “I don’t know, but the other two call him BOSS.”

Source : (www.jokes.com)

IT Quiz Solutions

1. Fire wire is a serial communication interface that supports data rate upto 400 Mbps as against 12 Mbps of USB ports. This name originally coined by Apple computer has now become an IEEE standard. no. 1394. 
   

2. IrDA stands for Infrared Data Association, the body that contributed to development of standards for infrared communication amongst computing devices. IrDA devices are now commonly available for connecting Laptops, printers, scanners without wires. The web site for this association is www.irda.org.
   

3. Dolby sound refers to surround sound effects produced by using either Dolby-Digital or Dolby-DTS (Digital Theatre System) standards created by the company named Dolby Laboratories. Dolby-DTS is the more advanced of the two & is often used in latest movies. These technologies are also available to PC users.