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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Proud_Infidel who wrote (35730)	7/12/2000 2:03:04 AM
From: Jeffrey D	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST: MICROCHIP ADVANCES PAVE WAY FOR ANYWHERE, ANYHOW LINKS 94% match; The South China Morning Post - Hong Kong ; 12-Jul-2000 12:00:00 am ; 230 words BY TECHNOLOGY SARA FRENCH Technology is about to become largely invisible, as personal computers are displaced by small but powerful computing devices embedded in just about everything, according to consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC). Transistors are shrinking so much that every 18 to 24 months, the number that can be squeezed on to a semiconductor doubles. This pattern has held true since the early 1960s - so long, in fact, that the smallest features on semiconductors are now measured in atoms instead of microns. Extreme compactness makes it possible to put computing devices just about everywhere and spells the end of the personal computer era as we know it, according to PWC in its "Technology Forecast". Computers will no longer appear as discrete devices with keyboards and displays. When this happens - and Terry Retter, a director at PWC's Silicon Valley-based Technology Centre, predicts it will begin happening this year or next - personal computing will give way to "pervasive computing". Mr Retter points to the proliferation of hand-held devices - pagers, mobile phones and personal digital assistants among them - as evidence pervasive does not yet mean unobtrusive. "The issue with these devices is not necessarily bandwidth. The issue is belt width," he said in Hong Kong yesterday. "How many devices are you willing to hang off your belt . . .?" In time, a single operating system would win over the hand-held market and wireless technology would provide ubiquitous ad hoc networking. This would allow the emergence of a "Web tone", making it possible to access the Web from almost anywhere and with almost any device.