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Technology Stocks : Year 2000 (Y2K) Embedded Systems & Infrastructure Problem -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Mansfield who wrote (259)	3/22/1998 9:47:00 AM
From: Josef Svejk	Respond to of 618

Humbly report, All, Optical Read-Only Memory: 'Let's say you're noodling around on the MIT Web site and come across the surprising discovery that the CD and CD-ROM technology were invented in the mid-1960s by an American scientist named James Russell. And let's say the first question that pops into your mind is, "What has Russell done for me lately?" The answer is not, on reflection, surprising-but it is intriguing. In 1990, Russell set up shop in the Seattle suburbs and began working on a new kind of data storage, now called OROM, for Optical Read-Only Memory. OROM stores data holographically-in miniature plastic optical systems about half the size of a business card-and reads the data by shining tiny LEDs through the OROM lenses. Each card stores 128 mb of data, and since they slip into a card reader with no moving parts, as there are in disk drives, reading the data uses virtually no power. The Brains and Bucks Roll In It has proven rather easy for Russell to sign up a management and technical team and round up money. (For some reason, having invented the CD-ROM gives him credibility with investors.) Microsoft, Polaris Venture Partners, Britannia Ltd. and other investors recently ponied up $9.5 million to productize Russell's invention and get it to the market by mid-1999. Russell also talked former Hewlett-Packard general manager (and former Tektronix VP) Fred L. Hanson into becoming president and CEO of his company, ioptics-or Information Optics. The market for OROM storage promises to be huge: everything, in Hanson's words, "from embedded computing devices-things like toasters with chips in them, which sell around 100 million units per year-to point-of-sale devices, industrial controls, instruments, GPS navigators, handheld games, portable entertainment devices, handheld PC's." He envisions the day when a company with a large sales force can update presentations or inventory on OROM chips, send them out in the field, and have salespeople plug the cards into the palmtop computers they use for filling orders or doing updated PowerPoint presentations. Portable CD and tape players can be replaced by OROM-reading devices, making them immune (since OROM has no moving parts) to the jostling that comes with walking, running or jumping around. Doin' it Right the Second Time 'Round But where OROM is likely to make the biggest difference to you and me is in the handheld and laptop computer markets, where growth has been slowed in part by the high cost and high power consumption of memory-storage devices. Handheld computers like the PalmPilot use MROM or flash memory, which run in the dollars-per-megabyte price range, while OROM will cost approximately two cents per megabyte. And the weight and power consumption of laptops can be reduced by anywhere from 20 percent to 80 percent by transferring operating-system and interface data from the hard drive, where it comprises nearly 40 percent of the data stored on the drive, to OROM cards. Eliminating the need for hard drives to store read-only memory allows manufacturers to install far smaller and lighter and less power-hungry drives in laptops, driving down their cost and driving up their efficiency. OROM is likely to make an even bigger difference to the Sonys of the world, who have made billions off of CD players. I visited ioptics twice, hoping to meet Russell, but was turned away the first time and told he was out of town the second. One of his engineers, though, noted that Russell never earned any money off of his CD-ROM patents. (It is axiomatic in the software and computing hardware worlds that businesspeople always figure out a way to shoot the inventor.) "He's doing things right this time around," the engineer said admiringly. Then he pointed out that OROM would someday eliminate the need for CD-ROM storage. Revenge, I thought, is sweet-especially when it takes 30 years or so to exact it.' Fred Moody is author of I Sing the Body Electronic: A Year With Microsoft on the Multimedia Frontier. His book on virtual reality will be published this spring by Random House. Thanks to #reply-3796041 Svejk (GL-15 applies: digiserve.com ;-)

To: John Mansfield who wrote (259)	3/22/1998 11:53:00 AM
From: John Mansfield	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 618

C.S.Y2K `The specific idea of inter-system testing, across utility boundaries, is an ackowledged part of the Y2K issue. Two areas come to mind where this is required. 1) The NRC requires a near real time data link to all US Nuclear Utilities, specifically to a data acquisition system that monitors the nuclear reactor and other important variables. This obviously needs testing. 2) Most nuclear reactors can not start up (and then produce power), unless they initially get power from somewhere else (the on site AC and DC backups are typically sized only to ensure vital safety systems are powered in a "loss of off-site power" event). Assuming a serious Y2K effect on the grid, which might trip reators and cause blackouts, special care would have to be taken to ensure these power sources for reactor startup (typically dams that might be hundreds of miles away, controlled by other utilities) are available, incluing all the intermediary lines and equipment, with no Y2K problems themselves. The interfacing and testing needed to ensure this is a line item on the list of things to do in any nuclear utility Y2K project. This is not to say that everything is perfect in the US Electric Utility world, but it could be worse, too. Fred Swirbul