All Those Laws of Technology

Gordon Moore

In absence of any news about any key development in the world of technology in last few days, let us look back at those laws that governed minds of technocrats in last few years as they looked forward in time:

Moore's Law: The number of transistors we can fit on a chip (or semiconductor) or, effectively the CPU power, will double every 18 months. He later revised the law to 'every two years'. [Gordon Moore cofounded Intel in 1965]

Gilder's Law: Bandwidth will double every 6 months -Or, 3 times faster than CPU power. [Gearge Gilder was visionary author of "Telecosm: How Infinite Bandwidth will Revolutionize Our World"]

Metcalfe's Law: The usefulness, or utility, of a network equals the square of the number of users. [Robert Metcalfe was founder of 3Com Corporation and designer of the Ethernet protocol for computer networks]

Proebsting's law: Compiler research has led to a doubling in computing power every 18 years.[Todd Proebsting is the Director of the Center for Software Excellence in Microsoft's Platform and Services Division]

Hwang's Law: The density of the top-of-the-line flash memory chips will double every 12 months. [Hwang Chang-gyu is President of Samsung. More details in our past posting]

Nokia's Wibree Technology

Mobile phone market leader Nokia unveiled a new short-range wireless connection on Tuesday that is smaller and more energy-efficient than current Bluetooth technology and can be used in small devices such as watches. The new radio technology, dubbed "Wibree", can work alongside Bluetooth short-range wireless connections but use just a fraction of the power. It's up to 10 times more energy efficient than Bluetooth, Nokia claims.

The Bluetooth technology links cell phones with headsets, computers and printers to transfer calls, calendar items, documents, songs and pictures. Similarly, Wibree provides a radio link of up to 10 metres between devices with a data transmission rate of 1Mbps and opens up a new market for ultra low power wireless connections to button battery cell powered devices -- one not yet served effectively by other radio technologies. Because of their small size and low energy consumption, Wibree radio chips will make it possible and efficient to connect phones and other electronics devices to low-power watches or sports sensors and health monitors.

Nokia said it expected the first commercial version to be available during the second quarter of next year. The company expects that devices currently connected by Bluetooth will get a dual Bluetooth-Wibree chip, while devices that are currently not connected will use a Wibree-only chip. Likely Wibree-devices include watches, wireless keyboards, toys and sports sensors.