NVIDIA GeForce Grid
Nvidia has started a cloud service for 3D
computation. Called GeForce Grid, the service is a computing centre full of
special graphics processors that compute the 3D graphics for thousands of
gamers simultaneously. Using this service, complex 3D games can be played even
on weak devices. The games are shown as video streams through a browser, be it
on smartphones, tablets, PCs or 60-inch LCD TVs.
Our Prognosis: Cloud based 3D games will
compete with game consoles from 2013.
NVIDIA
GeForce Grid
Flexible Glass for New Mobile Devices
Glass manufacturer Corning has introduced a
new type of glass. Called Willow, it's so thin that you can bend it and it can
cling to surfaces. For this, Corning uses a special manufacturing process that
enables the production of glass plates that are as thin as a sheet of paper,
around 0.1mm thick. Normally, glass thicknesses of about 0.5 to 0.7mm are used
in smartphone displays. Willow glass can also be used at high temperatures (up
to 500°C) without problems. This new type of glass can be used to equip
smartphones, tablets and notebook displays with much thinner back plates,
colour filters for OLED and LCD displays, and touch sensors of touch displays.
As this glass is flexible and can bend, curved smartphones and more complex
designs are possible.
For instance, a company can come up with
conical or convex/concave displays. Samsung has already implemented this glass
with the arched display of the GALAXY Nexus. As Coming's Gorilla glass is found
on Apple devices, it is speculated that Willow glass could soon debut on the
iPhone 5.
Our Prognosis: The new invention will
influence the design of new gadgets and cause prices to decline. As Willow
glass can be wound onto rolls, manufacturers can process it at high rotation
speeds, drastically reducing manufacturing costs.
Charge Cell Phones Wirelessly
In 2008, Intel lit a bulb wirelessly with
unlinked wire-wound coils as a tech demo. Since then, an increasing number of
products that transfer electricity wirelessly through induction are arriving.
Samsung has announced a charger for the GALAXY S III that charges the phone by
merely placing the phone in the charger dock. Intel also showcased a notebook
adapter in June that can recognise and wirelessly charge a phone.
Our Prognosis: In three years, most mobile
devices will be charged wirelessly'.
Charge
Cell Phones Wirelessly
Super-Fast Memristors will abolish Long
Boot Times
In research publications, the term,
"Memristor" (a word created using "memory" and
"resistor") has been already circulating for many years. This passive
electrical component is expected to be used in mobile devices from 2014/15 onwards,
according to Hewlett-Packard. HP wants to produce the "ReRAM"
modules, which are a lot faster than NAND Flash memory, and retain information
after being switched off.
Our Prognosis: If ReRAM succeeds in the
market, boot times will finally disappear.
Super-Fast
Memristors will abolish Long Boot Times.
Smart Glasses
What comes after the smartphone era? Google
is working on Google Glass, a pair of glasses that display web info on a small
display in the frame. Google recently demonstrated the concept device at the
Google I/O 2012 developers conference The whole process is probably controlled
with a ring on the finger. Google holds at least one patent for this.
Our Prognosis: Smart glasses will remain a
niche product, unlike smartphones.
Smart
Glasses
Quantum Computers
IBM researchers could recently sustain
quantum bits (Qubits) at temperatures slightly below -273 degrees Celsius for
as many as 0.1 milliseconds in two metal blocks. This is an important step
towards quantum computing as Qubits can simultaneously hold the values 0 and 1,
and can theoretically compute extraordinarily fast.
Our Prognosis: Quantum technology could
revolutionise the computer world from 2030 onwards.
Quantum
Computers
Downward Trend
Cheap Netbooks
Atom processors were never designed for
notebooks, and Intel was quite taken aback when ASUS landed a major coup with
the EeePC in 2008 and established the netbook category. However, in the
meantime, most users prefer faster CPUs for smoother performance and a better
overall experience. As a consequence, there are barely any notebook providers
today who venture to sell netbooks.
Our Prognosis: Intel will only sell a few
Atom CPUs, but will just sell more expensive mobile processors.
Budget GPUs
Since Intel and AMD directly integrate
graphic units into their CPUs, these chipsets noticeably perform very well.
Intel's Ivy Bridge CPUs and AMD's new Trinity processors, for example, beat
their respective predecessors in terms of 3D-performance by approximately 50%.
Their CPUs’ speed is more than adequate for casual or office use, and the newer
desktop and notebook motherboards also offer sufficient video ports.
Our Prognosis: Affordable graphics cards
costing up to $98 will soon become obsolete.
Fibre Optic Broadband
Malaysia is already started to equip its
households with fibre broadband. However, only a fraction of the world has
access to fibre connections as compared to South Korea (approx. 60%). The
reason for this is the "Sell first, build later" strategy of the
ISPs. This results in the world lagging behind in the fiber optic expansion.
Our Prognosis: Many broadband customers
will switch to cable.
Portable Game Consoles
If you have played games on a new, high-end
tablet or smartphone, you will its 3D rendering, speed and display quality
match the likes of the Sony PSP or Nintendo 3DS/DSi. In addition, smartphones
have access to an exhaustive game repository from the App markets which are
often free of cost.
Our Prognosis: Mobile gaming consoles have
outlived their time and will be extinct soon.
Holographic Versatile Disks
After CD came the DVD, then Blu-ray. Now
it’s the turn of the Holographic Versatile disk (HVD) to take over. The HVD
shines with its specifications and capacity (capacity: up to 3.9TByte, transfer
rate: 1GBit/s). However, as was already foreseeable in the case of Blu-ray
disks, most users worldwide prefer to save their data on USB sticks and hard
disks.
Our Prognosis: HVDs will remain a niche
product the large amounts of data in the future will anyway be stored on the
cloud.
