The amazing story of the birth of HCL

In 1976, during lunch time at Delhi Cloth Mills, DCM, a group of six young engineers in the office canteen were discussing their work woes at DCM's calculator division.
Despite them all have having jobs that paid them well, they were an unhappy lot -- they wanted to do more, riding on their own gumption. They decided to quit their jobs and start a venture of their own.
The man who was fuelling the ambitions of his five other colleagues at that canteen was a 30-year-old engineer from Tamil Nadu, Shiv Nadar. And this is how the story of Hindustan Computers Limited, HCL began.
Nadar and his five colleagues quit DCM in the summer of 1976. They decided to set up a company that would make personal computers. They had gathered enough technical expertise at DCM's calculator division, but like for all start-ups, getting funds was the problem.
However, Nadar's passion for his new dream company and the support of his enthusiastic colleagues soon made the task very easy.
Founder, Chairman and CEO, HCL Technologies, Shiv Nadar told CNBC-TV18, "The first person I met was Arjun and he was also a management trainee like me. He was a couple of batches junior to me. . . We became very good friends and we are still very good friends. Then, the rest of them all worked for DCM and we all are of similar age, so we used to hang out together, crib together, have fun together, work together.
Nadar would first have to gather cash to give wings to his idea of manufacturing computers. He floated a company called Microcomp Limited -- through which he would sell teledigital calculators. This venture threw up enough cash to allow the founders to give shape to their ultimate dream to manufacture computers in India, at a time when computers were just sophisticated cousins of the good old calculator but support also came from the Uttar Pradesh government.
Finally, the founders put together Rs 20 lakh (Rs 2 million) and HCL was born.
The year after HCL was floated, the Indian government reigned in the ambitions of the foreign companies in India. This pronounced the death knell of companies like IBM and Coca-Cola while bells began to ring for Indian entrepreneurships like HCL.
Managing Editor, The Smart Manager, Dr Gita Piramal says, "Few Indian businessmen were happy when George Fernandes became industry minister in 1977, when the Janata Party came to power. Foreign businessmen were even less happy that Coca-Cola and IBM left India. IBM's leaving, left a major vacuum and this was the vacuum in which Shiv Nadar spotted an opportunity. He stepped in and customers began to trickle in."
HCL started shipping its in-house microcomputers around the same time as its American counterpart Apple, and took only two more years to introduce its 16 bits processor.
By 1983, it indigenously developed a relational data based management system, a networking operational system and client-server architecture, almost at the same time as its global peers. The road to the top was now in sight and HCL took it a step further by exploring foreign shores.
HCL's first brush with international business came about in 1979 when it set up a venture in Singapore; it was called Far East computers. HCL was only three years old and its net worth was around Rs 3 crore (Rs 30 million). Shiv Nadar set up an ambitious target for the venture and notched up sales of Rs 10 lakh (Rs 1 million) in the very first year.
Co-Founder, HCL Technologies, Ajai Chowdhry says, "We discovered that there was a good opportunity to enter Singapore with our own hardware we had manufactured in Singapore. But the strategy was very clearly around selling computerization rather than computers and so we actually took the whole idea of hardware, software solution and service and packaged it and presented it as computerization."
Even as it was basking in its success in Singapore, HCL planned a whole new area of expansion and it tapped into a territory that was lying unexplored in the country - computer education. Sensing the increasing demand for computer training, HCL set up NIIT [Get Quote] in 1981 to impart high quality IT education in India.
Nadar explains, "We knew many people in IIT and Indian Institute of Science. We formed an advisory panel and asked them, can you help us navigate this whole thing and they were very enthusiastic about this and they of course shaken up a little bit when they saw that we started advertising in Bombay -- selling education as a commercial project."
From calculators to IT education, the first five years of HCL was a combination of growth and expansion riddled with uncertainty but the company was now gearing up to set a much bigger target for itself and an announcement from the government would help it takeoff to those soaring heights.
In 1984, the Indian government announced a new policy that would change the fortunes of the entire computer industry. The government opened up the computer market and permitted import of technology. With new guidelines and regulations in place, HCL grabbed the opportunity to launch its own personal computer.
The demand for personal computers was slowly but surely mounting in the Indian market. Most banks were shifting to the UNIX platform. A few companies approached HCL for personal computers, so, the founders flew all over the world to bring back PCs they could take apart, study and reproduce and indigenously upgrade. Their first innovative personal computer was ready in three weeks' times and soon they launched their first range of computers, and they called it the Busybee.
Chowdhry says, "In a lot of ways, it opened up the market because one thing was that, you no longer had to develop basic stuff in India - like operating systems but on the other hand it opened new opportunities like banking because as per government policy, all banking computers must be UNIX based. So, feverishly we set out creating a UNIX based computer and we bought the UNIX source code and created that product out of nothing."
In two years, HCL became one of the largest IT companies in India. The founders now went to different corners of the country to set up sales and marketing offices and it now needed the brightest minds to take it to the next level of competition.
Campus recruitment in management and technical institutes began in full swing and HCL grabbed some of the best talent by offering pay packages that outscored some of the best companies of the time -- Rs 2,000 per month to start with.
The adrenaline rush of the first half of the 1980s and the rapid expansion strategy soon caught up with HCL. A turning point came in 1989, when HCL on the basis of a report by McKinsey and Company decided to venture into the American computer hardware market.
HCL America was born but the project fell flat on its face. HCL had failed to follow a very crucial step necessary to enter the US market. A big disappointment was on its way.
Piramal says, "For every entrepreneur, the US will always remain the dream market. It's the biggest market in the world and Shiv Nadar obviously was drawn to it but he really didn't know what he was getting into. The computers he made didn't get environmental clearances. In fact, HCL probably turned into his biggest mistake but HCL and Shiv himself, he is a very strong person, he understood he was making a mistake, he saw that Infosys [Get Quote] and Wipro [Get Quote] are doing really well in software and he was not too proud to change gears and finally HCL did enter the software market."
It didn't take too long for HCL to brush off the disappointment in the US. Its first failure in the US was set aside in 1991 and HCL entered into a partnership with HP (Hewlett-Packard) to form HCL HP Limited. It opened new avenues for HCL and gave opportunities to firm up its revenues.
In three years, another new possibility came knocking at its door and in 1994, HCL looked beyond PCs and tied up with Nokia cellphones and Ericsson switches for distribution.
Chowdhry explains, 'In 1991, when India didn't have enough foreign exchange. We were in the hardware business and we didn't have enough funds. That's the time when a clear thought entered our minds - that we should globalize and in the very early days, we actually created a joint venture with Hewlett-Packard.
In 1997, HCL was already a multi-dimensional company spun off HCL Technologies Limited to mark their entry into the global software space. It made up its mind to focus on software development, which was twenty years behind its entrepreneurial journey, Shiv Nadar was now ready to take on global competition with all his might.
From 70s to 90s, the HCL story was one of steady rise but in the face of its rapid expansion and continuous flow of achievements, Shiv Nadar didn't anticipate that he would be in for a rude shock and that it would come from someone very close.
In 1998, Arjun Malhotra, Shiv Nadar's comrade and friend decided to leave the company to start his own TechSpan, headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. He was also one of the largest shareholders in HCL Infosystems [Get Quote] at that time. For Shiv Nadar, it was time to think afresh.
The revenues were shrinking from the hardware sector and Nadar now decided to redesign HCL. The company once again needed funds to grow and this time around, Nadar decided to look at the capital market. An initial public offer (IPO) was made on the Indian Stock Exchange in 1999, which was a stupendous success.
President, HCL Technologies, Vineet Nayar says, "The shareholders supported us and then I think we started with Rs 580 an IPO and went up to Rs 2,800 or something like that. So, it was a dream run, I think the shareholders bought the argument we were making, they liked the articulation of the strategy, they liked the management team and they liked the vision we were painting and they supported the stock full time and that was a turning point for HCL."
Shiv Nadar now put aside his dream of becoming a global hardware major and venture into software with an open mind and a clean slate. Technology was opening up vistas of opportunities in the software sector and HCL now wanted to build new businesses.
Global business became a priority, so, now they started a BPO in Ireland in 2001. His partner in this ambitious venture was British Telecom.
The years that followed saw HCL in an expansion mode. In 2005 alone, HCL signed a software development agreement with Boeing for its 787 dreamliner programme. Next came a venture with NEC, Japan.
It even brought out the joint ventures Deutsche Bank and British Telecom's Apollo Contact Center. In the same year, HCL Infosystems launched it sub Rs 10,000 personal computer and joined hands with AMD and Microsoft to bridge the digital divide.
The successes of 2005 spilled over into 2006 and the company now produced over 75,000 machines in a single month, with more parallel joint ventures growing on its list. But in spite of this overwhelming success, Shiv Nadar would not rest. There was a nagging sense of dissatisfaction and perhaps not having exploited its full potential that still drove Nadar and the company to achieve much more.
Thirty years after starting his company, Shiv Nadar really does not have much to complain about. Hindustan Computers Ltd today is an empire worth $3.5 billion with staff strength of 34,000.
But then dissatisfaction has been the quintessential factor that has made Shiv Nadar the visionary that he was and continues to be. Dissatisfaction once drove him to quit his job at DCM and it is that same quality even today, that is driving him to achieve much more when he can quite easily rest on his laurels.

How to Improve Your Wi-Fi Network's Performance

By Becky Waring, PC World
How can I extend the range of my home Wi-Fi network?
First, make sure you are getting the most out of your current Wi-Fi router: Mount it in a central location in your house, preferably high on a wall; make sure that other 2.4-GHz devices such as cordless phones, baby monitors, wireless audio speakers, Bluetooth gadgets, and microwave ovens are not causing interference; and separate your router from your neighbors' router on the Wi-Fi spectrum. If they are using channel 1, for example, try channel 12 to minimize the chance of cross-channel interference.

If you still get a poor signal, consider upgrading to a router that incorporates MIMO (multiple-input, multiple-output) or draft-n technology. (See our latest review of these devices, "Wireless Routers: The Truth About Superfast Draft-N"). These routers not only provide far greater range than standard 802.11b/g routers, but they also boost speed by as much as ten times.

Finally, if you have particular Wi-Fi trouble spots in your house, such as odd corners, a basement, or an attic, power-line networking can be a great way to serve those areas. With power-line devices, you simply plug one adapter into a wall outlet and run an ethernet cord to your router; then you plug another adapter into an outlet near the device you want to connect to the network and run an ethernet cord to that device. You'll need reasonably clean power--free from excessive interference from other electrical devices--but the newest technologies, such as HomePlug AV and HD-PLC, work very well.

What's 802.11n? Do I need to upgrade my router?
Wi-Fi standards are continually evolving as technology advances. The first Wi-Fi routers were 802.11b, with a maximum of 11-megabits-per-second throughput. Next, 802.11g increased that to 54 mbps. Now, MIMO and draft-802.11n routers have pushed the wireless frontier to 280 mbps and beyond, rivaling wired ethernet. This year, the Wi-Fi Alliance will start certifying draft-802.11n routers. If you are in the market for a new router, definitely buy one of these models.

But if your old router provides satisfactory performance throughout your house, you needn't upgrade immediately. Your current equipment will operate just fine with 802.11n devices as they begin to appear. Wait to upgrade until you really need the added performance for bandwidth-intensive applications such as streaming video. Prices will only go down in the meantime.

How do I share a printer or game console over a Wi-Fi network?
For between $50 and $100, you can buy an adapter that will convert any device that has a wired ethernet port into a Wi-Fi-capable one. These Wi-Fi-to-ethernet bridges are available from companies like D-Link and Netgear, and are usually marketed as "wireless game adapters" for PlayStations, GameCubes, and Xboxes. But they work equally well with ethernet printers and network security cameras.

Often the adapters work right out of the box if your Wi-Fi net is configured to use DHCP, which enables dynamic IP addressing. If it's not, you can set up an adapter by connecting it to your PC and then assigning an IP address. Note that with some older game consoles, you must attach a networking adapter that equips them with an ethernet port before you can add the bridge. The Xbox 360 has a USB port, for which Microsoft sells a Wi-Fi adapter.

For printers without ethernet ports, you can buy a wireless print server, also available from companies like Belkin, D-Link, and Linksys. Be sure to choose a print server with ports (USB and/or parallel) that match your printers. Note, however, that multifunction devices usually lose all but their printing functions when networked this way.

Can I add a network hard drive to my Wi-Fi net?
There are two basic ways to add storage to your wireless network, but in either case, it's best to physically locate the drive(s) next to your router and connect them by wires rather than using a wireless adapter. Generally, you needn't put a network drive in a different room, and a wired connection is always faster and more reliable than wireless, especially if you have gigabit-ethernet equipment.

What you are really looking for is access to your network storage over your Wi-Fi net, which you can achieve by connecting any Network Attached Storage (NAS) device to one of your router's ethernet ports. Alternatively, you can buy a device like the Linksys Network Storage Link NSLU2, which connects two USB hard drives to any router via ethernet.

Can I use VoIP over Wi-Fi? What kind of quality will I get?
Voice over IP actually requires comparatively little bandwidth--under 100 kilobits per second per call--whereas network throughput is normally measured in megabytes per second. The problem with VoIP over Wi-Fi is more an issue of priorities: If someone else on the network is downloading large files from the Internet at the same time that you are making a call, choppiness and delays can occur.

Although the faster your router is, the fewer problems you should have using VoIP, most late-model wireless routers also incorporate a technology called 802.11e, or QoS (quality of service), that prioritizes streaming data ahead of regular data transfers. Be sure to get matching adapters that also support QoS, however.

How do I stream audio and video from one room to another via Wi-Fi?
Any audio or video that you can stream over a wired net, you can also stream via Wi-Fi. You just need to be sure that your Wi-Fi equipment's pipes are broad and fast enough to handle the data. For high-quality video, you'll probably need either 802.11e or a vendor's proprietary implementation of QoS enabled in both your router and adapters.

To stream your media, you'll also need some kind of streaming server, such as a Windows Media Center PC; an NAS drive with software like the open source SlimServer; or one of the many dedicated wireless streaming-media consoles, such as the D-Link MediaLounge Wireless HD Media Player or Roku SoundBridge M1001. See "Get More Out of Your Wireless Network" for more on wireless streaming.

Freedom from the office -- the Bedouin way

Leave the office behind -- forever

Mike Elgan

March 16, 2007 (Computerworld) -- San Francisco Chronicle journalist Dan Frost wrote a nice piece recently about local digital nomads he called Bay Area Bedouins. These are people who work for San Francisco start-up companies without offices, who roam from one coffeehouse to the next, working wherever they find a Wi-Fi connection. (Traditionally, a Bedouin is a desert-dwelling nomad who lives in a tent and moves around to find greener pastures for his camels, sheep and goats, bringing everything he needs with him.)

No matter who you are, you can embrace the new Bedouinism. You don't have to live in the Bay Area or the desert or work for a start-up. You don't even need access to a coffeehouse. It's easy, and I'll tell you how. But first, let me tell you why becoming a Bedouin can improve your life.

Boost your career

There are several ways Bedouinism can help your career. The most obvious one is that, when you carry your office with you, you'll be more responsive to colleagues and customers. Instead of replying to requests for a document with: "I'm on the road today, so I'll send it to you when I'm at my desk on Monday," you can reply with: "Here's the document."

the Bose Quiet Comfort headset The author busy at work on the Honduran island of Roatan during an islandwide blackout. This is why you need an extra battery.

A less obvious way the new Bedouinism can help you is that you can get closer to your business. For example, you can spend more time on the road visiting customers and attending more trade shows and other events that give you an edge. You can spend more time with suppliers and other business partners. You can do all this without a major penalty to your normal workload. You'll no longer do business the traditional way, in which you have two work modes: "in the office" and "on the road." Rather, you'll have only one work mode: "wherever I want to be and ready for anything."

You'll also be able to get work done at arbitrary times such as while shopping with your partner or standing in line at the DMV. In such situations, your brain is just sitting there doing nothing. You might as well whip out your phone and crank through some e-mails.

Take longer vacations

There's a lot of negative press these days about people who bring their work with them on vacations. And I agree. If you get only two or three weeks of vacation per year, you shouldn't spend that time working.

Bedouins take a different view. If you have the right kind of job, you can take vacations while you're "on the clock." In other words, you can travel for fun and adventure and keep on working. You can travel a lot more without needing more official vacation time.

I've done it. In August I took a monthlong vacation to Central America, backpacking from one Mayan ruin to the next, and I never officially took time off. I submitted my columns, provided reports and other input, participated in conference calls and interacted via e-mail. I used hotel Wi-Fi connections and local cybercafes to communicate and Skype to make business calls.

Nobody knew I was sunburned, drinking from a coconut and listening to howler monkeys as I replied to their e-mails.

Of course, this may be impossible in your line of work. But you can still be a part-time Bedouin and stretch vacations, taking small bits of time off that you otherwise couldn't.

Spend more time with friends and family

I don't advocate a workaholic lifestyle where you're taking calls constantly and never paying attention to the people in your personal life. But I do believe Bedouinism can get you out of your cubicle or office and into your home or wherever your family and friends are -- If you do it right.

Some critics slam the mobile lifestyle by saying that you never have any time off, that when e-mail comes in over the weekend, you are compelled to reply. But Bedouinism has no effect on the problem of workaholism -- it won't make you a workaholic if you aren't one now, and it won't cure workaholism, either. That's a separate issue (and a separate column). What Bedouinism does do is put you in control of where and when you work.

And remember: Giving yourself the ability to know when business e-mail and calls come in also tells you when they don't come in. My e-mail system sends all important e-mail to my BlackBerry Pearl, 24/7. (Here are details on my e-mail system.) So if my e-mail doesn't "ring" over the weekend, I can relax with the knowledge that nobody is waiting for me. If I do get mail over the weekend, I can choose to ignore it until Monday or, if it's important enough, reply immediately. In either case, I get maximum peace of mind. That's better than ignorance and the worry that some vital message is sitting there for days unread.

Have more fun

Here's the best reason to become a Bedouin: It's fun. Let's face it: offices suck. I'd much rather work at my dining room table, at the beach or -- what the heck -- at a San Francisco coffeehouse with the rest of my tribe. You spend one third of your waking life at work. Why spend a minute more than necessary in an environment where nobody wants to be?

The good news is that Bedouinism is cheaper and easier than ever before, thanks to myriad improvements in mobile hardware, software and services.

Here are my five steps to becoming a Bedouin:

1. Replace your desktop PC with a notebook. For less than $1,500, you can buy a desktop-replacement laptop with a 17-in. screen and tons of memory and storage. Get rid of your desktop computer forever and use one laptop for everything. If you crave the desktop experience, plug in peripherals like mouse, keyboard and giant monitor using a docking station.

People have their own preferences, but I wouldn't buy a laptop with anything smaller than a 17-inch screen. You'll be a lot happier and more productive than you would with a smaller screen. Buy an extra battery and look for hot-swappable components such as the ability to pull out the integrated CD/DVD drive and plug in the extra battery.

Every laptop has Wi-Fi these days, but make sure your new system has built-in Bluetooth, not the plug-in kind. You can use that Bluetooth connection for a variety of essential tasks such as using your cell phone as a modem and synchronizing your cell phone's data with the laptop.

Make sure you have extra protection for both your laptop and the add-on components. There are thousands of options available, from neoprene laptop covers to waterproof, padded briefcases. Find the option that best fits your style.

Aim is more connections per access point

Phil Hochmuth

March 16, 2007 (Network World) --

Foundry Networks Inc. this week launched new wireless LAN access points and controllers that can help users concentrate more connections per access point and stretch WLAN applications beyond simple data access.

With a new location management offering as well, Foundry said the new gear and software will help companies simplify WLAN deployment and management, and consolidate wireless data access with other services -- such as VoIP and location tracking -- on a single 802.11-based infrastructure.

Foundry's IronPort Mobility AP150 access point -- based on technology from Meru Networks -- can support as many as 120 WLAN connections per device, a useful feature for deployments in large public spaces or high-traffic areas. The IronPort Mobility Radio Switch 4000 is an even beefier WLAN access point, with built-in dual 802.11a and 802.11g radios, and support for as many as 256 connections per device. These products, combined with IronPort Wireless Location Manager 2.02 software, let users deploy such services as rogue-access-point detection and location, and WLAN-based employee or asset tracking.

The IronPort Mobility AP150 and IronPort Radio Switch 4000 provide multiple-radio coverage and the ability to deploy an entire WLAN with a single 802.11 channel and a single Secure Service Set Identifier network name. Foundry said this simplifies management and configuration for administrators.

The new IronPort gear also supports in-the-air quality of service (QoS) -- where the devices prioritize certain types of radio traffic between the client and the access point. Other WLAN equipment applies QoS settings to data or voice traffic only once packets hit the wired network at the access point, Foundry said.

The IronPort Wireless Location Manager 2.02 software now identifies the location of unauthorized access points -- for example, an access point set up by a user in a cubicle or at a desk -- as well as unauthorized WLAN clients in a building or campus. This service can be overlaid on top of an existing Foundry WLAN infrastructure and does not require additional access points dedicated to location tracking, the company says.

The Meru-based Foundry WLAN gear competes with products such as Cisco Systems Inc.'s Airespace-based WLAN equipment, as well as gear from Aruba Networks

Vista on a stick: How to flash your OS

This little trick can cut your work in half

Bill O'Brien
March 16, 2007 (Computerworld) -- In a world where there's too much to do -- and too little time to do it in -- we're always looking for shortcuts. So when we stumbled upon a blog entry by Kurt Shintaku over on Windows Live Spaces that promised to let us install Vista from a flash drive instead of an optical disc, there was certainly interest.

Why? Well, if we needed to install Vista on only one computer, it would be a case of "Who cares?" However, running down an aisle of 20 or 50 or 100 PCs with a flash drive in hand, pouring out data at 20MB/sec. – 25MB/sec. sure beats doing the same thing with a disc in hand and an optical drive pumping away at 16MB/sec. – 21MB/sec. Sure, it doesn't sound like much of a speed boost on paper, but when you start multiplying those small transfer rates by the length of each operation and then the number of repetitions, time can fly or it can crawl. The claim for the flash drive was that it soars, as much as 50% faster in some instances (assuming your PC's BIOS will let you boot from a USB device in the first place).

If that wasn't bait enough, fast 4GB flash drives aren't expensive, they can be recycled as Vista ReadyDrives when you're done, and best of all, the instructions for transferring our Vista disc to flash looked so easy a caveman could …, well you get the picture. There were only 10 steps:
diskpart
select disk 1
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
format fs=fat32
assign
exit
xcopy d:\*.* /s/e/f e:\

All right, you've just had a panic attack. What the heck are those? They're command-line instructions. You need to start things off by clicking your way through Start/All Programs/Accessories/Command Prompt. It sets up a DOS (remember that?) command screen. "Diskpart" starts a scripting subroutine that lets you enter line commands (which are the next eight things in the list), after which you exit the subroutine and use xcopy to transfer the contents of the disc to flash. See? Simple.

All right, it would be if it worked, but try as we might -- and we did for hours and hours and hours of iterations -- it didn't. We could manually start the install from the flash drive from a computer that was already up and running, but it wouldn't boot -- and that's important when you're beginning with a blank PC.

The situation was very surprising because Ken Shintaku "works for Microsoft as a Principal Technology Specialist in Southern California." Then we noticed that Ken had stripped some of the front-end stuff from a colleague's blog and, in that way that technicians can often be careless with simple things, he forgot to mention something his colleague did: You need to do this from a Vista PC.

Again there's a why? Under XP, diskpart doesn't seem to recognize the flash device as a drive. It will display the device as a volume, but the remaining diskpart commands couldn't care less about that. Vista, on the other hand, recognizes the flash device as a drive. That's why we could transfer the contents of the Vista disc under XP, but we couldn't use the diskpart commands to make it a boot device. Needless to say, our first Vista install was from disc.
And it still didn't work! You know how it is when you pull a key out of your pocket and it won't unlock the lock even though you're positive it's the correct key. It might be the right key, but if so, it must be the wrong lock. Throwing caution to the wind, we reformatted the flash drive, this time under Vista, and tried again. Still nothing. The diskpart commands weren't working.

One more time into the breach. Formatted again, we took a look at the screen and saw that Vista recognized the drive as H: when there was no G: drive. It had skipped a letter. That shouldn't be a big thing. Diskpart commands work with disk numbers, not letters, and they're assigned consecutively irrespective of the letter assignment. Still, just in case, we took a quick trip into the Control Panel's Disk Administrative Tools application and changed the drive letter to G:.

Suddenly the skies cleared, the waters parted, and the commands worked flawlessly (almost -- Vista automatically reassigned the drive to H: after the "assign" command, and we needed to used that designation when we executed xcopy). The flash drive booted, Vista was installed, and, yes, it was faster than disc. Oh happy day!

But you're not quite done yet. Although the diskpart commands are very straightforward, they're also quite generic as shown. Let's take a last look at the list:

diskpart starts the "diskpart" scripting subroutine
select disk 1 focus all subsequent commands on a particular disk
clean clean all configuration information from the disk
create partition primary create a partition (of type)
select partition 1 move the focus to the partition just created
active mark the partition as an active boot partition
format fs=fat32 format the partition with a fat32 file system
assign assign a drive letter to the disk
exit exit diskpart
xcopy d:\*.* /s/e/f e:\ copy all files and directories from one device to another

After you've run the DOS command prompt screen and entered the diskpart command, you need to focus the rest of the subroutine commands on the disk you're about to work with by selecting it. It will probably not be "1" as shown. In fact, if you use the command as is, you'll destroy the contents of drive 1, whatever it might be.

To find out where your flash drive resides in the hierarchy, use the "list disk" command. (If you type "help" at the diskpart prompt you'll see a list of all available commands.) It will display each disk on your computer with its corresponding number. In our case, our Corsair Readout flash drive was shown as "3" so our select command was actually "select disk 3." From that point on, any command we issued within diskpart was used on disk 3 without needing to mention it specifically again.

The xcopy command is also device-specific. Our optical drive was actually F: and, as mentioned, the flash drive was H:. (After you exit diskpart and before you use xcopy, you can check with Vista to see what your drive assignments are. The DOS command prompt window will just cycle out of sight as you do, but you can select it again to bring it to the top). Our xcopy command, therefore, looked like this:

xcopy f:\*.* /s/e/f h:\

(If you're DOS savvy, you've probably realized that the /s and /e switches are contradictory. /s copies directories and subdirectories, but not empty ones, while /e copies directories and subdirectories, including empty ones. It didn't seem to cause a problem, so we let it be. The /f switch displays the full source and destination file names while copying is going on, and a file called install.wim, the actual installation image itself, will seem to take forever to get from disc to flash. Don't get anxious. Just sweat it out).

When xcopy has completed transferring files, close the command prompt window. That's it. You're done. You can boot from the flash drive and do all your installations from there. Now you just have to figure out what you'll be doing with your free time… (And should you want to use your flash drive as a ReadyDrive when all your installs are completed, you'll have to reformat it so it's blank and, once connected to your Vista computer, right-click its icon and set it to work as one from its Properties box).

Bill O’Brien has written a half-dozen books on computers and technology. He has also written articles on topics ranging from Apple computers to PCs to Linux to commentary on IT hardware decisions.

300

a movie about an ancient war, done entirely in 3D, CGI, and other hi tech computing wizardry

watch














a little about the film

filming done in 60 days flat...
30 top end animation firms hired.
all sets, scenery, done on computer software, only actors real.
extensive use of blue screen...

enjoy

edgar allen poe adapted animation

a tell tale heart

something new

Data Encryption Techniques

Introduction

Often there has been a need to protect information from 'prying eyes'. In the electronic age, information that could otherwise benefit or educate a group or individual can also be used against such groups or individuals. Industrial espionage among highly competitive businesses often requires that extensive security measures be put into place. And, those who wish to exercise their personal freedom, outside of the oppressive nature of governments, may also wish to encrypt certain information to avoid suffering the penalties of going against the wishes of those who attempt to control.

Still, the methods of data encryption and decryption are relatively straightforward, and easily mastered. I[1] have been doing data encryption since my college days, when I used an encryption algorithm to store game programs and system information files on the university mini-computer, safe from 'prying eyes'. These were files that raised eyebrows amongst those who did not approve of such things, but were harmless [we were always careful NOT to run our games while people were trying to get work done on the machine]. I was occasionally asked what this "rather large file" contained, and I once demonstrated the program that accessed it, but you needed a password to get to 'certain files' nonetheless. And, some files needed a separate encryption program to decipher them.

Methods of Encrypting Data

Traditionally, several methods can be used to encrypt data streams, all of which can easily be implemented through software, but not so easily decrypted when either the original or its encrypted data stream are unavailable. (When both source and encrypted data are available, code-breaking becomes much simpler, though it is not necessarily easy). The best encryption methods have little effect on system performance, and may contain other benefits (such as data compression) built in. The well-known 'PKZIP®' utility offers both compression AND data encryption in this manner. Also DBMS packages have often included some kind of encryption scheme so that a standard 'file copy' cannot be used to read sensitive information that might otherwise require some kind of password to access. They also need 'high performance' methods to encode and decode the data.

Ways of encrypting data

1. The 'translation table', meets this need very well. Each 'chunk' of data (usually 1 byte) is used as an offset within a 'translation table', and the resulting 'translated' value from within the table is then written into the output stream. The encryption and decryption programs would each use a table that translates to and from the encrypted data. Further, such a method is relatively straightforward for code breakers to decipher - such code methods have been used for years, even before the advent of the computer. Still, for general "unreadability" of encoded data, without adverse effects on performance, the 'translation table' method lends itself well.

a. A modification to the 'translation table' uses 2 or more tables, based on the position of the bytes within the data stream, or on the data stream itself. Decoding becomes more complex, since you have to reverse the same process reliably. An example of this method might use translation table 'A' on all of the 'even' bytes, and translation table 'B' on all of the 'odd' bytes. Unless a potential code breaker knows that there are exactly 2 tables, even with both source and encrypted data available the deciphering process is relatively difficult.

b. Similar to using a translation table, 'data repositioning' lends itself to use by a computer, but takes considerably more time to accomplish. A buffer of data is read from the input, then the order of the bytes (or other 'chunk' size) is rearranged, and written 'out of order'. The decryption program then reads this back in, and puts them back 'in order'. Often such a method is best used in combination with one or more of the other encryption methods mentioned here, making it even more difficult for code breakers to determine how to decipher your encrypted data. The most common examples are anagrams. Some anagrams are easier than others to decipher, but a well written anagram is a brain teaser nonetheless, especially if it's intentionally misleading.

2. My favorite methods, however, involve something that only computers can do: word/byte rotation and XOR bit masking. If you rotate the words or bytes within a data stream, using multiple and variable direction and duration of rotation, in an easily reproducable pattern, you can quickly encode a stream of data with a method that is nearly impossible to break. In some cases, you may want to detect whether data has been tampered with, and encrypt some kind of 'checksum' into the data stream itself. This is useful not only for authorization codes but for programs themselves.

a. A virus that infects such a 'protected' program would no doubt neglect the encryption algorithm and authorization/checksum signature. A cyclic redundancy check is one typically used checksum method. It uses bit rotation and an XOR mask to generate a 16-bit or 32-bit value for a data stream, such that one missing bit or 2 interchanged bits are more or less guaranteed to cause a 'checksum error'. The method is somewhat well documented, and standard. But, a deviation from the standard CRC method might be useful for the purpose of detecting a problem in an encrypted data stream, or within a program file that checks itself for viruses.

3. Key-Based Encryption Algorithms:

a. One very important feature of a good encryption scheme is the ability to specify a 'key' or 'password' of some kind, and have the encryption method alter itself such that each 'key' or 'password' produces a different encrypted output, which requires a unique 'key' or 'password' to decrypt. This can either be a 'symmetrical' key (both encrypt and decrypt use the same key) or 'asymmetrical' (encrypt and decrypt keys are different). The popular 'PGP' public key encryption, and the 'RSA' encryption that it's based on, uses an 'asymmetrical' key. The encryption key, the 'public key', is significantly different from the decryption key, the 'private key', such that attempting to derive the private key from the public key involves many hours of computing time, making it impractical at best.

b. . In nearly all cases, if an operation is performed on 'a', resulting in 'b', you can perform an equivalent operation on 'b' to get 'a'.

c. In the case of the RSA encryption algorithm, it uses very large prime numbers to generate the public key and the private key. Although it would be possible to factor out the public key to get the private key (a trivial matter once the 2 prime factors are known), the numbers are so large as to make it very impractical to do so.

d. What PGP does (and most other RSA-based encryption schemes do) is encrypt a symmetrical key using the public key, then the remainder of the data is encrypted with a faster algorithm using the symmetrical key. The symmetrical itself key is randomly generated, so that the only way to get it would be by using the private key to decrypt the RSA-encrypted symmetrical key.

e. Example: Suppose you want to encrypt data (let's say this page) with a key of 12345. Using your public key, you RSA-encrypt the 12345, and put that at the front of the data stream (possibly followed by a marker or preceded by a data length to distinguish it from the rest of the data). THEN, you follow the 'encrypted key' data with the encrypted page text, encrypted using your favorite method and the key '12345'. Upon receipt, the decrypt program looks for (and finds) the encrypted key, uses the 'private key' to decrypt it, and gets back the '12345'. It then locates the beginning of the encrypted data stream, and applies the key '12345' to decrypt the data. The result: a very well protected data stream that is reliably and efficiently encrypted, transmitted, and decrypted. [2]

4. A brand new 'multi-phase' method (invented by ME)

a. I have (somewhat) recently developed and tested an encryption method that is (in my opinion) nearly uncrackable. The reasons why will be pretty obvious when you take a look at the method itself. I shall explain it in prose, primarily to avoid any chance of prosecution by those 'GUMMINT' authorities who think that they oughta be able to snoop on anyone they wish, having a 'back door' to any encryption scheme, etc. Well, if I make the METHOD public, they should have the same chance as ANYONE ELSE for decrypting things that use this method.

i. Using a set of numbers (let's say a 128-bit key, or 256-bit key if you use 64-bit integers), generate a repeatable but highly randomized pseudo-random number sequence (see below for an example of a pseudo-random number generator).

ii. 256 entries at a time, use the random number sequence to generate arrays of "cipher translation tables" as follows:

1. fill an array of integers with 256 random numbers (see below)

2. Sort the numbers using a method (like pointers) that lets you know the original position of the corresponding number

3. Using the original positions of the now-sorted integers, generate a table of randomly sorted numbers between 0 and 255. If you can't figure out how to make this work, you could give up now... but on a kinder note, I've supplied some source below to show how this might be done - generically, of course.

4. Now, generate a specific number of 256-byte tables. Let the random number generator continue "in sequence" for all of these tables, so that each table is different.

5. Next, use a "shotgun technique" to generate "de-crypt" cipher tables. Basically, if a maps to b, then b must map to a. So, b[a[n]] = n. get it? ('n' is a value between 0 and 255). Assign these values in a loop, with a set of 256-byte 'decrypt' tables that correspond to the 256-byte 'encrypt' tables you generated in the preceding step. NOTE: I first tried this on a P5 133Mhz machine, and it took 1 second to generate the 2 256x256 tables (128kb total). With this method, I inserted additional randomized 'table order', so that the order in which I created the 256-byte tables were part of a 2nd pseudo-random sequence, fed by 2 additional 16-bit keys.

6. Now that you have the translation tables, the basic cipher works like this: the previous byte's encrypted value is the index of the 256-byte translation table. Alternately, for improved encryption, you can use more than one byte, and either use a 'checksum' or a CRC algorithm to generate the index byte. You can then 'mod' it with the # of tables if you use less than 256 256-byte tables. Assuming the table is a 256x256 array, it would look like this:
crypto1 = a[crypto0][value] where 'crypto1' is the encrypted byte, and 'crypto0' is the previous byte's encrypted value (or a function of several previous values). Naturally, the 1st byte will need a "seed", which must be known. This may increase the total cipher size by an additional 8 bits if you use 256x256 tables. Or, you can use the key you generated the random list with, perhaps taking the CRC of it, or using it as a "lead in" encrypted byte stream. Incidentally, I have tested this method using 16 'preceding' bytes to generate the table index, starting with the 128-bit key as the initial seed of '16 previous bytes'. I was then able to encrypt about 100kbytes per second with this algorithm, after the initial time delay in creating the table.

7. On the decrypt, you do the same thing. Just make sure you use 'encrypted' values as your table index both times. Or, use 'decrypted' values if you'd rather. They must, of course, match.

5. However, if you're at a loss for a random sequence consider a FIBBONACCI sequence, using 2 DWORD's (like from your encryption key) as "seed" numbers, and possibly a 3rd DWORD as an 'XOR' mask. An algorithm for generating a random sequence of numbers, not necessarily connected with encrypting data, might look as follows:

  unsigned long dw1, dw2, dw3, dwMask;
  int i1;
  unsigned long aRandom[256]
 dw1 = {seed #1};
  dw2 = {seed #2};
  dwMask = {seed #3};
// this gives you 3 32-bit "seeds", or 96 bits total

  for(i1=0; i1 < style="">
  {
    dw3 = (dw1 + dw2) ^ dwMask;
    aRandom[i1] = dw3;
    dw1 = dw2;
    dw2 = dw3;
  }

If you wanted to generate a list of random sequence numbers, let's say between zero and the total number of random numbers in the list, you could try something like THIS:

int __cdecl MySortProc(void *p1, void *p2)

{

  unsigned long **pp1 = (unsigned long **)p1;

  unsigned long **pp2 = (unsigned long **)p2;

  if(**pp1 < **pp2)

    return(-1);

  else if(**pp1 > *pp2)

    return(1);

   return(0);

}
 ...

  int i1;

  unsigned long *apRandom[256];

  unsigned long aRandom[256];  // same array as before, in this case

  int aResult[256];  // results go here

  for(i1=0; i1 <>
  {
    apRandom[i1] = aRandom + i1;
  }

// now sort it
  qsort(apRandom, 256, sizeof(*apRandom), MySortProc);
// final step - offsets for pointers are placed into output array
  for(i1=0; i1 <>
  {
    aResult[i1] = (int)(apRandom[i1] - aRandom);
  }
...
  
The result in 'aResult' should be a randomly sorted (but unique) array of integers with values between 0 and 255, inclusive. Such an array could be useful, for example, as a byte for byte translation table, one that could easily and reliably be reproduced based solely upon a short length key (in this case, the random number generator seed); however, in the spirit of the 'GUTLESS DISCLAIMER' (below), such a table could also have other uses, perhaps as a random character or object positioner for a game program, or as a letter scrambler for an anagram generator. 
  
GUTLESS DISCLAIMER: The sample code above does not in and of itself constitute an encryption algorithm, or necessarily represent a component of one. It is provided solely for the purpose of explaining some of the more obscure concepts discussed in prose within this document. Any other use is neither proscribed nor encouraged by the author of this document, S.F.T. Inc., or any individual or organization that is even remotely connected with this web site.
    
    
  
[1] The author is a employee of Cisco, and the following extract is taken from his recollections. 
  
  
  
[2] ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/crypt/cryptography/asymmetric/rsa 
  
  

a good animation should be

SNW: New storage standard to include metadata search

The eXtensible Access Method is focused on searching fixed content

Lucas Mearian

April 03, 2006 (Computerworld) -- SAN DIEGO -- The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) announced today that it is well on its way to developing an interface standard that would allow companies to perform internal searches for any data using Google-like tools, based on metadata associated with a file, image, audio file, database or even e-mail.

The proposed standard, called Extensible Access Method, or XAM, is focused on searching fixed content and is expected to allow users to find information across multivendor disk and tape systems to retrieve data requested by regulators or for legal discovery purposes.

“If you’ve got 19 days to provide information to someone, you can use these common API sets to access the data,” Matt Brisse, technology strategist and vice chairman of the board for SNIA, said at Storage Networking World here today.

The standard could also allow a hospital to retrieve a patient’s old X-rays, as well as any electronic documents associated with it, such as doctors’ notes.

Suzie Dahle, CIO of DXP Enterprises, Inc., said being able to search data and restore it piecemeal versus having to restore an entire database, would greatly reduce the labor involved with data restores.

Brisse said 36 of SNIA’s member companies are working on the XAM interface, “so this is a full-court press.” SNIA’s Fixed Content Aware Storage Technical Working Group expects to demonstrate the standard in early 2007.

Ray Dunn, a member of SNIA’s board of directors, said the group is working on three separate updated versions of the Storage Management Initiative Specification, or SMI-S, which defines the way multivendor systems communicate with each other. SNIA is currently working to get versions of SMI-S ratified as an international standard by the International Standards Organization.

Dunn said Version 1.02 is being reviewed by SNIA members, and Version 1.03 has just been ratified by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and is being pushed to the International Standards Organization for ratification. Version 1.1 is on track to be submitted to the InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards for ratification as an ANSI standard.

Dunn said SNIA is particularly focused on Version 1.1 of SMI-S, which defines interfaces between network-attached storage and iSCSI-based devices. SMI-S v1.1 deals with device descriptions and the services associated with them, such as copying data from one array to another.

“It will have the capability of copying data from one host to another, regardless of the vendor,” Dunn said.

DXP Enterprises, which distributes maintenance, repair, and operating equipment and products to inudstries such as oil and gas companies, recently installed a disaster recovery architecture that includes NAS arrays that replicate data between two sites 200 miles apart.

Dahle said she's happy to hear the SNIA is developing replication standards "because while you can get the data over there, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s usable or it’s right. You have to be able to work on both sides of that."
Blogs by SNW Attendees:

• Jason McDaniel: Soap and Security
• Jeff Boles: So where's the SAN brain going to be?
• Jeff Boles: Grids and storage virtualization
• Jeff Boles: Needing storage policy, practices, and processes

Microsoft, Dell team up on NAS/iSCSI array

The array is aimed at competing with NetApp's FAS250 array

Lucas Mearian

December 06, 2006 (Computerworld) -- Dell Inc. and Microsoft Corp. today announced a storage array that can serve up either file or block-based data and has software that supports features such as data snapshots and replication.

Designed for small and midsize businesses, the Dell PowerVault NX1950 comes loaded with Microsoft Windows Unified Data Storage Server 2003, offering file server and IP storage-area network (SAN) support based on the iSCSI protocol. The PowerVault NX1950 comes in single or two-node cluster configurations and includes a redundant back-end storage array -- the new Dell MD1000 -- scaling up to 45 serial-attached SCSI (SAS) drives and 13.5TB capacity. The MD1000 supports up to four host servers.

Microsoft obtained the iSCSI driver for the array from its acquisition of String Bean Software in June (see "Microsoft bites into String Bean for iSCSI technology").

The array also supports CIFS (Windows) and NFS (Linux, Unix, and Macintosh) protocols, and it has security and mapping functions familiar to Windows and Unix administrators. The NX1950 also comes with Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 capabilities, such as single-instance storage, full indexed text search, distributed file services, and management of user quotas, file screening and storage reports.

Eric Endebrock, senior manager of Dell Enterprise Storage, said the array's SAS drives offer a combined 92,000 I/O per second from four SAS ports. Endebrock said the NX1950 is designed to compete against Network Appliance Inc.'s FAS250 and FAS270 arrays.

"We're getting great performance for a cluster that can be very highly available," Endebrock said. "It's very affordable for customers to get into using the serial-attached SCSI drives.

Bala Kasiviswanathan, group product manager for Windows Storage at Microsoft, said administrators can manage their volumes, create shares for NFS or CIFS and manage their iSCSI target all from a single interface.

Another first for Microsoft is the array's automated clustering capability. "So people can set up multinode clusters of these devices and really have a highly available solution," Kasiviswanathan said, adding that the clusters scale up to four nodes.

"Last but not least, we've added remote management capability for this box from a non-Windows client," he said.

Early in 2007, Dell and Microsoft plan an upgrade to the NX1950 that will allow greater clustering and drive expansion, as well as adding Fibre Channel SAN gateway capabilities.

The NX1950 starts at about $17,000. A 4.5TB configured array starts at about $24,000.

Iomega terabyte-size NAS server sports swappable drives

Peter Cohen

January 23, 2007 (MacCentral) -- Iomega Corp. today announced the availability of its StorCenter Pro NAS 150d, a network-attached storage server that features 1TB of storage capacity and hot-swappable hard disk drive mechanisms. It is priced at $799.

The 1TB model features four hot-swappable SATA II 250GB hard disk drive mechanisms. A 2TB version that uses 500GB mechanisms is available for $1,499. You can configure the server using RAID Level 0 (striping) for improved performance, RAID Level 1 (mirroring) for redundancy or RAID Level 5 (striping plus parity) for maximum security.

The StorCenter Pro NAS 150d has a Gigabit Ethernet port and a USB 2.0 port for sharing up to four printers on the network. It supports Mac OS X, Windows and Linux operating systems. A five-user license of EMC Retrospect Express is also included, for network-based backups.

Mac system requirements call for Mac OS X v10.2.7 or later.

HP integrates Cisco switch, adds encryption storage arrays

HP added encryption to its Data Protector Software

Deni Connor

February 07, 2007 (Network World) -- Hewlett-Packard Co. this week launched an enhanced midrange storage array, a new Fibre Channel switch for its BladeSystem servers, a network-attached storage (NAS) gateway and encryption for its data protection software.

At the HP Asia Pacific StorageWorks Conference in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, the company added the ability to handle both application or block data and file data to its Enterprise Virtual Array family of arrays – the EVA4000, EVA6000 and EVA8000 in Windows or Linux environments. Called EVA File Services, the software lets customers virtualize their storage into a single pool that can be managed centrally. HP’s EVA File Services is a combination of its EVA arrays and file server clustering software it resells from PolyServe. The product, available in a two-node starter kit, is $90,000. It is expected to ship next month.

The Fibre Channel switch – the Cisco MDS 9124e Fabric Switch for HP c-Class BladeSystem -- is a 4Gbit/sec switch that fits in the BladeSystem enclosure and shares power and cooling with the server blades. The switch is available in 12- or 24-port configurations. Expected to be available next month, it costs $6,000 and $9,500, respectively.

The HP ProLiant DL585 G2 Storage Server is a NAS gateway that provides multiple protocols including iSCSI connectivity and features Serial Advanced Technology Attachment and Serial Attached SCSI drives. It is intended to be installed as a front-end device to a storage-area network (SAN) and provide file and print serving. The DL585 uses the Microsoft Windows Unified Data Storage Server 2003 operating system, which allows for combined SAN and NAS connectivity.

The G2 Storage Server is the second array to use Microsoft’s storage technology. Dell introduced the Dell PowerVault NX1950 in December 2006. The G2 Storage Server starts at $19,000.

Further, the company added 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard encryption to its Data Protector Software to secure data in flight and at rest. HP Data Protector Software automates the backup and recovery of data from disk or tape over distance for disaster recovery purposes. Data Protector Software starts at $490 per system backed up.

EqualLogic adds to SAS storage array product line

Technology automatically load-balances between storage arrays

Robert Mullins

February 20, 2007 (IDG News Service) -- Storage appliance maker EqualLogic Inc. says its newest product improves performance by doing a better job of balancing the data load among storage arrays in a network.

EqualLogic Tuesday introduced the PS3900XV, the third model in the PS3000 line that debuted last September. The product is a Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) array and is designed to store data from high-demand applications such as Oracle or Microsoft SQL databases, or the Microsoft Exchange messaging and collaboration platform.

Like the previous PS3800VX, the 3900 operates at up to 15,000 rpm but features larger storage capacity -- 4.8TB, versus 2.3TB for the 3800.

EqualLogic says its SAS storage array can support more end users yet requires less storage capacity, based on the Fibre Channel protocol for transferring data, which is faster and has higher capacity than SCSI, said John Joseph, vice president of marketing for EqualLogic.

"There is a lot of concern in the industry about 1GB [SCSI] Ethernet and how it competes against 4GB Fibre Channel. Well, the wire is not the bottleneck," said Joseph.

EqualLogic said it moves data faster across its storage arrays by automatically balancing the load among storage devices.

"We are able to load-balance the workload ... without the user ever having to click on a window to reconfigure or rebalance or retune, or do anything manually," Joseph said.

Gartner Inc. forecasts that SAS unit shipments will surpass those of Fibre Channel in 2008 and continue to grow faster. Even though Fibre Channel offers better performance than SCSI, SCSI is cheaper and is a more well-known protocol, said Gartner analyst Stanley Zaffos.

SAS unit growth will be strongest in the small-to-midsize business market as those companies' storage needs grow, said Zaffos.

According to 2006 research from IDC, EqualLogic holds a 19% market share for SAS disks, based on units shipped, second only to Network Appliance Inc. It also competes with storage start-ups such as LeftHand Networks Inc. and Nexsan Technologies Inc.

The PS3900XV, which will begin shipping in March, carries a list price of $67,000, although Joseph said it will be more expensive in international markets.

Dell, EMC ship SMB storage with more kick for the buck

February 20, 2007 (Network World) -- Dell Inc. today unveiled storage systems for small and midsize businesses that let customers deploy storage-area networking and tape automation technology more affordably.

The Dell/EMC CX3-10 is a entry-level storage system that can attach to either the SAN via Fibre Channel or Gigabit Ethernet network via iSCSI. It accommodates either high-capacity Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA) or high-performing Fibre Channel drives, which can be intermixed in the same array for a total capacity of 30TB. The 1U (1.75-inch) high storage processor contains four Fibre Channel and four iSCSI connections.

The Dell/EMC CX3-10 is shipped with PowerPath failover and management software factory installed. It is managed locally or remote via the Navisphere Task Bar software. The Dell/EMC CX3-10 supports as many as eight directly connected or six SAN connected Windows, Linux, Solaris, HP-UX or AIX host computers.

Using 500GB Serial ATA or 73GB, 146GB or 300GB Fibre Channel drives, the CX3-10 starts at $22,000.

The PowerVault TL2000 and the PowerVault TL4000 tape libraries support LTO-3 (Limited Tape Open) media. Priced the same as tape autoloaders, the TL2000 and TL4000 let SMB customers consolidate their data protection and archiving environments.

The PowerVault TL2000 and TL4000 hold 44 tape cartridges for a total capacity ranging from 9.6TB to 17.6TB. They are available in 2U (3.5-inch) high or 4U (7-inch) high configurations. Each tape library is rack-mountable and customer installable. The TL series starts at $9,300.

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http://www.iese.uiuc.edu/pdlab/Papers/Customization.pdf

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trailer general animation

Enter the 'Penryn' processors

Intel's 45nm process will manifest itself in a microprocessor architecture known only by the code name "Penryn." Not surprisingly, Intel has kept a fairly tight lid on Penryn, but based on rumors and speculation by analysts and experts, it appears that these processors will be based on the Core 2 architecture, but will take advantage of the 45nm processor to provide larger L2 caches and increased performance. (It's worth noting that Penryn will also serve as Intel's mobile processor architecture, with laptop CPUs scheduled for release in early 2008.)

In terms of specific processor releases, Computerworld has heard of a few Penryn-based CPUs that should be released in late 2007. Two dual-core, single-die processors known as "Ridgefield" and "Wolfdale," respectively, could be released as early as the third quarter of 2007. There has been no concrete information regarding the clock speeds of these two processors, but reliable early information has indicated that the Ridgefield processor will have 3MB of shared L2 cache, while the Wolfdale variant will have 6MB of shared L2 cache.

One of Intel's most potentially exciting desktop CPUs is code-named "Yorkfield" and appears to be a 45nm-process quad-core processor that uses a single die (referred to as "native" quad-core) and has an astonishing 12MB of shared L2 cache. When combined with the performance-per-watt advantages of the 45nm processor, this could be Intel's extreme high-end CPU of the year if it is released on schedule at the end of Q3 or the beginning of Q4 2007.

Finally, although the company has not confirmed this in any way, it's entirely plausible that Intel could combine two Yorkfield processors at the end of 2007 to create an octo-core, dual-die, 24MB L2 cache monster.

All the Penryn processors described above will be compatible with Intel's new Bearlake chip set.

As a teaser to what may come beyond 2007, rumors have swirled around a future-gen Intel microprocessor architecture code-named "Nehalem" that will be released in 2008. No details on this architecture have been revealed to date.

Smaller, faster, cooler, more efficient: The 2007 mobile CPU road map

AMD is pitting an innovative new CPU design against Intel's new Centrino platform and 45nm fabrication process. The mobile chip wars are hotter than ever.

February 06, 2007 (Computerworld) -- Ask anyone to name their No. 1 laptop grievance and you'll repeatedly hear two words: "battery power." In an era when seemingly everyone is switching from desktops to laptops, the inability to compute for more than four or five straight hours without being plugged in feels outdated.

Thankfully, it appears that market leaders Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) understand this shortcoming and are moving to address it. Both last year and this year, the all-important notion of performance-per-watt has dominated the spotlight. Greater performance-per-watt results in cooler inside temperatures and increased power efficiencies. For laptops, both of these elements are critical, and addressing them usually translates into longer battery life.

Typically, laptop processor speeds have increased at the cost of battery life. However, with last year's release of its mobile Core 2 Duo processors, Intel made great strides in increasing performance while decreasing power consumption. But can the chip giant keep it up?

Considering how important the mobile computing category is to overall profits, it's clear that AMD will have to deliver some substantially better products to make a dent in Intel's dominance. Can AMD deliver?

Keep reading for details -- including a surprising and novel approach to CPU design by AMD.

Editor's Note: Looking for information on desktop, rather than mobile, CPUs? See "Beyond Dual Core: 2007 Desktop CPU Road Map."

Beyond Dual Core: 2007 Desktop CPU Road Map

January 01, 2007 (Computerworld) -- What a difference a year makes. One year ago, we were dazed, dazzled and beguiled by the arrival of dual-core processors. Offerings from Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. had analysts, journalists, IT professionals and enthusiasts all gushing with praise for a bright new multitasking future.

Amazingly, both Intel and AMD were able to deliver on the potential of dual-core processing. Throughout 2006, desktop PCs played host to a series of processors that, while slower at the clock-speed level, were faster in real-life usage, allowing for unprecedented amounts of multitasking. (For more about both companies' current lineups of desktop CPUs, see our CPU Buyer's Guide.)

As the calendar flips to 2007, we are firmly entrenched in the world of multicore processors. And based upon the confidential road maps of both Intel and AMD, it is clear that dual-core CPUs are only the launching point for the future of the microprocessor. In 2007, quad cores and even eight-core CPUs will be available. By 2009, there's a good chance that sixteen-core processors will be on the market.

As we enter 2007, five key questions regarding the pending year's CPU battle are on our minds:

1. Will AMD be able to continue its dominance in the U.S. desktop market?
2. How will Intel capitalize upon the success of Core 2?
3. Will AMD be able to match the success of Intel's Core 2 processors?
4. When will the market see true quad-core and even eight-core processors?
5. What surprises do the chip makers have up their sleeves?

With all this in mind, we're taking an extended look at the processors and processor trends you can expect to see in 2007. Not surprisingly, neither AMD nor Intel was willing to divulge many specifics regarding their CPU releases for the coming year. So we scoured the Net, pored over statements from both companies and dug into reports from the host of analysts and experts who cover them.

It's worth noting that much of the information in this road map is preliminary and code-name-level information. As such, the specifics of the processors could change in coming months.

All secrets are revealed within.