Holographic storage moves ahead, backing up just got even harder

The latest Technology Review reports that a new technique has made rewritable holographic memory one step closer to reality. Holographic memory has just started moving in to the marketplace but at this stage it only uses write once memory.

This new technique involves "reengineered versions of proteins produced by bacteria-like organisms (I'm not sure what it means but it sure sounds cool), increases data retrieval speeds and improves data density to about 500 Gigabytes per square inch. Once again, I have no idea how that would translate to the consumer market, but considering that multi-platter magnetic disk drives are only just reaching the terabyte stage, I'm going to assuming that it will be a whopping great big amount.

With hard drive space climbing all the time and the tantalising possibility of holographic memory exploding the size of consumer storage, the question must be asked:

If we have these massive amounts of storage space at our fingertips, why do most backup solutions still suck?

Massive amounts of storage space encourages laziness in users. When you rarely hit a wall when it comes to disk space, you are less inclined to take a critical look at the data you do have. It doesn't help that every backup solution I have ever tried was painful, convoluted and inflexible. I have an awkward and unproductive time trying to back hundreds of megs at a time. I have no idea how painful backing up 500GB per square inch would be, but I fail to see how it could be a good experience.

Until backup solutions become more user friendly, holographic memory is only going to make things harder for the average user to keep their information safe.

Image courtesy of the Technology Review. Photo credit: Amitabh Avasthi

Storage robot? Want!

I first saw a video of Drobo in action a couple of months ago. The Ars Technica review of Drobo just confirms for me that I really, really, really wish that I had the spare cash to throw at this little bad boy robot.

Program your own console

This is so cool - the Hydra console game dev kit from Thinkgeek, which allows you to program your own console games.

Seems like the perfect summer holiday project for me and the boy in about 10 years time.

Via Boing Boing - [permalink]

More on Surface

Ars Technica has a short write up based on a Q&A session with Microsoft developers on the wonder that is Surface.

Interesting facts include:

• it's not a touch-screen as movement is detected by 5 cameras below the surface of the table
  
• inanimate objects can be recognised if they have a tiny "tag" attached
  
• the tag doesn't use RFID but a series of dots to encode information (a "domino")
  
• the tables run on a Core2-Duo, 2GB of RAM and apparently a "newish" video card
  
• at US$5,000-$10,000 (AUS$6,000-$12,000), they're not likely to enter the general consumer market anytime soon, but hey, who knows?
  

I still want one. Oh yes. I still want one.

Breaking the Surface

There have been little rumours floating around this past week that Microsoft was going to launch some kind of iPhone killer, complete with funky touch screen technology.

It turns out that the rumours were half true. Microsoft don't appear to have been working on an iPhone killer (yet), but the funky touch screen technology has seen the light of day - Microsoft Surface (needs Flash).

A 30-inch touch-screen display set in a table-top, Surface appears to have the goods to be very cool and perhaps even innovative. Once again, Microsoft is trying to be a hardware company. It certainly hasn't worked all that well in the past. Origami and the Tablet PC didn't exactly set the world on fire, and the much hyped Vista Sideshow technology for laptops hasn't really gained much traction either. Of course, the less said about the Zune the better for everyone, in my opinion.

History notwithstanding, Surface has a lot of potential, depending on who Microsoft chooses to partner with (currently including Sheraton Hotels and T-Mobile), and the likelihood that the platform will be open to at least some degree.

There some videos on the Surface website (screenshot from one of the videos is above). While they look very impressive, these are probably just mock-ups and not footage of working prototypes. I'm not Microsoft fan-boy, but even I can see the potential that these sort of setups could have.

Found via Read/Write Web [permalink]

It's all about the quantum

A lot has been going down in the world of quantum in the last few weeks:

• D-Wave Systems demoed their quantum computer in Vancouver on 13 Feb 2007.


• However, qualified sceptics, as well as the usual unqualified ones remain somewhat unconvinced D-wave has what it think it was (but hey, at least it can play sudoku)


• and in other quantum news, researchers from Toshiba, University of Cambridge and Imperial College, London, have plugged some loopholes, making quantum cryptography more secure
  

Actually, it's not all that exciting after all. Maybe I just collapsed the wrong wave-state.

Geek News - Macworld 2007

I picked a good week to return from holidays it would seem.

Anyone even vaguely jacked in would know that the big hype over the last few days has been the Apple iPhone (not to be confused with the pre-emptive Linksys iPhone – but more on that later). Sexy, sleek, shiny, just begging to be touched, the long-rumoured iPhone has finally arrived (subject to US FCC approval which is not likely to be forthcoming before June 2007).

Picture courtesy of Apple, Inc

The tech specs are readily available and have been repeated ad infinitum so I don’t need to repeat them in detail here. Notable features though are its iPod-in-a-phone nature (with Nano-like capacities of 4 and 8 gigs), a honking big “multi-touch” widescreen, a single hardware button, runs on a fully featured OSX, Wi-Fi (although it apparently doesn’t sync via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth but through plain ol’ USB – however, running on OSX should lead to delicious opportunities for VOIP usage in wireless hotspots) and as it is a GSM phone, no 3G (yet).

There have been the usual round of complaints including capacity (4 and 8 GB seems at least equal to, if not more than, anything else on the market), battery life (5 hours talk time seems about right to me, as does 16 hours music playback – both figures would appear to dump all over the appalling battery life of my Motorola V3x which is admittedly a 3G phone), only a 2 MP camera and the fact that it’s an Apple product.

To me, the biggest attraction of an iPhone is interoperability. If my iPod is anything to go by, the iPhone should integrate very smoothly with iTunes, making it easy to sync contacts, calendar, music, video (that multi-touch widescreen looks tasty) and, if you’re bored, be fun to make phone calls on, too. For what it’s worth, if Apple nails the sync, I think everything else will become secondary. I wish my Moto would sync properly :( My no-brainer prediction is that when the iPhone handsets actually hit the shelves, an iTunes 8 will be launched, complete with beefed up productivity components. You read it here first…

Anyway, launch dates for the iPhone are likely to be June/July 2007 for the US with a scheduled Q4 2007 release for Europe and a 2008 release for Asia. Apparently by this time, the iPhone will also have 3G but I have only seen this information coming from unnamed “Apple sources” (hmm, apple sauces *drool*), I’ll take that with a grain of salt. I’ll wait and see if Australia is included with the technically similar European networks or the geographically similar Asian region.

The other big news from Macworld was the launch of the AppleTV, formerly known as iTV. With an Intel processor, 40GB hard drive, “draft n” wireless and HDMI, it looks smooth. In the event I ever own a Mac and a widescreen TV (the tech specs only state that it supports a 16:9 ratio), I’m right on the AppleTV train. For the less geeky, “draft n” is the proposed next standard in wireless – it’s fast enough to be able to stream HD video content, but the standard has yet to be ratified. It might seem that Apple is taking a bit of a punt on this, but all the new Intel Macs have 802.11n wireless. Unlikely as it might be, if the draft n standard is changed, AppleTV will still work with Macs so they’re still pretty much ahead of the game.

Picture courtesy of Apple, Inc





Something else that isn’t gaining much attention is that Apple have officially changed their name from Apple Computers, Inc to just plain old Apple, Inc, in recognition of the fact that these days “pure” computers forms only one part of their growing business. Time will tell if this will lead to further difficulties in the already strained relationship between Apple, Inc and Apple Records.

Finally, as something of an aside, Cisco (owners of the Linksys brand) is suing Apple for use of their trademark. As (in)famously reported on Gizmodo, Cisco launched their iPhone under the Linksys brand in late December 2006, which is their right given they’ve owned the rights to that name in the US since 2000 (although it’s been reported that Apple own the rights to iPhone in Australia and the UK and have done so since 2002). Hours after Apple’s launch, Cisco issued a press release saying they had been in talks with Apple for quite a while about the usage of the name and that an agreement would be forthcoming as soon as some final details could be agreed to. The following day Cisco announced they were suing Apple.

I wonder who lied to whom?

The brain train

Japanese company Hitachi has embiggened the world of brain-control interfaces with a device that can control a model train through measuring blood flow in the brain with optical topography.

The Google translated page is a little hard to follow, but it looks like the device measures changes in the quantity of blood in the brain which is related to mental activity. This has the potential to assist the "difficult people" in the future ( which is I'm sure a poor translation of "disable" - man, I love Asian languages translated into English by a machine*). The big bonus of this technique is that it is a man-machine interface that is non-invasive. I'm sure most people would prefer a funky helmet to a 1/4" jack in the base of the skull.

Personally, I'd like the 1/4" jack but that may just be because I read Neuromancer too many times at an impressionable age.

* Completely off the point but my favourite bit of translation from the above link is the following translation for what I'm assuming is a pointer to a printer-friendly link:

As for the one which is printed please view this

Found via Engadget [permalink]

NVIDIA buys PortalPlayer

The jostling for position in the potentially lucrative mobile video market continues unabated.

AMD's purchase of ATI seemed like a match made in heaven when it came to consumer-level mobile apps. ATI has long had its fingers in the mobile pie, providing graphic-chip tech for portable devices like PDAs and mobile phones. Coupled with AMDs CPU know-how, the sky seemed the limit. Ultra-Mobile PCs (UMPCs) seem to be getting more press, 3G mobile phones are packed with more and more features like games, onboard video cameras and video conferencing and every second small-time electronics corp appears to be releasing a portable DAP (Digital Audio Player) with onboard video capability to compete with iPods, Sansas and Zunes of the world.

Now it looks like competition has become just a little hotter as NVIDIA is acquiring PortalPlayer (subject to approval by regulators). For anyone unfamiliar, PortalPlayer is the company behind the system-on-a-chip technology that has powered DAPs like the iPod and the Sandisk Sansa e200 series. Perhaps more exciting is PortalPlayer's Preface, which is a tiny LCD screen on the lid of your laptop called Windows Sideshow which displays data, pictures and other widget-like functionality. It's low power so it can run for many hours, apparently even without the laptop being powered up.

After the AMD-ATI merger, it looks like NVIDIA are trying to ensure that they are more than just a graphics procesor company, ripe for the pickings. This could be the toehold into the handheld graphics world they've been looking for.

"Kentsfield" coming soon

Extremetech are reporting that the "Kentsfield" quad-core will be released 1 November with a shipping date of around 15 November.

As I've mentioned previously, the Kentsfield is more like a dual dual-core rather than a true quad-core implementation. The real quad-core goodness probably won't launch until first or second quarter next year.

AMD are expected to launch their 4x4 quadish-core solution around the same time, according to the same article.

80 cores? wtf?

The blogosphere has been abuzz with a prototype chip revealed by Intel at the Intel Developer's Forum that has 80 cores. 80. Apparently within 5 years as well.

Sony is having enough trouble getting people to write games that will take full advantage of the 7 extra cores that will be available on the variant of the Cell chip they're using in the Playstation 3. Even more to the point, the vast majority of the software I use doesn't even support dual core setups. 80 cores? *Pfwah* to that I say.

If compiler technology and coding techniques has advanced sufficiently to take advantage of even half that capacity, I will be very surprised (and happy - I mean, 80 cores! That would rock).

AMD Torrenza - Open Hardware Continues

Hot on the heels of my discovery of the OpenSparc initiative of Sun, I've come late to yet another open hardware party - AMD's Torrenza. Torrenza is a "socket compatibility" technology, where AMD has opened up the design for their Opteron sockets (the CPU technology they use for servers and other high-end uses) so that other "silicon designers" can design and build in a preexisting x86 environment with supported motherboards and chipsets that will already be in production, with resulting savings in economy of scale.

(x86, for anyone that isn't entirely familiar, is the basic processor architecture for just about all CPUs currently produced for consumers today. The x86 title stems from the early chips which would be most familiar to people as the old 286, 386 and 486 processors produced by Intel. The 86 nomenclature was eventually dropped in favour of names that could be trademarked (eg Pentium, Athlon) but as the basic architecture has remained the same, the x86 designation has remained to describe the family of processor technologies. While there have been a range of additions to the architecture such as AMDs x86-64 (among others) which changed the architecture from 32bit to 64bit, the basics are still the same, even with new multi-core processors)

While Torrenza was first announced back in June 2006, it's in the news again this week as AMD announced their plans for Torrenza with a range of partners including Sun, Cray, IBM and Dell. I'm still undecided as to whether this is a forward-thinking, strategic move from AMD to make sure that their motherboards become first choice through providing greater choice of processors, or if its a move of desperation as they battle to maintain market share in the server market.

Not being tapped into the scene in any shape or form, I guess I'm just going to have to wait and see.

Hot Chips: AMD Quad-core "Barcelona" and the logic behind the merger with ATI

Quad-core has a name, and that name is Barcelona.

Barcelona

AMD spoke to [Hard]Ocp about their upcoming multi-core solutions, in particular their latest quad-core technology, the Barcelona (can tell how much fun I'm having typing Barcelona? You should hear how I'm saying it - dodgy fake Spanish accents are a lot of fun - try saying Antonio Banderas in one and you will know what I mean).

Barcelona is due for release "mid-2007" and will be a "native" quad-core solution with four cores in the one chip as compared to Intel's Kentsfield "Quadro" which looks like it will be just two Core2 Duo dual processors crammed together on the one die, soaking up Watts and pumping out heat.

Who will use four cores?

Even with all these multi-cored beasties powering around, there's precious little software that has been designed to take advantage of the latest and greatest in chip design. Most software that can take advantage of a multi-core setup is used for things such as image manipulation, video rendering or audio tracking.

AMD have said that they are looking for games designed for consoles to lead the way, as the Xbox 360 has a triple-cored PowerPC (each core is dual-threaded so it can do 6 threads at once) and the PS3 will have the Cell chip with 7 of the 8 supporting processors activated (although one will be used for the PS3 operation system) and a controlling PowerPC core. As gaming houses get used to developing titles that support multi-threaded systems, they must be hoping that this skill set and knowledge will leak across to the PC market.

There will probably be benefits in decoding high-def TV on the fly and other media applications, and there will be potential for some parallel computing. It will be good when virtualisation software also begins to take advantage of the support being provided in the hardware which could allow for different operating systems to be run on individual cores. Aw yeah.

AMD and ATI

One of the key product developments that will come out of the AMD and ATI merger will be lower power, highly optimised CPU/GPU combinations on a single die for notebooks and lower-range desktops, possibly inside the next 18 months. There is a strong market for this sort of product in the corporate area, where desktop computers have no need for a separate graphics card, as well as the ability to pack more into a notebook/laptop chassis while taking up less space and at the very least, consuming no more power or creating no more heat than present technology and configurations.

There's also the growing markets for powerful but lower-speed x86 processors in set-top boxes, mobile communication devices (phones, Blackberries etc) and ultra mobile PCs (UMPC). ATI already has a large presence in the graphics processing side of these markets. AMD will now be in a position to develop units to compete with likes of ARM or Freescale, particularly as software for these smaller and more mobile devices becomes increasingly complex. I had an idea that this is the way they AMD and ATI might be heading, it's nice to see that confirmed by people who are actually in the know.

Lasers to transfer data in chips

Edit 19/9: There's now an interesting dicussion on this NYT article at Slashdot - my normal practice is to browse comments at a threshold of 4, but whatever does it for you...

According to the New York Times, a research collaboration between Intel and the University of California, Santa Barbara, has borne fruit, allowing them to transfer data between chips over laser instead of wires. This advance in technology will allow a greater density of chips in system designs, with a faster rate of transfer between the chips.

Aspects of this technology are already in general use, particularly when transmitting data over long distances using fibre optic cable. There's probably any number of mind-boggling applications (particularly in parallel processing) but I can yet find any further information from Intel or UCSB.

It has reminded me that I need to check into Intel's Technology and Research page more often. They have got some really funky stuff going on over there.

I don't expect to see this enter the consumer desktop market any time this decade, but that suits me fine. I have enough problems with core envy. I don't need to add laser envy to the mix as well.

Hot Chips: Open Hardware

It's becoming increasingly obvious to me that I have no idea what is going on the tech world around me.

I have only just discovered, with the launch of the Simply RISC S1 Core, that not only is there such a concept as "open hardware", but hardware designed from open sources is actually being shipped.

It is pretty cool that Sun has made the designs for their SPARC chip freely available with the OpenSPARC project. The SPARC is a complicated looking chip that appears like it has a lot in common (although very different to) the STI Cell chip (currently most well known as the powerhouse for the PS3).

What is cooler is that there is a community building up around the idea of developing an open System-On-a-Chip (SOC) infrastructure at OpenCores.org.

I'm happy to admit that understanding the potential and comprehending the possibilities are beyond my grasp, but the idea that there are freely and readily available resources out there that people can use to design and maybe even build their own CPUs or even multi-cored, integrated SOCs. This isn't really a big concept for the industry giants, but it would have to be exciting for the budding electrical engineer who has a great idea about a new system design but is not quite sure where to start. It's not just new systems that excites me. My mind boggles just trying to think about where the more creative tinkerers can get to when designing DIY and hobbyist electronics with embedded processors. That's a whole other world away from DIY printed circuit boards (which is hard core and high tech enough to scare me).

I get goose bumps just thinking about it. Now I think I understand a little of what Woz felt in those early days.

SILLIAC turns 50 - Australia's IT legacy celebrated

Australia's first high speed computer turns 50 today!

Technically, it performed its first calculation on July 4, but it was officially opened for business on this day in 1956. The difference between conception and birth, perhaps?

Regardless of the details, happy birthday SILLIAC! Woo!

Of course, you're in many pieces now, but you will always be remembered.

Hot Chips: Kentsfield - quad-core goodness coming Real Soon Now™?

Tom's Hardware have a preview (in their usual "why do it in 5 pages when we can do it in 15, with ads!" style) of the incoming Intel "quad-core" Core2 CPU solution.

By the looks of it, the "Core2 Quadro" isn't so much a pure quad-core set up as a 2x2 where they have crammed two Core2 Duos into the one little package. While I have no doubt that 4 cores on one die isn't too far away, it leaves me to ponder as to why Intel are rushing out this temporary solution. Are there better reasons than just to beat AMD to the punch? Probably not.

I bet this baby runs hot, too. New chip would probably need new cooling too (not to mention that only a specific subset of currently available motherboard chipsets will support this bleeding edge tech).

Sometimes not being an early adopter has its upside.

Interesting link:
Intel Multicore Fact Sheet - August 2006

AMD + ATI merger: trying to make sense of it all.

While it probably isn't news to anyone that cares, the merger between CPU maker AMD and graphics chipset maker ATI has been given final approval from competition regulators in the US (home of AMD), Canada (home of ATI) and Germany (where most of AMD's chip fabrication plants are located). As the pieces finish falling in to place, I'm still trying to work out the ramifications of the marriage between the two major market players. It's not an easy task for a faceless government administrator, so I can only build my knowledge based on what scraps of information leak into the public domain from industry insiders.

What is the merger going to do the market place? Prior to the formation of the mega-corp, the CPU and graphics markets were fairly even split: NVIDIA and ATI battled it out in the graphics and motherboard chipset market while Intel and AMD tussled for market share with CPUs. Intel was still market leader but AMD had been steadily eroding that advantage for some time, particularly in the enthusiast market where AMD was considered to have better bang for buck. Both NVIDIA and ATI made chipsets for motherboards that supported both Intel and AMD. In fact, most motherboards for the new AM2 were based on NVIDIA chipsets.

The AMD-ATI merger leaves a number of questions that I don't have the capacity to answer (and would love it if someone could point me towards someone who can) :

• what does this mean for motherboard chipsets? Will NVIDIA still make NForce chipsets for AMD? Will ATI still make chipsets for Intel chips? I hate seeing competition reduced in any market
• what is the future of NVIDIA? Will it need to enter into exclusive agreements with Intel in order to survive, or is it big enough and bad enough to manufacture and develop for both parties?
• related to the above points, one of the dangers of vertical integration is the inclination to favour your own product over a competitors. Even if NVIDIA continues to develop products for AMD, will the development environment remain open?

There are substantial benefits for AMD in the merger. ATI technology is the basis for both the XBox 360 and the Nintendo Wii (NVIDIA is supplying the graphics tech for the Playstation 3). AMD missed out on supplying the CPUs for the Xbox, but now they have an "in" through ATI, as well as a new business partnership with IBM, who have developed the multi-cored PowerPC chips for the Xbox. ATI also have a growing business in mobile graphics technology, particularly for handhelds and mobile phones.

What could be more exciting for the partnership are the future development options. While the current focus in CPUs appears to be multiple cores, it surely can't be too long before the focus switches to integration with other areas. We already have "integrated graphics" on most motherboards (particularly on corporate systems where a graphics card makes no sense cost wise). I would imagine the next logical step is to integrate entire graphics processing units (GPUs) into the chipset as well. Current PCI-e technology is fast, but whenever information is shifted through a PCI bus, there has to be a performance hit of some kind. Moving the GPU on die would reduce that hit (if not eradicate it completely). AMD and ATI are now in the perfect position to begin development on this CPU/GPU integration. In the short term, this is likely to manifest in integrated (but not on-die) solutions like the rumoured Yokohama platform for notebooks which will see an AMD-ATI collaboration with third party Wi-Fi.

There are flow-on effects from this integration as well. Current high-def DVD set top players are pretty much just a small computer running Linux in a pretty box that fits in with your home theatre setup. Imagine the potential leap on your competitors if you could be the first one t0 market with an "all-in-one" solution for high-def playback - fast CPU and excellent on-die graphics in one small package. I'm not sure what the heat implications are, but no graphics card means one less fan in the system. Less noise = home theatre goodness.

The one thing I haven't picked up much noise on is the possibilities surrounding ATI's physics engine development, which will compete with physics processing unit (PPU) solutions such as Ageia PhysX. The Ageia PPU is a separate PCI card (although a variation of the technology will be used with the PS3) which can be used for physics acceleration, presently lusted after in the gaming arena. The ATI solution involves adding a third graphics card which be transformed into a dedicated PPU. I'm not sure of the physical realities regarding available slots (especially if you're using two cards for a Crossfire set up and want to add a card for PPU work) but I'm sure that if the software can combine all the cards together, then surely the potential to use the technology on-die isn't far away. With multi-cores already in use and quad-core not far away, the next logical step (to me anyway) is many cores serving different functions. What's to stop a multi-cored CPU to also have additional GPUs and PPUs or other general, programmable PUs waiting to be used (maybe even dynamically?).

The AMD-ATI merger is going to have its problems. Merging two large corporations generally does. However, once the initial teething troubles are put to rest, I think the new entity will be a force to be reckoned with. Integrated GPUs, physics processing, mobile graphics, consumer set top boxes - many fingers in many pies.

It's an exciting time to be alive and watching the hardware game right now.

Interesting links:
DV Doctor: Why did AMD and ATi get wed and where's AMD headed now?
Ars Technica: AMD + ATI: does it add up?
Asymmetric Physics Processing with ATI Crossfire - ATI white paper (pdf)

Apple Releases New iMacs

Apple have quietly announced that they have updated their iMac line. All iMacs now have Core2 Duos. More exciting is that Apple have also announced a 24-inch iMac, which apparently has full HD support. For A$3,000 you can get a 24" LCD screen, built in Bluetooth and wireless, SuperDrive, Firewire 800 and USB2 with a 2.16 GHz Core Duo chip. I was going to spec up an equivalent Dell but the website confused the hell out of me. How do you pick and choose parts on Dell's website? I don't get that at all...

I'm a bit slow, but I was home looking after the boy today to give my wife a rest, so I haven't really had a chance to check this out.

I've had my eyes on a MacBook for a while, which is even more attractive as I can salary sacrifice a laptop and not attract Fringe Benefits Tax. That 24" iMac sure is tempting though.

So much tech. So little money to spend on it. *sigh*

Hot Chips: Virtualisation

With all the tech goodies hidden in the latest CPUs, the one thing that interests me the most is also the one thing that I know the least about - virtualisation supported in the hardware. I understand the basic idea of virtualisation but its implementation and its possibilities creep further and further beyond the grasp of my basic comprehension.

From what I can gather (and I am a simple man so this may be way off base) but virtualisation uses something called a Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) to provide a neat encapsulation, where the idea is to convince software that it is running in a certain environment when in reality it is encapsulated by the VMM. This could be a purely software emulation (eg convincing a DOS program that it is running on DOS) or hardware emulation (convincing software that it is running on a completely different processor). A good example of virtualisation is the backwards compatibility that Apple Computers has historically used while undergoing a complete change in CPU architecture. When they moved from the 68k processor to the Power PC, there were emulators that allowed legacy programs to run. Similarly, during the recent switch from PPC to Intel chips, the Rosetta software emulator once again allows software compiled specifically for the PPC chips to run on Intel chips.

"Virtualisation in hardware" seems to be all about providing support in the hardware for techniques utilised by the current crop of software VMMs like VMWare or Virtual PC where the VMM essentially detects whenever software tries to access various parts of the hardware and "traps" it. The VMM then returns to the software whatever information it would expect the hardware to send it. The software chugs along, happily thinking it is running in whatever environment, and the VMM is able to exercise complete control of the software by trapping it inside the VMM. I think. Because the VMM is able to utilise areas of the hardware specifically designed for that purpose, supported VMMs will theoretically be able to operate with almost zero latency or overhead as they do not need to operate through a software layer like an operating system.

I can see some of the more obvious benefits of virtualisation including:

• legacy support for old software;
  
• hardware independent operating systems (it doesn't matter what the hardware really is if the VMM can tell the OS what it wants to hear); and
  
• running software compiled for one operating system or chip set inside a completely different one.

There is also the obvious security enhancements as you could "sandbox" software inside a VMM so that nothing permanent is left behind on disk or can prevent malware from spreading its sickly tentacles through your system as it would stop at the borders of the VMM.

However, I don't think that any of this comes without a cost. While the software and technology is improving all the time, current software VMMs still take a hit of your resources like hard drive space and RAM. For example, VMWare offers a free VM Player that allows people to use pre-configured "VM Appliances" where people have already set up the software environment and all the user needs to do is load it into the Player and have fun. Entire Linux distributions are available, but these can take upwards of 800MB of space and I believe run largely in RAM. While a lot of systems now have 1GB or more of RAM, I don't think it is that commonplace just yet.

There are other downsides, some of which have the potential to be quite serious. By allowing software to access the "hypervisory" capabilities embedded in the hardware, new security threats have emerged, most notably the infamous "Blue Pill", a proof of concept malware by security research Joanna Rutkowska that utilises the virtualisation technology on new AMD chips in order to take over a Windows Vista system on the fly while remaining almost completely undetectable. While not everyone agrees on the level of this threat, it raises some interesting questions about just what is possible given sufficient resources and/or motivation. It is the usual two steps forward, one step back approach to technological advancement.

My own personal view is that virtualisation in hardware will end up being a positive development, albeit one with a few kinks that will need to be ironed out security wise (I'm reminded of the security mantra "New is bad, mature is secure" in this instance). As virtualisation becomes increasingly a hot topic with free versions of VMWare and Virtual PC, and the increase in popularity of Parallels VMM for Mac (which enables other operating systems to be run inside of OS X, unlike solutions such as Boot Camp which is a dual-boot approach), VMMs will be probably be more widely adopted. If the security concerns can be addressed, hardware support for VMMs will be a boon for us all.

Now all I need is a new chip...