PCs Still Shine Bright

Most industry people and IT aficionados make a yearly pilgrimage to Taipei to
attend Computex, a five-day event where the latest technological products are on
display. This year was no different. The turnout according to The Taiwan
External Trade Development Council was a decent 26,222 buyers, with a total of
1,18,053 visitors.

Buyers this year showed an 18% rise over last year's event, which had a
22,250 turnout. 3,856 buyers were from USA, followed by Japan's 3,335, Hong
Kong's 1,822, Korea's 1,656, and Singapore's 895.

For the first time, Infineon, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, Toshiba,
Agilent Technologies, Ricoh, Sanyo Denki, and Moserbaer India showcased their
products, joining a total of 1,347 local and foreign firms.

Highlights of the event included the emergence of digital home appliances,
innovations in PC multimedia applications, the launch of motherboards based on
PCI Express technology and the rise of DDRII memory modules.

Stan Shih, Chairman of the Acer Group, pointed out in his special address at
the opening ceremony, "Digital home products not only present hope for
consumer-electronic companies, they also provide grand opportunities for
expansions in the PC market."

SOLUTIONS WERE THE FOCUS

Solution providers mostly view hardware as a necessary evil. Most are
conditioned to believe that it is inherently unreliable and therefore warranty
support is a key factor. This is precisely why more and more vendors were
promoting not just their products, but comprehensive solutions per se.

Snapshots from Computex Vehicle based GPRS system-screen in the background shows city map Home PC

End-to end failure detection; hot stand-by and hot swappable modules are some
of the proven remedies for high availability systems. Even servers were
displayed as platforms and not stand-alone products.

Traditionally, this region was dominated by proprietary platforms. Now,
manufacturers are adopting open source standards for faster implementation and
better-cost efficiencies. No efforts were spared to educate visitors about the
significant differences of these new standards, especially relating to the
communications path between the system components of the chassis.

PCs STILL HOG THE LIMELIGHT

The usual paraphernalia of PCs, peripherals and all associate components
were very much on display. There were many manufacturers announcing 'the
smallest PCs in the world'.

Some interesting machines were the panel PCs, portable PCs, industrial PCs
and PCs as music systems. The list did not end there. There were the coolest
PCs, no-noise PCs; no moving parts PCs, sunlight-readable displays. Virtually
every innovation that could be built into a PC was highlighted and sold.

All these systems were aimed at segments their features have immense value.
These proposed values have to be suitably integrated with the segment specific
software to make it a viable solution.

Technologies like Bluetooth and WLAN have been absorbed in many products. In
fact, they are no longer considered as mere technologies, but are available as
flexible, cost-effective and standard tools. This was precisely why exhibitors
like Intel and Microsoft were strongly showcasing embedded system developments.

PROMISING AREAS

For a solution provider, Computex had several application areas for PCs,
depending on computing power and system resource platform. Partners could then
choose the physical form and shape based on these parameters.

Industrial PCs drew a lot of attention as many manufacturers provided board
level, system level, and fully integrated industrial computer products for
systems integrators who sought to automate applications quickly and cost
effectively. These companies give the complete solution, from chassis for harsh
industrial environments and data acquisition products to engineering
support, customizing of industrial PCs and customer service.

EMBEDDED SOLUTIONS

Yet another area of interest in the event was the embedded system, which is
a computer or computing device that performs a dedicated function or is designed
for use with specific embedded software application. Very small size and
dedicated application specific systems use a ROM-based operating system.

Home and handheld devices are expected to be a very big market segments. PC
compatibility of these embedded systems eases software development and testing.
India is has a huge resource and expertise for software development.

These products help system integrators to considerably reduce their
time-to-market and gain a competitive advantage with products including
high-performance open computer platforms and systems, single board computers,
man-machine interfaces and mobile computers.

Snapshots from Computex Hardened Portable PC Shows handheld device board for embeded system

Models can be based on deeply embedded logic board utilizing VIA's latest
low power Eden Platform and Intel's embedded low-power Celeron CPU's. For
more power hungry applications, solutions based on Logic boards with mainstream
high performance PIII/Celeron CPUs are also available.

Computex had an array of Pocket PCs with and without phone and other smart
phones on display, which used similar embedded solutions. Many of these devices
announced Microsoft Windows Mobile software support for combining all
functionality on one device. 

DIGITAL IS THE KEY

Digital home was the key concept behind the event, so it was no surprise
that several products for this segment were prominently showcased. Proton
displayed its award-winning digital home software providing HDTV and digital
Media Adaptor functions.

CyberLink demonstrated Power Cinema, which transforms a PC into a media
entertainment center and allows operation via remote control. Many home cabling
products were displayed to help existent wiring in the houses support new
technologies and devices.

DVR platforms, which include one to eight-channel digital video and audio
recorders, also caught one's attention. Along with CCD cameras, it forms an
excellent platform for solutions to meet streaming media applications.

Rising sales and falling prices have been observed in of GPS, GPRS and other
vehicle products in Europen and North American regions. It all may have started
with mobile computing, but now we have multimedia entertainment, navigation,
telematics and recreation in the vehicles.

In all these applications and equipments saving of battery power is of key
importance. To resolve this, some companies are planning to use solar energy.
Real-time vehicle tracking and monitoring is a significant segment being
developed. This covers many applications like vehicle fleet management.

Advanced anti-theft gadgets prevent car thefts and if the theft does occur, a
SMS is sent to your mobile phone. If that is not enough, it also sends
geographical co-ordinates of its current location. No wonder, there were many
eyeballs for these products.

Milind Kamat
is a an industry expert