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- A H/D failure on the road costs the company a lot of money.
- You are ignoring the use of software-based encryption. The notebooks are not unprotected.
This all boils down to you believing that hardware encryption trumps all else.
Others weigh relative risks and come to a different conclusion.
The IT guy is our VP. I imagine he knows at least as much or more than you do about the entire information technology arena.
Like I said, it is a matter of balancing relative risk.
At the corporate IT level, loss of data from hard drive failure happens several orders of magnitude more often than loss or theft of a laptop. It is a matter of weighing relative risks.
Currently, one can have hardware encryption on a mechanical drive which is prone to failure or software encryption on a very reliable drive.
A Fortune 500 firm.
I am simply reporting from where the rubber hits the road.
I have talked to my IT folks. They believe the smaller form factor, lower weight, reliability, durability and speed of a Flash drive-based notebook would trump even a FDE mechanical hard drive solution, as do I. And the company is willing to pay more for the solution. They use software-based encryption.
You probably have schlepped a notebook through airports until your shoulder hurt. What if you could cut the weight in half (or more)?
What if you could have an "instant-on" notebook? No wait for the hard disk to spin up.
What if you could increase your notebook's performance by 23%?
I, for one, will buy one!
For the "thin and light" notebook segment, I believe Flash hard drives will prevail due to MUCH smaller form factor and weight. For the desktop-replacement market, not so much because the notebook is being used as a desktop machine most of the time.
Notebooks are the fastest growing segment of the PC market. Road warrior "thin and light" notebooks constitute the fastest growing portion of the overall notebook market.
Who are the road warriors? Enterprise and government users.
I am not confusing the issue. It is a matter of physics. A mechanical drive with spinning media and read/write heads cannot compete with the performance of a solid state Flash drive. Go ask any competent engineer you may know.
Haven't heard any PR about Wave technology being featured in SanDisk Flash drives. That is only conjecture.
re: so won't Seagate just make an FDE solid state drive...am I missing something?
What you are missing is the fact that Seagate does not manufacture Flash devices, in fact does not manufacture any semiconductor devices of any kind. And the barrier to entry (cap ex) is considerable.
Yes, that is an approach. But it does not overcome the durability and reliability a solid state-only solution provides. We are talking about notebook computers here.
My point is:
The volume mass market will likely go for performance, reliability and durability before they opt for encryption. After connection bandwidth, the largest gating item for computer performance is hard drive access time.
Besides, both mechanical hard drives and solid state hard drives are nothing but bit repositories. The only difference is the manner in which data is read and written. There is nothing to prevent encryption on a Flash drive, should demand ever warrant the approach.
re: wouldn't these computers still need a hard drive?
No. The mechanical drive is replaced with a 32 GB (or larger) Flash drive. No moving parts, solid state memory.
re: hasn't Seagate said there will be no loss of speed with the encrypted drives?
Compared to a non-encrypted mechanical drive, possibly.
Compared to a Flash drive, no. From the link provided by may1sep2:
The 1.8in 32 Gbyte SanDisk SSD, which SanDisk announced in January, increases performance by as much as 23 percent and is three and a half times less likely to fail when compared with HDDs currently available for the Latitude line, Dell said.
That's quite a performance boost. There's no way a mechanical drive with spinning media and read/write heads can compare to the performance of a solid state drive. And the Flash drives have become cost competitive. Very cost competitive.
I believe durability, reliability, and speed will trump H/D security in the mass market (read: volume).
re: flash-based laptop
That could put a serious hitch in Seagate's giddy-up.
Yeah, right.
re: an FPGA is not a chip... it's a series of chips
Although I agree that RIM is a flimsy facade and not to put too fine a point on it, an FPGA is a "chip" (and I am a semiconductor engineer):
A field programmable gate array is a semiconductor device containing programmable logic components and programmable interconnects. The programmable logic components can be programmed to duplicate the functionality of basic logic gates such as AND, OR, XOR, NOT or more complex combinational functions such as decoders or simple mathematical functions. In most FPGAs, these programmable logic components (or logic blocks, in FPGA parlance) also include memory elements, which may be simple flip-flops or more complete blocks of memories.
A hierarchy of programmable interconnects allows the logic blocks of an FPGA to be interconnected as needed by the system designer, somewhat like a one-chip programmable breadboard. These logic blocks and interconnects can be programmed after the manufacturing process by the customer/designer (hence the term "field programmable", i.e. programmable in the field) so that the FPGA can perform whatever logical function is needed.
FPGAs are generally slower than their application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) counterparts, as they can't handle as complex a design, and draw more power. However, they have several advantages such as a shorter time to market, ability to re-program in the field to fix bugs, and lower non-recurring engineering costs. Vendors can sell cheaper, less flexible versions of their FPGAs which cannot be modified after the design is committed. The development of these designs is made on regular FPGAs and then migrated into a fixed version that more resembles an ASIC. Complex programmable logic devices, or CPLDs, are another alternative.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FPGA
re: better yet, show up at the SHM and talk to the BOD and CEO, who will all be there, under one roof at one time.
By then, it will be a fait accompli (if it isn't already).
re: Esilicon stated they will manufacture the ASSP.
Actually, you are incorrect. eSilicon will purportedly handle test and oversee (manage) production. TSMC will purportedly fab the devices. eSilicon has no wafer fabs.
At any rate, it's a moot point. Rim will never have the volume (or device) to warrant even the first wafer start.
Zeev,
Hope you enjoyed the venison. One of my favorite dishes, cooked properly ... and i'm sure properly is an understatement for the dish you had.
Now ... back to the diet!
"You cannot save your way out of a downturn"
-- Craig Barrett
re: . “Field Programmable” is the key phrase here. Cupria is in the field.
Ummm ... actually, no.
Field programmable means exactly what it says: It is programmed in the field. As opposed to being programmed in the wafer fab. A useful memory analogy is EPROM versus masked ROM. An EPROM is programmed in the "field" on an EPROM programming station while a masked ROM's program is "hard-wired" into the device during the fabrication process. Man+Dog can buy FPGA's in small quantities and do whatever they want with them. A dedicated design, manufactured in a wafer fab, requires extremely large volumes to be cost effective.
That is the crux of the disagreement between you and the realists. You believe RIM's "solution" will be widely deployed. The realist opinion is that it won't.
Who would exercise under water options, unless they thought the future value of those options would appreciate. The fact that he seems ready to let the options expire worthless speaks volumes to the CEO's real opinion of Wave's future.
I wonder what the basis of his new options will be?
Grand Caymans, no doubt!
Probably packing up his belongings with a security dood waiting to escort him out!
del
re: Well, the stock is holding up pretty well in afterhours.
AMD is halted A/H.
Click on "Tools" on the top menu bar. Click on "My Settings" on the resultant window. Turn off "Play Embedded Sounds" (7th option on the settings page).
re: And who is PE?
Paul Engel?
re: If they are exercised at $40.00, who will care at that point in time?
And if the company is doing billions in revenues by then, exercising the options and the dilution will not mean a thing.
Those are some pretty heavy ifs in your post.
Snowrider, I think you missed the irony in my post. In saying AMD was executing itself flawlessly, I was using the definition of execution as a means of ending one's life.
mas,
re: you don't like the message and wish AMD would just curl up and die?
No need to waste wishes on such. AMD is executing itself flawlessly, it would seem, without any "divine" intervention.
re: The goal of our SIG is to ultimately be absorbed into the ITU-T, ANSI, IEEE or similar standards organization, so we are organizing it from the beginning to make that easier.
COUGH
re: If the trend continues, they'll be out of business by year end.
Although far crom a "certainty", I can envision an AMD in the future where all that remains is the ATI infrastructure and business.
pugdog,
re: 2C, SR, Benz, Party, etc...
you will never, never, never.....NEVER outsmart me
Since you posted it, may I ask what you are talking about?
re: We are thus in the fortunate position of being selective in choosing which customers we wish to engage with.
That's code for: NO customers.
re: Ayn Rand type of philosophy
That would be called Objectivism
re: So I do not believe he should be deleting them.
That would be an issue between you and him.
Correct me if I am wrong, but this board is entitled:
Ayn Rand and Russian Investments
I didn't intend to discuss this board, pro or con. I only intended to point out that Ms. Rand's writings had a fairly fine point and were not about "everything". Man as motive force, the primacy of the individual and the absolute primacy of reason.
re: Have you ever read anything from Ayn Rand? It talks about everything ...
Actually, Ayn Rand's writing is quite to a specific point, whether it is fiction or nonfiction.