Patrick Nelson
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Patrick Nelson
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Space-data-as-a-service gets going
Upcoming space commercialization will require hardened edge-computing environments in a small footprint with robust links back to Earth, says vendor OrbitsEdge, which recently announced that it had started collaborating with Hewlett Packard Enterprise on computing-in-orbit solutions.OrbitsEdge says it’s the first to provide a commercial data-center environment for installing in orbit, and will be using HPE’s Edgeline Converged Edge System in a hardened, satellite micro-data-center platform that it’s selling called SatFrame.To read this article in full, please click here
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Space-data-as-a-service prepares to take off
Upcoming space commercialization will require hardened edge-computing environments in a small footprint with robust links back to Earth, says vendor OrbitsEdge, which recently announced that it had started collaborating with Hewlett Packard Enterprise on computing-in-orbit solutions.OrbitsEdge says it’s the first to provide a commercial data-center environment for installing in orbit, and will be using HPE’s Edgeline Converged Edge System in a hardened, satellite micro-data-center platform that it’s selling called SatFrame.To read this article in full, please click here
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Space-data-as-a-service prepares to take off
Upcoming space commercialization will require hardened edge-computing environments in a small footprint with robust links back to Earth, says vendor OrbitsEdge, which recently announced that it had started collaborating with Hewlett Packard Enterprise on computing-in-orbit solutions.OrbitsEdge says it’s the first to provide a commercial data-center environment for installing in orbit, and will be using HPE’s Edgeline Converged Edge System in a hardened, satellite micro-data-center platform that it’s selling called SatFrame.To read this article in full, please click here
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Researchers experiment with glass-based storage that doesn’t require electronics cooling
Hard drives aren’t going to be capacious enough for future data archiving and retrieval requirements, scientists believe, as applications such as artificial intelligence, wide-scale Internet of Things connectivity, and virtual and augmented reality take hold. Glass could be the answer.Encoding in glass would have advantages over hard drives and other mediums, experts suggest. Holding capacity is greater, and the slivers of quartz being experimented with don’t need cooling or dehumidifying environments.Microsoft Research, working in the UK along with the University of Southampton, announced that it has been able to store an entire movie on a quartz, glass-based storage medium. The team stored and retrieved a full-length Superman film on a small slab of the special material that measures about 3 inches square and less than a tenth of an inch thick. .To read this article in full, please click here
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Researchers experiment with glass-based storage that doesn’t require electronics cooling
Hard drives aren’t going to be capacious enough for future data archiving and retrieval requirements, scientists believe, as applications such as artificial intelligence, wide-scale Internet of Things connectivity, and virtual and augmented reality take hold. Glass could be the answer.Encoding in glass would have advantages over hard drives and other mediums, experts suggest. Holding capacity is greater, and the slivers of quartz being experimented with don’t need cooling or dehumidifying environments.Microsoft Research, working in the UK along with the University of Southampton, announced that it has been able to store an entire movie on a quartz, glass-based storage medium. The team stored and retrieved a full-length Superman film on a small slab of the special material that measures about 3 inches square and less than a tenth of an inch thick.To read this article in full, please click here
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IoT sensors must have two radios for efficiency
For the Internet of Things to become ubiquitous, many believe that inefficiencies in the powering of sensors and radios has got to be eliminated. Battery chemistry just isn’t good enough, and it’s simply too expensive to continually perform truck-rolls, for example, whenever batteries need changing out. In many cases, solar battery-top-ups aren’t the solution because that, usually-fixed, technology isn’t particularly suited to mobile, or impromptu, ad hoc networks.Consequently, there’s a dash going on to try to find either better chemistries that allow longer battery life or more efficient chips and electronics that just sip electricity. An angle of thought being followed is to wake-up network radios only when they need to transmit a burst of data. Universities say they are making significant progress in this area.To read this article in full, please click here
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Space-sourced power could beam electricity where needed
Capturing solar energy in space and then beaming it down to Earth could provide consistent electricity supplies in places that have never seen it before. Should the as-yet untested idea work and be scalable, it has applications in IoT-sensor deployments, wireless mobile network mast installs and remote edge data centers.The radical idea is that super-efficient solar cells collect the sun’s power in space, convert it to radio waves, and then squirt the energy down to Earth, where it is converted into usable power. The defense industry, which is championing the concept, wants to use the satellite-based tech to provide remote power for forward-operating bases that currently require difficult and sometimes dangerous-to-obtain, escorted fuel deliveries to power electricity generators.To read this article in full, please click here
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Space-sourced power could beam electricity where needed
Capturing solar energy in space and then beaming it down to Earth could provide consistent electricity supplies in places that have never seen it before. Should the as-yet untested idea work and be scalable, it has applications in IoT-sensor deployments, wireless mobile network mast installs and remote edge data centers.The radical idea is that super-efficient solar cells collect the sun’s power in space, convert it to radio waves, and then squirt the energy down to Earth, where it is converted into usable power. The defense industry, which is championing the concept, wants to use the satellite-based tech to provide remote power for forward-operating bases that currently require difficult and sometimes dangerous-to-obtain, escorted fuel deliveries to power electricity generators.To read this article in full, please click here
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Cheap IoT satellite network gets approval
Space communications start-up Swarm Technologies will begin delivering commercial, bi-directional Internet of Things (IoT) data early next year, according to the company, which has just received its regulatory go-ahead to launch its satellites and transmit.“Swarm will begin rolling out its commercial, two-way data offerings in early 2020,” Sara Spangelo, co-founder and CEO told me in a recent e-mail. The company aims to deploy 150 satellites before the end of 2020, she says. The FCC, in October, granted Part 25 approval for the startup to deploy and operate 150 non-geostationary, Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites, for non-voice purposes.To read this article in full, please click here
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Wireless noise protocol can extend IoT range
The effective range of Wi-Fi, and other wireless communications used in Internet of Things networks could be increased significantly by adding wireless noise, say scientists.This counter-intuitive solution could extend the range of an off-the-shelf Wi-Fi radio by 73 yards, a group led by Brigham Young University says. Wireless noise, a disturbance in the signal, is usually unwanted.To read this article in full, please click here
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NICT successfully demos petabit-per-second network node
Petabit-class networks will support more than 100-times the capacity of existing networks, according to scientists who have just demonstrated an optical switching rig designed to handle the significant amounts of data that would pour through future petabit cables. One petabit is equal to a thousand terabits, or a million gigabits.Researchers at the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) in Japan routed signals with capacities ranging from 10 terabits per second to 1 petabit per second through their node. Those kinds of capacities, which could send 8K resolution video to 10 million people simultaneously, are going to be needed for future broadband video streaming and Internet of Things at scale, researchers believe. In-data-center applications and backhaul could benefit.To read this article in full, please click here
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NICT successfully demos petabit-per-second network node
Petabit-class networks will support more than 100-times the capacity of existing networks, according to scientists who have just demonstrated an optical switching rig designed to handle the significant amounts of data that would pour through future petabit cables. One petabit is equal to a thousand terabits, or a million gigabits.Researchers at the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) in Japan routed signals with capacities ranging from 10 terabits per second to 1 petabit per second through their node. Those kinds of capacities, which could send 8K resolution video to 10 million people simultaneously, are going to be needed for future broadband video streaming and Internet of Things at scale, researchers believe. In-data-center applications and backhaul could benefit.To read this article in full, please click here
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Data center liquid-cooling to gain momentum
Concern over escalating energy costs is among reasons liquid-cooling solutions could gain traction in the data-center.Schneider Electric, a major energy-management specialist, this month announced refreshed impetus to a collaboration conceived in 2014 with liquid-cooling specialists Iceotope. Now, technology solutions company Avnet has been brought into that collaboration.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.] The three companies will develop chassis-level immersive liquid cooling for data centers, Schneider Electric says in a press release.Liquid-cooling systems submerge server components in a dielectric fluid as opposed to air-cooled systems which create ambient cooled air.To read this article in full, please click here
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Data center liquid-cooling to gain momentum
Concern over escalating energy costs is among reasons liquid-cooling solutions could gain traction in the data-center.Schneider Electric, a major energy-management specialist, this month announced refreshed impetus to a collaboration conceived in 2014 with liquid-cooling specialists Iceotope. Now, technology solutions company Avnet has been brought into that collaboration.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.] The three companies will develop chassis-level immersive liquid cooling for data centers, Schneider Electric says in a press release.Liquid-cooling systems submerge server components in a dielectric fluid as opposed to air-cooled systems which create ambient cooled air.To read this article in full, please click here
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Reimagining-the-Internet project gets funding
The Internet of Things and 5G could be among the benefactors of an upcoming $20 million U.S. government cash injection designed to come up with new architectures to replace existing public internet.FABRIC, as the National Science Foundation-funded umbrella project is called, aims to come up with a proving ground to explore new ways to move, keep and compute data in shared infrastructure such as the public internet. The project “will allow scientists to explore what a new internet could look like at scale,” says the lead institution, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in a media release. And it “will help determine the internet architecture of the future.”To read this article in full, please click here
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How a simpler mmWave architecture can connect IoT
Current wireless technologies, such as Wi-Fi, won’t provide enough support for the billions of internet of things (IoT) sensors and networks that are expected to come on stream in the next few years, say researchers. More speed, efficiency and bandwidth will be needed. Plus, the equipment must cost significantly less than existing gear, including upcoming 5G equipment.To address the issue, scientists at University of Waterloo are developing a stripped-down version of millimeter wave technology.“A growing strain will be placed on requirements of wireless networks,” the researchers say in an article announcing a new low-power, low-cost 5G network technology that it calls mmX. They say the technology is specifically geared towards IoT.To read this article in full, please click here
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Space internet service closer to becoming reality
Test results from recent Low Earth Orbit internet satellite launches are starting to come in—and they're impressive.OneWeb, which launched six Airbus satellites in February, says tests show throughput speeds of over 400 megabits per second and latency of 40 milliseconds. Further, the future internet service provider (ISP) says a satellite re-alignment will offer southern U.S. coverage sooner than originally thought.Also read: The hidden cause of slow internet and how to fix it Internet service for the Arctic Arctic internet blackspots above the 60th parallel, such as Alaska, will be the first to benefit from OneWeb’s partial constellation of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) broadband satellites, OneWeb says.To read this article in full, please click here
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How 6G will work: Terahertz-to-fiber conversion
Upcoming 6G wireless, superseding 5G and arriving possibly by 2030, is envisaged to function at hundreds of gigabits per second. Slowly, the technical advances needed are being made.A hole in the tech development thus far has been at the interface between terahertz spectrum and hard, optical transmission lines. How does one connect terahertz (THz), which is basically through-the-air spectrum found between microwave and infrared, to the transmission lines that will be needed for the longer-distance data sends? The curvature of the Earth, for one thing, limits line of sight, so hard-wiring is necessary for distances. Short distances, too, can be impeded by environmental obstructions: blocking by objects, even rain or fog, becomes more apparent the higher in spectrum one goes, as wavelengths get shorter.To read this article in full, please click here
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Data center cooling: Electricity-free system sends excess building heat into space
We all know that blocking incoming sunlight helps cool buildings and that indoor thermal conditions can be improved with the added shade. More recently, though, scientists have been experimenting with ways to augment that passive cooling by capturing any superfluous, unwanted solar heat and expelling it, preferably into outer space, where it can’t add to global warming.Difficulties in getting that kind of radiative cooling to work are two-fold. First, directing the heat optimally is hard.“Normally, thermal emissions travel in all directions,” says Qiaoqiang Gan, an associate professor of electrical engineering at University at Buffalo, in a news release. The school is working on radiative concepts. That’s bad for heat spill-over and can send the thermal energy where it’s not wanted—like into other buildings.To read this article in full, please click here
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Data center cooling: Electricity-free system sends excess building heat into space
We all know that blocking incoming sunlight helps cool buildings and that indoor thermal conditions can be improved with the added shade. More recently, though, scientists have been experimenting with ways to augment that passive cooling by capturing any superfluous, unwanted solar heat and expelling it, preferably into outer space, where it can’t add to global warming.Difficulties in getting that kind of radiative cooling to work are two-fold. First, directing the heat optimally is hard.“Normally, thermal emissions travel in all directions,” says Qiaoqiang Gan, an associate professor of electrical engineering at University at Buffalo, in a news release. The school is working on radiative concepts. That’s bad for heat spill-over and can send the thermal energy where it’s not wanted—like into other buildings.To read this article in full, please click here