S.Korea's super broadband

[Ah Hai]

SEOUL - TECH-SAVVY South Korea will install a nationwide super-broadband infrastructure by 2013 which would enable the downloading of a feature film in one or two seconds, officials said on Tuesday.

The project unveiled by the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) will require investment of 1.3 trillion won (S$1.4 billion) from the government and 32.8 trillion from the private sector.

'South Korea will be the first in the world to build such a network nationwide for commercial use,' Rha Sung-Uk of the state-run National Information Society Agency told AFP.

The agency teamed up with the commission to work out a blueprint for the project, which officials said will change the lifestyle of Koreans.

'You can download a movie in one or two seconds through an upgraded optical fibre cable extended to every household,' Mr Rha said.

'It will allow users to engage in e-commerce or use Internet protocol phones while watching ultra high-definition TV programmes.'

The existing wireless network will also be rebuilt for faster data transmission and multiple services, he said.

Commission officials said the plan will enable users to transmit data at an average speed of 1 Gbps (gigabits per second) through a fixed line, more than 10 times faster than now.

South Korea is already one of the world's most wired societies with nearly all households connected to the Internet, but KCC officials said the new network will become an engine for growth. -- AFP

 

[SamuelStalin]

One less reason for them to leave the house? Hahahaa.

 

[Ah Hai]

US$10 laptop

NEW DELHI - INDIA has unveiled plans to produce a laptop computer costing just US$10 (S$15) in a bid to improve the skills of millions of students across the country.

The laptops will be mass-produced as part of a government-sponsored education scheme launched on Tuesday in the southern city of Tirupati.

Details about the computer remained scare, but Higher Education Secretary R.P. Agrawal said last week that it would be available within six months.

'Once the testing is over, the computers will be made available on commercial basis,' he told the Press Trust of India news agency.

'Its cost will be 10 US dollars. If the parents want to gift something to their kids, they can easily purchase this item.'

The laptop will reportedly have a two gigabyte memory and wireless Internet capability, but officials have not publicly demonstrated a prototype - or yet explained how it can be produced at such a low cost.

The government has earmarked more than 46 billion rupees (S$1.4 billion) to develop the low-power gadget to work in rural areas with unreliable power supply and poor Internet connectivity.

The planned laptop is part of a push to increase the number of students in higher education and give them the technological skills needed to further boost India's economic growth.

New Delhi rebuffed a previous attempt to bring cheap laptops to India, led by MIT computer scientist Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child programme.

The government cited hidden costs for its rejection of that computer, which was dubbed the US$100 laptop. -- AFP

 

[po2wq]

SEOUL - TECH-SAVVY South Korea will install a nationwide super-broadband infrastructure by 2013 which would enable the downloading of a feature film in one or two seconds, officials said on Tuesday. ...

sg ... wat r u waiting 4? ... quikly 1 up sk ... muz b no 1 ...

 

[po2wq]

Re: US$10 laptop

NEW DELHI - INDIA has unveiled plans to produce a laptop computer costing just US$10 (S$15) ...

how much do dey plan 2 sel it? ...

 

[Cestbon]

Re: US$10 laptop

Coming IT show. All electronic eg. laptop. LCD TV, digital video/camera price will drop 30%~50% from insider info. So wait for another 0ne month.

 

[Ah Hai]

Super-fast supercomputer

Super-fast supercomputer

SAN FRANCISCO - SEVEN months after IBM delivered the world's fastest supercomputer, it has announced an even speedier one with the computing power of 2 million laptops.

IBM said on Tuesday it is developing the technology for its new Sequoia computer, with delivery scheduled in 2011 to the Department of Energy for use at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Sequoia will chug along at 20 petaflops per second and is one order of magnitude quicker than its predecessor. The earlier machine, delivered in June to the Energy Department, broke the 1 petaflop barrier.

Peta is a term for quadrillion and FLOP stands for floating point operations per second.

Sequoia, and a smaller computer called Dawn, are being built in Rochester, Minnesota, for use in simulating nuclear tests. IBM says they can also be used for complex tasks like weather forecasting or oil exploration.

IBM says Sequoia will be highly energy-efficient for the job it does but even so will occupy 96 refrigerator-sized racks in an area the size of a big house -- 3,422 square feet (318 square meters). - REUTERS.