Sneak Peak at Future Tech From HP Labs

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PALO ALTO — HP celebrated the fortieth anniversary of its
HP Labs facility by giving a small group of reporters a sneak peek at some
of its cutting-edge research.

One of the big areas of HP’s research is the so-called data center
of the future that will include a utility computing model. John Sontag,
director of virtualization at HP, said a common complaint he’s heard from
CIOs in the past ten years is that they spend a lot of money on hardware,
software and the people to run it all, but the system isn’t very flexible to
changing business conditions, changes in the supply chain, the demands of
the Web and other factors.

“We’re looking at [transforming] the data center in terms of agility,
ability to respond and making it a service over the wire,” he said.

Like HP, IBM (Quote, Chart) and Sun (Quote, Chart) have begun
offering different versions of utility or on-demand computing. Sontag noted
a key advantage is being able to add computer capacity quickly and manage it
from a remote location. “Normally, the process of acquiring new systems is
three to twelve weeks,” said Sontag.

HP’s research has enabled it to significantly shrink the amount of
physical space its own data center needs, and it’s working to convey the
expertise and technology it’s developed to help its customers do likewise.
The cost of physical space and the energy required to maintain an
appropriate cool temperature in the data center, full of increasingly more
powerful servers, is a major IT concern.

“Since the mid ’90s, we’ve been looking at how do you extract heat at the
chip, system and rack level?” said Sontag. For example, where a typical data
center might be entirely cooled to a constant 68 degrees, HP approached the
problem holistically, looking at better ways to manage airflow and other
factors that leave the main area about 72 degrees and 100 degrees or more
(which HP says is safe) in back of the servers, saving significant cooling
costs.

Moving from enterprise concerns to consumer technologies, HP showed
several projects that show promise, even if they may never become commercial
products in quite the same way as their current prototype incarnations.

“Casual capture” is the term HP uses to describe a new kind of discreet
video and photo capture. A prototype unit featured a video camera built in
to a pair of sun glasses; the glasses were tethered to a paperback sized
power supply and storage unit that could be clipped a belt. HP Labs in the
U.K. has been experimenting with the glasses as a way, for example, for a parent
to record an afternoon at the park. The recording is always on.

For viewing later, HP has software which guesses at the best
images to reproduce and can display them in a collage format. For example,
something that is stared at for more than a few seconds might be deemed by
the software to be a particularly important image, while a scene that’s
viewed slowly from one side to the other might be a good panoramic shot.

The prototype can store about three hours of video at 30
frames-per-second. “The software reviews and picks out the best frames
automatically,” said Dr. Howard Taub, vice president and associate director of HP Labs.
“This may be the future of photography for consumers.”

HP is not committing to any of these consumer products being made
available commercially; for now they are research projects that HP hopes
will become commercial products in one form or another.

Misto is HP’s code name for a kind of interactive coffee table that
brings new meaning to the term “digital living room.” The prototype is
basically an Intel Pentium-based computer built into a coffee table with
a two-by-three-foot display taking up most of the surface, which has touch
screen capability.

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