InformationWeek

April 2, 2001

Editor: Karyl Scott (kscott@cmp.com)

A Chilling Effect
Researchers at two University of California campuses are cooking up one cool technology. Led by Ari Shakouri, an electrical engineering professor at UC Santa Cruz, a team of scientists is refining what are essentially microscopic refrigerators used for cooling semiconductors and optoelectronic devices such as lasers. The result could mean substantial savings for the chip and telecommunications industries, as well as more dependable data integrity for those using future products cooled by the tiny devices.

As integrated circuit chips get smaller and more powerful, and as telecommunications networks increasingly depend on so-called wavelength division multiplex technology to serve up more data, temperature control is a growing concern. Smaller, faster chips are prone to overheating, and Shakouri says spot-cooling the locations on the chip that tend to be hottest can greatly improve performance. Similarly, a small temperature change in an optical transmission can alter the wavelength enough to degrade the signal, resulting in data loss.

Chipmakers have depended largely on cooling fans since attempts to mount coolers directly on microprocessors haven't been well-received because of the risks associated with adding another moving part. But by refining a new thermoelectric material made from silicon, germanium, and carbon, Shakouri and his team say they've developed a technology that will yield improved cooling efficiency. The substance can be grown directly onto the silicon substrate during chip production. He and one of his key collaborators, John Bowers, an electrical and computer engineering professor at UC Santa Barbara, say that refinements in the cooling materials will result in the desired effect.

-- Tony Kontzer (tkontzer@cmp.com)

Streams Of Consciousness
David Gelernter's 1991 book Mirror Worlds presaged the World Wide Web when the Internet was still a tool for academics. Now, the company that the Yale computer-science professor named after that famous tome is releasing its first product. Mirror Worlds Technologies Inc.'s Scopeware aims to bring the same simplicity to PCs that the Web bestowed on the information highway.

"I don't think anybody doubts the file system and the desktop are dead," says Gelernter, chief scientist at Mirror Worlds in New York. Scopeware lets users manage files, E-mail, Web documents, and other information through a lightweight, cross-platform interface.

Instead of going with the PC metaphor of organizing information by file names, Scopeware organizes a user's digital life by time. Expandable index cards denoting Web pages, E-mail, calendar entries, and Office documents sit stacked on the desktop in the order they were created or received. New information goes to the top of the "stream." Sweeping the cursor over a stream of thumbnail documents lets users scan their contents.

Scopeware works by making copies of files on a network and a user's hard drive. The server, running on Windows NT or 2000, sits behind a company's firewall, extracting and indexing documents' content, which it presents to a browser-based client running on PCs, Macs, Unix workstations, Palm and Windows CE devices, WAP phones, and BlackBerry pagers.

-- Aaron Ricadela (aricadel@cmp.com)