data storage – Page 2

The shiny, plastic memory of the compact disc: when the new format was introduced.

Many people still remember the time when we had to listen to the favorite music from the cassette tapes, or, if you are old enough, even the vinyl records. The least ones seem to gradually come back into our houses, with the introduction of the latest re-invented record players, and there are even some signs of the cassette tape revival that are periodically observed here and there.

But what about the CDs? We kind of heard that they recently migrated from the consumer market to some niche industries like data archiving and medical IT, however there are still some implications of that media on the mass market as well (gaming consoles are still mostly operate on optical discs, as well as offline media distribution).

Anyway, when observing the revival of the media storage formats that preceded CDs and DVDs, one may logically presume that same phase will come one day and for the optical discs. Many people still use optical media for things like music playback, as many claim that sound quality of the studio recorded disc can’t be beaten by anything else.

Saskatoon based writer, editor and columnist with the StarPhoenix and related publications, Cam Fuller still remembers the days when the optical disc started its small industrial revolution, that eventually changed the way we listen to the music and watch the movies. Here are his memories, that reflect those days:

The miracle of the compact disc is not forgotten by me.

I remember when they first came out. They were impossibly cool. There was no hiss and pop when you put one on, unlike vinyl records. I remember an audiophile magazine article from way back then. The writer was caught off guard after pressing play — with no background noise before the music started, it was like nothing was working at all. You had to trust the song would start eventually and avoid cranking your speakers to full volume on speculation. Many woofers were melted by impatient audio fools, I suspect.

CDs were small and shiny and oh-so modern. Amazingly, they could hold 75 minutes of music, way more than an LP. And you could play them in a car. If you listened to Tom Cochrane’s Life is a Highway on CD when you were literally on the highway, life was just about as good as it could possibly get.

Because of my job, it felt like I had an even closer relationship with CDs than most people. Working in the Entertainment Department put me on the publicity list of every major record label. Since they wanted attention for their bands, they’d send CDs. Lots of CDs. CDs for bands I was doing stories on. CDs for bands I wasn’t. Compilations, movie soundtracks, you name it.

In fact, the three main labels had representatives who’d phone and pop by with boxes of them.

Was I spoiled? Was I ever. Unless it was for somebody else’s Christmas present, I rarely bought a CD, and when I did it was a jolt of reality. “Twenty-three bucks? What a rip.”

This was free music before free music, a golden age before downloading changed everything. My entire music collection consisted of 50 LPs and 25 cassettes. We’re talking 600 songs. Then one day I was drowning in music. “What is Third Eye Blind? I’ll have to give it a whirl. Ooh, the new Aerosmith album!” Having access to all that music was like being able to make it rain when you needed rain. A god-like power.

And then something happened. Twenty-five years went by. The novelty wore off, to say the least. Digital music took over. And I’m left, on my shelves, with a gallery of the obscure. Kashtin, the soundtrack from the movie The Perez Family, The String Cheese Incident, Woman and Songs 6, The World’s Very Best Opera for Kids. It’s nothing if not diverse.

None of these, by the way, have I listened to in the past 20 years. It wouldn’t feel right selling them but I doubt there’s a market anyway. I can’t in good conscience take them to the landfill. They’re no good for floor tile. I suppose I could wait until they’re cool again — it happened for LPs. And I just read that The String Cheese Incident has a new album. I’m so out of it, I’m cutting-edge.

Source: Saskatoon StarPhoenix

Falcon Technologies International hosts International Customer Seminar on April 4th and 5th

Falcon Technologies International recently hosted its international customer seminar in the stunning Ritz Carlton Al Wadi Hotel, which is located in a unique desert environment within our home Emirate of Ras Al Khaimah. We were delighted to welcome approximately 50 delegates who travelled from diverse locations such as France, Germany, Japan, USA and the UK, to discuss the latest developments, opportunities and innovations that make optical media the exciting and progressive industry that it is today.

The entire FTI extended a very warm welcome to all the guests, who enjoyed the superb hospitality of the Al Wadi Hotel, complete activities including a traditional Arabian Falcon show, archery, sailing, go-karting and golf. The presentation session included an overview of the economic growth Ras Al Khaimah has been experiencing in recent years from Mr. Shahram Hashemi, Group Director of Strategy and Investments at RAK Free Trade Zone, along with presentations from the FTI management team with demonstrations of new product development initiatives.

Speaking about the event our CEO Mr. Michael Gutowski said, “We are delighted to host the global optical media community here in our home of Ras Al Khaimah. Having the opportunity to assemble so many of our partners in Ras Al Khaimah was a very positive experience for us at FTI, the optical media industry in general, and for Ras Al Khaimah as a global business hub. We very much hope that all the attendees enjoyed their stay in Ras Al Khaimah, and hope to welcome them back in 2018”.

Here are some photo and video highlights from the event:

Exploring the History of Archiving: Exhibit Examines the Evolution of Technology Used to Record Memories

Before we typed on PCs, touched smartphone screens and wrote on paper, people in the past carved into rocks and clay or wrote on trees and even animal bones.

It’s the instinct to record that perhaps set us apart from other species.

It also is through documentation that our memories can expand beyond what our brains can remember and that we can pass down memories to the next generations.

The newly-opened Memory Museum within the National Library of Korea in Seoul, South Korea, sheds light on how documentation evolved throughout history. From pre-historic rock art to Egyptian papyrus; from woodblock to modern printing; from a typewriter to a PC, humans have managed to find a better way to record and store memories and data.

Upon entering the exhibition hall, located within the institution’s digital library building, visitors see a media art piece featuring a human face and a book.

Renowned media artist Lee Lee Nam created the piece to celebrate the opening of the museum. Titled “Face Within a Book,” it features LED lights on metal slates and the lights create five different imageries that represent humans’ creativity and imaginativeness.

It represents that humans are destined to archive, and that books and libraries are important for that reason.

About 200 items are on display.

One of the highlights from the first section of the exhibition, titled “Archival Media, Awakening Civilization,” is the Great Dharani Sutra of Immaculate and Pure Light (Mugujeonggwang Daedaranigyeong), printed in the 8th century during the Unified Silla period (668-935) period. The publication is considered the world’s oldest woodblock print, although what is on display at the museum is a copy.

While this section is more about text, the second section expands to scope into how humans archived pictures and sounds. Naturally, items like cameras and films are displayed here. One of the interesting artifacts in this section is the stereoscopic viewer from the 1900. When people gaze at two photos through the viewer, they get a 3-D effect. Lee Kwi-bok, the chief conservator at the library’s preservation and research center said, “the basic logic is the same as the 3-D equipment today,” adding that such devices were brought to Korea by American missionaries.

The last part focuses on digital archiving, showing how PCs and their components have developed. Korea’s first ever personal computer, SE-8001, developed in 1981, is on display, as well as Korea’s first hard disk drive (HDD), donated by Yonsei University, which can store up to 20 megabytes, as well as Korea’s first semiconductor, donated by Samsung Electronics.

There are some interesting programs that visitors can take part in at the end of the exhibition.

They can write a letter using ancient printing tools, like woodblocks and metal movable types, as well as a typewriter. Also if you have any data on older media formats, like VHS, reel-to-reel tape, cassette tapes or LP records, you can take them to the museum, which can convert the data into a more modern format, like digital files, CDs or DVDs.

“Civilization and the culture today exist because of archiving and media,” director Park Joo-hwan said. “Archiving is what transcends time and space and connects the past with the present. And libraries have been part of this process throughout the history.”

Source: Korea JoongAng Daily

Falcon Technologies International LLC shares these universal values of cultural heritage preservation and puts them as a base for the development of archival media production. We firmly believe that without knowing where we come from, there would be no vision of where are we heading to, therefore data preservation for the future generations is essential.

FalconMEDIA Century Archival is a professional grade optical media, that is able to store and preserve data of any kind for hundreds of years, literally meaning that many things around us may change forever, but the information that is stored under the Century Archival’s Gold Protective Layer will be still accessible.

At the Dawn of the Computer Age: Memories of the “Informational Revolution” Pioneers.

Do you remember your very first computer? Pretty much everyone does; most of the people in their mid-30s, early-40s can still remember these noisy big white boxes with huge square screens and clicking dial-up modems that took ages to download a plain-text news article or even a basic e-mail with no attachments. Well, it took almost 40 years for the technology to get to that point, and there are still alive today witnesses to how it all started in the basements of the world famous universities and colleges.

Joyce Wheeler is someone who saw it all in those early days. She also can still remember her very first computer, and one of the reasons for that is because it was one of the first computers anyone used.

Dr. Joyce Wheeler was among the pioneers of programming

It was EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator), a “proto-computer” that was assembled and served scientists at the University of Cambridge back in 1949. Joyce Wheeler was a member of the scientists group who were working on their PhD degree under the supervision of famous astronomer Fred Hoyle. They were researching the reactions inside stars, in particular the star lifecycle stages and their length.

In order to perform the research, Joyce needed some powerful calculating equipment, since the inner workings of the nuclear furnace that keep stars shining is a very complicated problem to solve with use of a human brain, pencil and a piece of paper. Mathematics capable of describing this level of nuclear energy processes is pretty formidable: Joyce remembers that she had to solve a nasty set of differential equations that describe their behavior and composition.

A copy of Edsac is being built at the National Museum of Computing

Completing these calculations manually would almost certainly result in errors, inaccurate data and ultimately could – and probably would – affect the research outcomes. And here is where she met EDSAC – a machine built by Professor Maurice Wilkes, a technical device the size of several average size bedrooms, that was there to do the kind of calculations that Ms. Wheeler needed to be done to complete her advanced degree.

The first challenge for young astrophysics student was to learn the sophisticated language that machine could understand. She was quite familiar with the machine itself, since it was showcased to her prior the start of her degree course in 1954. Being keen to get her research done accurately, Joyce sat down with an instructions booklet and worked her way through dozens of the programming exercises from that pioneering programming manual. That little book was called WWG (after the names of the authors: Maurice Wilkes, David Wheeler and Stanley Gill).

The foundations of programming were laid down by Edsac's creators — The foundations of programming were laid down by Edsac’s creators

While learning the programming, Joyce (whose family name was Blacker at that time) got talking to David Wheeler, since one of her programs was helping to ensure that EDSAC was working well. They eventually got to know each other, fell in love and married in 1957.

Joyce remembers that exciting time in detail: she could not stop wondering what the machine could do for her work. She was able to study the programming quite fast due to her strong mathematical background: she became very quickly able to master the syntax into which she had to translate the endless complex equations.

At certain point of time she realized that programming is very similar to Maths in the sense that one can’t do it for too long.

“I found I could not work at a certain programming job for more than a certain number of hours per day,” Joyce Wheeler remembers. “After that you would not make much progress.”

Research students like Joyce Wheeler had to use Edsac at night

Sometimes the solution to some programming problems that worried her from time to time would come into her mind while she was doing some other things outside of the computer lab: like doing the laundry or having lunch.

“Sometimes it’s better to leave something alone, to pause, and that’s very true of programming.”

When the programming bit was finally done, Joyce Wheeler was allocated a timeslot to run her programs on the EDSAC: it was Friday night. She remembers that this period was perfect for her: there were no lectures the next day she had to attend.

As an operator she was granted the right to run the EDSAC alone, but she had to make sure that everything she did was recorded. A quite common occurence for all the early computers (and EDSAC was no exception) was unexpected crashes. Joyce remembers that only occasionally she was lucky enough to keep machine running all night, and if it did crash, there was little she was allowed to do to try to fix it. Even the cleaners were not allowed to get near EDSAC.

Dr. Wheeler showed Joyce one procedure, that allowed the recalibration of the EDSAC’s two kilobyte memory, but if that did not help, Joyce had no other choice but to stop her work for the night. But despite the regular crashes, she made steady progress on finding out how long different stars would last before they collapsed.

“I got some estimates of a star’s age, how long it was going to last,” she said. “One of the nice things was that with programming you could repeat it. Iterate. You could not do that with a hand calculation. We could add in sample numbers on programs and it could easily check them. I could check my results on the machine very rapidly, which was very useful.”

Now, you should understand that “rapidly” back in the 1950’s meant “not more than 30 minutes”. This is the time that EDSAC required to run a program. After that the results were printed out for the researcher to analyze them. After that you had to re-program and wait another couple of days to run another round of complex calculations. Despite all these delays, Ms. Wheeler felt that she was a part of something that would change the world.

“We were doing work that could not done in any other way,” she said. And even though EDSAC was crude and painfully slow by modern standards, she saw that a revolution had begun.

We at FTI never fail to get inspired by pioneering scientists like Dr. Wheeler, with their single-minded dedication and commitment to innovating new solutions to existing problems, often in lonely circumstances and running against the tide of conventional thinking, driving them to expand the frontiers of discovery and learning in ways that eventually become implemented into normal life for the entire global population. Innovation, research and patience are some of the core values we cherish at FTI, and no-one demonstrated these better than Dr Joyce Wheeler.

How to Let Your Media Speak for Itself?

Even though we live in the era of flash-memory, hard disc drives and cloud storage solutions, optical disc still remains number one choice for the offline data distribution and long-term information storage and archiving.

Optical disc - still leading archival tool — Optical disc – still leading archival tool

Just like a good old book, an optical media disc also has a cover that contains the summary of what is recorded on it – otherwise it would be impossible to distinguish two absolutely identical glowing circular pieces of pressurized polycarbonate from each other. A disc printable layer (sometimes called simply “label”) is something that gives a disc personality, lets it speak for itself and identifies what is recorded on it. It is important for this label to be vibrant and colorful to replicate the design that was initially tailored by the publisher, so that the end consumer will be able to understand what type of content is on the disc from the very first glance.

Vibrant and colourful disc label - good way to boost the sales potential of the media — Vibrant and colourful disc label – good way to boost the sales potential of the media

There were plenty ways to create the labels for the media: the most common method was to print the design on circular pieces of paper and glue it to the surface, but times have changed and not it is impossible to glue discs that spin at over 5000 RPM instead of 33 RPM back in the days of vinyl. Some manufacturers even tried to implement a technology of “in-drive label burning”, but the labels made with this technology were typically black and white and very faded.

For over a decade, Falcon Technologies International LLC prioritized its Research and Development efforts on printable surfaces and managed to implement high-tech solutions into its production process. FTI’s wide range of printable layers are designed to meet any professional media duplication industry requirements according to highest standards.

FTI is proud to introduce its brand new SMART GLOSSY printable layer – a surface that is able to illustrate your personalized graphics and labels brighter and shinier than ever before. FalconMEDIA Smart Glossy printable discs are perfect to create customized, long-lasting, ultra-vivid design disc labels. Our Research and Development team have invested significant resources to tailor this brand new technology to allows you to have superior image definition, color saturation and vivid quality of printed graphics.

Key Features of the Product:

Superior ink absorption and faster ink drying printable surface (best in class)
Better glossiness surface delivering full color, glossy photo quality printing
Excellent color whiteness
Consistent printing across the full surface giving excellent uniformity
Long lasting print surface
Excellent water resisitant quality makes the printable surface free from scratches, smudging and smearing in wet conditions
High yield on inkjet printer (economic ink consumption)
Excellent Black/White Contrast with economical ink saturation setting
Wider compatibility on all standard professional inkjet printers
Good handling characteristics to ensure smooth operation with leading robotic duplication and publishing systems

To conclude it would be fair to note here that in media duplication and distribution business it is very important to select the right supplier, that is able to ensure high quality of the optical media and compatibility with a wide range of mass-printing equipment.

Critical Role of Data Archiving for the Financial Institutions

Finance is an excessively regulated industry, with many moving parts and data that must be monitored and reported in order to stay protected and compliant with all regulations. One of the most important aspects of regulatory compliance for banks and financial organisations is record keeping and archiving electronic communication data. With the right tools and plans in place, archiving compliance does not have to be a daunting task.

Financial institutions generate a lot of data, which has to be archived by law.

Brokers, dealers, investment advisors, lending agents, futures and transfer agents, and businesses like mortgage companies, credit unions, banks, hedge funds, private equity firms, exchanges, commercial and retail banks, lenders and insurers, payday lenders, foreclosure relief services and debt collectors are all required to capture, monitor and archive business related communication data for review, audits, eDiscovery, litigation, and compliance.

But how do you become compliant? Let’s just jump right into the What, Why, and How of archiving compliance for banking and financial organisations.

Compliance with data archiving regulations is vital prevention of cyber crimes.

In short, a financial institution of any kind should be archiving all business related electronic communication data.

Email has been around long enough that just about everyone realizes the need to have a complete and easily accessible email archive. But you should really be archiving every bit of electronic communication data created by your organization. This includes social media, instant messaging, and content created on mobile devices.

The most obvious reason to archive emails and other business communication data is that your business is regulated and thus, mandated to do so.

Another thing that has to be archived - corporate e-mails — Another thing that has to be archived – corporate e-mails

Another reason why you should archive, that isn’t obvious at first, is data leakage. If you have proprietary data, customer account, transactional or confidential information, you are obligated to make sure that it isn’t shared, either purposefully or accidentally. The use of email, social media, instant messaging, and mobile devices increases the ease at which your employees could share this type of data. Couple that with the fact that the line between personal and business communication is blurred on corporate mobile devices. In addition to data leakage, you need to guard against insider trading, inappropriate financial advice, and stating personal beliefs about a financial investment or trade as fact. Having an archiving solution provides you with protection against these threats by giving you oversight. This oversight on employee communication data, coupled with an effective communication policy, will not only discourage bad behavior, but will encourage proper behavior according to established policy. Your employees will know that, according to your policy, everything they communicate is being stored and can be accessed for review.

As you can see, almost every commercial entity produces and accumulates large amounts of various data on a daily basis, so the “archival question” is becoming more actual nowadays and will become even more critical in the future. Data storage and archival solutions in the age of “informational revolution” we live in are required to provide not only the big data storage and rendering capacities, but also ensure the integrity and accessibility of data for years, decades and centuries.

art4 Falcon Technologies International LLC’s Research and Development team have created a solution that complies with the archival needs and requirements of the financial institutions and government entities. Our FalconMEDIA Century Archival CDs and DVDs with golden and platinum reflective layers showed outstanding results during the internal and third-party benchmarking tests: data stored on these professional archival discs stays accessible and integer for more than 500 years – timeframe that is enough to archive data for almost 7 future generations of the humanity.
Source: GWAVA

Falcon Technologies International LLC Celebrates 11th Anniversary

Falcon Technologies International LLC have celebrated its 11th anniversary on November 13th, 2016. Since the company launch in 2005, we have managed to build a great team of specialists to develop and manufacture the highest quality of optical media products available in the market today. Marking the beginning of second decade on the global market, FTI is looking forward to further development and growth of its worldwide presence and remaining at the cutting edge of product development and quality assurance in the field of optical media.

On behalf of the FTI Management Team we would like to thank all of our clients and partners worldwide for being with us all these years!

What Every Consumer Should Know About Big Data

While “Big Data” may sound like nothing more than a buzzword, many companies are using it for a wide variety of online applications; for instance, to target marketing efforts to customers more effectively. But what is big data, really?

Big data is the collection of information that can be gathered online, which businesses can analyze and use to find patterns, trends or associations that will help them make better decisions. But while big data can be used to enhance user experience and provide targeted ads, there are still some privacy concerns. Eight members of Forbes Technology Council offer their insights into things everyone should know about big data:

1. Big Data Isn’t Moral

Data is just that — data. Just as the news interprets data, so does every application to determine how to use it. The same data that allows stores to intelligently sell you what you really want may also allow a government to infringe upon your rights. The data is just data, but how it is used determines morality. “1984″ was written before the means were known, but human nature has remained the same. – Nicholas Thompson, Grit

2. Aggregation Masks Private Data

Consumers often fear big data due to privacy concerns. However, if big data is regulated and used properly through aggregation, individuals’ privacy will not be breached, and at the same time, consumers’ experience will be enhanced. I personally love it when Amazon or iTunes recommend products based on aggregated behavioral data. – Arash Asli, Yocale

3. Most Big Data Is There To Help You

It might sound cliché, but 99% of the organizations using big data are doing so to align you with relevant content or experiences (and spare you from those that have nothing to do with you). The better the data and analysis, the better the experience you’re going to have with the brands and content you engage with. And it’s more likely you’ll discover new things that are also relevant to you. – Or Shani, Adgorithms

4. If It’s Online, It’s Discoverable

In this day and age, it’s important to treat any data you give online as discoverable. Anything you put out there will be found no matter how many times you delete it. If it goes online, someone is archiving it. Take this into consideration before posting anything on the web and you’ll be just fine! – Danny Boice, Trustify

5. Privacy Is A Real Issue

As with all data collection, privacy will be top of mind for consumers. Social networks and governments are taking consumers’ concerns around privacy seriously, rolling out new legislation and regulations. When dealing with big data, the industry needs to respect and protect privacy by design. This means designing in principles of data governance, collection, anonymization, usage and retention. – Tim Barker, DataSift

6. Big Data Enhances User Experience

Consumers should realize big data has been going on for years and has contributed to enhanced online shopping experiences, such as suggested items in your Amazon account. There are many laws in place to protect privacy and they continue to get more stringent. We do not want companies restricted too much, as their user experience could suffer. – Chris Ciabarra, Revel Systems INC

7. Big Data Supports Our Digital Experiences

Too many consumers believe big data is ethereal and unapproachable, but they should know that it is the enabling the phenomenon that supports every digital experience they have, whether it’s using their preferred map app or sharing their family experiences over social media. Big data underpins it all and is going to enable even more incredible experiences in the future.– Adam Wray, Basho Technologies

8. Machines Don’t Gossip

The concerns consumers have over data privacy and giving companies access to their personal data may be assuaged with new artificially intelligent systems. These systems can analyze big data (without sharing it) and, at last, break the deadlock between consumers’ fears about data privacy and business’ need for more data/better personalization. – Paulo Marques, Feedzai

Data may be called “immortal” in some sense nowadays. Everything one has ever written or has been recorded saying is saved forever, in some obscure server somewhere on the planet. Going in and deleting data doesn’t work either. It can simply be recovered, even by a hacker with limited skills. Try pulling out of Facebook, for example. While your account will be shut down, Facebook will tell you that you are better off deactivating it so you can come back to it at some future time. It brings to mind Don Henley and Glenn Frey’s immortal line from the song Hotel California, the Eagles’ greatest hit, which says “you can check out, but you can never leave”.

Data is now referred to in zetabytes (where one zetabyte is equivalent to one trillion gigabytes). Studies show that in 2006, the Internet produced about 0.16 zetabytes of data, which then grew at a compound annual rate of 25% for the next decade, going to 8.5 zetabytes at the end of last year.

It is important to understand that in this age of Big Data we live in it is crucial to prioritize the secure storage of private information. The less it is connected to the Internet, the safer it is – an axiom known almost by any school kid nowadays. Anything that is anyhow connected to the web is automatically unsafe and non-secure.

Falcon Technologies International LLC understands the need of safe data storage solutions and develops the supreme quality optical media to ensure that the data is stored safely and for extended periods of time. FTI’s Century Archival discs are able to securely store the sensitive information for hundreds of years, ensuring that it stays integer, accessible and readable by the future generations.

GITEX Technology Week in Dubai

In search for future technologies that can enable companies to achieve efficiency and cost effectiveness for business? Well, the 36th Gulf Information Technology Exhibition (Gitex) provided just that.

This 5 day event opened its doors from Sunday 16th October, 2016. It was the largest ICT exhibition in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia, that took place at Dubai world trade centre. The event was inaugurated by Shaikh Hamdan Bin Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of the Dubai Executive Council.

So, what was the Gitex technology exhibition all about? This event showed live demonstrations of future generation technology solutions from various government and international companies that can transform Middle East businesses. Key industry verticals of marketing, healthcare, finance, intelligent cities, retail, education and energy were discussed by industry leaders.

Over 200 investors and influential tech investment companies from Silicon Valley, Europe, Asia and the Middle East, including SoftBank Group International, 500 Startups, and many other venture partners arrived in Dubai to explore, evaluate and potentially fund start up businesses with talent. These ventures also included globally giant investors like Facebook, Dropbox and Spotify.

Key highlights included a large indoor VR activation powered by Samsung logo, Game-changing tech from 4,000 solution providers including AR, VR, AI, Wearables, Drones and more. GITEX Startup Movement examined the global startup movement featuring 350+ breakthrough startups from 52 countries. Customized networking programmes were also on offer for startups to discover how global contemporaries have been there, done that and created an impact.

In today’s era of technology, there is an ever increasing need for entrepreneurs to harness technologies that can enable companies to achieve efficiency and cost effectiveness. FTI has always believed that a strong culture of innovation, in all areas of the company, is an essential contributor to business success. FTI prioritize R&D and technology over cost, as we firmly believe that these functions are critical to ensure our products represent the best quality within the optical media industry.

In line with new innovation for business and services Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) showcased a smart streetlight system at GITEX 2016. According to Eng Maitha bin Adai, CEO of RTA’s traffic and roads agency, there are three systems showcased at Gitex this year and this combination of systems will help sustain green economy requirements by reducing carbon emissions. These systems include the Central Wireless Road Lighting Control System that sets multiple synchronized timetables for dimming streetlights. “A new feature in the smart lighting system is a tentative WiFi service installed in Dubai Water Canal at Sheikh Zayed Road.

RTA also displayed high-definition pedestrian detection camera systems with a twist. These new generation cameras produce pedestrian statistics in terms of number, sex, and age group.

Dubai Customs‘ Smart Virtual Agent initiative was also showcased at GITEX 2016. This venture represents a smart channel for communication with customers, which allows their queries about customs services, procedures and regulations to be answered more efficiently. Without the need for any physical employee the Smart Virtual Agent is an intelligent tool which operates 24/7. This cost effective measure helps efficiently redirect resources to other duties by reducing support cost. The self-improving platform utilizes Dubai Customs’ database and memory of similar cases to answer customer inquiries.

Many GITEX visitors had the opportunity to try out the Smart Inspection Glasses on display at the Dubai Customs stand. These tech heavy glasses facilitate containers’ field inspection, as customs inspectors can browse the customs declaration and x-ray images of the shipment simultaneously as well as its risk level. Inspectors can submit inspection reports using either the virtual keyboard or voice input feature.

Furthermore Dubai Customs showcased 8 happiness-led initiatives and innovations under the umbrella of Ports, Customs and Free Zone Corporation pavilion. Other innovations included the Authorized Economic Operator, Smart Inspection Lab, Smart Customs Route, Bags Smart Customs Inspection System and the Endangered Species Exhibition.

Five seminal trends have caught the eye at this Gitex event namely; Robotics and artificial intelligence (AI), Biometrics, 3-D Printing, Mixed reality and drones. With artificial intelligence on the rise and the need for huge amounts of data to be stored, the progression and development of cloud storage is on the horizon. Cloud storage is a cloud computing model in which data is stored remotely on servers accessed from the World Wide Web, or “cloud.” Storage servers are built on virtualization techniques all maintained, managed, and backed-up online.

The technology world is increasingly realizing that Optical Digital Media is a safer way to store data compared to cloud technology solutions – this is evidenced by multiple data breaches where personal photographs and other information has been hacked and distributed to the public, and by the fact that Facebook has publicly stated that they have chosen to store their data with Optical Digital Media rather than cloud.

Falcon Technologies International (FTI) leads the way with regard to Optical Digital Media security and memory technology, and is conducting potentially ground-breaking research in this field with academic partners.

Powerful computing and storage implications

Technology has come a long way. We see constant development and growth in terms of computing hardware, software and storage. Although some technologists say, those gains are stalling, perhaps limited in by the physical boundary of raw materials that are used in central processing units.

Supercomputers are developing even faster than consumer-oriented computing technologies

Recently Microsoft thinks it may have found the solution namely field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). A FPGA is an integrated circuit designed to be configured by a customer or a designer after manufacturing – thus it is said to be “field-programmable”. To define the behavior of the FPGA, the user provides:

a hardware description language (HDL)
or a schematic design.

The HDL form is more optimal for large structures as you can specify them numerically rather than having to draw every piece by hand. However, schematic entry can allow for easier visualization of a design. FPGA allows you flexibility in your designs and is a way to change how parts of a system work without introducing a large amount of cost and risk of delays into the design schedule. Many designers have the false impression that building a system with a modern FPGA means you have to deal with millions of logic gates and a massive amounts of connections just to do something useful. But if that were the case, FPGA use wouldn’t be growing: Instead, there would only be about a half dozen FPGA users left. It turns out FPGA designers have done much of the heavy lifting of adding commonly needed components so all that you have to concentrate on is customizing those functions that are specific to your application. Examples of components produced by designers comprise: clock generators, dynamic random access memory (DRAM) controllers and even whole multicore microprocessors.

This type of computer chip that can be reprogrammed for specific tasks after they leave the factory floor, are adding firepower to Microsoft’s network of on-demand computing power.

What does this mean in real terms?

Using all of the power of Microsoft’s data centers worldwide, the company could translate all 5 million articles on the English language Wikipedia in less than a tenth of a second.

In the past 2 years Microsoft has quietly been installing FPGAs on the new servers; Microsoft added to its global fleet of data centers. They’re present usage includes ranking results in the Bing search engine and speed the performance of Microsoft’s Azure cloud-computing network. Microsoft is alone among major cloud-computing players in widely deploying FPGA technology.

There are also implications for high performance computing and data storage such as solutions for Network Attached Storage (NAS), Storage Area Network (SAN), servers, and storage appliances.

Project Catapult is the technology behind Microsoft’s hyperscale acceleration fabric. The supercomputing substrate is built with the aim to accelerate the efforts in networking, security, cloud services and artificial intelligence.

Project Catapult combines an FPGA integrated into nearly every new Microsoft datacenter server. By exploiting the reconfigurable nature of FPGAs, at the server, the Catapult architecture delivers the efficiency and performance of custom hardware without the cost, complexity and risk of deploying fully customized ASICs into the datacenter. Moreover, the performance gain compared with CPUs is monumental and with less than 30% cost increase, and no more than 10% power increase.

Other FPGA Applications

Due to their programmable nature, FPGAs are an ideal for numerous markets. As the industry leader, Xilinx provides comprehensive solutions consisting of FPGA devices, advanced software, and configurable, ready-to-use IP cores for markets and applications such as:

Aerospace & Defense – Radiation-tolerant FPGAs along with intellectual property for image processing, waveform generation, and partial reconfiguration for SDRs.
Industrial – Xilinx FPGAs and targeted design platforms for Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) enable higher degrees of flexibility, faster time-to-market, and lower overall non-recurring engineering costs (NRE) for a wide range of applications such as industrial imaging and surveillance, industrial automation, and medical imaging equipment.
Medical – For diagnostic, monitoring, and therapy applications, the Virtex FPGA and Spartan® FPGA families can be used to meet a range of processing, display, and I/O interface requirements.
Security – Xilinx offers solutions that meet the evolving needs of security applications, from access control to surveillance and safety systems.
Wireless Communications – RF, base band, connectivity, transport and networking solutions for wireless equipment, addressing standards such as WCDMA, HSDPA, WiMAX and others.

The advancement in computing power and storage capability combined with substantial savings and efficiency introduced through FPGA technology mean the world of supercomputing is more accessible then ever.

At the same time, the advancement of supercomputing technologies automatically means more data storage requirements. Every year world produces more and more data and therefore more and more information needs to be stored. Some information needs to be stored for more extended periods of time like 10-20-30 or even 100 years. There is no better long-term data storage mediums than archival discs.

Falcon Technologies International LLC has developed Century Archival product line, which is a cutting-edge technology with built in Gold or Platinum layers to ensure maximum security, longevity and protection for stored data.

Century Archival products are designed to secure data for hundreds of years – FTI’s Century Archival DVD product has been demonstrated in testing to be capable of storing data for up to 200 years, whereas the Century Archival CD product has demonstrated a longevity in excess of 400 years, making the Century Archival line the most durable and secure archival digital media product available in the market today.