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| http://www.gilder.com/
| Issue 269.0/October 27, 2006
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HEADLINES:
- The
Week / Can Technology Defeat Terrorism?
- Friday
Feature / EZchip: Getting the Giant
Fabs’ Attention
- Friday
Blogger Bonus / Maintaining
Momentum
- Readings /
The
Week / Can
Technology Defeat Terrorism?
Peter Huber, Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute for Policy Reasearch,
speaking at the Gilder/Forbes Telecosm 2006 Conference earlier this month in
Lake Tahoe (excerpt):
When a deliberate nuclear release occurs in the United States, as I think it
inevitably will, we will almost certainly find that the material originated
somewhere mundane—a hospital, a factory, an industrial setting. There is a
whole lot of nuclear material out there all over the place. It has many useful
applications. People who want it will find it.
The
London subway bombers used Triaceatone Triperoxide (TATP). They brewed it in
the bathtub using acetone, drain cleaner, and bleach. The Japanese subway
attackers home-brewed their Sarin gas. The Oklahoma City bombers mixed liquid
fertilizer and diesel fuel.
It
is easy to forget about things like this if they haven’t happened in very
recent memory. One would prefer to think that they’re not possible. But, the
simple fact is—and people in the know really do know this—we still face today
an absolutely horrifying disconnect between u-weapons (these very toxic
materials) and our own ability to see them before they are released or
detonated in a subway or a stadium.
Scientists can of course see anything in a lab. They can see a single atom of
Cobalt-60 or a molecule of TATP or a strand of anthrax DNA. Just bring your
sample to the right building and a well-trained technician will fire-up a
room-sized or larger mainframe unit and in due course the instrument will tell
you exactly what it is you brought in. It happens after every attack. They can
always tell you what hit you, after you’ve been hit.
The challenge is to see these things before they detonate, before they’re
dispersed, before they get into the air ducts, and to see them not roughly or
approximately, but so precisely that you can see exactly what they are and
react to them appropriately, in real time, in all of the places where they
could inflict damage.
How do you even begin to do that?
Just across Manhattan on any given day are some 4 million letters, 3 million
people, at least half a million motor vehicles, half a million parcels, any of
which could be carrying a tiny amount of something that could cause enormous
harm.
Some time ago, the officers who patrol the mall in Washington D.C. were given
portable radiation detectors. They soon removed the batteries. The units
registered so many false alarms, they were worse than useless.
Radiation is easy to detect. It’s easy to detect badly. You can’t evacuate
Yankee Stadium twice during every game to respond to false alarms.
Again, inferior technologies are worse than useless. A significant fraction of
money spent in the immediate aftermath of 9-11 on technology was wasted. Yet,
with that said, there is absolutely no other alternative. You cannot fight
unstable atomic nuclei or nerve agents or DNA with guns and guards and gates.
Guns and guards and gates are too expensive and completely ineffectual. They
can’t see the stuff and, if they can see it, they can’t intercept it. You need
the accuracy of a lab in something the size of a pager. You need to push out
the boundaries, so you can screen huge numbers of packages and containers and
so on at points of origin overseas and screen again at ports of entry and at
key switching points like mail centers and transportation transits points and
buildings and hospitals, where the first responders are treated, and on and on
and on.
What are the essential technologies that will make this possible? What are the
core enablers?
I will not suggest that there is a short list, but one can begin to zero in on
a few of them. That is certainly what I and some fellow investors started doing
before 9-11 and have continued doing since…
Download the audio of Peter Huber’s complete Telecosm 2006 keynote address:
http://www.gildertech.com/public/Telecosm2006/Agenda.htm#Huber
(NOTE: This is a large 69MB MP3 file, which includes George Gilder’s opening
Telecosm 2006 remarks. It may take a few minutes to download.)
|
Year-to-date returns for THE GILDER TECHNOLOGY REPORT’s “Telecosm
Technologies” companies continue to impress |
Friday Feature
/ EZchip:
Getting the Giant Fabs’ Attention
Charlie Burger, October 18 (excerpted from the October issue of the Gilder
Technology Report): Following last September’s surprise sales
slide to $687 thousand from $2 million the previous quarter, EZchip
(LNOP) has been building momentum, and the window of opportunity to buy at
startup prices may be drawing to a close. EZ’s network processors or
NPUs—programmable chips that process data, voice, and video packets at high
speed—should gradually find their way into Ethernet switches and routers across
the network, especially in the metro regions, as triple-play (data, voice,
video) applications become ubiquitous.
The
last of the score or more NPU startups are now falling before EZ’s highly
integrated NP-2 chip, which is available is three interchangeable models and
includes all the major line-card functions such as wirespeed 10 Gigabit per
second (or 5 Gbps) processing, classification search engines, traffic managers,
and Ethernet ports. Traffic managers shape and schedule packets, and integrated
NPU/TM chips are becoming ubiquitous.
The
networking industry is now as innovative as the PC industry was, constantly
changing and creating new products. EZchip has survived because it boasts the
most flexible and most highly integrated chips, becoming a general-purpose
solution to the network market much as the MPU (microprocessors) was to the PC.
Full programmability enables systems houses such as Juniper (JNPR) to
differentiate their products from competing vendors, to adapt quickly and
economically to evolving standards, and the fuel the proprietary network
flavors being deployed by service providers.
The final and most serious opposition to EZchip by far comes from homegrown
NPUs, such as Alcatel’s (ALA), Redback’s (RBAK) internal solution
developed through its Siara acquisition of several years ago, and Cisco’s
(CSCO) Toaster. But internal solutions are costly and require expertise many
systems houses don’t have. Nonetheless, EZ’s ascendance over in-house solutions
will be hard won. It’s tough to get a big company to bet a billion-dollar
product on a small startup. EZ has to assure prospective customers that it’s
not going to succumb to growing pains and that its supply of NPUs will not get
swallowed up by a Cisco.
That
could be difficult to do without a strategic partner. Now that Broadcom
(BRCM) has absorbed Sandburst, Marvell (MRVL) becomes the leading
candidate to fill that role. Based on EZ’s recent progress inside Cisco and
considering that Marvell has a design center down the street from EZchip in
Israel, we suspect that such a partnership may be in the works. Because Marvell
is one of Taiwan Semiconductor’s (TSM) largest customers, such an
alliance would also help tiny EZ to get the giant fab’s attention as sales
surge.
But
an alliance with Marvell or anyone else would come with strings attached, which
we would examine closely…
Read Charlie’s complete EZchip analysis by logging
in with your subscriber ID at http://www.gildertech.com.
RELATED READING
EZchip Partners with Marvell on Next Generation
Network Processor-based Line Card Architectures
http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/ticker/article.asp?Feed=BW&Date=20061025&ID=6134306&Symbol=US:MRVL
|
Did you miss Telecosm '06? Or did you attend, and find yourself wishing you could experience
once again the musical thrill of a lifetime? Pay a visit to Jeff Stambovsky's
Telecosm Songbook!! You'll hear musical tributes to George Gilder and other
Telecosm luminaries of the past ten years, the people who made the future
come true. Listen now at www.telecosmsongs.blogspot.com. |
Friday Blogger Bonus / Maintaining Momentum
Shlomi Cohen (10/25/06): LanOptics (Nasdag: LNOP) has maintained its momentum of
recent weeks, after it climbed 7% in Friday’s session on Wall Street on large
volume to reach an annual high. As always, the man who came up trumps for
LanOptics was George Gilder, who on this occasion, was replaced by his deputy,
Charlie Burger, himself an expert on tech stocks in the telecommunications
sector.
In his review in the “Gilder Report,” Burger analyzes in depth the potential of
LanOptics’ subsidiary, EZchip Technologies over the next two years, and comes
up with figures that look fantastic. He believes that the developments in the
field of video, specifically home-wireless video, will propel forward the
network processors made by both EZchip and its competitors, not just into
telecommunications infrastructure (through the use of routers) but also home
digital converters, which will have to handle phenomenal volumes of wireless
video communications…
LanOptics’ most recent offering, which raised $6 million will be
peanuts compared with the major needs that EZchip will have on its way to
becoming the large company that Charlie Burger predicts it will be.
Read Cohen’s complete blog:
http://networking.seekingalpha.com/article/19093
|
The Gildertech Blog, http://blog.gildertech.com/ | Logon now to see what’s new. |
Readings /
Lessig Is More
http://handsoff.org/tiered-service/lessig-is-more/
The Age of Infinity and the Scarcity Matrix
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_william__061024_the_age_of_infinity_.htm
Seybold: WiMax:
A Worldwide Winner?
http://www.outlook4mobility.com/commentary2006/oct2606.htm
Steve
Forbes: Slick Solution
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2006/1113/039.html?partner=globalnews_newsletter
Qualcomm
To Use Common Platform Technology
http://www.edn.com/article/CA6385044.html?partner=enews&nid=2019&rid=2052959400
Not
Bad Is No Longer Good For AMD
http://www.forbes.com/2006/10/19/amd-earnings-intel-tech-cx_ck_1019amd.html?partner=technology_newsletter
Can
Apple Still Think Different?
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/15863855.htm
Better
Way To Handle Asian Currencies
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6740
Wesbury:
SEP New Home Sales
http://www.ftportfolios.com/Retail//Research/ViewResearchArticle.aspx?ID=179
The Beginning Of The Technology Boom
http://www.forbes.com/2006/10/25/joe-wilson-xerox-tech_cz_jm_1025michaels.html?partner=technology_newsletter
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