GPHD v. SPHD
Don't worry if you haven't a clue as to what those initials stand for, I just made them up. They stand for "General Purpose Hard Disk" vs. "Specific Purpose Hard Disk." The former you know. They're the hard drives you have in your PC, even your iPod. The latter is something new that the folk at Agere Systems are pushing.

To quote the news.com story, "In Agere's vision, the hard drive component would handle memory buffering for the overall device, and the computer chip "brains" of the drive would take on additional tasks such as decoding song files into actual music or processing radio signals for a mobile phone." It may sound silly on the face of it, but Intel and drive companies Seagate Technology, Hitachi and Toshiba (among others) have formed a group to work on an interface standard specifically for consumer electronics and handheld gadgets.

Unlike the classic CISC v. RISC battle, this one may actually have a chance at being understandable within the consumer community. It should be interesting to see how it shakes out.

# Permalink   Posted at 6:13 AM        2 comments       Email this Link