as Windows NT are turning notebooks into portable offices for mission-critical applications, says Wu Teng-Guo, regional marketing manager for Toshiba's Asia-Pacific notebook operations in Singapore.
Today's notebooks can do much more than last year's notebook models. For example, a notebook can connect to a Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) cellular phone via a PC Card. This lets you send or receive e-mail and faxes, and access the Internet over a wireless network, points out Evis Lin, director of Acer's Mobile Systems Business division.
Key Technologies
Has the notebook displaced the desktop PC? Not yet. Today's desktop systems have an advantage in price and performance, and they do not run on batteries. Still, some key technologies will continue to narrow the gap between notebooks and desktop systems: fast microprocessor units (MPUs), MMX, wireless network adapters, videoconferencing, communications, and improved battery life.
One place t
o look for notebook trends is Asia. Japan's Toshiba is the world's largest notebook supplier. NEC is also a major player. In addition, Fujitsu, Hitachi, and Sharp have recently entered the notebook market. Japanese companies are formidable competitors because as well as selling systems, they also make their own key components, including DRAM, ICs, LCDs, and, in some cases, batteries and peripherals, such as the upcoming DVD drives.
However, many Japanese suppliers -- and U.S. and European vendors -- have their notebooks made in Taiwan. Taiwan is now the world's largest maker of portables, according to the government-sponsored Market Intelligence Center in Taipei.
Like desktop systems, notebook product cycles are shortening, while technologies such as MPUs and screens continue to evolve quickly. In the last 18 months, for example, notebook makers have seen their CPUs change from 75- to 100-MHz 486DX4s to 150- to 200-MHz Pentiums with MMX. LCD sizes have zoomed from 10.4 inches to 13 inches or larger. P
rices for notebooks became even more attractive when LCD costs fell. Over the last year, South Korea's Samsung and LG Electronics moved into thin-film-transistor (TFT) LCD production, causing Japanese suppliers to cut their screen prices.
In mid-1996, a notebook with a 133-MHz Pentium, an 11.8-inch LCD, a four-speed CD-ROM drive, and a 720-MB hard drive sold for $2800, according to Dataquest. By the middle of this year, a notebook with a 166-MHz Pentium, an 11.8-inch LCD, a six-speed CD-ROM drive, and a 1.2-GB hard drive will go for about the same price.
Lots of Heat
Notebook designers have for the time being abandoned the idea of placing Intel's Pentium Pro processor in a portable. A standard Pentium Pro generates more than 20 W of power, making heat dissipation and battery life a nightmare. A Pentium Pro would have to dissipate some 8 W before it becomes feasible to put it in a portable, says Michael Lim, marketing manager at
Featron
, a Taiwan notebook make
r. Even Intel is discouraging vendors from putting a Pentium Pro in a portable until early this year, when it will offer an MPU-on-a-card for notebooks, says Jerry Kao, technical marketing manager for mobile systems at Intel Taiwan.
MMX Notebooks
Before that happens, though, notebook and desktop PC makers will first embrace Intel's Pentium-level processors
with MMX
, a new series of instruction sets in the x86 architecture that boosts multimedia performance (see the sidebar "Enhanced Multimedia Performance"). Then, Intel will ship the MPU-on-a-card for notebooks. This is much like Intel's approach to its next-generation Pentium Pro, code-named Klamath.
Intel's MPU-on-a-card notebook module is a 4- by 2.5-inch card that sits on the system's motherboard. It consists of a Pentium, the "north-bridge" portion of Intel's Mobile Triton II chip set (called the 430TX), a voltage regulator, and some L2 cache memory.
The 430TX supports several desktop-like features:
USB, DMA-33, SDRAM, and, perhaps down the road, RAMbus DRAM. The 430TX is a two-chip solution. The north-bridge portion is the controller, while the south-bridge part is the I/O.
Late in 1996, Intel was expected to ship a Pentium Pro-based module for notebooks, code-named Deschutes, which is a die shrink of Klamath. Like Klamath, though, Intel will sell Deschutes in a module form and will include its Voltage Reduction Technology (VRT) for saving power. Intel's module will make notebook design easier and provide an upgrade path to faster MPUs such as Deschutes, Kao says. All a designer needs to do is tie a connector to the module and buy the I/O part of the chip set.
Why won't Intel sell the north-bridge portion with the module? "If we did that, we would be selling a notebook motherboard. But we don't want to compete with our customers," Kao says. "What a customer can do to differentiate their products is to buy the I/O, add different skins, and integrate other features onto their systems."
Portable Workstations
Notebook makers are implementing Intel's modular approach. For example, Taiwan's First International Computer (FIC) is looking closely at Deschutes for a line of "portable workstations" that were scheduled to be out late in 1996 or early this year, says Ralph Liu, product marketing manager. Code-named Teak, FIC's portable workstation will have a 13.3-inch screen. "For heat dissipation, we will need a heat pipe and an external fan," he says.
Of course, Intel's modular approach supports only one MPU vendor: Intel. Meanwhile, Cyrix is offering a solution for notebooks, the 5GX86, a 586-like MPU that incorporates DRAM, a PCI controller, and graphics on the same IC. However, the 5GX86 is not pin-compatible with the Pentium.
Better Graphics
Faster MPUs, coupled with new multimedia features and videoconferencing, will also bring the notebook closer to the desktop PC. In fact, notebooks are getting many desktop-like, multimedia features: MMX, DVD drives
, MPEG-2, 128-bit VGA graphics, 3-D audio and video, Digital Simultaneous Voice and Data (DSVD) modems, and others. There's talk that notebooks may adopt Intel's Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP), a new approach to accelerate 3-D graphics. Originally designed to be a graphics port for desktop systems for now, AGP has transfer rates of 528 MBps and write performance 10 times better than the 133-MBps PCI bus. Overall, these technologies provide some hot applications for consumers.
For example, with a 16-bit Zoomed Video port (ZV port) -- or a 32-bit CardBus -- and a TV tuner, the notebook could become a portable TV. With its NTSC-out port, the notebook will act as a digital VCR, playing full-length DVD movies. Still, LCD size is one of the roadblocks for these applications. Mainstream markets will continue to embrace 11.8- and 12.1-inch LCDs, while high-end displays are rapidly moving toward a variety of 13-inch models. Beyond that, Sharp and others are developing high-end 14- and 15-inch displays, with SXGA
resolutions of 1280 by 1024 pixels. However, it is more likely that these latter LCDs will be incorporated in luggable laptops, says Amos Tseng, hardware design manager for Mitac, a Taiwan notebook maker.
LCDs are also critical for videoconferencing. Decent videoconferencing over the telephone line has been promised for years now, but current desktop systems and notebooks are still hampered by poor audio/video synchronization, skipping, time delays, and other problems. The major issue with videoconferencing over the Internet is the lack of bandwidth.
Cost is another issue. Still, Intel and others are working on a $500 videoconferencing system for PCs, which includes Intel's Proshare software, a V.80 DSVD modem, and an analog camera that links to a capture card or a digital camera that plugs into a USB connector. However, the frame rate is a mere 10 frames per second. This in turn is causing notebook vendors to consider integrating ISDN into a notebook to achieve or get close to real-time video at 30 f
ps. Still, some improved but competing technologies are surfacing in the videoconferencing arena: ZV port and CardBus.
The first wave of notebooks will support ZV port. In theory, the 16-bit ZV port provides real-time, full-motion video data at up to 27 MBps, or 24-bit color at 640- by 480-pixel resolution at up to 30 fps. To do so, ZV port transfers video and audio signals to a PC Card in a Type II slot from a video camera or similar input source attached to a notebook. These signals are sent directly to the graphics memory, bypassing the 133-MBps PCI bus.
However, ZV port may be short-lived, says Derek Brearley, deputy executive of marketing for Taiwan's Twinhead. The 32-bit, 33-MHz CardBus has complete access to the 133-MBps PCI bus for use in video, multimedia, Fast Ethernet LAN cards, and SCSI devices, he says. "If you implement the CardBus, you won't need the ZV port," he adds.
Toshiba, one of the major backers of ZV port, is hedging its bets by implementing both ZV port and CardBus across i
ts notebook lines. "We will be one of the first companies to have CardBus on our platforms, but there are still not a lot of 32-bit cards on the market yet," says Toshiba's Wu.
Getting Connected
Notebooks are getting wired -- and wireless. Today's notebooks are embracing USB, which links some 127 peripherals over a 12-MBps network, and, eventually, FireWire, a bus with 100- to 400-MBps transfer rates. Notebooks are rapidly moving toward 10/100-MBps Fast Ethernet networks, 32-bit PCI docking, and other connectivity features.
There are also innovations in wireless systems for remote applications. For example, wireless LANs using 2.4-GHz, spread-spectrum technology hold much promise for PCs, but they have proven to be expensive and slow for now. A PC LAN card for notebooks runs at a mere 1 to 2 MBps and costs $350. For shorter distances, however, 4-MBps fast infrared (IR) technology is moving to the notebook. It provides a handy way to move files between mobile systems and desktop PC
s and printers.
WANs provide a framework for more powerful applications. Today's portables are capable of connecting to GSM phones, thereby giving you the ability to send and receive data over a wireless network. GSM, which runs at 900 MHz, is the de facto worldwide standard in cellular transmission -- except in the U.S. However, the data rate for GSM is only 9.6 Kbps, making it slow and painful to access information over a network. Still, it's becoming feasible to download data via GSM by using V.42bis data compression, boosting the transmission rate from 9.6 Kbps to 30 to 40 Kbps -- a promising sign for notebook users.
Battery-Life Advances
Some new battery and power management technologies promise dramatic gains in battery life. Notebook makers will use lithium-ion batteries as standard equipment. The lithium-ion technology offers longer life than today's standard nickel-metal-hydride (NiMH) batteries, but it is up to three times more expensive. Still, there's a trend toward "s
mart" batteries. Temperature, voltage, and current sensors are placed on the battery pack, optimizing the use of batteries and increasing their lives.
Taiwan's Acer takes another approach. Its new Pentium-based notebook, the
AcerNote Nuovo
, runs for 6 hours or more on just six lithium-ion cells, says Lin. "In most notebooks, there are some parameters you need to set up, such as the timing," he says. "But we use a heuristic approach to power management. In other words, the software learns power management by itself. We use a software algorithm based on a dynamic timing-adjustment system."
There are other developments, too. Microsoft is releasing a service kit to help PC vendors build power management features for portable systems into NT 4.0. Microsoft's service kit is limited, however.
Some vendors are not particularly impressed. "It's a short-term solution," says Lin. "Microsoft may announce NT 5.0 early this year. At that time, they will add more power management features,
but still, I don't think NT will be popular for most mobile users."
Changing Form Factors
Aside from the battery and power management technologies, notebook form factors are also changing rapidly. Notebook makers are moving in two main directions: the traditional model design and the so-called thin-and-wide form factor. Digital Equipment, IBM, and Compaq are the pioneers of the emerging thin-and-wide notebooks, but Acer, Twinhead, and others are also developing these units.
There are some major trade-offs with many of the thin-and-wide models. The biggest, perhaps, is the lack of internal-drive options. For example, IBM's ThinkPad 560, which is only 1.2 inches thick, does not have an internal CD-ROM drive or a floppy drive. Twinhead's Pentium-based Slimnote-7 measures 11.6 by 9.2 by 1.4 inches and weighs 5 pounds. It has an 11.3- or a 12.1-inch LCD and a CD-ROM drive. Twinhead's new offering, the Slimnote-9, is a 1.9-inch-thick, Pentium-level powerhouse that includes an 11.3- or a
12.1-inch LCD, a CD-ROM drive, a 33.6-Kbps modem, and ZV port.
Featron is going in the other direction with a more conventional, modular design. Its new Pentium-level notebook has two expansion bays that can incorporate optional CD-ROM drives, floppy drives, or batteries. Also, there are options to add the latest peripherals, such as a notebook version of a Zip drive or a magneto-optical (MO) drive.
Other companies, including FIC, will hedge their bets and plan to offer several types of notebooks this year: ultraportables, professional multimedia systems, and desktop and workstation replacement notebooks, says FIC's Liu. The AcerNote Nuovo is a modular design based on a 133-MHz Pentium. But Acer will move to 150- to 200-MHz CPUs -- and faster chips -- this year. "We have one goal in mind: We are trying to replace the desktop," says Lin. "We're getting closer to the desktop in performance and features. Maybe we can equal the desktop in features, but we still can't match the price -- at least yet.
Where to Find
Acer, Inc.
Taipei, Taiwan R.O.C.
Phone: +886 2 545 5288
Fax: +886 2 545 5308
Internet:
http://www.acer.com/
New Notebooks
