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India, land of cheap broadband, could lead way on thin clients
One of the great unknowns about IT today is what the effect will be of emerging markets like India and China. One possibility is an erosion of Microsoft dominance and an increase in the use of open-source - ironically aided by more effective policing of digital rights. As pirated software becomes harder to get, these huge markets will seek cheap alternatives.
Richard Brown, British-born vice-president of marketing for chipmaker Via, believes India will boost the use of thin clients. It seems Via is doing a lot of work in India, and Taiwan-based Brown says he is going there "a couple of times a quarter".
Part of his work is promoting Via's PC-1 project to bring low-cost computing to countries like India. "Broadband is cheap there - between $6 and $10 a month, but computers are still expensive," he said during a stopover in London.
Thin clients, which act as the front end for remote server-based applications, make a lot of sense in this context because they can be built much more cheaply than full-fledged PCs. And services like Google Apps essentially provide free software for use over the network link.
Via has produced three reference designs for thin clients, called the E-Series, based on its own processors.
At the other end of the computing scale, Via's low-drain C7 processors and small Epia EN15000 mainboards are making high-performance cluster computing relatively affordable for smaller business, according to a start-up called Ainkaboot.
One of its compact Octimod MPC7-1500 cluster modules packs eight board onto a 4U rack - or 16, with two modules stacked back to back. Prices start at around £10,000, including installation, and if you need more capacity your can simply attach another module.
Posted by Clive Akass on February 19, 2007 | Permalink
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