©stock.adobe.com/au/Scott Griessel
NINE TECHNOLOGY PREDICTIONS FOR 2018 Keysight Technologies takes a look at key technology trends and offers insights and predictions for 2018.
1. Blockchain grows up Blockchain, the technology behind cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, is poised for adoption in a wide range of applications that will greatly benefit from its inherent security. Smart, secure contracts based on blockchains will emerge in industries from finance and real estate to education and health care. Even mature industries are likely to begin to adopt permissioned or private variants of this technology as a way to validate compliance with international process standards.
2. Software is everywhere, really Visualisation technology has driven a revolution in large-scale networked computing, enabling the rapid emergence of cloud architectures that offer radically new approaches to delivering value. As this trend accelerates in the networked computing world, the broad application of this concept to electronic systems will enable new breakthroughs in application performance and value. Traditional approaches will be disaggregated and reassembled in new ways to optimise the combination of high-performance customised hardware and the flexibility of software.
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3. CMOS enables the commercialisation of the mmWave spectrum As cost-effective CMOS pushes to higher and higher frequencies, it promises to enable the widespread utilisation of the mmWave spectrum for consumer applications from 5G to autonomous vehicles. The traditional home of secure government communication and research is opened up to a wide variety of commercial applications, unlocking a new universe of ‘new’ bandwidth.
4. Rapid expansion of hybrid photonic ICs to support high-speed communications and computing applications Power requirements associated with traditional electrical/optical data transfer interfaces in data centres are fast approaching a practical limit. To economically exceed a 25.6 Tbps transfer rate in future data centre switches, new packaging technologies will emerge that will enable the integration of a wide range of photonic and switch ICs. Although widespread commercial deployment of this technology is not likely until 2020, aggressive R&D in this area is predicted in 2018.
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