Small technology with big promise.

(From Financial Director)

Byline: Tom Berry.

The year 2002 has seen several advances in technology for the business user. Methanol and hydrogen-based fuel cells, for example, promise to make the standard laptop and mobile battery, as well as recharging, redundant.

And new devices, such as personal digital assistant/mobile phone hybrids and improvements in communications technologies such as wi-fi (wireless broadband), augur much in the way of multifunctional mobile networking.

But, to really push the boundaries of computing, scientists have been spending the past few months exploring technological extremes - building the world's most powerful supercomputer as well as robots the size of molecules.

In March 2002 a team of Japanese engineers fulfilled a five-year-old project to build the world's fastest computer - the Earth Simulator. Previously the fastest machine was owned by the US military and was capable of 7.2 trillion calculations per second. Earth Simulator, at 35 trillion calculations per second is faster than the next 12 fastest supercomputers in the world combined.

Sporting a footprint the size of four tennis courts, Earth Simulator is designed to simultaneously keep tabs on the environmental effect of every weather system, polluting factory and rainforest. Its creators argue that the computer is able to accurately predict the global environment decades from now.