I have always been fascinated by the fact that, in most areas of technology, physical size is constantly shrinking. The one exception being LCD displays, of course, which seem to get bigger every year. So I was excited by two pieces of news to cross my desk this week, the arrival of a 100Gb 1.8 inch hard drive and the first of the AMD 65nm processors.

Toshiba have announced that the MK1011GAH 1.8 inch drives, based on perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology, will have a capacity in excess of 100Gb and go on display at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January 2007. But don’t get too excited as you won’t be able to buy them, as Toshiba are not going to sell them direct to the consumer to start with, these drives are aimed strictly at the device manufacturer market. Which is good news, in many ways, because with a 10 percent smaller footprint than the original 1.8” drives they are absolutely perfect for portable audio and video devices. Anyone for a 100Gb video iPod? Or better still, as far as I am concerned, a small factor, ultra-portable sub-notebook of the 8” screen variety with a couple of these drives under the bonnet.

AMD had been expected to make the announcement about the 65nm processors, so it came as no surprise but was welcome nonetheless. Codenamed Brisbane, these are effectively nothing more than a ‘process shrink’ from the 90nm Windsor core, but the truth is they represent much more than just that. When it comes to performance per watt they are in a whole different ball park, with a Thermal Design Power rating of less than half that of the Windsor and there are claims that they dissipate half as much power as Intel Core 2 Duo chips as well. Which bodes well, especially if they could power that fantasy sub-notebook of mine…