5 Million and growing

As you read this column, Indian IT community is about to cross a historical threshold. The 5 millionth working personal computer (PC) would be installed somewhere in the country. Per se the number fades into insignificance when we compare it with China where over 5 million PCs are sold every year. And globally some 100 million PCs would be sold in Calendar 2000.

Nevertheless, the 5 million marks a significant footprint the Indian IT journey has traversed. According to DATAQUEST magazine, which has been chronicling the country's IT journey since 1982 when the first PC landed in India, the 5 millionth mark will be crossed on 21 December. Actually, some 6.1 million PCs would have been sold in the country so far, but the 5 million mark has been

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lated taking into account the high obsolescence factor which would have rendered at least a million PCs unusable so far..

The growth of PCs in India has been remarkable. In the first year of entry, 1984, just about 1200 units were sold. After all, at a hefty Rs 5 lakh, not many could afford the Neptune PCs from Minicomp. Today an average PC with 100 times more

capabil

s 35,000 . It was only in 1996 that the nation's PC installation base reached the 1 million mark. But the last four years have been remarkable. In 1999 alone, over 1.3 million PCs were sold and this year, it is likely to reach close to the 2 million mark. With annual growth rates of at least 47 percent, by 2004 over 5 million PCs will be sold in the country.

Technological advancements in the microprocessor design and development have made giant strides. One of the first commercial PCs, Altair could handle only 1,200 bits of information per sec. Then came Digital's VAX-11/78 which could do 1 million instructions per second (MIPS). Today, a Matsucom wristwatch can handle 3.5 MIPS. The 80386 microprocessor sold by Intel in 1986 had 275,000 transistors. In 1989, the next generation 486 chips had 1.2 million transistors. The Pentium III mobile versions sold in 2000 have 27 million transistors. In 2001, IBM plans to introduce its Power 4 series processors with 170 million transistors. Intel's Andy Grove predicts processors to have 1 billion transistors to handle over 100,000 million instructions per second in 2 years. For two decades, Intel's Gordon Moore's prediction that the processing power of a chip will double in 18 months was the industry's bible. Current developments are set to overtake even Moore's predictions.