ZeoSync: Data Discovery Can Shake Up Tech Sector

January 08, 2002 02:12 AM ET

By Eric Auchard

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Florida research start-up working with a team of
renowned mathematicians said on Monday it had achieved a breakthrough that
overcomes
the previously known limits of compression used to store and transmit data.

If proven and successfully commercialized, the discovery asserted by ZeoSync
Corp of West Palm Beach, Florida could overturn half a century of thinking
in the field of lossless data compression and undermine business assumptions
on which the telecommunications and other digital industries are based.

Lossless compression is the process by which computer data can be compacted,
stored and then restored with complete fidelity, or zero loss of data.
Existing
compression techniques typically shed redundant data in order to conserve
space.

ZeoSync said its scientific team had succeeded on a small scale in
compressing random information sequences in such a way as to allow the same
data to be
compressed more than 100 times over -- with no data loss. That would be at
least an order of magnitude beyond current known algorithms for compacting
data.

The company's claims, which are yet to be demonstrated in any public forum,
could vastly boost the ability of computer disks to store, text, music and
video
-- if ZeoSync's formulae succeed in scaling up to handle massive amounts of
data.

The same compression technique might one day make make high-speed Internet
access cheaper and widely available across the globe, posing a threat to
huge
investments in telecommunications network capacity, an industry analyst
said.

"Either this research is the next 'Cold Fusion' scam that dies away or it's
the foundation for a Nobel Prize. I don't have an answer to which one it is
yet," said David Hill, a data storage analyst with Boston-based Aberdeen
Group.

In 1990, a group of Utah researchers scandalized the scientific world with
claims -- quickly found to be unsupported -- that the long-sought answer to
the
problem of Cold Fusion had been discovered.

Hill, the only independent analyst briefed ahead of the announcement, said
ZeoSync's claims were theoretically feasible, but years away from definitive
proof. He will require more information before evaluating ZeoSync's claims,
he said.

ZeoSync, whose Web site can be located at http://www.zeosync.com/, was
founded by Peter St. George, an Internet and financial services
entrepreneur, who
has a background in telecommunications research.

ZeoSync, with 30 full-time employees, said it had collaborated with experts
from Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford
University
and researchers in Warsaw, Moscow, and Beijing.

BREAK WITH CURRENT TECHNOLOGIES

Among the scientific team working with ZeoSync is Steve Smale, one of
America's most renowned mathematicians. Smale is an emeritus professor at
the University
of California at Berkeley and the 1966 winner of the Fields Prize, the Nobel
Prize for researchers in this field. He could not be reached for comment on
his role in the project.

Peter St. George, ZeoSync founder and chief executive, said his company's
technique challenged the foundations of digital communications theory
spelled
out by AT&T's Dr. Claude Shannon in his classic 1948 treatise on Information
Theory.

Shannon, who died in 1991, had proposed that any type of information, from
human speech to computer keyboards to storage disks is limited by the
capacity
of the data channel over which it flows. This is the basis of digital
communications theory.

"What we've developed is a new plateau in communications theory," St. George
said. "We are expecting to produce the enormous capacity of analog
signaling,
with the benefit of the noise-free integrity of digital communications."

The techniques described by ZeoSync would mark a break with the dozens of
existing compression technologies, including MPEG for video and music and
JPEG
for pictures and graphics are able to compact data at compression rates up
to 10 times the original. These algorithms typically work by eliminating
long
strings of identifiable bits of data such as blue sky, green grass or the
white background of a snow-covered landscape.

In a statement, ZeoSync said its techniques, "once fully developed, will
offer compression ratios that are anticipated to approach the
hundreds-to-one range."

Using mathematical terminology, the company said its technique
"intentionally randomizes naturally occurring patterns to form entropy-like
random sequences."

ZeoSync said it had applied for patent protection for a technology it calls
Zero Space Tuner, and a related technique it calls BinaryAccelerator, which
encodes data into perfectly reproducible compressed formats.

The company expects the technology to be in commercial use during 2003, it
said.

St. George told Reuters the company was in talks with unnamed potential
strategic partners, including a major supplier of computer chips used in
multimedia
compression and also a leading Hollywood music studio, among others.

Partnerships deals will be announced over the next several months, he said,
although no deals had yet been reached. The company said its technology
could
be used to enhance existing compression techniques such as fractals, a
school of geometry that seeks to find order in the chaos of the natural
world.

"We would like to invite additional members of the scientific community to
join us in our efforts to revolutionize digital technology," St. George said
of the formerly secretive project.

"There is a lot of exciting work to be done."


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