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The chip really has two cores, one DSP and one MCORE.

See the EE Times story for a little more in-depth information.

The main idea here is that the same chip can be used a number of phones or other devices, making them cheaper and easier (or at least faster) to design. You will start to see more and more multi-core chips come out as this Systems On a Chip (SOC) stuff picks up.

Ask the Headhunter has quite a few interesting columns on discolsing salary information. The gist: don't lie but don't tell. Companies do have ways of confirming what they tell you.

My personal favorite is "my NDA prevents me from disclosing that" (the the bottom of the link). :)

It sounds like this could be a bit too expensive, and a bit too complex when compared to something like the light-emitting plastic (LEP) that Philips is working with. I mean, full-color screens on t-shirts, floors, etc.

Everyone seems to see this as a Good Thing(TM), and I can't wait to have my screen be an entire wall of my office, but just imagine the marketing blitzkrieg that will eventually ensue... The floors in supermarkets, the billboards...

This article quotes sony as saying that the PSX2 will use PC Card slots for expansion, and USB ports as well: http://www.eet.com/story/OEG19990302S0026 . This is news to me! I thought I'd kept up on the PSX2 pretty well, but I think we have a viable thin-client computer here. If only we could have a small hard drive on the thing. Well, I guess I'm assuming ethernet will take up the PC Card slot. Perhaps not, we could use a USB->Ethernet connection, and slam 340meg or so into the PC Card slot.

This is a great deal: $400 for a game console, and a thin-client (or server) for the internet.

http://www.beowulf.org/listarchives/beowulf/1999 /03/0027.html


http://www.eet.com/story/OEG19990302S0026

- most OCR programs, such as the ones that now come free with your scanners,
use neural networks for at least some of the steps to recognize
characters. See, for example, Caere OmniPage and Ligature,
which uses them in its "ocr-on-a-chip" that goes into its
handheld "Quicktionary" pen.

- data mining programs used NNW's to analyse
transactions for unusual patterns, e.g. credit card fraud. This is
now a big time business. See, for example, HNC Software, co-founded
by Robert Hecht-Nielson, a famous NNW guru at Univ. of San Diego.

- Sensory Inc. uses them in its voice recognition chips.
They've sold millions of such chips, which recognize just a few words
but with speaker independence, high background noise, and for low cost.
See the recent article at EE Times: "Toys that talk..."

- Synaptics , co-founded by Carver Mead, uses analog hardware
neural network techniques in its Touchpad that is used in many notebooks.

Have I convinced you yet? Most of these applications are at the
infrastructure level and don't get much PR, often for proprietary
reasons. Calera for example, was using NNW's in its OCR already
in the late 80's but didn't say anything about them until Caere started
bragging in ads in 1992 that it was using NNW's.

You are thinking of the Power3 (64-bit) and Power4 (multiple cpu on die, under development) chips. These are only made by IBM and used in their AS/400 and RS6000 systems. While closer to being PowerPC than previous "Power" generations, these aren't exactly stuff you find in boxes at your friendly neighborhood store.

Power3: http://www.chips.ibm.com:80/news/power3.html
Power4: http://www.eet.com/story/OEG19990804S0023

The EE Times also has an article about next gen server technology IBM (via Sequent) and some info about Sun's next-gen stuff. As usual, Sun are saying very little. From what I've heard seperately though, Sun are working on both a form of NUMA and something else called COMA (Cache-Only Memory Architecture). They might be doing both (on the same machine) for their next-gen server - Project Serengheti, because NUMA is good for some types of applications, while COMA is good for others, so by doing both, the end-users can choose which memory architecture best suits their needs.

The EE Times also has an article about next gen server technology IBM (via Sequent) and some info about Sun's next-gen stuff. As usual, Sun are saying very little. From what I've heard seperately though, Sun are working on both a form of NUMA and something else called COMA (Cache-Only Memory Architecture). They might be doing both (on the same machine) for their next-gen server - Project Serengheti, because NUMA is good for some types of applications, while COMA is good for others, so by doing both, the end-users can choose which memory architecture best suits their needs.

Engineers in the field of Electronic Design had a heck of a discussion about
Linux vs. Ms-WinNT in Integrated System Design magazine quite some time ago.
The editorial that started it all and the articles that followed are listed
below mostly in chronological order.

Editorial - April 1998
Cover Story - July 1998
Cover Story - August 1998
Editorial - August 1998
Linux vs. NT Public Forum

And this one in Electronic Engineering Times:

'Real' designers reject Windows NT

It seems that, overall, at least hardware engineers with a job to get done
prefer *nix over NT by far.

Job search sites are a poor way to find a job. Here's a recent quote from Ask The Headhunter over at the EE times:

It should be no surprise to you that the big career sites where you can post jobs and resumes are owned by advertising companies. The objective is not matching people with jobs; the objective is selling as many ads as possible. That's why none of these sites (that I know of) can or will report on hiring rates resulting from those postings.

If I'm wrong, and this site is different, then prove it. Show them stats!

The address should be shown as http://www.eet.com/columns/ask_the_h eadhunter/

How then to get employed?

Target a few companies that you'd like to work for (Ok to dream a little). Research a company using the web, and by inside info: make a call to somebody who works there, who can help you understand the job and what work needs doing. Then talk to the manager and show him you can do the job.

I know it sounds laborious, but you'll have better luck doing this than sending out a thousand resumes. For more info, check out the headhunter

Good Luck.