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The machine's designers must not be able to explain how their original code led to this new program.

If I'm not mistaken, this has already happened when evolutionary algorithms were applied to hardware design: some slides. The author of the program has no idea how the resulting circuit worked.

You can now deal directly with TSMC for this, or go through third parties like MOSIS and CMP. AFAIK none of the groups that do this publish their rates, and I haven't done this myself, so my numbers come from forums like this one, rounding up the lower numbers that I have commonly seen.

Actually, KAAPI (I distributed memory workstealing programming framework) was ported to Iphone/Ipod touch a few years ago. It still appears on their website http://moais.imag.fr/membres/thierry.gautier/TG/Kaapi.html
Not sure if it still run...

The technology itself isn't bullshit, but what is bullshit is that Euclideon is taking credit for other people's work.

They say they've invented the methods and algorithms behind it all, well that's just pure fantasy. Here's what Euclideon is basing there technology off of:

http://research.nvidia.com/publication/efficient-sparse-voxel-octrees-analysis-extensions-and-implementatio [nvidia.com]
http://artis.imag.fr/Publications/2009/CNLE09/ [artis.imag.fr]

Here's video from 2009 which looks better than Euclideon's videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HScYuRhgEJw [youtube.com]

They might also be using other people's source code (legally though, it's released under the Apache license): http://code.google.com/p/efficient-sparse-voxel-octrees/ [google.com]

Furthermore, it's not "unlimited detail", you will always have a limited amount of RAM and disk space, therefore you have limits to your detail, even with procedural content generation. But your effective compression rate is 1-bit per voxel, so 20 billion voxels = 2.5GB, so you need to utilize dynamic content streaming from disk to the GPU.

Don't bother, they're taking credit for other people's work. You want to know how their technology works? Here's a couple of research papers:

http://research.nvidia.com/publication/efficient-sparse-voxel-octrees-analysis-extensions-and-implementatio
http://artis.imag.fr/Publications/2009/CNLE09/

Want some source code? http://code.google.com/p/efficient-sparse-voxel-octrees/
Want a video? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HScYuRhgEJw

Euclideon is just spinning up the marketing bullshit and trying to make a profit off of it all. They don't even have good lighting, they're just doing forward shading for each voxel ray-cast intersection using diffuse lighting with a single global point light source. And they haven't demonstrated robust animation yet.

Guess what, it is possible to animate voxel octrees, but Euclideon never came up with the method either. Some researcher in Germany came up with a working solution for his bachelor's thesis: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl6PE_n6zTk

Euclideon is unjustly taking credit for other people's hard work. They say they've invented the methods and algorithms behind it all, well that's just pure fantasy. Here's what Euclideon is basing there technology off of:

http://research.nvidia.com/publication/efficient-sparse-voxel-octrees-analysis-extensions-and-implementatio
http://artis.imag.fr/Publications/2009/CNLE09/

Here's video from 2009 which looks better than Euclideon's videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HScYuRhgEJw

They might also be using other people's source code (legally though, it's released under the Apache license): http://code.google.com/p/efficient-sparse-voxel-octrees/

Furthermore, it's not "unlimited detail", you will always have a limited amount of RAM and disk space, therefore you have limits to your detail, even with procedural content generation.

Stop virally spreading this video, you're only helping Euclideon profit from more page views and attention.

Indeed. That was it. Wow. Thanks for that. I couldn't remember the name. Interesting that it went on from being a fairly small project to an IBM product.

I guess that KA-Tools became a popular replacement for BPBatch, but KA was still really immature back when I last used BPBatch. Now KA just seems abandoned, probably in favor of gPXE.

Mobinet is an open-source platform for mobile objects programming (simulation, games, graphics, maths-physics, ...). It is developed by INRIA Grenoble in France and used to initiate students (from high school to university) to games programming, or more generally to provide them with a concrete intuitive and fun version of the notions seen in math and physics course.

> my visual system being able to interpret a texture on a couple of planes as something more complex

Several pieces of work have exploited that effect in recent years, most notably Billboard Clouds at ACM SIGGRAPH 2003.

> researchers have been able to do this kind of stuff for a while now

Then you must know something no graphics researchers in the world do, since Derek's work was presented as new research in ACM SIGGRAPH 2005. (ACM SIGGRAPH is by far the top graphics conference in the world; if they thought it was new and you don't, you're probably wrong.)

There MAY be a good reason to use CVS in that CVS is slightly more trivial to set up; this Subversion tutoral makes the SVN setup fairly painless, too, though.

Subversion is likely to give you less pain in the long run than CVS, though.

<soapbox>
I think SVN's lack of distribution support might end up being the worst thing to happen to open source ever. Distributed development can boost the open source model A LOT, and CVS suckiness made it much more likely that this would become the norm. Instead, Subversion creates a much higher bar that has to be jumped, delaying the full use of distributed systems a lot, possibly effectively killing it. Unfortunately, people need to think long and carefully about version control, development, hurdles, personal effort economics, and open source culture before the impact of this is obvious.
</soapbox>

Eivind.

Lots of people are saying you can't build the chip yourself. That's not exactly true.

Go through CMP and you can get say the AMS C35B4C3, a 0.35um 4 metal, 2 poly CMOS process, for 650 Euro/mm2. I'm sure lots of people will cringe at the 0.35um, saying that it is ancient. Well, maybe in digital terms, but it is quite nice for analogue/mixed chips imo. 0.8um is still around (290 euro/mm2)!

Alternatively, if you are part of an Educational Institution or Research Laboratory, how about the ST Microlelectronics 0.18um CMOS process for 990 euro/mm2?

Now get hold of a copy of Electric some spice or other and learn how to design design electronic circuits. geda may also be of interest.

That last step might take a while.

Design your chip, submit it to CMP, wait three or four months and you'll get it back. Now go on to do what the other comments are talking about with pin hole cameras etc.

Let's do a rough price breakdown. Suppose you want VGA (640x480) in grey scale. Let's also suppose you can get your pixel element down to 5um*5um (which would be quite small imho). This gives:

Width: 640*5um + 2*400um = 4mm

Height: 480*5um + 2*400um = 3.2mm

The 400um gaps are for the pads on each side. This doesn't include any other electronics, so let's just say it is 4mm*4mm = 16mm2.

You need packaging as well and are probably limited to JLCC packages because it needs to be exposed to the light. Let's assume a JLCC68 package. You get 20 chips back and each package costs 48 euro.

So, 16*650 + 20*48 = 11360 euro. Put another way, 568 euro per chip. Don't forget to add VAT if you pay it. For the UK, this means 9343 or 476/chip.

Now consider that 16mm2 is still a small chip (and colour would be at least 3 times larger). If you have access to a webcam and can get inside it to look at the light sensitive area, measure it and figure out how much it would cost!

Cheers,

Roger

for mpeg-4 systems part of the spec to be implemented
overview

By 1989, I had already started numbering Apollo objects using gaulish gods. One which I had not used was Toutatis since I thought it was an invention of Goscinny and Uderzo, authors of the well known comic book series "Les aventures d'Asterix". There are several dozens sites about this comic book series, you may want to look at few of them :

• Stephane Riviere Asterix's page
• Page on asterix in different languages
• The international Asterix homepage which contains many more links to Asterix pages elsewhere

One of their constant saying is "By Toutatis", another one is that their only fear is that the sky may fall onto their heads.
I discovered my ignorance of gaulish culture when I learned that Toutatis was ( or had been ) a real God. I also learned that the citation in Asterix was not a joke, but that it had been reported by some historians of Alexander the great who had met some gaulish warriors ( who had once invaded Italy and Great Britain ).
One of the first thing we learned about Toutatis was its record low inclination. This meant that it is indeed ( in a remote future ) a good candidate to fall onto our heads. The name stuck almost immediately at the telescope when I proposed it. Toutatis, also sometimes spelled "teutates" is a totemic deity, to which human sacrifices were made.
Don't be misled, very few french persons do know about the cruel god Toutatis, but most will talk to you about Asterix and his friends if you come to swear " By Toutatis ! ", provided you get the right (i.e. french) accent...

By 1989, I had already started numbering Apollo objects using gaulish gods. One which I had not used was Toutatis since I thought it was an invention of Goscinny and Uderzo, authors of the well known comic book series "Les aventures d'Asterix". There are several dozens sites about this comic book series, you may want to look at few of them :

• Stephane Riviere Asterix's page
• Page on asterix in different languages
• The international Asterix homepage which contains many more links to Asterix pages elsewhere

One of their constant saying is "By Toutatis", another one is that their only fear is that the sky may fall onto their heads.
I discovered my ignorance of gaulish culture when I learned that Toutatis was ( or had been ) a real God. I also learned that the citation in Asterix was not a joke, but that it had been reported by some historians of Alexander the great who had met some gaulish warriors ( who had once invaded Italy and Great Britain ).
One of the first thing we learned about Toutatis was its record low inclination. This meant that it is indeed ( in a remote future ) a good candidate to fall onto our heads. The name stuck almost immediately at the telescope when I proposed it. Toutatis, also sometimes spelled "teutates" is a totemic deity, to which human sacrifices were made.
Don't be misled, very few french persons do know about the cruel god Toutatis, but most will talk to you about Asterix and his friends if you come to swear " By Toutatis ! ", provided you get the right (i.e. french) accent...

By 1989, I had already started numbering Apollo objects using gaulish gods. One which I had not used was Toutatis since I thought it was an invention of Goscinny and Uderzo, authors of the well known comic book series "Les aventures d'Asterix". There are several dozens sites about this comic book series, you may want to look at few of them :

• Stephane Riviere Asterix's page
• Page on asterix in different languages
• The international Asterix homepage which contains many more links to Asterix pages elsewhere

One of their constant saying is "By Toutatis", another one is that their only fear is that the sky may fall onto their heads.
I discovered my ignorance of gaulish culture when I learned that Toutatis was ( or had been ) a real God. I also learned that the citation in Asterix was not a joke, but that it had been reported by some historians of Alexander the great who had met some gaulish warriors ( who had once invaded Italy and Great Britain ).
One of the first thing we learned about Toutatis was its record low inclination. This meant that it is indeed ( in a remote future ) a good candidate to fall onto our heads. The name stuck almost immediately at the telescope when I proposed it. Toutatis, also sometimes spelled "teutates" is a totemic deity, to which human sacrifices were made.
Don't be misled, very few french persons do know about the cruel god Toutatis, but most will talk to you about Asterix and his friends if you come to swear " By Toutatis ! ", provided you get the right (i.e. french) accent...

Ohhh, you mean like these switches.

Ah, the good old days.

One good way to minimize gerrymandering is to create compact districts. This is a requirement that districts be roughly uniform in shape (like a hexagon or circle).

Sorry I didnt post these sooner but I am at a asynchronous computing workshop.
If you are intrested in async then here is a list of cool websites:
Async home is the main website with resources events and background.
Amulet group have a selection of resources and news.
And if you want a laugh then check out rat powered cpus

If you want to see what NeXTStep (OpenStep) looked like, you can still download OpenStep for Solaris here. It includes a DPS server; just make certain you startx with -- -dpi 72. It should even run in iBCS under Linux (Sparc), though I haven't tried it.

• Amoeba, one of the first, most mature, and most well-known distributed OS projects.
  
  
• Guide, a distributed "operating environment" that runs on top of *NIX.
  
  
• Plan 9, from Lucent, has some distributed components
  
  

I know many graphics coders who are depressed because all of their hard-won knowledge coding polygon fillers, environment map effects and realistic shading engines in software seem completely superceded by advances in hardware. They shouldn't be. There's still tons left to research and better algorithms to be found - even more so now that more powerful graphics cards are becoming cheaper.

There's zillions of good Web references on the subject - here is a place to start.