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ARM Designer Steve Furber On Energy-Efficient Computing
ChelleChelle writes "By now, it has become evident that we are facing an energy problem — while our primary sources of energy are running out, the demand for energy is greatly increasing. In the face of this issue, energy-efficient computing has become a hot topic. For those looking for lessons, who better to ask then Steve Furber, the principal designer of the ARM (Acorn RISC Machine), a prime example of a chip that is simple, low power, and low cost. In this interview, conducted by David Brown of Sun's Solaris Engineering Group, Furber shares some of the lessons and tips on energy-efficient computing that he has learned through working on this and subsequent projects."
And you also mean the porting of thousands and thousands of x86 apps as well?
But most people don't USE thousands and thousands of apps. Or even hundreds of apps. Most people don't even use dozens of apps. You got your web browser and your IM client (maybe), (maybe) an email client, a DVD player, and I bet that's it for the vast majority of computer users outside of work. IM & email clients can be handled by the browser. Seriously - Chrome OS or Android running on a nice 1-2gHz dual-core ARM beast with hardware accelerated HD video w/ 4GB of memory is probably all that most people need at home, as long as it's got a decent screen, keyboard and mouse, they're set.
Download your Android apps, of which there *are* thousands (though many different versions of a much smaller number of TYPES of applications) for expanding into more obscure things. Most of which would be games, of course.
I'd like to see Chrome OS & Android merge sooner rather than later. Absolutely no point in having these be separate projects - with the rise of 'superphones,' there's not that much difference in horsepower anymore, and one platform target is better than two from a developer standpoint (usually).
IMO, anyway. :)
I'm hoping the day when I can take my dual-core 1+ gHz superphone out of my pocket, put it in a dock at home to get a big screen, real keyboard and mouse and true broadband home connection. Shouldn't be more than a year away. C'mon, Sprint, with the Supersonic! I'll fire up the beastly machine when I need to run Photoshop or whatever, but most of the time at home, my computer use is watching TV/movies/websurfing/email.
I worked at Acorn in the early 80's and knew Steve Furber, but it's amusing to think that most of the Slashdot crowd probably wasn't even born then. I assume the average age here nowadays must be college age or thereabouts.
Not surprising they don't know what ARM originally stood for.
For less than the cost of the financial stimulus package, or the Iraq war for that matter, the US could produce almost all it's electricity with solar thermal plants with present level technology (and the cost for plants would probably be quartered by the time you are done because of economies of scale, so it would cost far less). Hugely reducing electricity costs in the US would probably do more for the economy than just about anything else the money could be spend on.
As a European I'm envious ... the US really has it all, virtual dead deserts with round the year sunlight, a reserve currency which gives you nearly limitless free money to spend on these kinds of projects, and hell quite a nice supply of oil reserves as well ... it's frankly a miracle how your politicians manage to fuck that kind of potential up.