I've seen the cyclos public presentations a few years ago. A somewhat simpler explanation would be:
On a chip such as a big processor a large part of the power is used distributing the clock signal. This is for two reasons.
1) It takes more power to get a clock distribution network closer to zero skew, and processor design is done zero skew.
2) Ratio of Clock power vs data power goes up as you put less data stages between your flops. (double clock speed, double data activity vs double clock activity x twice the flops (or local clock gates) load).
Making an advance processor the most suitable chip type for a technology that's potentially difficult to use. These chips already use clock meshes for their distribution.
The mesh looks to it's driver like a big capacitor. The driver does work charging the mesh each cycle. (imagine a child on a swing, lift the swing up once and let go, child annoyingly stops at bottom of swing, repeat). In this technology the driver is replaced by a 'kicker' and a big inductor is matched to the capacitance of the mesh. Now you have a resonant circuit (child is swinging without stopping, just needs a small nudge each time). Less power at the cost of either on chip or off chip inductor, lots of non-standard design flow and $$$ to cyclos for the clever bits (the kicker and tool knowledge).
This is the daily mail, pretty pointless reading anything they say about computer without a quick fact check. The wired article make more sense:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/12/video-games-war-crime/
Playing the game is not a war crime, using a realistic game to train soldiers who then go onto commit the crime in real life could mean the trainer is commiting one as well as the trainee.
Probably not - when we design the chips we spec a lifetime that the chip will survive under worst case conditions before 'Electromigration*' kills it. Generally systems are currently well obsolete before it becomes an issue - but run your laptops under worst case conditions for ten years and the semicondutors will stop working. To fix the issue we'd have to make the wires bigger, which would stop Moore's law all by itself. EM isn't even to only lifetime issue for chips, it's just the most significant.
*Electrons flowing through the copper interconnect gradually move the metal atoms out of places with higher current density towards places with lower density, causing the wire to fail or even a bridge to another wire. Most significant on power and ground (where current goes one way) but also happens on the signals. S
Funny - can imagine the conversation now.....
DOJ - So Amazon, what seems to be the problem.
Amazon - Well, we used our tech savvyness to take a huge chunk of buisness away from the smaller bookstores, plus we're big enough to take the wholesale cut and we get given a load of the marketing budget for advertising the books on our website. Then we used our massive market share to force the publisers to take their and the author's cuts as a percentage and allow us to set the price, levaing us with about 70% in the end.
DOJ - Okay, interesting - do go on.
Amazon - So we saw the whole ebook thing coming a mile off, of course, clearly we wanted some of that - in fact we had no choice since the majority of the cost savings due to ebooks come in our part of the pipeline - if anyone else got their first they could massively undercut us - so we used our massive buying power over the publishers to force them into contracts where we set a flat rate price of $9.99, we still take 70%, they get roughly what they got before, less the money it would have cost them to print the books, they aren't allowed to sell the ebook elsewhere for less than we charge and what we sell is locked to hardware only we make. Of course the cool thing is we make a much bigger profit, because our costs are vastly lower and we own the new market due to the discounts!
DOJ - Err ok and the problem is?
Amazon - Didn't you read our press release? Apple come along and try to steal our market and because of that the publisers want to put the price up. Outrageous monopolistic pricing that is. So we decided to stand up for our poor customers by removing that publisers Ebooks and Paper books from sale.
DOJ - Actually we'd like to see the contract please.
Amazon - But we put everything in the press release, we're an honest small tech startup not like those nasty dinosaur publishing houses.
DOJ - But, you know, we should really double check.
Amazon - OK,OK you're cearly in their pockets and have been all along.
DOJ - Hmm it say here that the publisers get the right toset a raised price like you said, interesting - but wait - it also says the get the right to lower the price too. And they can sell ebooks elsewhere for less. Hmm and you're cuts gone down to 30% (plus what they give you for marketing and what you charge for the hardware). Hey Macmillan, what have you got to say for yourselves?
Macmillan - Didn't you read our press release? "The price will be set the price for each book individually. Our plan is to price the digital edition of most adult trade books in a price range from $14.99 to $5.99. At first release, concurrent with a hardcover, most titles will be priced between $14.99 and $12.99. E books will almost always appear day on date with the physical edition. Pricing will be dynamic over time."
DOJ - Amazon, i think you were right, someone was trying to misuse their market position, but it's ok now.
But we do agree on one thing - Murdoch is a clueless dinosaur - he can't even put this case across.....
Actually there is a sub-possibility to your first one:
He was wrong, but the 'evil mega-corporations' that make the separate vaccines for measels, mumps and rubella that (i believe, you'd want to check the fact) cost more than the MMR shots, plus the ones who make the treatments for the diseases, saw a way to reinstate their products.
Last week, my youngest baby very suddenly came out with a rash across his whole body (which fortunately faded away pretty quickly). Two day's LATER he was given the swine flu vaccine. If my local doctors had set their vaccine day three day's earlier the two events would have lined up - entirely randomly. This is why 'The plural of anecdote is not evidence'. Unfortunately you have observed a possibly correlation between two events, we have to use statistics to see if it's likely there is a correlation of if it's just random chance. To my knowledge huge effort has been put in to researching this since the original scare and the overwhelming result has been negative.
Let me begin by saying I fully agree with free software, happily make use of it with no contribution myself and salute those who do write it.
However, in terms of ethics, how is violating copyright any different than violating the GPL? Both provide legal means for the author to control the use of their work.
And no 'evil corporation' bs. Copyright can be assigned for good as well, Time-Warner might not be champions for the benefit of humanity but, for instance, Great Ormond St Hospital in london must rate reasonably high (for many years majority funded by the copyright on 'Peter Pan'and leading innovators in childhood illness).
So many people seem to be assuming that the guardian media group are motivated by corporate profits - i wonder how different the replies would be if the original message had contained the info that GMG is wholly owned by the Scott Trust which is not for profit?
Slashdot Mirror
I've seen the cyclos public presentations a few years ago. A somewhat simpler explanation would be: On a chip such as a big processor a large part of the power is used distributing the clock signal. This is for two reasons. 1) It takes more power to get a clock distribution network closer to zero skew, and processor design is done zero skew. 2) Ratio of Clock power vs data power goes up as you put less data stages between your flops. (double clock speed, double data activity vs double clock activity x twice the flops (or local clock gates) load). Making an advance processor the most suitable chip type for a technology that's potentially difficult to use. These chips already use clock meshes for their distribution. The mesh looks to it's driver like a big capacitor. The driver does work charging the mesh each cycle. (imagine a child on a swing, lift the swing up once and let go, child annoyingly stops at bottom of swing, repeat). In this technology the driver is replaced by a 'kicker' and a big inductor is matched to the capacitance of the mesh. Now you have a resonant circuit (child is swinging without stopping, just needs a small nudge each time). Less power at the cost of either on chip or off chip inductor, lots of non-standard design flow and $$$ to cyclos for the clever bits (the kicker and tool knowledge).
Thanks, shame you can't fix my missing words and bad title....
This is the daily mail, pretty pointless reading anything they say about computer without a quick fact check. The wired article make more sense: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/12/video-games-war-crime/ Playing the game is not a war crime, using a realistic game to train soldiers who then go onto commit the crime in real life could mean the trainer is commiting one as well as the trainee.
Probably not - when we design the chips we spec a lifetime that the chip will survive under worst case conditions before 'Electromigration*' kills it. Generally systems are currently well obsolete before it becomes an issue - but run your laptops under worst case conditions for ten years and the semicondutors will stop working. To fix the issue we'd have to make the wires bigger, which would stop Moore's law all by itself. EM isn't even to only lifetime issue for chips, it's just the most significant. *Electrons flowing through the copper interconnect gradually move the metal atoms out of places with higher current density towards places with lower density, causing the wire to fail or even a bridge to another wire. Most significant on power and ground (where current goes one way) but also happens on the signals. S
Funny - can imagine the conversation now..... DOJ - So Amazon, what seems to be the problem. Amazon - Well, we used our tech savvyness to take a huge chunk of buisness away from the smaller bookstores, plus we're big enough to take the wholesale cut and we get given a load of the marketing budget for advertising the books on our website. Then we used our massive market share to force the publisers to take their and the author's cuts as a percentage and allow us to set the price, levaing us with about 70% in the end. DOJ - Okay, interesting - do go on. Amazon - So we saw the whole ebook thing coming a mile off, of course, clearly we wanted some of that - in fact we had no choice since the majority of the cost savings due to ebooks come in our part of the pipeline - if anyone else got their first they could massively undercut us - so we used our massive buying power over the publishers to force them into contracts where we set a flat rate price of $9.99, we still take 70%, they get roughly what they got before, less the money it would have cost them to print the books, they aren't allowed to sell the ebook elsewhere for less than we charge and what we sell is locked to hardware only we make. Of course the cool thing is we make a much bigger profit, because our costs are vastly lower and we own the new market due to the discounts! DOJ - Err ok and the problem is? Amazon - Didn't you read our press release? Apple come along and try to steal our market and because of that the publisers want to put the price up. Outrageous monopolistic pricing that is. So we decided to stand up for our poor customers by removing that publisers Ebooks and Paper books from sale. DOJ - Actually we'd like to see the contract please. Amazon - But we put everything in the press release, we're an honest small tech startup not like those nasty dinosaur publishing houses. DOJ - But, you know, we should really double check. Amazon - OK,OK you're cearly in their pockets and have been all along. DOJ - Hmm it say here that the publisers get the right toset a raised price like you said, interesting - but wait - it also says the get the right to lower the price too. And they can sell ebooks elsewhere for less. Hmm and you're cuts gone down to 30% (plus what they give you for marketing and what you charge for the hardware). Hey Macmillan, what have you got to say for yourselves? Macmillan - Didn't you read our press release? "The price will be set the price for each book individually. Our plan is to price the digital edition of most adult trade books in a price range from $14.99 to $5.99. At first release, concurrent with a hardcover, most titles will be priced between $14.99 and $12.99. E books will almost always appear day on date with the physical edition. Pricing will be dynamic over time." DOJ - Amazon, i think you were right, someone was trying to misuse their market position, but it's ok now. But we do agree on one thing - Murdoch is a clueless dinosaur - he can't even put this case across.....
Actually there is a sub-possibility to your first one: He was wrong, but the 'evil mega-corporations' that make the separate vaccines for measels, mumps and rubella that (i believe, you'd want to check the fact) cost more than the MMR shots, plus the ones who make the treatments for the diseases, saw a way to reinstate their products.
Last week, my youngest baby very suddenly came out with a rash across his whole body (which fortunately faded away pretty quickly). Two day's LATER he was given the swine flu vaccine. If my local doctors had set their vaccine day three day's earlier the two events would have lined up - entirely randomly. This is why 'The plural of anecdote is not evidence'. Unfortunately you have observed a possibly correlation between two events, we have to use statistics to see if it's likely there is a correlation of if it's just random chance. To my knowledge huge effort has been put in to researching this since the original scare and the overwhelming result has been negative.
Let me begin by saying I fully agree with free software, happily make use of it with no contribution myself and salute those who do write it. However, in terms of ethics, how is violating copyright any different than violating the GPL? Both provide legal means for the author to control the use of their work. And no 'evil corporation' bs. Copyright can be assigned for good as well, Time-Warner might not be champions for the benefit of humanity but, for instance, Great Ormond St Hospital in london must rate reasonably high (for many years majority funded by the copyright on 'Peter Pan'and leading innovators in childhood illness).
So many people seem to be assuming that the guardian media group are motivated by corporate profits - i wonder how different the replies would be if the original message had contained the info that GMG is wholly owned by the Scott Trust which is not for profit?