And you're now back to the 'startup in the morning takes an excessive amount of time'.
If startup takes more than 30 seconds out of the worker's day, you've just burned more than the $.15 or so of electricity it costs to leave the computer on all night in some sort of non-suspended power saving mode.
Thus my suggestion to simply find a way to make the computer use less power period.
Well, I didn't mention underclocking/reducing voltage specifically, but as a general rule I consider business machines to be run by spec - as little customization as possible. A business will buy low power 'green' machines before they'll mess around with underclocking/undervolting.
A significant point would be that a 120W CPU costs quite a bit more than the 65W CPU. Newegg places the cheapest 125W CPU at $76 for a Athlon 64 X2 6000+ Windsor 3.0Ghz. The next cheapest is $150 for a AMD Phenom 9750 2.4GHz Socket AM2+ 125W Quad-Core Processor. On the 65W end, a AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Brisbane 2.2GHz Socket AM2 65W Dual-Core Processor runs $40.
Buy 'enough' CPU and let modern power saving functions. My core2 duo will automatically reduce the clock speed and therefore use fewer amps when it's not being stressed. It's literally a factor of 3 for power consumption, even at the same voltage.
A lot of people in my area still go for the local phone company's cell phones, and they're roaming outside of the area outside the state/a bit of the neighboring. A bunch more go for regional phones.
Me, I travel several times a year, so have a national, but regionals are still offered. I went with the national because it was only like $2 more a month.
Although, with all the new peering and leasing agreements going on, we'll likely see less and less of roaming fees from any provider that owns some amount of their own towers.
True, despite all the ads, Alltel's and Verizon's networks are essentially identical today. My alltel* phone will work anywhere the identical model Verizon branded one will.
No roaming or long distance charges in 99.9% of the USA that gets cellphone coverage.
*Because Alltel offered me a plan that works out ~$5/month cheaper.
For what it did, the shuttle program was successful.
but only a very narrowly defined vision will see that as a failure
Actually, I'd argue that only a very narrowly defined vision will see the shuttle program as a success. In order to consider it a success you'd have to concentrate on it's reusable nature and disregard cost.
Yes, the shuttle 'succeeds' at Y(reusable orbital craft). However, the primary goal was always Z(get stuff into orbit, be able to work on it up there), and X(disposable orbital craft) is far cheaper, allowing far more Z to get done per dollar.
On the other hand, NASA provides tangible benefits to science, and science has always, in the long run, improved society both culturally and economically. Knowledge gleaned is not lost. As a tax payer, I will far more readily spend $17B a year, even if it's vastly inefficient, for small, tangible scientific advances, than spend ten times that much to cover up major problems in the economy. Nothing is gained by axing NASA, and even less is gained by claiming that NASA is totally and irrevocably useless and has always been.
Now this is more in line with my beliefs. Still, many of the arguements are that if we'd actually replaced the shuttle back when we realized what a boondoggle it'd become, we could have gotten far more scientific achievements and been further along in space now. I've seen estimates that for the approximate cost of a shuttle service mission to the Hubble, we could have simply launched a new one.
I wouldn't throw away ANYTHING we've learned with the shuttle if I can help it at all. Life support systems are going to be very similar whether the craft's a shuttle, disposable capsule, or space station. The heat resistant tiles might replace the ablative shell of a capsule. Heck, armor the station with them to reduce heating/cooling costs.
If I had my way, way back when I'd have killed the shuttle, kept the Saturn around, and followed a policy of keeping man-rated missions and cargo seperate. Basically, for experiments launch a space station, even if it's a 'disposable' one to conduct experiments with the astronaughts coming up later. Though I'd shoot for having a permanent station, with a orbital commuter type craft capable of fulfilling the shuttle's maintenance tasks.
The station would be a sort of 'capsules plugged into a central hub' design. As our knowledge increases or the capsules wear out, send up new capsules. The hub, other than being pressurized, will be as simple as possible, only acting to transfer connections like power and air between capsules. Every so often, send up an updated hub.
Real-life measurements are crucial. One of our standard workstations (Lenovo 8808 + 17" LCD) draws 120W. With the monitor and PC in standby, the draw is only 3W.
Oh, I agree. Though I'm a bit surprised at the 3W quote, I thought it took more power than that to keep the memory refreshed.
Just to make sure we're using the same terms, when you mean standby you mean the computer's suspended(restart from RAM), not hibernated(restart from HD), right?
Manufacturers like Volkswagen, Ford, and Mercedes already build diesel cars that can burn biodiesel.
So doesn't GM and Ford.
Properly made biodiesel can be used as a 100% replacement for regular diesel without any modifications to the engine. That's a big part of it's appeal.
Ethanol would look a lot better if we had engines available that were optimized for it - the extremely high octane rating would allow us to build a more efficient high compression engine for it if we could jettison the requirement to run on regular low octane dino-gas.
But suspending doesn't drop power demand as much as shutting down; indeed, it could cut your savings in more than half if you have a yum-cha power supply. We're already looking at 15 cents of electricity a night in my area, it's getting into 'stupid green' territory. Heck, up here in the frozen wastelands any waste heat we eliminate has to be replaced via the heating systems - while NG and geothermal heat pumps are cheaper, again, you're chopping your savings in half or so.
I'd argue greater savings could be had by paying a bit of attention to your computer components - 80+ efficient power supplies, 35-65W CPUs rather than 95-150W. You can even get power efficient video chipsets(normally on the motherboard), etc...
89 watts isn't much though. Figure a 90% efficient PS, that's 80 Watts left. 35W CPU*, That leaves 45 Watts for the memory, Motherboard, video, and any rotating fans. We'll figure that the drives are already in powersaving mode.
Looking at it, I figure that a computer could easily use double to quadruple the power when being used - so reducing power there can save far more than shutting down computers.
This might change a bit of Wake on Lan or some timer is used. Again, enabling such functionality costs power, though.
*More likely a 65W CPU that's underclocking itself because it's not working hard
Not a bad idea, but SSDs have reached usable sizes for ~$100 for 32GB, enough for an OS and most program files - just install the games, user directories, and other multimedia stuff to the raid system.
Heh, I wonder how large and cheap a SSD made with a 32 nm process would be.
Being that I have a tendency to run a few pieces of software that'll peg a CPU to 100% today, going to a dual core processor was a 'I LOVE THIS!!!' moment.
I went with a dual core for the higher individual core speed and that games were, on the whole, still not optimized for using multiple cores, so the best you could get is the game on one core and everything else on the second, which STILL wouldn't be strained. Of course, prices come down, performance goes up, software advances, I'd consider a quad today.
Yes, but unless they've changed stuff lately, he can't use RAID 5 on his boot disk - only mirroring is supported, and only sorta at that.
Though with the way SSDs are going, I'd seriously consider putting the OS on a SSD, then going with the RAID array.
And have things really changed so much that true hardware RAID is slower? I'm aware that there are RAID devices that depend on the CPU much like winmodems did, but surely a good RAID card still beats software?
I guess reporting the ads depends on the site - I'm far more likely to report a bad ad for dan's data than some random site I only found a few minutes ago.
Of course, I hardly see ads anyways, and ads featuring images of XP/Vista default schemes show up like a bad apple.
While responding to an email marks your address as valid, I'd dispute that repording a bad ad marks you as a mark - After all, you didn't fall for the one, indeed, you're mad enough to report it.
Yes, but as we've learned with Everquest, WoW, Eve Online, etc... You CAN'T realistically stop the real-world wealthy* from buying advantages in the game.
Thus, perhaps it's better for the game company to realize this and provide them a legitimate way to spend their real world money buying advantages - at least this way you have a better chance that the people in the game are actually playing - not being gold farmers to feed the secondary market.
The old school MUDS often had this - and it normally worked out fine.
Misconception, or are you falling victim to historical revisionism?
Conventional bombing was already doing more damage and killing more people than we could do with our two little atom bombs.
I'll also submit that there's quite a difference between the US devistating a city via the usage of hundreds of planes, thousands of bombs and using ONE high altitude plane and ONE bomb. And Japan had no way of knowing that we only had two at the time.
Japan had already started the peace negotiations before we dropped the bombs. The bomb was probably dropped for two reasons, neither of which was to force Japan to surrender. First, the emperor could use this new super bomb as an excuse to surrender.
Japan was making some negotiations, but by that time we wanted unconditional surrender. You have to remember, people of the time were very aware of how the ending of WWI laid the seeds to WWII - we didn't want Japan popping up again in 30 years.
Well, of course, but consider a rope and a very sharp sword. It's possible to swing the sword fast enough that the rope's own weight will hold it down enough to cut it. Same problem with the ribbon. Mass, air resistance, any cargo pods, might hold the ribbon down enough that it ends up ripping instead of bending. Heck, it could simply be a undiscovered flaw in the ribbon eventually giving way.
All depends on where it gets cut. GEO is around 22k miles. Let's say it's cut at 11k. The part above 11k will start floating up. The part below the cut will start falling.
Still, 11k miles is a lot of distance to fall, but you have to remember we're talking about building this from carbon nanotubes, and it'll be lighter per square foot than most papers. The part actually *IN* atmosphere will likely 'flutter' down, limited by terminal velocity. The part outside the atmosphere will be able to achieve higher speeds, but upon hitting atmosphere will either slow down upon hitting atmosphere or ignite and burn to ash, neither a threat.
Just my thought - Just because the 1st says the government can't silence you, neither does the ammendment force the government or anybody else to provide for the distribution of your message.
You're free to yell from your soapbox, run a printing press from home, etc... You can't walk into a Kinkos and demand that they run off 10k copies of your manifesto for free.
This extends to email systems, bulletin boards, etc...
Unsolicited Email, like electronic junk mail Unwanted, usually advertisement email. Spam are usually sent in bulk and the recipient addresses are obtained by illegal means (eg by tapping the network communication). Spam is the term widely used for unsolicited e-mail; spam is also referred to as junk mail. Spam is usually sent indiscriminately to hundreds or even hundreds of thousands of inbox's simultaneously. Spamming is the abuse of electronic messaging systems to indiscriminately send unsolicited bulk messages.... A collection of unsolicited bulk electronic messages; Any undesired electronic content automatically-generated for commercial purposes; (rare) An unsolicited electronic message sent in bulk, usually by email or newsgroups; Alternative form of SPAM; : To send spam (i.e. unsolicited electronic... An obnoxious practice of mass advertising to clients through e-mail, IRC, a browser, or any other communication device.
Basically, UBC is SPAM, but SPAM isn't necessarily UBC.
Isn't leakage not so much a function of the process as the size of the traces/components and the subsequent closeness? IE if you're imitating a 180nm die(to give some amperage capacity) with 65nm, wouldn't you get 180nm or better leakage, since the traces would be very accurage compared to a true 180nm process?
Maybe they decided to go for a PMU that ONLY powers the radio stuff. That way you only need a few power traces to the chip, leaving the rest of the stuff for a seperate PMU. Helps keep the board simple. I also read somewhere about developers coming up with a hybrid digital/RF analoge die methodology.
Then again, maybe this design is actually a SIP that they're misterming a 'chip', since most people view the casing(and it's contents) as a 'chip', not just the silicon wafer inside. Still, if you can get yields high enough SIP is more expensive than single wafer design. If they've figured out how to build 'everything RF' into a single wafer suitable for usage in a cell phone/PDA/laptop it'd be quite the kudos. Then again, this isn't everything RF, many devices would still need a cellular chip. Ah well, they have something to work on next...;)
Is 65nm still cutting edge though? Intel's been producing stuff at 45nm for a while now.
From my understanding of the technology, if they need to they can always 'scale up' the PMU section - drawing bigger parts using the finer process isn't difficult. It'd be a bit like displaying 480i images on a 1080p screen.
Meanwhile you get the power savings, higher speeds, smaller size, and increased yields per platter for the smaller process.
Might not be the most 'efficient' way to do it, but reducing the chip count can save far more money in the long run. After all, you're saving space, board traces, an extra chip package, and all the plastic, weight, transportation, soldering, inventory issues it entails.
I mean, imagine a computer on/in a chip - Sure, it's not upgradable, but it has the CPU, memory, north bridge, south bridge, video and sound all integrated. The board(today) only needs to have transfer traces for the power, video, network, sound, USB, and SATA. Deluxe version includes firewire. If they need serial/parallel ports, use a USB bridge.
How expensive would this be? How power efficient? How small? Heck, I'd imagine that you could make it small enough to fit into the back of a LCD monitor.;)
Sure it can. That's why DVDs aren't selling anymore; after all they've been broken to the point that copying takes longer than cracking. Oh wait...
The point would be to keep the DRM as unobtrusive as possible, and maximize the benefits of a legitimate copy - professionally pressed media lasts longer than burned. You get a nice box and manual, etc... No worries about being sued, professional download speeds(or pick up all materials needed in the box at the store), even tech support. All for a decent price.
I haven't purchased OR downloaded spore - mostly because I've heard nothing but bad things about it's DRM. DRM has annoyed me more with LEGAL copies of stuff than illegal copies. As a result, I have a policy of waiting to hear about a game - and I won't buy it if they mention particularly draconian DRM.
I can read a book and return it. I can even buy clothing and return it.
Videos and games are exceptions to the 'no returns' rule, and DRM can actually COMPLICATE returning - even if the user uninstalled it, the game is now down an activation.
At least if there's no DRM the next purchaser gets a working game.
To be fair, spark plugs can now last 100k miles, and changing the oil of a car is fairly dirty work unless you have the right tools - it's easier to simply pay the $30 to have a service station do it, what with their lift or access tunnel, not to mention a full selection of oil wrenches from hell.
That's why I said 'some'. Obviously detecting stolen stuff is going to be different.
I've seen some of the stuff turned in as 'scrap' - brand new 12/2 wire, copper piping not yet oxidized, beer kegs with a pub's name on them(and the sellers not affiliated with the pub in any way), etc...
Slashdot Mirror
And you're now back to the 'startup in the morning takes an excessive amount of time'.
If startup takes more than 30 seconds out of the worker's day, you've just burned more than the $.15 or so of electricity it costs to leave the computer on all night in some sort of non-suspended power saving mode.
Thus my suggestion to simply find a way to make the computer use less power period.
Actually, I mentioned it in my post:
35-65W CPUs rather than 95-150W.
Well, I didn't mention underclocking/reducing voltage specifically, but as a general rule I consider business machines to be run by spec - as little customization as possible. A business will buy low power 'green' machines before they'll mess around with underclocking/undervolting.
A significant point would be that a 120W CPU costs quite a bit more than the 65W CPU. Newegg places the cheapest 125W CPU at $76 for a Athlon 64 X2 6000+ Windsor 3.0Ghz. The next cheapest is $150 for a AMD Phenom 9750 2.4GHz Socket AM2+ 125W Quad-Core Processor. On the 65W end, a AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Brisbane 2.2GHz Socket AM2 65W Dual-Core Processor runs $40.
Buy 'enough' CPU and let modern power saving functions. My core2 duo will automatically reduce the clock speed and therefore use fewer amps when it's not being stressed. It's literally a factor of 3 for power consumption, even at the same voltage.
A lot of people in my area still go for the local phone company's cell phones, and they're roaming outside of the area outside the state/a bit of the neighboring. A bunch more go for regional phones.
Me, I travel several times a year, so have a national, but regionals are still offered. I went with the national because it was only like $2 more a month.
Although, with all the new peering and leasing agreements going on, we'll likely see less and less of roaming fees from any provider that owns some amount of their own towers.
True, despite all the ads, Alltel's and Verizon's networks are essentially identical today. My alltel* phone will work anywhere the identical model Verizon branded one will.
No roaming or long distance charges in 99.9% of the USA that gets cellphone coverage.
*Because Alltel offered me a plan that works out ~$5/month cheaper.
For what it did, the shuttle program was successful.
but only a very narrowly defined vision will see that as a failure
Actually, I'd argue that only a very narrowly defined vision will see the shuttle program as a success. In order to consider it a success you'd have to concentrate on it's reusable nature and disregard cost.
Yes, the shuttle 'succeeds' at Y(reusable orbital craft). However, the primary goal was always Z(get stuff into orbit, be able to work on it up there), and X(disposable orbital craft) is far cheaper, allowing far more Z to get done per dollar.
On the other hand, NASA provides tangible benefits to science, and science has always, in the long run, improved society both culturally and economically. Knowledge gleaned is not lost. As a tax payer, I will far more readily spend $17B a year, even if it's vastly inefficient, for small, tangible scientific advances, than spend ten times that much to cover up major problems in the economy. Nothing is gained by axing NASA, and even less is gained by claiming that NASA is totally and irrevocably useless and has always been.
Now this is more in line with my beliefs. Still, many of the arguements are that if we'd actually replaced the shuttle back when we realized what a boondoggle it'd become, we could have gotten far more scientific achievements and been further along in space now. I've seen estimates that for the approximate cost of a shuttle service mission to the Hubble, we could have simply launched a new one.
I wouldn't throw away ANYTHING we've learned with the shuttle if I can help it at all. Life support systems are going to be very similar whether the craft's a shuttle, disposable capsule, or space station. The heat resistant tiles might replace the ablative shell of a capsule. Heck, armor the station with them to reduce heating/cooling costs.
If I had my way, way back when I'd have killed the shuttle, kept the Saturn around, and followed a policy of keeping man-rated missions and cargo seperate. Basically, for experiments launch a space station, even if it's a 'disposable' one to conduct experiments with the astronaughts coming up later. Though I'd shoot for having a permanent station, with a orbital commuter type craft capable of fulfilling the shuttle's maintenance tasks.
The station would be a sort of 'capsules plugged into a central hub' design. As our knowledge increases or the capsules wear out, send up new capsules. The hub, other than being pressurized, will be as simple as possible, only acting to transfer connections like power and air between capsules. Every so often, send up an updated hub.
Real-life measurements are crucial. One of our standard workstations (Lenovo 8808 + 17" LCD) draws 120W. With the monitor and PC in standby, the draw is only 3W.
Oh, I agree. Though I'm a bit surprised at the 3W quote, I thought it took more power than that to keep the memory refreshed.
Just to make sure we're using the same terms, when you mean standby you mean the computer's suspended(restart from RAM), not hibernated(restart from HD), right?
Manufacturers like Volkswagen, Ford, and Mercedes already build diesel cars that can burn biodiesel.
So doesn't GM and Ford.
Properly made biodiesel can be used as a 100% replacement for regular diesel without any modifications to the engine. That's a big part of it's appeal.
Ethanol would look a lot better if we had engines available that were optimized for it - the extremely high octane rating would allow us to build a more efficient high compression engine for it if we could jettison the requirement to run on regular low octane dino-gas.
But suspending doesn't drop power demand as much as shutting down; indeed, it could cut your savings in more than half if you have a yum-cha power supply. We're already looking at 15 cents of electricity a night in my area, it's getting into 'stupid green' territory. Heck, up here in the frozen wastelands any waste heat we eliminate has to be replaced via the heating systems - while NG and geothermal heat pumps are cheaper, again, you're chopping your savings in half or so.
I'd argue greater savings could be had by paying a bit of attention to your computer components - 80+ efficient power supplies, 35-65W CPUs rather than 95-150W. You can even get power efficient video chipsets(normally on the motherboard), etc...
89 watts isn't much though. Figure a 90% efficient PS, that's 80 Watts left. 35W CPU*, That leaves 45 Watts for the memory, Motherboard, video, and any rotating fans. We'll figure that the drives are already in powersaving mode.
Looking at it, I figure that a computer could easily use double to quadruple the power when being used - so reducing power there can save far more than shutting down computers.
This might change a bit of Wake on Lan or some timer is used. Again, enabling such functionality costs power, though.
*More likely a 65W CPU that's underclocking itself because it's not working hard
Not a bad idea, but SSDs have reached usable sizes for ~$100 for 32GB, enough for an OS and most program files - just install the games, user directories, and other multimedia stuff to the raid system.
Heh, I wonder how large and cheap a SSD made with a 32 nm process would be.
Being that I have a tendency to run a few pieces of software that'll peg a CPU to 100% today, going to a dual core processor was a 'I LOVE THIS!!!' moment.
I went with a dual core for the higher individual core speed and that games were, on the whole, still not optimized for using multiple cores, so the best you could get is the game on one core and everything else on the second, which STILL wouldn't be strained. Of course, prices come down, performance goes up, software advances, I'd consider a quad today.
Yes, but unless they've changed stuff lately, he can't use RAID 5 on his boot disk - only mirroring is supported, and only sorta at that.
Though with the way SSDs are going, I'd seriously consider putting the OS on a SSD, then going with the RAID array.
And have things really changed so much that true hardware RAID is slower? I'm aware that there are RAID devices that depend on the CPU much like winmodems did, but surely a good RAID card still beats software?
They have your address if the ad only loaded.
I guess reporting the ads depends on the site - I'm far more likely to report a bad ad for dan's data than some random site I only found a few minutes ago.
Of course, I hardly see ads anyways, and ads featuring images of XP/Vista default schemes show up like a bad apple.
While responding to an email marks your address as valid, I'd dispute that repording a bad ad marks you as a mark - After all, you didn't fall for the one, indeed, you're mad enough to report it.
Yes, but as we've learned with Everquest, WoW, Eve Online, etc... You CAN'T realistically stop the real-world wealthy* from buying advantages in the game.
Thus, perhaps it's better for the game company to realize this and provide them a legitimate way to spend their real world money buying advantages - at least this way you have a better chance that the people in the game are actually playing - not being gold farmers to feed the secondary market.
The old school MUDS often had this - and it normally worked out fine.
*Even if it's only via daddy's credit card.
That is a terrible misconception.
Misconception, or are you falling victim to historical revisionism?
Conventional bombing was already doing more damage and killing more people than we could do with our two little atom bombs.
I'll also submit that there's quite a difference between the US devistating a city via the usage of hundreds of planes, thousands of bombs and using ONE high altitude plane and ONE bomb. And Japan had no way of knowing that we only had two at the time.
Japan had already started the peace negotiations before we dropped the bombs. The bomb was probably dropped for two reasons, neither of which was to force Japan to surrender. First, the emperor could use this new super bomb as an excuse to surrender.
Japan was making some negotiations, but by that time we wanted unconditional surrender. You have to remember, people of the time were very aware of how the ending of WWI laid the seeds to WWII - we didn't want Japan popping up again in 30 years.
Well, of course, but consider a rope and a very sharp sword. It's possible to swing the sword fast enough that the rope's own weight will hold it down enough to cut it. Same problem with the ribbon. Mass, air resistance, any cargo pods, might hold the ribbon down enough that it ends up ripping instead of bending. Heck, it could simply be a undiscovered flaw in the ribbon eventually giving way.
All depends on where it gets cut. GEO is around 22k miles. Let's say it's cut at 11k. The part above 11k will start floating up. The part below the cut will start falling.
Still, 11k miles is a lot of distance to fall, but you have to remember we're talking about building this from carbon nanotubes, and it'll be lighter per square foot than most papers. The part actually *IN* atmosphere will likely 'flutter' down, limited by terminal velocity. The part outside the atmosphere will be able to achieve higher speeds, but upon hitting atmosphere will either slow down upon hitting atmosphere or ignite and burn to ash, neither a threat.
Just my thought - Just because the 1st says the government can't silence you, neither does the ammendment force the government or anybody else to provide for the distribution of your message.
You're free to yell from your soapbox, run a printing press from home, etc... You can't walk into a Kinkos and demand that they run off 10k copies of your manifesto for free.
This extends to email systems, bulletin boards, etc...
While UBC/UCE* is indeed spam, I'd say that the chain letter is INDEED SPAM as well.
Google's list of definitions.
Unsolicited Email, like electronic junk mail ... ...
Unwanted, usually advertisement email. Spam are usually sent in bulk and the recipient addresses are obtained by illegal means (eg by tapping the network communication).
Spam is the term widely used for unsolicited e-mail; spam is also referred to as junk mail. Spam is usually sent indiscriminately to hundreds or even hundreds of thousands of inbox's simultaneously.
Spamming is the abuse of electronic messaging systems to indiscriminately send unsolicited bulk messages.
A collection of unsolicited bulk electronic messages; Any undesired electronic content automatically-generated for commercial purposes; (rare) An unsolicited electronic message sent in bulk, usually by email or newsgroups; Alternative form of SPAM; : To send spam (i.e. unsolicited electronic
An obnoxious practice of mass advertising to clients through e-mail, IRC, a browser, or any other communication device.
Basically, UBC is SPAM, but SPAM isn't necessarily UBC.
*Unsolicited Commercial Email
How come none of these chips ever come with an AM receiver?
Technology and physics - while it's simpler to process AM signals over FM you need a larger unit and antenna.
So while you can do a FM radio on the cheap AM takes a bit more space or effort, so they don't normally bother with the smallest equipment.
Isn't leakage not so much a function of the process as the size of the traces/components and the subsequent closeness? IE if you're imitating a 180nm die(to give some amperage capacity) with 65nm, wouldn't you get 180nm or better leakage, since the traces would be very accurage compared to a true 180nm process?
Maybe they decided to go for a PMU that ONLY powers the radio stuff. That way you only need a few power traces to the chip, leaving the rest of the stuff for a seperate PMU. Helps keep the board simple. I also read somewhere about developers coming up with a hybrid digital/RF analoge die methodology.
Then again, maybe this design is actually a SIP that they're misterming a 'chip', since most people view the casing(and it's contents) as a 'chip', not just the silicon wafer inside. Still, if you can get yields high enough SIP is more expensive than single wafer design. If they've figured out how to build 'everything RF' into a single wafer suitable for usage in a cell phone/PDA/laptop it'd be quite the kudos. Then again, this isn't everything RF, many devices would still need a cellular chip. Ah well, they have something to work on next... ;)
Is 65nm still cutting edge though? Intel's been producing stuff at 45nm for a while now.
From my understanding of the technology, if they need to they can always 'scale up' the PMU section - drawing bigger parts using the finer process isn't difficult. It'd be a bit like displaying 480i images on a 1080p screen.
Meanwhile you get the power savings, higher speeds, smaller size, and increased yields per platter for the smaller process.
Might not be the most 'efficient' way to do it, but reducing the chip count can save far more money in the long run. After all, you're saving space, board traces, an extra chip package, and all the plastic, weight, transportation, soldering, inventory issues it entails.
I mean, imagine a computer on/in a chip - Sure, it's not upgradable, but it has the CPU, memory, north bridge, south bridge, video and sound all integrated. The board(today) only needs to have transfer traces for the power, video, network, sound, USB, and SATA. Deluxe version includes firewire. If they need serial/parallel ports, use a USB bridge.
How expensive would this be? How power efficient? How small? Heck, I'd imagine that you could make it small enough to fit into the back of a LCD monitor. ;)
System on a Chip
System in a Package
Heck, I've figured they've done stuff like this for watches/clock radios/cheap calculators for years.
Sure it can. That's why DVDs aren't selling anymore; after all they've been broken to the point that copying takes longer than cracking. Oh wait...
The point would be to keep the DRM as unobtrusive as possible, and maximize the benefits of a legitimate copy - professionally pressed media lasts longer than burned. You get a nice box and manual, etc... No worries about being sued, professional download speeds(or pick up all materials needed in the box at the store), even tech support. All for a decent price.
I haven't purchased OR downloaded spore - mostly because I've heard nothing but bad things about it's DRM. DRM has annoyed me more with LEGAL copies of stuff than illegal copies. As a result, I have a policy of waiting to hear about a game - and I won't buy it if they mention particularly draconian DRM.
I can read a book and return it. I can even buy clothing and return it.
Videos and games are exceptions to the 'no returns' rule, and DRM can actually COMPLICATE returning - even if the user uninstalled it, the game is now down an activation.
At least if there's no DRM the next purchaser gets a working game.
Oh,and I've returned games successfully before.
To be fair, spark plugs can now last 100k miles, and changing the oil of a car is fairly dirty work unless you have the right tools - it's easier to simply pay the $30 to have a service station do it, what with their lift or access tunnel, not to mention a full selection of oil wrenches from hell.
That's why I said 'some'. Obviously detecting stolen stuff is going to be different.
I've seen some of the stuff turned in as 'scrap' - brand new 12/2 wire, copper piping not yet oxidized, beer kegs with a pub's name on them(and the sellers not affiliated with the pub in any way), etc...