The full OGP core will fill most of the XC3S4000 (that's the second largest FPGA in the Spartan-3 product line).
Interesting. So when did they decide to switch from the XCS2000? (The chip listed in the spec sheet.)
Sure, you'd probably be able to make a *2D* core fit into a tiny FPGA, but a full OpenGL shader pipeline? Not likely.
Fully 1.3 compatible? No, but you could fake it in software.:-) Some of the more interesting designs I've seen is when chip makers use microcode routines from memory to cover advanced instructions. This allows the chip design to use far less real estate than previously necessary at a slight performance expense.
If they wanted to keep it small, I see no reason why they couldn't use a similar design here. After all, at the end of the day a GPU looks a lot like a DSP. Add a few support chips (usually quite cheap) and they should be able to produce everything they need in a very small core.
Not that I'm suggesting that's what they do. Performance wise they'd get killed on this 3DFXish approach. Unfortunately, I don't have any pricing data on the 2000 and 4000 series (not that it means much anyway), but I'm thinking they could probably negotiate a pretty good deal.
A lot of people like Verilog because it looks like C. IMHO, however, that tends to lead to more errors because of the similarity. You're far better off starting with VHDL.
Read this response of mine... I am aware of FPGA chips and I also understand that they are limited as to what their top performance capabilities are.
The performance gap between FPGAs and ASICs have dwindled in recent years, with FPGAs taking advantage of smaller fab processes than ASICs currently have readily available. That's why Xilinx preaches their "Make Spartan your ASIC" line and gets away with it.:-)
That's why I see this as being a difficult to get running kind of venture. Unless they can perform some kind of miracle, very few regular PC users will be interested in this sort of thing.
I wouldn't be entirely sure about that. This sort of thing should be able to be competitively priced (granted, with a poorer price/performace ratio) to where it could easily be the standard choice for OEM Linux machines.
As another poster suggested, this might work great for embedded or tiny form factor devices, like PDAs, Cell phones and similar. It will be quite a feat to see these graphics cards come close to competing with current mid to low range offerings from ATI and Nvidia.
Nonsense. You can get a lot more out of the FPGAs than most people believe. A lot of individuals still think of FPGAs as those electronic oddities from the 80's. Projects like SaarCorare demonstrating how FPGAs can outperform even a Pentium IV. Do not underestimate these guys.
To your original question, if the ASIC route is taken, the chips can either be delivered by the fab to the board manufacturer on a tape and reel, or sockets can be used to plug in the chip during packaging.
* The GPU is probably too complex for the really cheap FPGAs to work.
I've noticed a PDF they have on their site that has the specs. Apparently, they are using a Spartan 3 2000. The rest of their specs suggest a relatively simple GPU for the time being, so they should have no trouble fitting into the chip they chose.:-) (Although they will need a handful of other chips to support the features they want.)
* most importantly...SPEED. Those ultracheap FPGAs are too slow to handle 3-D processing for megapixel graphics at 100FPS, which is what you need to do to compete with ATI and NVidia. The FPGA evaluation board they are releasing will probably run at some fraction of the intended frequency of the final product.
I beleive they state 200MHz in their spec sheet. Which is a) competitive and b) doable with current FPGAs. But you're right, they can run up an ASIC to a much higher frequency. I think they'll want to break into the market before they attempt that though.:-)
I just hope that they do not have crap in it like VESA has: scrolling framebuffers to implement double buffering and text scrolling is quite stupid nowdays IMO.
Well... yes. VESA is a beast from another time altogether. The fact that it even works in x86 Protected Mode is a miracle to behold. But since it *does* work, it makes for an excellent method of out-of-the-box graphics support. Without it, the cute little QNX-on-a-floppy demo couldn't exist.:-)
BTW, you seem to be very well versed in graphics issues. Just wondering what is your background? Judging from previous conversations your knowledge defintily trumps mine, as my knowledge in the graphics field has been reading a bit too many various whitepapers lite, wikipedia articles, and a good cs background, but that is all.
That's very nice of you to say, but my knowledge is very much from the same areas as yourself. Perhaps following this link might help you better understand how I know so much about the concept.:-)
(P.S. Sorry, I just realized that the link is down right now. Check it in an hour or two and it should be back up.)
And, what tricky work is done in software? Shading? Bump mapping?
Yes. Shaders, bump mappers, and other effects are micro programs that run on the GPU. This design became so common that it evolved into complete GPU languages such as CG.
At an average of 4 transistors/gate, this is equivalent to ~600,000 transistors. Compare this with the latest offering from NVidia and ATI, which are pushing the 300 million transistor mark. So, you need 500 FPGAs to get the equivalent resources (at a reduced horse power).
1. They're not trying to reach the same levels of performance as NVidia. (Yet, anyway.)
2. A single pipeline isn't so bad. It gets messy when we're talking multiple pipelines, texturing units, etc. I assume for now they're targetting a single pipeline chip with only one or two texturing units.
If you have ever worked with FPGAs, you'll know that typically only a max of 75% of the resources can be used if you would like to be able to route your FPGA and still maintain decent clock speeds
Generally, yes. But there's still ways to cheat like hell to up that utilization a bit.:-)
Do you use only existing transistors and processing chips, or do you design your own and then have them fabricate a run of those chip designs before having those installed in your board designs?
Actually, you just use an FPGA. They're completely programmable processors that are very similar in design to static RAM. They can be reprogrammed on the fly, and can represent any chip desired. (Limited only by the number of logic units.) They used to be used only for prototyping due to high cost and low speed, but today they are very competitive on the market. Many a manufacturer has taken to shipping the FPGA instead of paying for the manufacture of a custom chip (usually an ASIC).
We are currently lucky that nvidia keeps updating their drivers for the older video-cards, as the nv drivers (which are mostly reverse engineered / developed from tiny amounts of nvidia released specifications) suck badly.
Putting 3D support aside for the moment, it's worth noting that NVidia produces one of the best VESA BIOSes on the market today. As such, their cards tend to be very easy to support and work far better than any competitor.
The real issue is that most people want 3D support so they can play video games or (*gasp*) do engineering work. Once you're in the 3D arena, only a vendor supported driver is going to have a chance in hell of competing. Not just because of the issues with the hardware interfaces being secret, but because of the massive amounts of performance IP that's stored in the driver source code. (Sorry, you probably knew that, but I had to reiterate it for others.):-)
It is highly unlikely that you'll be able to program an FPGA to do something faster than a modern computer can do.
Now that's just nonsense. This is the thinking of "More MHz is better". The truth is that a custom chip design targetted at a specific task can easily out-perform a more generic chip. For example, the SaarCor can render a raytraced scene many times faster than a Pentium IV, using nothing more than off-the-shelf FPGA hardware running at 1/300th the MHz.
That being said, it's doubtful that the OGP will outperform someone like NVidia or ATI who already build custom chips. But it might be able to give them a decent run for their money.
Actually, they're not to bad on complexity. Most of the chip complexity comes from constantly pushing the boundaries of performance. Even then, a majority of the tricky work is actually done in the software drivers.
You're quoting prices for very SMALL FPGAs. What makes you think we could fit something as complex as a GPU into a 3S200?
A 3S200 is not that small of a chip. Fairly good sized processors can be written on it, often with quite a bit of space left over. Even if they do need a larger chip (e.g. a Virtex III) they should still check the prices. Xilinx has been making sure that their chips are extremely affordable in large quantities.
In quantites smaller than 1000? Well, it's difficult to get a good price out of ASICs as well.
Thanks to FPGAs, complete hardware designs can be written (in source code no less!), downloaded directly to the chip, tested, and then sold for a profit without ever speaking to a chip fab or hardware factory. And places like Pad2Pad allow for custom test boards to be built for a VERY low cost.
If the Open Graphics Hardware project needs a million smackers, then they better damn well have a shippable product on their hands.
Hardware is quite a bit different then software, being a physical tangible item that isn't easily copied/manufactured.
Tell that to Pad2Pad. I can send them a computer file, and they can send me back a complete board (or run of boards).
In fact, hardware has become closer to software than you think. Thanks to languages such as VHDL and Verilog, you can *code* a chip and test it without ever pressing a piece of hardware. And if you use an FPGA, you can litterally download the chip design into the processor and have a working model of your design.
If you ever hear about "chip IP", they're referring to the practice of developing a chip design and then selling the design to hardware manufacturers. ARM is a particularly well known exmaple of this.
Based on their current work plan, an FPGA-based project board will be available in November "that serves as the development platform for a much less expensive ASIC-based solution (second quarter of 2006), contingent on available funding."
I don't know if they've been paying any attention (I presume they have), but FPGAs have gotten extremely cheap as of late. AVNet lists the Xilinx XC3S200-4VQ100C with the following rates:
1 - $14.7950 25 - $12.8700 100+ - $11.2200
While I don't like assuming, in this case it's fairly safe to say that the price would be even lower for quantities of 1000 or more. I see little difficulty with them being able to mass produce an FPGA card for ~$50 US. (Something of a sweet spot price point in computer the computer industry.) The only real reason I could see for going to ASICs is to reduce the cost of very large runs, and/or increasing the performance of the onboard chip.
The different races represented concepts more than countries.
Indeed. Possibily my favorite parallel is the Borg representing rampent socialism. i.e. What's done in the name of improving life for everyone whipes out the individual in the process. That underlying aspect is what made the Borg so chilling and dangerous. B&B, of course, missed the point entirely.
Trek has always had its ups and downs. I mean, on one end you've got Spock's Brain, Patterns of Force, The Child, Shades of Gray, and Star Trek V. If the shows were judged on these alone, it wouldn't last very long.
But what keeps fans coming back are the jewels such as City on the Edge of Forever, A Private Little War, The Wrath of Khan, Best of Both Worlds, Inner Light, Darmok... errr... you get the idea. These shows push the boundries of thought provoking entertainment. Whether it be a commentary on current events, a truely deep story portrayed by amazing actors, or an edge of your seat fight for survival, Trek has a way of making you *want* to watch more.
You're missing my point. What's generally considered "hardcore" Sci-Fi is so completely left field that it's ended up with the dual term "Sci-Fi/Fantasy". I used the "Lord of the Rings in Space" item as a parody example. (Although it's pretty close. Try reading Probability Moon sometime. Ugh.)
Take Manifold Time as an example. Seemingly scientific and whatnot, but quickly delves into areas of depressing mysticism and psuedo-science. I mean, squids as computers? Superchildren from the future? Destiny? Fate? New multiverses? It just goes beyond what science can reasonably say could happen and jumps off the deepend of wild imaginings.
Even 2001 was shackled by this type of story telling. What starts off as a reasonable mission to Jupiter (Titan in the book) quickly degrades into insane computers that would make Stephen King jealous, Monoliths of power, and star babies that can travel the universe.
None of this is science fiction any more. It crosses the line and becomes Fantasy. Yet this is what we're being told is "the hardcore good-stuff"! Even Card himself says that "Being John Malkovich" is one of the best Sci-Fi movies of all time! WTF?
Actually, it tends to be the other way around. That's why I don't like a lot of the "hardcore" stuff. It's too much mysticism mixed with a depressing tale and covered over with pseudo-science. In my mind, things *really* go downhill when they start calling it "Sci-Fi/Fantasy". (Hey, we could have Ents, Hobbits, Trolls, and Wizards if we just put them on another planet and make the source of the magic some form of super-technology! Brilliant!) Ugh.
Screw the enraged Trekkies, he's knocked SciFi as a whole by listing such a crap set of unabashedly mainstream and modernly-popular authors - with the exception of Ellison - to represent 'Sci-Fi of the time' or whatever he calls it.
I was just re-reading his comments when I noticed these gems:
Charlie Kaufman created the two finest science fiction films of all time so far: "Being John Malkovich" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind."
Through-line series like Joss Whedon's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and Alfred Gough's and Miles Millar's "Smallville" have raised our expectations of what episodic sci-fi and fantasy ought to be.
Malkovich? Smallville? *These* are what he thinks are the paramount of Sci-Fi? This guy needs his head checked!
Whedon's "Firefly" showed us that even 1930s sci-fi can be well acted and tell a compelling long-term story.
In summary, he states that Trek has always sucked, Roddenberry was a hack, and the Klingon language is stupid. I've got some tar over here, anyone else got some feathers?
Honestly, it's great that he doesn't like Star Trek. I'm happy for him. Really. But not everyone is looking to have their heads messed with when they watch Science Fiction. They don't necessary need to find the "deeper connection", "reveal the hidden truths", or "find another plain of existence". Sometimes people are happy addressing issues that are relevant today rather than issues from some dysotopian future. Star Trek did that. It used allegories (e.g. Klingons == Russians) and analogous situations (e.g. A Private Little War) to help put current issues into perspective. In addition, Roddenberry made Star Trek nothing more than a canvas for far more experienced writers to make their points.
In short, people loved Star Trek because it was both thought provoking and accessable to people who aren't interested in "hardcore sci-fi" visions of the future.
Side Note: Has anyone ever noticed that when Star Trek addresses a topic that some find to be a repulsive trait of hardcore Sci-Fi (e.g. telepaths), the blow is somehow softened to where the concept is easy to accept? Perhaps there's even more missing than Mr. Card realizes.
"I wonder sometimes if the motivation for writers ought to be contempt, not admiration." -Orson Scott Card
In my defense, I did use TESS to attempt to find the trademark. What I missed (which another poster pointed out) is that it's actually registered to the parent company.
This definitely strengthens their case, but probably not to any significant degree.
The retailer has owned trademarks on Tiger, TigerDirect and TigerSoftware since 1996.
Last time we discussed this, the general conclusion is that TigerDirect had *registered* trademarks on all of these *except* "Tiger". Apple, OTOH, has a registered trademark on the term "Tiger". Has anyone tracked down this mysterious registration, or is TigerDirect merely claiming that their use of the mark precedes Apple's? (As I understand it, trademarks are not required to be registered. However, it can be very difficult to prove the usage of a common mark without it.)
Honestly, I think TigerDirect is entitled to nothing more than "TigerDirect" and its derivitives. I have never seen them referred to as simply "Tiger", and I find nothing confusing about a product name vs. a company name. IMHO, TD has a long road ahead of them if they want to prove that Apple is misusing their mark. And what does TD really think they're going to get out of it anyway? The cost of the suit will drain their company dry before they ever see even a meger return. Perhaps they think Apple will settle?
TigerDirect's contention is that Apple's use of the word "tiger" has knocked the retailer from the top of search results on Google, Yahoo and MSN.
What a bunch of poppycock. If you do a search for "Tiger Direct" or "Tiger Computers" on Google, you get Tiger Direct. Even if you search for "Tiger", you still get Tiger Direct before Apple. But just because they happen to come up on a search for "Tiger" does not give them the right to claim the use of that mark.
Mr. Young is also currently CEO of Lulu.com, which provides independent publishers with free access to on-demand publishing tools for books, e-books, music, images and calendars.
Watch out for that website. It's a real Lulu! (insert groaning here)
It is amazing how much you can uncover from just connecting the dots and/. Account name.
Indeed. Especially since I must divulge certain information in order to have a business or domain name. That's why laws against performing the type of stunts you pulled exist. Be very aware of that in the future.
Any more posts along the lines will not come from me
Sorry, but this story is just begging for this old joke:
Bill Gates wanted to look good and impress everyone with his success. He decided to measure the accomplishments of Microsoft against General Motors. The comparison went like this:
If automotive technology had kept pace with computer technology over the past few decades, you would now be driving a V-32 instead of a V-8, and it would have a top speed of 10,000 miles per hour. (160,000km/hr)
Or you could have an economy car that weighs 30 pounds (14 kilos) and gets a thousand miles to a gallon of gas. In either case the sticker price of a new car would be less than $50.
In response to all this goading, GM issued a press release stating the following: "If GM had developed technology like Microshaft has, we would be driving cars with the following characteristics:"
For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash at least twice a day.
Every time they repainted the lines on the road, you would have to buy a new car.
Occasionally, your car would die on the freeway for no apparent reason, and you would accept this, restart, and drive on.
Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to start, in which case you would have to re-install the engine.
Only one person at a time could use the car, unless you bought 'Car95' or 'CarNT'. Then you would have to buy more seats.
Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was more reliable, five times as fast, and twice as easy to drive, but would only run on five percent of the roads.
The oil, water, temperature and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single 'general car fault' warning light.
New seats would force everyone to have the same butt size.
The airbag system would say "Are you sure?" before going off.
Occasioanlly, for no known reason, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.
GM would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of Rand McNally road maps (now a GM subsidiary), even though they neither want them or need them. Attempting to delete this option would immediately cause the car's performance to diminish by fifty percent or more.
Every time GM introduced a new model, car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.
You'd press the 'Start' button to shut off the engine.
Subs generally utilize light water reactors instead of the more difficult to maintain liquid metal reactors.. Here is a page that gives a quick description of early Liquid Cooled reactors.
Slashdot Mirror
The full OGP core will fill most of the XC3S4000 (that's the second largest FPGA in the Spartan-3 product line).
:-) Some of the more interesting designs I've seen is when chip makers use microcode routines from memory to cover advanced instructions. This allows the chip design to use far less real estate than previously necessary at a slight performance expense.
Interesting. So when did they decide to switch from the XCS2000? (The chip listed in the spec sheet.)
Sure, you'd probably be able to make a *2D* core fit into a tiny FPGA, but a full OpenGL shader pipeline? Not likely.
Fully 1.3 compatible? No, but you could fake it in software.
If they wanted to keep it small, I see no reason why they couldn't use a similar design here. After all, at the end of the day a GPU looks a lot like a DSP. Add a few support chips (usually quite cheap) and they should be able to produce everything they need in a very small core.
Not that I'm suggesting that's what they do. Performance wise they'd get killed on this 3DFXish approach. Unfortunately, I don't have any pricing data on the 2000 and 4000 series (not that it means much anyway), but I'm thinking they could probably negotiate a pretty good deal.
A lot of people like Verilog because it looks like C. IMHO, however, that tends to lead to more errors because of the similarity. You're far better off starting with VHDL.
Read this response of mine... I am aware of FPGA chips and I also understand that they are limited as to what their top performance capabilities are.
:-)
The performance gap between FPGAs and ASICs have dwindled in recent years, with FPGAs taking advantage of smaller fab processes than ASICs currently have readily available. That's why Xilinx preaches their "Make Spartan your ASIC" line and gets away with it.
That's why I see this as being a difficult to get running kind of venture. Unless they can perform some kind of miracle, very few regular PC users will be interested in this sort of thing.
I wouldn't be entirely sure about that. This sort of thing should be able to be competitively priced (granted, with a poorer price/performace ratio) to where it could easily be the standard choice for OEM Linux machines.
As another poster suggested, this might work great for embedded or tiny form factor devices, like PDAs, Cell phones and similar. It will be quite a feat to see these graphics cards come close to competing with current mid to low range offerings from ATI and Nvidia.
Nonsense. You can get a lot more out of the FPGAs than most people believe. A lot of individuals still think of FPGAs as those electronic oddities from the 80's. Projects like SaarCor are demonstrating how FPGAs can outperform even a Pentium IV. Do not underestimate these guys.
To your original question, if the ASIC route is taken, the chips can either be delivered by the fab to the board manufacturer on a tape and reel, or sockets can be used to plug in the chip during packaging.
* The GPU is probably too complex for the really cheap FPGAs to work.
:-) (Although they will need a handful of other chips to support the features they want.)
:-)
I've noticed a PDF they have on their site that has the specs. Apparently, they are using a Spartan 3 2000. The rest of their specs suggest a relatively simple GPU for the time being, so they should have no trouble fitting into the chip they chose.
* most importantly...SPEED. Those ultracheap FPGAs are too slow to handle 3-D processing for megapixel graphics at 100FPS, which is what you need to do to compete with ATI and NVidia. The FPGA evaluation board they are releasing will probably run at some fraction of the intended frequency of the final product.
I beleive they state 200MHz in their spec sheet. Which is a) competitive and b) doable with current FPGAs. But you're right, they can run up an ASIC to a much higher frequency. I think they'll want to break into the market before they attempt that though.
I just hope that they do not have crap in it like VESA has: scrolling framebuffers to implement double buffering and text scrolling is quite stupid nowdays IMO.
:-)
:-)
Well... yes. VESA is a beast from another time altogether. The fact that it even works in x86 Protected Mode is a miracle to behold. But since it *does* work, it makes for an excellent method of out-of-the-box graphics support. Without it, the cute little QNX-on-a-floppy demo couldn't exist.
BTW, you seem to be very well versed in graphics issues. Just wondering what is your background? Judging from previous conversations your knowledge defintily trumps mine, as my knowledge in the graphics field has been reading a bit too many various whitepapers lite, wikipedia articles, and a good cs background, but that is all.
That's very nice of you to say, but my knowledge is very much from the same areas as yourself. Perhaps following this link might help you better understand how I know so much about the concept.
(P.S. Sorry, I just realized that the link is down right now. Check it in an hour or two and it should be back up.)
And, what tricky work is done in software? Shading? Bump mapping?
:-)
Yes. Shaders, bump mappers, and other effects are micro programs that run on the GPU. This design became so common that it evolved into complete GPU languages such as CG.
At an average of 4 transistors/gate, this is equivalent to ~600,000 transistors. Compare this with the latest offering from NVidia and ATI, which are pushing the 300 million transistor mark. So, you need 500 FPGAs to get the equivalent resources (at a reduced horse power).
1. They're not trying to reach the same levels of performance as NVidia. (Yet, anyway.)
2. A single pipeline isn't so bad. It gets messy when we're talking multiple pipelines, texturing units, etc. I assume for now they're targetting a single pipeline chip with only one or two texturing units.
If you have ever worked with FPGAs, you'll know that typically only a max of 75% of the resources can be used if you would like to be able to route your FPGA and still maintain decent clock speeds
Generally, yes. But there's still ways to cheat like hell to up that utilization a bit.
Do you use only existing transistors and processing chips, or do you design your own and then have them fabricate a run of those chip designs before having those installed in your board designs?
:-)
Actually, you just use an FPGA. They're completely programmable processors that are very similar in design to static RAM. They can be reprogrammed on the fly, and can represent any chip desired. (Limited only by the number of logic units.) They used to be used only for prototyping due to high cost and low speed, but today they are very competitive on the market. Many a manufacturer has taken to shipping the FPGA instead of paying for the manufacture of a custom chip (usually an ASIC).
You should go purchase an FPGA board and see all of the fun stuff you can program it to do!
We are currently lucky that nvidia keeps updating their drivers for the older video-cards, as the nv drivers (which are mostly reverse engineered / developed from tiny amounts of nvidia released specifications) suck badly.
:-)
Putting 3D support aside for the moment, it's worth noting that NVidia produces one of the best VESA BIOSes on the market today. As such, their cards tend to be very easy to support and work far better than any competitor.
The real issue is that most people want 3D support so they can play video games or (*gasp*) do engineering work. Once you're in the 3D arena, only a vendor supported driver is going to have a chance in hell of competing. Not just because of the issues with the hardware interfaces being secret, but because of the massive amounts of performance IP that's stored in the driver source code. (Sorry, you probably knew that, but I had to reiterate it for others.)
It is highly unlikely that you'll be able to
program an FPGA to do something faster than a
modern computer can do.
Now that's just nonsense. This is the thinking of "More MHz is better". The truth is that a custom chip design targetted at a specific task can easily out-perform a more generic chip. For example, the SaarCor can render a raytraced scene many times faster than a Pentium IV, using nothing more than off-the-shelf FPGA hardware running at 1/300th the MHz.
That being said, it's doubtful that the OGP will outperform someone like NVidia or ATI who already build custom chips. But it might be able to give them a decent run for their money.
Do you have any idea how complex a GPU is?
Actually, they're not to bad on complexity. Most of the chip complexity comes from constantly pushing the boundaries of performance. Even then, a majority of the tricky work is actually done in the software drivers.
You're quoting prices for very SMALL FPGAs. What makes you think we could fit something as complex as a GPU into a 3S200?
A 3S200 is not that small of a chip. Fairly good sized processors can be written on it, often with quite a bit of space left over. Even if they do need a larger chip (e.g. a Virtex III) they should still check the prices. Xilinx has been making sure that their chips are extremely affordable in large quantities.
In quantites smaller than 1000? Well, it's difficult to get a good price out of ASICs as well.
Hardware involves real and significant material costs. Big difference.
Really? Silly me, all I thought I needed was a testing board and some hardware descriptions.
Thanks to FPGAs, complete hardware designs can be written (in source code no less!), downloaded directly to the chip, tested, and then sold for a profit without ever speaking to a chip fab or hardware factory. And places like Pad2Pad allow for custom test boards to be built for a VERY low cost.
If the Open Graphics Hardware project needs a million smackers, then they better damn well have a shippable product on their hands.
Hardware is quite a bit different then software, being a physical tangible item that isn't easily copied/manufactured.
Tell that to Pad2Pad. I can send them a computer file, and they can send me back a complete board (or run of boards).
In fact, hardware has become closer to software than you think. Thanks to languages such as VHDL and Verilog, you can *code* a chip and test it without ever pressing a piece of hardware. And if you use an FPGA, you can litterally download the chip design into the processor and have a working model of your design.
If you ever hear about "chip IP", they're referring to the practice of developing a chip design and then selling the design to hardware manufacturers. ARM is a particularly well known exmaple of this.
Works just fine:
Based on their current work plan, an FPGA-based project board will be available in November "that serves as the development platform for a much less expensive ASIC-based solution (second quarter of 2006), contingent on available funding."
I don't know if they've been paying any attention (I presume they have), but FPGAs have gotten extremely cheap as of late. AVNet lists the Xilinx XC3S200-4VQ100C with the following rates:
1 - $14.7950
25 - $12.8700
100+ - $11.2200
While I don't like assuming, in this case it's fairly safe to say that the price would be even lower for quantities of 1000 or more. I see little difficulty with them being able to mass produce an FPGA card for ~$50 US. (Something of a sweet spot price point in computer the computer industry.) The only real reason I could see for going to ASICs is to reduce the cost of very large runs, and/or increasing the performance of the onboard chip.
The different races represented concepts more than countries.
Indeed. Possibily my favorite parallel is the Borg representing rampent socialism. i.e. What's done in the name of improving life for everyone whipes out the individual in the process. That underlying aspect is what made the Borg so chilling and dangerous. B&B, of course, missed the point entirely.
Trek has always had its ups and downs. I mean, on one end you've got Spock's Brain, Patterns of Force, The Child, Shades of Gray, and Star Trek V. If the shows were judged on these alone, it wouldn't last very long.
But what keeps fans coming back are the jewels such as City on the Edge of Forever, A Private Little War, The Wrath of Khan, Best of Both Worlds, Inner Light, Darmok... errr... you get the idea. These shows push the boundries of thought provoking entertainment. Whether it be a commentary on current events, a truely deep story portrayed by amazing actors, or an edge of your seat fight for survival, Trek has a way of making you *want* to watch more.
You're missing my point. What's generally considered "hardcore" Sci-Fi is so completely left field that it's ended up with the dual term "Sci-Fi/Fantasy". I used the "Lord of the Rings in Space" item as a parody example. (Although it's pretty close. Try reading Probability Moon sometime. Ugh.)
Take Manifold Time as an example. Seemingly scientific and whatnot, but quickly delves into areas of depressing mysticism and psuedo-science. I mean, squids as computers? Superchildren from the future? Destiny? Fate? New multiverses? It just goes beyond what science can reasonably say could happen and jumps off the deepend of wild imaginings.
Even 2001 was shackled by this type of story telling. What starts off as a reasonable mission to Jupiter (Titan in the book) quickly degrades into insane computers that would make Stephen King jealous, Monoliths of power, and star babies that can travel the universe.
None of this is science fiction any more. It crosses the line and becomes Fantasy. Yet this is what we're being told is "the hardcore good-stuff"! Even Card himself says that "Being John Malkovich" is one of the best Sci-Fi movies of all time! WTF?
Actually, it tends to be the other way around. That's why I don't like a lot of the "hardcore" stuff. It's too much mysticism mixed with a depressing tale and covered over with pseudo-science. In my mind, things *really* go downhill when they start calling it "Sci-Fi/Fantasy". (Hey, we could have Ents, Hobbits, Trolls, and Wizards if we just put them on another planet and make the source of the magic some form of super-technology! Brilliant!) Ugh.
Screw the enraged Trekkies, he's knocked SciFi as a whole by listing such a crap set of unabashedly mainstream and modernly-popular authors - with the exception of Ellison - to represent 'Sci-Fi of the time' or whatever he calls it.
:-/
I was just re-reading his comments when I noticed these gems:
Charlie Kaufman created the two finest science fiction films of all time so far: "Being John Malkovich" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind."
Through-line series like Joss Whedon's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and Alfred Gough's and Miles Millar's "Smallville" have raised our expectations of what episodic sci-fi and fantasy ought to be.
Malkovich? Smallville? *These* are what he thinks are the paramount of Sci-Fi? This guy needs his head checked!
Whedon's "Firefly" showed us that even 1930s sci-fi can be well acted and tell a compelling long-term story.
Well, at least he got one right.
In summary, he states that Trek has always sucked, Roddenberry was a hack, and the Klingon language is stupid. I've got some tar over here, anyone else got some feathers?
:-/
Honestly, it's great that he doesn't like Star Trek. I'm happy for him. Really. But not everyone is looking to have their heads messed with when they watch Science Fiction. They don't necessary need to find the "deeper connection", "reveal the hidden truths", or "find another plain of existence". Sometimes people are happy addressing issues that are relevant today rather than issues from some dysotopian future. Star Trek did that. It used allegories (e.g. Klingons == Russians) and analogous situations (e.g. A Private Little War) to help put current issues into perspective. In addition, Roddenberry made Star Trek nothing more than a canvas for far more experienced writers to make their points.
In short, people loved Star Trek because it was both thought provoking and accessable to people who aren't interested in "hardcore sci-fi" visions of the future.
Side Note: Has anyone ever noticed that when Star Trek addresses a topic that some find to be a repulsive trait of hardcore Sci-Fi (e.g. telepaths), the blow is somehow softened to where the concept is easy to accept? Perhaps there's even more missing than Mr. Card realizes.
"I wonder sometimes if the motivation for writers ought to be contempt, not admiration." -Orson Scott Card
Well, that explains everything.
In my defense, I did use TESS to attempt to find the trademark. What I missed (which another poster pointed out) is that it's actually registered to the parent company.
This definitely strengthens their case, but probably not to any significant degree.
The retailer has owned trademarks on Tiger, TigerDirect and TigerSoftware since 1996.
Last time we discussed this, the general conclusion is that TigerDirect had *registered* trademarks on all of these *except* "Tiger". Apple, OTOH, has a registered trademark on the term "Tiger". Has anyone tracked down this mysterious registration, or is TigerDirect merely claiming that their use of the mark precedes Apple's? (As I understand it, trademarks are not required to be registered. However, it can be very difficult to prove the usage of a common mark without it.)
Honestly, I think TigerDirect is entitled to nothing more than "TigerDirect" and its derivitives. I have never seen them referred to as simply "Tiger", and I find nothing confusing about a product name vs. a company name. IMHO, TD has a long road ahead of them if they want to prove that Apple is misusing their mark. And what does TD really think they're going to get out of it anyway? The cost of the suit will drain their company dry before they ever see even a meger return. Perhaps they think Apple will settle?
TigerDirect's contention is that Apple's use of the word "tiger" has knocked the retailer from the top of search results on Google, Yahoo and MSN.
What a bunch of poppycock. If you do a search for "Tiger Direct" or "Tiger Computers" on Google, you get Tiger Direct. Even if you search for "Tiger", you still get Tiger Direct before Apple. But just because they happen to come up on a search for "Tiger" does not give them the right to claim the use of that mark.
Mr. Young is also currently CEO of Lulu.com, which provides independent publishers with free access to on-demand publishing tools for books, e-books, music, images and calendars.
Watch out for that website. It's a real Lulu! (insert groaning here)
It is amazing how much you can uncover from just connecting the dots and /. Account name.
Indeed. Especially since I must divulge certain information in order to have a business or domain name. That's why laws against performing the type of stunts you pulled exist. Be very aware of that in the future.
Any more posts along the lines will not come from me
Thank you.
Bill Gates wanted to look good and impress everyone with his success. He decided to measure the accomplishments of Microsoft against General Motors. The comparison went like this:
If automotive technology had kept pace with computer technology over the past few decades, you would now be driving a V-32 instead of a V-8, and it would have a top speed of 10,000 miles per hour. (160,000km/hr)
Or you could have an economy car that weighs 30 pounds (14 kilos) and gets a thousand miles to a gallon of gas. In either case the sticker price of a new car would be less than $50.
In response to all this goading, GM issued a press release stating the following: "If GM had developed technology like Microshaft has, we would be driving cars with the following characteristics:"
Subs generally utilize light water reactors instead of the more difficult to maintain liquid metal reactors.. Here is a page that gives a quick description of early Liquid Cooled reactors.
m l c t5.html
More links:
http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/~gav/almr/01.intro.ht
http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/thyd/ne161/shir/proje
http://www.nucleartourist.com/type/metal.htm
I know you're tracking my posts via my message list. I suggest you read this before you continue posting personal information.