Leading embedded systems OS vendors (such as WIND RIVER) work closely with chipmakers to port their OS's (eg VxWorks) to each chip (I assume there are subtle dfferences in chip architecture that require tweaking the O/S code).
This is the kind of front end commitment that has solidified Wind River's relationship with chip makers and now it appears that MSFT is trying to do the same.
Fact isthat what MSFT wants to do, WIND has been doing for quite a while (Centers of Excellence).
My wife works for Wind River, the embedded systems market leader (Tornado VxWorks platform).
She keeps telling me how Microsoft is trying to muscle their way into the embedded market but keep losing design competitions either to Wind River or players in the field.
And this is just "easy" embedded stuff like set top boxes and dsl modems.
Try and imagine Windows CE running anti lock braking systems or the Mars Pathfinder (as VxWorks did).
MS will not make it in this business.
they didn't go nearly far enough in reimagining the sport and the show.
I wanted a fundamentally wacked-out hybrid of entertainment and sports,
something more radical and new and disconcerting. I wanted more violence,
more cursing, more theater, more spectacle, more music, more special effects,
more slutty cheerleading, more madness.
I wanted postmodern degradation and debasement of the self-serious institution of
American football. Judging from one game, the XFL is not nearly as perverse or
shocking as it needs to be.
Not true!
I work in banking and maintain a large server park (>50). Most of them sit idle all day and spring to life after close of business until the wee wee hours (batch processing). I'd say 80% of them could go to sleep during the day.
A quick refresher of the chemistry of water, CO2, and life:
Water is an excelent solvent for polar (ionic) compounds like salt. CO2 is an excellent solvent for light organic compounds. Life consists of parcels (cells, globules) of complex chemistry, packaged in a lipid (fatty acid) membrane.
If water and liquid CO2 co-exist, they form small globules of one liquid in the other. At the interface, both polar and non-polar chemistry are possible. Lipids naturally line up at the boundary and form sheets that seal in the globules. Perhaps this is the first, crucial step towards the origin
of cellular life.
Maybe self-replicating chemicals already existed, but the packaging into cells was the vital step towards life as we know it. Perhaps conditions on the early Earth were cold enough for liquid CO2 to exist in some regions, and permit life to begin in this way? What a balance! Too cold and the water freezes. Too warm and the CO2 boils, and the greenhouse effect amplifies any change in insolation making the balance razor sharp.
If life required such a careful balance of temperatures to begin, then perhaps the habitable zone is much, much narrower than most people
imagine?
Hmm.... so the maximum distance that a planet could orbit our Sun and be spontaneously habitable (i.e. without terraforming) is about
1.25 AU.
At this distance a Terrestrial planet with the standard inventory of CO2 and H2O would have started off some 4.5 billion years ago with
a surface temperature and pressure very similar to modern Mars. As the sun warmed, the planet would slowly warm too. After about 1.5 billion
years, the planet would thaw enough for liquid water to be stable at the equator, and the process of conversion of CO2 to carbonate rock would
begin and the extensive CO2 pole caps would begin to disappear. Once consumed, their depressing effect on temperature (caused by the
reflection of sunlight back into space) would be removed and the planet could warm up appreciably. At the present day, such a planet would have
Earth-like temperatures but would need a large proportion (15%) of CO2 in the atmosphere to acheive this. 15% CO2 is poisonous to higher life
forms, but extremophiles can survive and if this was the planet's atmosphere, then life could well evoilve to tolerate it.
There's no reason why life couldn't evolve on a colder planet, further from the Sun. But it would be forever restricted to underground habitats
where volcanic activity warmed the ground. In nature, this life would resemble extremophile bacteria and algae on Earth, which appears to have
been the first form of Terrestrial life from which everything else evolved.
The average length of a human coding sequence in the DNA databases is approximately 1.2
Kbp and sensible estimates of the total number of genes in the human genome lie between 50 and 100,000. A gene number of 70,000 would give a
total coding sequence of 85 Megabases, less than 3% of our genome. Herein lies one of the major problems. A 3% return on investment, even
when genes are identifiable, is rather poor, especially when sequencing is an expensive business. As if that's not enough, a large percentage of
highly re-iterated dispersed repeats serve to exacerbate the problem. The average length of a human coding sequence in the DNA databases is approximately 1.2
Kbp and sensible estimates of the total number of genes in the human genome lie between 50 and 100,000. A gene number of 70,000 would give a
total coding sequence of 85 Megabases, less than 3% of our genome. Herein lies one of the major problems. A 3% return on investment, even
when genes are identifiable, is rather poor, especially when sequencing is an expensive business. As if that's not enough, a large percentage of
highly re-iterated dispersed repeats serve to exacerbate the problem.
Consequently other more direct approaches are being used, mostly to identify coding sequences within large genomic regions of DNA, and it is
only by using a combination of these more elegant strategies that 'gene hunters' are able to operate economically. Some of these methods compare
human sequences with sequences from other organisms, using the premise that conserved sequences have some function. An extension of this,
particularly amongst mammals but also with chicken, is to identify conserved linkage groups, and this may have particular value in positional
cloning projects. Conserved linkage, or conserved synteny, can in fact be used to great advantage in comparative genomics, particularly if a
genome is smaller and easier to work with than the human genome.
Magnetic RAM, MRAM, is a non volatile memory with unlimited read and write cycles. It also has the potential
to be very fast, and very dense.
Virtually all products that involve digital electronics (which includes just about everything these days: computers,
cellular phones, but also household appliances like washers, dryers, microwave ovens, refrigerators, and entertainment
devices like televisions, CD players, VCR's...) need memory. The choice of memory has historically involved a tradeoff.
Non volatile memories (memories that hold the information whether or not power is supplied) like EEPROM's can be
expensive and may have long term reliability problems - you can read and write to them only so many times or cycles
before you degrade the ability of the memory to "remember".
Volatile memories (memories that hold the information only if power is supplied) can be static RAM's or dynamic RAM's.
SRAM's (static RAM's) consume a lot less power than DRAM'S (dynamic RAM's), but take up a lot more chip area for a
given memory size, so are a lot more expensive. Because cost is generally the driving force in electronics, DRAM's
tend to have the highest volume of sales...they are the lowest cost, but consume a lot more power. In fact, to get the
density in a DRAM, we use a simple capacitor as the memory device. A charge on the capacitor can represent a "1"
and no charge can represent a "0". However, over time, the charge leaks off....losing all the information. To avoid this,
the DRAM must be REFRESHED. Essentially, a REFRESH cycle involves reading all the information out, and then putting it
all back in. Looking at a data sheet for a DRAM, the example has the 64 Meg DRAM needing to be refreshed every 64
msec...being refreshed over 15,000 times per second!
That refresh cycle on the DRAM explains the much greater power consumption of the less expensive DRAM compared
to the more expensive SRAM. While it may not be typical, a quick browsing through data sheets found a 64 M DRAM
that consumed 1 Watt of power, and a 64 M SRAM that consumed less than 400 mW.
An MRAM can have the density of a DRAM...and since cost goes with density, it is possible that an MRAM can have a
cost that is competitive with a DRAM...but it will have much lower power consumption...effectively zero power
consumption in the standby mode, which is the mode the memory spends most of its time in.
The MRAM doesn't require the refresh of a DRAM, and has the nonvolatility of a EEPROM, but has reliability superior to
the EEPROM. So, an MRAM may be able to replace DRAM's, SRAM's. amd EEPROM's, without involving any major
compromise or tradeoff.
It is hard to judge the improvement in the battery life of a cellular phone. With digital cellular phones used just
sporadically for voice phone calls, the battery life now is very good, but might perhaps be doubled with an MRAM - this
is just my guess, and may be way off. If the digital cellular phone is heavily used for phone calls, the power
consumption involved in sending the signal out would tend to dominate over the impact of improved power
consumption in the memory, and the impact on battery life might be minimal.
However, future applications of wireless products like the cellular phone include adding more functionality beyond
voice calls. For communication products, MRAM may make it possible to have access to the internet with the ability to
get video in addition to data and voice.
What the article fails to mention is that the State Department already owns 2,000 Iridium handsets for use in remote spots.
There is a growing need for the encrypted services that will be made possible through a special "sleeve"" outfitted for secure handsets.
The Pentagon already owns about 1,600 Iridium satellite phones.
It will get unlimited air time for up to 20,000 government users for $3 million a month under the deal.
This will be ideal for easing the current crush of the U.S. military's ultra-high-frequency mesh for networking and point-to-point communications.
Currently, the department's communications satellites provide less than half such services required by U.S. forces, crowding lower-priority users off the airways.
Ouch.. this hurts! I am sorry dudes but I just can't get my head around this. Reason:
I begin with the classical (ie. non-relativistic) rocket equation (I use the classical version because relativistic effects only become important for exhaust velocities greater than about 95% the speed
of light, which is not the case for the powers and speeds we are talking about here).
The rocket equation is:
dv = u ln [ ( M + m ) / M ]
where:
dv = change in ship velocity
u = exhaust velocity
M = ship mass, without including reaction mass
m = reaction mass ejected from ship
Now in general, to get from one place to another a ship must accelerate for some time T/2, then coast at top velocity for a time , then decelerate over a time T/2.
The total change in velocity is v, but since the ship speeds up and slows back down to rest, the maximum velocity is v/2. The total trip time is the time spent accelerating/decelerating plus the time spent coasting.
Now the power required to eject the reaction mass at the given exhaust velocity is equal to the rate of change of kinetic energy of the reaction mass, which is half the mass-loss rate dm/dt times the square of the exhaust velocity.
Slashdot Mirror
Leading embedded systems OS vendors (such as WIND RIVER) work closely with chipmakers to port their OS's (eg VxWorks) to each chip (I assume there are subtle dfferences in chip architecture that require tweaking the O/S code). This is the kind of front end commitment that has solidified Wind River's relationship with chip makers and now it appears that MSFT is trying to do the same. Fact isthat what MSFT wants to do, WIND has been doing for quite a while (Centers of Excellence).
My wife works for Wind River, the embedded systems market leader (Tornado VxWorks platform). She keeps telling me how Microsoft is trying to muscle their way into the embedded market but keep losing design competitions either to Wind River or players in the field. And this is just "easy" embedded stuff like set top boxes and dsl modems. Try and imagine Windows CE running anti lock braking systems or the Mars Pathfinder (as VxWorks did). MS will not make it in this business.
they didn't go nearly far enough in reimagining the sport and the show. I wanted a fundamentally wacked-out hybrid of entertainment and sports, something more radical and new and disconcerting. I wanted more violence, more cursing, more theater, more spectacle, more music, more special effects, more slutty cheerleading, more madness. I wanted postmodern degradation and debasement of the self-serious institution of American football. Judging from one game, the XFL is not nearly as perverse or shocking as it needs to be.
Not true! I work in banking and maintain a large server park (>50). Most of them sit idle all day and spring to life after close of business until the wee wee hours (batch processing). I'd say 80% of them could go to sleep during the day.
A quick refresher of the chemistry of water, CO2, and life:
Water is an excelent solvent for polar (ionic) compounds like salt. CO2 is an excellent solvent for light organic compounds. Life consists of parcels (cells, globules) of complex chemistry, packaged in a lipid (fatty acid) membrane.
If water and liquid CO2 co-exist, they form small globules of one liquid in the other. At the interface, both polar and non-polar chemistry are possible. Lipids naturally line up at the boundary and form sheets that seal in the globules. Perhaps this is the first, crucial step towards the origin
of cellular life.
Maybe self-replicating chemicals already existed, but the packaging into cells was the vital step towards life as we know it. Perhaps conditions on the early Earth were cold enough for liquid CO2 to exist in some regions, and permit life to begin in this way? What a balance! Too cold and the water freezes. Too warm and the CO2 boils, and the greenhouse effect amplifies any change in insolation making the balance razor sharp.
If life required such a careful balance of temperatures to begin, then perhaps the habitable zone is much, much narrower than most people
imagine?
Hmm.... so the maximum distance that a planet could orbit our Sun and be spontaneously habitable (i.e. without terraforming) is about
1.25 AU.
At this distance a Terrestrial planet with the standard inventory of CO2 and H2O would have started off some 4.5 billion years ago with
a surface temperature and pressure very similar to modern Mars. As the sun warmed, the planet would slowly warm too. After about 1.5 billion
years, the planet would thaw enough for liquid water to be stable at the equator, and the process of conversion of CO2 to carbonate rock would
begin and the extensive CO2 pole caps would begin to disappear. Once consumed, their depressing effect on temperature (caused by the
reflection of sunlight back into space) would be removed and the planet could warm up appreciably. At the present day, such a planet would have
Earth-like temperatures but would need a large proportion (15%) of CO2 in the atmosphere to acheive this. 15% CO2 is poisonous to higher life
forms, but extremophiles can survive and if this was the planet's atmosphere, then life could well evoilve to tolerate it.
There's no reason why life couldn't evolve on a colder planet, further from the Sun. But it would be forever restricted to underground habitats
where volcanic activity warmed the ground. In nature, this life would resemble extremophile bacteria and algae on Earth, which appears to have
been the first form of Terrestrial life from which everything else evolved.
The average length of a human coding sequence in the DNA databases is approximately 1.2 Kbp and sensible estimates of the total number of genes in the human genome lie between 50 and 100,000. A gene number of 70,000 would give a total coding sequence of 85 Megabases, less than 3% of our genome. Herein lies one of the major problems. A 3% return on investment, even when genes are identifiable, is rather poor, especially when sequencing is an expensive business. As if that's not enough, a large percentage of highly re-iterated dispersed repeats serve to exacerbate the problem. The average length of a human coding sequence in the DNA databases is approximately 1.2 Kbp and sensible estimates of the total number of genes in the human genome lie between 50 and 100,000. A gene number of 70,000 would give a total coding sequence of 85 Megabases, less than 3% of our genome. Herein lies one of the major problems. A 3% return on investment, even when genes are identifiable, is rather poor, especially when sequencing is an expensive business. As if that's not enough, a large percentage of highly re-iterated dispersed repeats serve to exacerbate the problem. Consequently other more direct approaches are being used, mostly to identify coding sequences within large genomic regions of DNA, and it is only by using a combination of these more elegant strategies that 'gene hunters' are able to operate economically. Some of these methods compare human sequences with sequences from other organisms, using the premise that conserved sequences have some function. An extension of this, particularly amongst mammals but also with chicken, is to identify conserved linkage groups, and this may have particular value in positional cloning projects. Conserved linkage, or conserved synteny, can in fact be used to great advantage in comparative genomics, particularly if a genome is smaller and easier to work with than the human genome.
Magnetic RAM, MRAM, is a non volatile memory with unlimited read and write cycles. It also has the potential
...being refreshed over 15,000 times per second!
to be very fast, and very dense.
Virtually all products that involve digital electronics (which includes just about everything these days: computers,
cellular phones, but also household appliances like washers, dryers, microwave ovens, refrigerators, and entertainment
devices like televisions, CD players, VCR's...) need memory. The choice of memory has historically involved a tradeoff.
Non volatile memories (memories that hold the information whether or not power is supplied) like EEPROM's can be
expensive and may have long term reliability problems - you can read and write to them only so many times or cycles
before you degrade the ability of the memory to "remember".
Volatile memories (memories that hold the information only if power is supplied) can be static RAM's or dynamic RAM's.
SRAM's (static RAM's) consume a lot less power than DRAM'S (dynamic RAM's), but take up a lot more chip area for a
given memory size, so are a lot more expensive. Because cost is generally the driving force in electronics, DRAM's
tend to have the highest volume of sales...they are the lowest cost, but consume a lot more power. In fact, to get the
density in a DRAM, we use a simple capacitor as the memory device. A charge on the capacitor can represent a "1"
and no charge can represent a "0". However, over time, the charge leaks off....losing all the information. To avoid this,
the DRAM must be REFRESHED. Essentially, a REFRESH cycle involves reading all the information out, and then putting it
all back in. Looking at a data sheet for a DRAM, the example has the 64 Meg DRAM needing to be refreshed every 64
msec
That refresh cycle on the DRAM explains the much greater power consumption of the less expensive DRAM compared
to the more expensive SRAM. While it may not be typical, a quick browsing through data sheets found a 64 M DRAM
that consumed 1 Watt of power, and a 64 M SRAM that consumed less than 400 mW.
An MRAM can have the density of a DRAM...and since cost goes with density, it is possible that an MRAM can have a
cost that is competitive with a DRAM...but it will have much lower power consumption...effectively zero power
consumption in the standby mode, which is the mode the memory spends most of its time in.
The MRAM doesn't require the refresh of a DRAM, and has the nonvolatility of a EEPROM, but has reliability superior to
the EEPROM. So, an MRAM may be able to replace DRAM's, SRAM's. amd EEPROM's, without involving any major
compromise or tradeoff.
It is hard to judge the improvement in the battery life of a cellular phone. With digital cellular phones used just
sporadically for voice phone calls, the battery life now is very good, but might perhaps be doubled with an MRAM - this
is just my guess, and may be way off. If the digital cellular phone is heavily used for phone calls, the power
consumption involved in sending the signal out would tend to dominate over the impact of improved power
consumption in the memory, and the impact on battery life might be minimal.
However, future applications of wireless products like the cellular phone include adding more functionality beyond
voice calls. For communication products, MRAM may make it possible to have access to the internet with the ability to
get video in addition to data and voice.
What the article fails to mention is that the State Department already owns 2,000 Iridium handsets for use in remote spots.
There is a growing need for the encrypted services that will be made possible through a special "sleeve"" outfitted for secure handsets.
The Pentagon already owns about 1,600 Iridium satellite phones.
It will get unlimited air time for up to 20,000 government users for $3 million a month under the deal.
This will be ideal for easing the current crush of the U.S. military's ultra-high-frequency mesh for networking and point-to-point communications.
Currently, the department's communications satellites provide less than half such services required by U.S. forces, crowding lower-priority users off the airways.
Ouch .. this hurts! I am sorry dudes but I just can't get my head around this. Reason:
/2, then coast at top velocity for a time , then decelerate over a time T /2.
/2. The total trip time is the time spent accelerating/decelerating plus the time spent coasting.
/dt times the square of the exhaust velocity.
I begin with the classical (ie. non-relativistic) rocket equation (I use the classical version because relativistic effects only become important for exhaust velocities greater than about 95% the speed
of light, which is not the case for the powers and speeds we are talking about here).
The rocket equation is:
dv = u ln [ ( M + m ) / M ]
where:
dv = change in ship velocity
u = exhaust velocity
M = ship mass, without including reaction mass
m = reaction mass ejected from ship
Now in general, to get from one place to another a ship must accelerate for some time T
The total change in velocity is v, but since the ship speeds up and slows back down to rest, the maximum velocity is v
Now the power required to eject the reaction mass at the given exhaust velocity is equal to the rate of change of kinetic energy of the reaction mass, which is half the mass-loss rate dm
And that's that!