I am a product engineer in the semiconductor industry, and I agree with the skeptics on this one. Open "source" PCB layouts, ROM code, etc. are great, but designing an IC is a whole different ball game. There is no way that a community-funded project fabbed on a years-old process is going to compete on cost or features with anything sold commercially. Reliability will also be an issue, especially for a high-speed design. SoCs are designed, verified, tested, and manufactured by large teams of skilled and highly-paid engineers. Where will the labor come from? Who's going to run the device qualification, and where will they get the millions of dollars' worth of hardware to do so? Who's going to write the test vectors? The OpenCores site has projects listed as "Done" with only VHDL verification! Who's going to do the difficult and tedious work of debugging real silicon? Why would volunteers (presumably engineers themselves) want to work on last decade's technology in their spare time? This isn't like an FPGA where you make your own toy to play with; they're trying to design a real product. That means lots of grunt work.
By the way, who's supposed to buy this? They talk about undercutting the industry, but the block diagram combines a PC on a chip (PCI, DDR2, AC'97) with a microcontroller (SPI, I2C). One size fits all chips are not going to be cost competitive, especially in an older/larger process. Power will also be a concern, unless they're designing for low power on a low-power process, which takes even more money and expertise. Their "spec" describes only features, with none of the required electrical specs. What is the nominal voltage? Temperature range? Power consumption? Clock frequency?
The OpenCores propaganda is particularly offensive:
Please help us "revolutionize" the electronic hardware industry and to make the semiconductor giants tremble, by making a donation to design/manufacture an ASIC-component based on the world's only "true" open-source 32-bit RISC processor supporting Linux (the OpenRISC processor from OpenCores.org). We want to provide an alternative to the profit-hunting semiconductor giants who only provide "cost efficient prices" to large multi-national companies. We want to make it feasible to compete on even and fair conditions, which would be possible if we ALL contribute to create a universal OpenRISC processor ASIC component.
Gee, I'm sorry we don't want to just give away tens of millions of dollars' worth of work. The fact that you're begging for huge piles of money from the internet just to get started ought to tell you how stupid that is.
This whole project reads like it was created by software people who don't understand the many ways in which real hardware is different:
* Software is a mathematical construct. It's the same everywhere. Every piece of hardware that comes out of the fab is slightly different, and runs differently at different voltages and temperatures. The illusion of digital perfection that software relies on is very hard to create. The fact that a design works in an FPGA says little about whether it will work in silicon. Some of the OpenCores IP blocks do claim to be "ASIC verified", but I can't find any characterization data. * Hardware can't be copied for free. It is expensive and needs even more expensive hardware to analyze. Cutting-edge software is written by random people on the internet all the time. Cutting-edge hardware development is beyond the reach of hobbyists. * The semiconductor industry is not crippled by stagnant monopolies. There is no Microsoft. There are lots of companies competing heavily. Look on Digikey if you want a list. * The semiconductor industry does not sell to consumers (except PC CPUs), but rather to engineers who are very concerned about cost, features, and reliability. It's not like software where you can easily sell people on useless flash and skimp on the basics. Development ideology is not on the radar. * The development environment (HDL) is not only d
This looks like an embedded microcontroller, in which case 32-bit is already very high-end. You realize all that Arduino stuff is based on an 8-bit CPU, right? Modern high-speed 64-bit CPUs are very difficult to design and expensive to fabricate.
I agree with you in general, and I think a lot of the paranoia over privacy is overblown or even harmful. But there are legitimate reasons why location privacy is a good idea. The standard examples are abusive spouses, stalkers, closeted homosexuals in hostile territory, and nosy employers, and I'm sure there are a lot more. Those are all real problems, and none of them are going to disappear in the lifetime of a consumer electronics device.
I think the real selling point for driverless cars isn't going to be safety, but efficiency. Road maintenance is very expensive. Adding more roads costs a lot of money, and widening existing roads often means tearing down whatever homes or businesses are built alongside them. Driverless cars could use cooperative algorithms to better handle things like lane closures and overall congestion. You wouldn't have free-rider problems (no pun intended) like people cutting in at the front of a line, slowing everyone else down. When a stoplight turns green, every car could start moving simultaneously, getting more people through the light. I bet a huge reduction in rush hour traffic would be a selling point for a lot of people (and regulators).
It would take a long time to implement. And there would be a backlash from people who want to do (possibly selfish) things the algorithms won't. But it's still a neat idea.
On the other hand the political world is so intertwined with all fields now perhaps it's time to abandon the illusion that all technical stories are not really political stories to some degree, and allow even totally non-technical stories like this one as well by way of showing how technology truly gets funded these days.
Hmm... I have to disagree on both counts.
First, I don't think sci/tech is more entwined with politics than it used to be. Many of our technological accomplishments in the past sixty years came out of the Cold War, which was about as political as you can get. This includes things like the space program (space race) and the internet (DARPA). We don't feel the need to talk about the ethics of military funding every time we have a story about one of those.
Secondly, politics is not Slashdot's strength. The sci/tech stories work well because there are usually a few people in the comments with real expertise who can tell us more about the subject matter than the article can. The signal to noise ratio isn't great, but it's greater than zero. In political stories there is no signal. Read the comments on this story, and what do you see? Opinion, speculation, conspiracy theories... utter garbage:
* GE funds MSNBC!!! * It's all the Federal Reserve's fault * Making fun of GE's motto (but it isn't funny) * Wistful ponderings on why Republicans are so popular (but the questions aren't answered) * A totally implausible suggestion to set global tax rates * MSNBC is "a mouthpiece of the Obama administration!!!"
Reading these comments made me more ignorant. And I doubt we'll see any corporate tax experts or IRS agents commenting about what's really going on, either.
IMHO, Slashdot should play to its strengths and take the opposite approach -- recognize that all political stories involve technical issues and focus on those. (The Nate Silver approach, in other words.)
Whenever Slashdot updates itself I do everything possible to go back to the old layout, so probably I'm missing a lot of new features. I am at least vaguely familiar with the Firehose, though. Doesn't change my question.
Yes. Actually, I couldn't tell what the real slant was -- the summary praises Reagan (that great tax-raiser?), then quotes a Democrat. The article was five pages long and quoted a bunch of people; I didn't bother trying to figure out who all they're aiming at.
I've seen lots of political stories here, but usually only the really significant ones -- elections, revolutions, disasters, etc. This one stood out as being particularly mundane. I filter out YRO and most of the copyright stories, so maybe this is common elsewhere on the site and I've just missed it. I'm not a fan of politics here because the discussions are usually terrible -- it's like all the other stories except you don't get the two or three people who actually know what they're talking about.
Guess I got outvoted since I've been modded off-topic.:-(
I know the definitions of "News for Nerds" is very broad, but does this really belong on Slashdot? It's a straightforward article on corporate taxes without a sci/tech or otherwise nerdy slant. Wouldn't this be better discussed on a real political blog?
Reducing the amount of money I have to spend on video cards is not a bad thing. Control and gameplay problems are. Dead Space on PC was totally unplayable because the mouse input was converted to an analog stick-style velocity input, capping its max speed and forcing me to flail wildly at my desk just to turn around. Mass Effect doesn't let me hit escape to back out of menus. Aliens Vs. Predator was about as interactive as Doom -- point at the glowing quest object and hold down the use key; repeat fifty times. With all this advanced technology, why does it feel like time is going backwards? None of the big-name console shooters can hold a candle to 2004's Half-Life 2 in any area except graphics, and even then the poor art direction cripples them (brown, gray, brown gray, dull green...). And let's not forget the big contribution of this console generation, DLC -- the sort of add-ons we used to get for free now have a price tag attached. The PC versions don't charge yet, but you know it's coming.
Don't get me wrong, I love consoles. I've played consoles games in every generation since the NES. I just don't see a lot of positive influence on PC gaming these days aside from standardized graphics requirements. The keyboard and mouse are just better for some kinds of games, and it saddens me to see those games dumbed down so they can fit in hardware that was never designed to accomodate them.
On the other hand, it could be worse -- the next big influence is probably going to be touchscreen phone games, and we all know how great touchscreens are for gaming, right?
...that I should avoid Facebook to make it easier for me to lie under oath? What exactly is the motivation here? It's not exactly new to have private information be used as evidence in a court of law.
First off, the article doesn't say anything about five years. Inaccurate summary.
Secondly, the examples given in the article aren't that great. Namely:
* A "feature film", which is machinima of GTA IV. In other words, a movie totally dependent on a game produced by a traditional content studio. * A short film with impressive special effects and not much else. * A demo of a game engine that was created by a traditional content house and modified by another traditional content house. * A music video that was apparently made on an iPhone 4. Arguably the best example. * And a couple fun facts about Netflix streaming being cheaper than mail, social networking allowing for free ads, and analogies to reality TV.
Not exactly a compelling case. That being said, it wouldn't surprise me at all if low-budget films start to displace studio productions eventually. But not in five years. Although everyone loves to speculate about movies (probably because of the file-sharing aspect), I suspect that e-books are going to be the first big displacer. The production model is basically the same (one writer or a small team), the costs are the same (one writer's spare time plus a keyboard) -- the only difference is publishing. So when indie e-books kill off all the big publishers, *then* you can start telling me that Hollywood will die any day now. Meanwhile, how about some better articles and not just blog fluff?
What's up with the pseudo-open drain? Is that new and exciting or just marketing speak? I know what open drain is, but how do you have a "pseudo" open drain?
Re:That's one heck of a "long goodbye"
on
Goodbye, VGA
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· Score: 1
It is a shame. I'll probably have to make my own keyboard with a custom USB protocol once everyone gets rid of PS/2.
Re:That's one heck of a "long goodbye"
on
Goodbye, VGA
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· Score: 2
The USB keyboard protocol polls the keyboard for changes at regular intervals. If two keys change state very close together (i.e., if you're a fast typist), the changes will be sent in the same data packet. The problem is that the protocol doesn't care about the order of the keypresses and just handles the changes in QWERTY order, so I get typos in my text whenever I type in the "wrong" order. The $100 Das Keyboard is particularly bad about this due to its N-key repeat feature, but others do it too.
Modern consumer electronics seems to have given up high-speed response in favor of convenience and ease of signal processing. A noteworthy (and on-topic!) example is LCD input lag, the real reason I'll be sad to see VGA go. Analog signal paths are horrible from an electrical point of view, but they're also lag-free.
Aliens vs. Predator doesn't need a gameplay remake, it needs a story remake. They're never going to get anywhere with that universe as long as they stick to the same old "humans try to escape the space colony while being hunted by aliens and predators" plot. I'd love to see a game in the AvP universe that takes place on Earth, or at least one that lets me explore the colony *before* it gets overrun.
The embedded space is very cost-sensitive. It's not like PCs where you can dazzle end users with specs and convince them to pay more. Every gate on the die adds manufacturing cost (and cuts profit), so there has to be a compelling technical reason to add more functionality. Engineers aren't allowed to add features for the sake of features -- it tends to upset their managers. Only marketing people can do that.:-)
Also, keep in mind that embedded systems are totally different from large software and network systems. There isn't going to be some kind of crunch where suddenly we need 64-bit CPUs. We're not going to run out of bits. People still use 16-bit and 8-bit microcontrollers all the time. 64-bit CPUs will be used where their advantages justify the cost, and 32-bit CPUs will still be around afterward.
What the "article" describes is standard for high-grade automotive MCUs. 128MHz may be new in engine controllers (although I doubt by much), but it is not new in cars. I work on production automotive MCUs for antilock brakes and chassis control that go up to 160MHz and >200MHz is in the pipeline. I don't think we sell anything with 3 MB of flash (which might be the more exciting part), but that's just a matter of what people are willing to pay. The operating conditions (-40C to 125C, etc.) are bog-standard for this application. It doesn't sound like there's anything new here -- they just made a new ECM and are patting themselves on the back. It may be better than anything else by some metric, but they didn't say what that metric really is.
That being said, it is nice to see something concrete about what their engineering group is up to rather than some empty fluff about new Buicks being able to cure cancer or something.
Nobody's going to use this for desktop CPUs. The whole point is that the switches work at 500 degrees C, where silicon doesn't. This technology would be used for embedded control in extremely hostile environments, where 500 kHz would be just fine. The article names the inside of a jet engine and the surface of Venus as examples.
Re:Shallow Learning Curve
on
Autotools
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· Score: 1
I thought it was how much you have to learn (Y axis) vs. how long you use the software (X axis). A shallow learning curve takes less learning (= effort) in the short term.
Slashdot Mirror
This seems like a pretty solid example of "resisting arrest". Obama said there was a gunfight in the compound.
I am a product engineer in the semiconductor industry, and I agree with the skeptics on this one. Open "source" PCB layouts, ROM code, etc. are great, but designing an IC is a whole different ball game. There is no way that a community-funded project fabbed on a years-old process is going to compete on cost or features with anything sold commercially. Reliability will also be an issue, especially for a high-speed design. SoCs are designed, verified, tested, and manufactured by large teams of skilled and highly-paid engineers. Where will the labor come from? Who's going to run the device qualification, and where will they get the millions of dollars' worth of hardware to do so? Who's going to write the test vectors? The OpenCores site has projects listed as "Done" with only VHDL verification! Who's going to do the difficult and tedious work of debugging real silicon? Why would volunteers (presumably engineers themselves) want to work on last decade's technology in their spare time? This isn't like an FPGA where you make your own toy to play with; they're trying to design a real product. That means lots of grunt work.
By the way, who's supposed to buy this? They talk about undercutting the industry, but the block diagram combines a PC on a chip (PCI, DDR2, AC'97) with a microcontroller (SPI, I2C). One size fits all chips are not going to be cost competitive, especially in an older/larger process. Power will also be a concern, unless they're designing for low power on a low-power process, which takes even more money and expertise. Their "spec" describes only features, with none of the required electrical specs. What is the nominal voltage? Temperature range? Power consumption? Clock frequency?
The OpenCores propaganda is particularly offensive:
Gee, I'm sorry we don't want to just give away tens of millions of dollars' worth of work. The fact that you're begging for huge piles of money from the internet just to get started ought to tell you how stupid that is.
This whole project reads like it was created by software people who don't understand the many ways in which real hardware is different:
* Software is a mathematical construct. It's the same everywhere. Every piece of hardware that comes out of the fab is slightly different, and runs differently at different voltages and temperatures. The illusion of digital perfection that software relies on is very hard to create. The fact that a design works in an FPGA says little about whether it will work in silicon. Some of the OpenCores IP blocks do claim to be "ASIC verified", but I can't find any characterization data.
* Hardware can't be copied for free. It is expensive and needs even more expensive hardware to analyze. Cutting-edge software is written by random people on the internet all the time. Cutting-edge hardware development is beyond the reach of hobbyists.
* The semiconductor industry is not crippled by stagnant monopolies. There is no Microsoft. There are lots of companies competing heavily. Look on Digikey if you want a list.
* The semiconductor industry does not sell to consumers (except PC CPUs), but rather to engineers who are very concerned about cost, features, and reliability. It's not like software where you can easily sell people on useless flash and skimp on the basics. Development ideology is not on the radar.
* The development environment (HDL) is not only d
This looks like an embedded microcontroller, in which case 32-bit is already very high-end. You realize all that Arduino stuff is based on an 8-bit CPU, right? Modern high-speed 64-bit CPUs are very difficult to design and expensive to fabricate.
I think you're talking about MOSIS.
http://www.mosis.com/
I agree with you in general, and I think a lot of the paranoia over privacy is overblown or even harmful. But there are legitimate reasons why location privacy is a good idea. The standard examples are abusive spouses, stalkers, closeted homosexuals in hostile territory, and nosy employers, and I'm sure there are a lot more. Those are all real problems, and none of them are going to disappear in the lifetime of a consumer electronics device.
I think the real selling point for driverless cars isn't going to be safety, but efficiency. Road maintenance is very expensive. Adding more roads costs a lot of money, and widening existing roads often means tearing down whatever homes or businesses are built alongside them. Driverless cars could use cooperative algorithms to better handle things like lane closures and overall congestion. You wouldn't have free-rider problems (no pun intended) like people cutting in at the front of a line, slowing everyone else down. When a stoplight turns green, every car could start moving simultaneously, getting more people through the light. I bet a huge reduction in rush hour traffic would be a selling point for a lot of people (and regulators).
It would take a long time to implement. And there would be a backlash from people who want to do (possibly selfish) things the algorithms won't. But it's still a neat idea.
On the other hand the political world is so intertwined with all fields now perhaps it's time to abandon the illusion that all technical stories are not really political stories to some degree, and allow even totally non-technical stories like this one as well by way of showing how technology truly gets funded these days.
Hmm... I have to disagree on both counts.
First, I don't think sci/tech is more entwined with politics than it used to be. Many of our technological accomplishments in the past sixty years came out of the Cold War, which was about as political as you can get. This includes things like the space program (space race) and the internet (DARPA). We don't feel the need to talk about the ethics of military funding every time we have a story about one of those.
Secondly, politics is not Slashdot's strength. The sci/tech stories work well because there are usually a few people in the comments with real expertise who can tell us more about the subject matter than the article can. The signal to noise ratio isn't great, but it's greater than zero. In political stories there is no signal. Read the comments on this story, and what do you see? Opinion, speculation, conspiracy theories... utter garbage:
* GE funds MSNBC!!!
* It's all the Federal Reserve's fault
* Making fun of GE's motto (but it isn't funny)
* Wistful ponderings on why Republicans are so popular (but the questions aren't answered)
* A totally implausible suggestion to set global tax rates
* MSNBC is "a mouthpiece of the Obama administration!!!"
Reading these comments made me more ignorant. And I doubt we'll see any corporate tax experts or IRS agents commenting about what's really going on, either.
IMHO, Slashdot should play to its strengths and take the opposite approach -- recognize that all political stories involve technical issues and focus on those. (The Nate Silver approach, in other words.)
Whenever Slashdot updates itself I do everything possible to go back to the old layout, so probably I'm missing a lot of new features. I am at least vaguely familiar with the Firehose, though. Doesn't change my question.
Yes. Actually, I couldn't tell what the real slant was -- the summary praises Reagan (that great tax-raiser?), then quotes a Democrat. The article was five pages long and quoted a bunch of people; I didn't bother trying to figure out who all they're aiming at.
I've seen lots of political stories here, but usually only the really significant ones -- elections, revolutions, disasters, etc. This one stood out as being particularly mundane. I filter out YRO and most of the copyright stories, so maybe this is common elsewhere on the site and I've just missed it. I'm not a fan of politics here because the discussions are usually terrible -- it's like all the other stories except you don't get the two or three people who actually know what they're talking about.
Guess I got outvoted since I've been modded off-topic. :-(
I know the definitions of "News for Nerds" is very broad, but does this really belong on Slashdot? It's a straightforward article on corporate taxes without a sci/tech or otherwise nerdy slant. Wouldn't this be better discussed on a real political blog?
I think he's talking about the PET scan.
Of course. But console gamers aren't getting saddled with poor PC controls. Well, unless you count the entire FPS genre as a bad PC port...
Reducing the amount of money I have to spend on video cards is not a bad thing. Control and gameplay problems are. Dead Space on PC was totally unplayable because the mouse input was converted to an analog stick-style velocity input, capping its max speed and forcing me to flail wildly at my desk just to turn around. Mass Effect doesn't let me hit escape to back out of menus. Aliens Vs. Predator was about as interactive as Doom -- point at the glowing quest object and hold down the use key; repeat fifty times. With all this advanced technology, why does it feel like time is going backwards? None of the big-name console shooters can hold a candle to 2004's Half-Life 2 in any area except graphics, and even then the poor art direction cripples them (brown, gray, brown gray, dull green...). And let's not forget the big contribution of this console generation, DLC -- the sort of add-ons we used to get for free now have a price tag attached. The PC versions don't charge yet, but you know it's coming.
Don't get me wrong, I love consoles. I've played consoles games in every generation since the NES. I just don't see a lot of positive influence on PC gaming these days aside from standardized graphics requirements. The keyboard and mouse are just better for some kinds of games, and it saddens me to see those games dumbed down so they can fit in hardware that was never designed to accomodate them.
On the other hand, it could be worse -- the next big influence is probably going to be touchscreen phone games, and we all know how great touchscreens are for gaming, right?
...that I should avoid Facebook to make it easier for me to lie under oath? What exactly is the motivation here? It's not exactly new to have private information be used as evidence in a court of law.
First off, the article doesn't say anything about five years. Inaccurate summary.
Secondly, the examples given in the article aren't that great. Namely:
* A "feature film", which is machinima of GTA IV. In other words, a movie totally dependent on a game produced by a traditional content studio.
* A short film with impressive special effects and not much else.
* A demo of a game engine that was created by a traditional content house and modified by another traditional content house.
* A music video that was apparently made on an iPhone 4. Arguably the best example.
* And a couple fun facts about Netflix streaming being cheaper than mail, social networking allowing for free ads, and analogies to reality TV.
Not exactly a compelling case. That being said, it wouldn't surprise me at all if low-budget films start to displace studio productions eventually. But not in five years. Although everyone loves to speculate about movies (probably because of the file-sharing aspect), I suspect that e-books are going to be the first big displacer. The production model is basically the same (one writer or a small team), the costs are the same (one writer's spare time plus a keyboard) -- the only difference is publishing. So when indie e-books kill off all the big publishers, *then* you can start telling me that Hollywood will die any day now. Meanwhile, how about some better articles and not just blog fluff?
What's up with the pseudo-open drain? Is that new and exciting or just marketing speak? I know what open drain is, but how do you have a "pseudo" open drain?
It is a shame. I'll probably have to make my own keyboard with a custom USB protocol once everyone gets rid of PS/2.
The USB keyboard protocol polls the keyboard for changes at regular intervals. If two keys change state very close together (i.e., if you're a fast typist), the changes will be sent in the same data packet. The problem is that the protocol doesn't care about the order of the keypresses and just handles the changes in QWERTY order, so I get typos in my text whenever I type in the "wrong" order. The $100 Das Keyboard is particularly bad about this due to its N-key repeat feature, but others do it too.
Modern consumer electronics seems to have given up high-speed response in favor of convenience and ease of signal processing. A noteworthy (and on-topic!) example is LCD input lag, the real reason I'll be sad to see VGA go. Analog signal paths are horrible from an electrical point of view, but they're also lag-free.
Aliens vs. Predator doesn't need a gameplay remake, it needs a story remake. They're never going to get anywhere with that universe as long as they stick to the same old "humans try to escape the space colony while being hunted by aliens and predators" plot. I'd love to see a game in the AvP universe that takes place on Earth, or at least one that lets me explore the colony *before* it gets overrun.
The embedded space is very cost-sensitive. It's not like PCs where you can dazzle end users with specs and convince them to pay more. Every gate on the die adds manufacturing cost (and cuts profit), so there has to be a compelling technical reason to add more functionality. Engineers aren't allowed to add features for the sake of features -- it tends to upset their managers. Only marketing people can do that. :-)
Also, keep in mind that embedded systems are totally different from large software and network systems. There isn't going to be some kind of crunch where suddenly we need 64-bit CPUs. We're not going to run out of bits. People still use 16-bit and 8-bit microcontrollers all the time. 64-bit CPUs will be used where their advantages justify the cost, and 32-bit CPUs will still be around afterward.
Okay, I read the press release copied and pasted onto a random blog. Is there a real article with pictures we could look at?
That doesn't do anything about global warming, though.
What the "article" describes is standard for high-grade automotive MCUs. 128MHz may be new in engine controllers (although I doubt by much), but it is not new in cars. I work on production automotive MCUs for antilock brakes and chassis control that go up to 160MHz and >200MHz is in the pipeline. I don't think we sell anything with 3 MB of flash (which might be the more exciting part), but that's just a matter of what people are willing to pay. The operating conditions (-40C to 125C, etc.) are bog-standard for this application. It doesn't sound like there's anything new here -- they just made a new ECM and are patting themselves on the back. It may be better than anything else by some metric, but they didn't say what that metric really is.
That being said, it is nice to see something concrete about what their engineering group is up to rather than some empty fluff about new Buicks being able to cure cancer or something.
Nobody's going to use this for desktop CPUs. The whole point is that the switches work at 500 degrees C, where silicon doesn't. This technology would be used for embedded control in extremely hostile environments, where 500 kHz would be just fine. The article names the inside of a jet engine and the surface of Venus as examples.
I thought it was how much you have to learn (Y axis) vs. how long you use the software (X axis). A shallow learning curve takes less learning (= effort) in the short term.