There is a reasonably well researched report published each year called "International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors", homepage is here.
The executive summary of the 2001 edition predicts that in 2016 the drawn gate length for microprocessors will be 13 nanometers (0.013 microns).
Now that we're on the verge of 0.1 micron transistors it is time to dump the microns unit and start using nanometers. The tables in the "International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors" all use nanometers.
IANA DMCA violater but did you know that many
DVD players have their firmware in FLASH ROMs? And that if you insert a CD into one of these with files
named and formatted properly the FLASH will
automagically update? This must very convenient
for the manufacturer if a firmware bug is found.
I certainly can't imagine that anyone could think of another use for this feature.:)
But it really is a fine language. (I'm sure many
people will disagree with me without really having
an objective or informed viewpoint, but that's
just how it goes)
Ada is a religious experience. You either believe or you don't. I don't. I don't because I had to live with Ada on an avionics project. I have an objective and informed opinion.
Some background. I worked for Boeing in the commercial airplane group during the 80s. I was part of a group that wrote a document entitled "Ada Language Guidelines" (D6-53340, if you have access to Boeing documents). Much of the document was devoted to describing the parts of Ada that shouldn't be used because they are unsafe or make code obscure.
I was amused by the statement:
They end
up hating it because of the language and
terminology used, because of the verbosity of the
language, because of some of the difficult
concepts of Ada, etc..
We called Ada "PASCAL for lawyers". Yeah, difficult
concepts, no shit. Consider this seemingly simple construct: -1..1 which should mean a range from -1 to 1. But it doesn't. It took a chain of six or seven references into the Ada RM (Reference Manual) to determine that "-1" and "1" are not of the same type, which makes the ".." operator barf. I don't really think the language designers meant to make "-1..1" illegal - I think the made their rules so complicated they didn't understand all of the ramifications.
However the real problem with Ada in avionics systems comes because there is no way to state hard real time constraints. For example, an autopilot computer typically reads the state of an airplane every 10 to 50 milliseconds and issues new commands to the control surfaces (flaps, rudder, etc.) on that time frame. So people doing systems with Ada would put an RTOS underneath Ada to ensure the hard real-time requirements would be met.
How do I know this? Other than the fact that it is obvious, my next job at Boeing was to oversee a subcontractor who used Ada and guess what, they put an RTOS underneath Ada.
This was a very good article. I've worked with battery powered systems where battery life was importatant, and every point in the article was on target.
I would like to make a point about clocking. Sleep mode involves turning off the clock (unlike Idle mode, where the clock continues to run). When the clock is turned back on it will take a certain amount of time - usually measured in milliseconds - for the clock to stabilize. This period of time will not matter if you are responding to the on/off switch, but means you can't service a high speed device out of Sleep mode.
Re:I have searched this entire thread...
on
Baked Alaska
·
· Score: 2, Informative
For evidence try a report from the EPA, thisfrom a committee of the National Research Council which included "11 of the nation's top climate scientists, including seven members of the National Academy of Sciences", and a page written by a NASA scdientist.
The article states "has grossed more than $1 million" which is not the same as the submitter claims "made himself a millionaire". He has expenses. Maybe he's spent all the money.
Can't people read?
Helmet doesn't have all features RIAA/MPAA require
on
DRM Helmet
·
· Score: 2, Funny
In addition to fogging up, it should send a message to the FBI that this person is trying to circumvent the DMCA (or any futurer laws) so the person can be arrested, and another message to the copyright holder so they'll know who to sue for trying to use use material without a license.
There were 5,800 distinct university KaZaA hosts during this time.
A typical large U.S. university has a student + faculy + staff population of 50,000 to 100,000. This suggests that 5 to 10 percent of university people are into file (music?) sharing.
You have no moree "right" to keep your code locked up on your hard drive for eternity than you would to hord a cure for cancer, or a working GUT equation.
I have trouble seeing most of my code in the same category as a cure for cancer.:-)
Some days my code might actually set the state of the art back - I have bad code days. Some of my code seems so specific and/or idiosyncratic it's hard for me to see why anyone else would want to see it.
If I had a dime for every time I've read an article on the end of scaling and/or Moore's Law since the mid 80's when I was in the IC industry I'd have several dollars by now. EE Times does one or two a year.
The most authoritative look at the subject is the yearly International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors available here. It predicts progress through 2016, at least.
And in any case the end of scaling (which is what the EE Times article is mostly about) is not necessarily the end of Moore's Law. Increased die size, 3D structures, etc., can keep things moving. More money has been spent studying silicon than any other substance in history.
Prototyping can be done much cheaper through MOSIS. If you just want to play with a simple processor (say an 8 bit processor in the 0.5 micron process) you can get in the game for
$5,900 US. If you want to play in a 32-bit world, but don't need the hottest process,
big onboard cache, etc., consider
$15,500 US for 40 parts in a 0.25 micron TSMC
process.
In amy case, the real advantage to a roll-your-own processor is not to build a better general purpose processor better than P4/SPARC/ARM/MIPS/PPC but to create a special purpose processor that does the one thing you care most about very well.
There is a lot of nuclear waste, so it would take many launches to "heave it into space". Since rockets are not yet 100 percent reliable, some launches would fail and spread radiation around the planet.
At some point in the next few thousand years someone will want to find a way to kill lots of people. Whatever marking they put over this dumpsite will say "Here's the dangerous stuff! Come and get it!"
That's why Spaceballs or Weird Al's "Amish Paradise" don't require the payment of royalties, and don't require the original creator's permission.
According to a Weird Al show I saw on VH1 he does pay royalties to Coolio, the author of "Gangsta Paradise" - don't know about being required. According to the show, even tho Coolio made a threat against Weird Al for releasing "Amish Paradise" Coolio cashes the royalty checks.
When I was an undergrad in Computer Science one of the grad student offices had a sign that said "We'd like to wipeout FORTRAN in your lifetime". Hasn't happened.
Slashdot Mirror
How about an Episode I HD-DVD with the "Phantom Edit" (and other reedits/parodies) on the same disk?
The executive summary of the 2001 edition predicts that in 2016 the drawn gate length for microprocessors will be 13 nanometers (0.013 microns).
Now that we're on the verge of 0.1 micron transistors it is time to dump the microns unit and start using nanometers. The tables in the "International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors" all use nanometers.
IANA DMCA violater but did you know that many DVD players have their firmware in FLASH ROMs? And that if you insert a CD into one of these with files named and formatted properly the FLASH will automagically update? This must very convenient for the manufacturer if a firmware bug is found.
I certainly can't imagine that anyone could think of another use for this feature. :)
Ada is a religious experience. You either believe or you don't. I don't. I don't because I had to live with Ada on an avionics project. I have an objective and informed opinion.
Some background. I worked for Boeing in the commercial airplane group during the 80s. I was part of a group that wrote a document entitled "Ada Language Guidelines" (D6-53340, if you have access to Boeing documents). Much of the document was devoted to describing the parts of Ada that shouldn't be used because they are unsafe or make code obscure.
I was amused by the statement:
They end up hating it because of the language and terminology used, because of the verbosity of the language, because of some of the difficult concepts of Ada, etc..
We called Ada "PASCAL for lawyers". Yeah, difficult concepts, no shit. Consider this seemingly simple construct:
-1..1
which should mean a range from -1 to 1. But it doesn't. It took a chain of six or seven references into the Ada RM (Reference Manual) to determine that "-1" and "1" are not of the same type, which makes the ".." operator barf. I don't really think the language designers meant to make "-1..1" illegal - I think the made their rules so complicated they didn't understand all of the ramifications.
However the real problem with Ada in avionics systems comes because there is no way to state hard real time constraints. For example, an autopilot computer typically reads the state of an airplane every 10 to 50 milliseconds and issues new commands to the control surfaces (flaps, rudder, etc.) on that time frame. So people doing systems with Ada would put an RTOS underneath Ada to ensure the hard real-time requirements would be met.
How do I know this? Other than the fact that it is obvious, my next job at Boeing was to oversee a subcontractor who used Ada and guess what, they put an RTOS underneath Ada.
I would like to make a point about clocking. Sleep mode involves turning off the clock (unlike Idle mode, where the clock continues to run). When the clock is turned back on it will take a certain amount of time - usually measured in milliseconds - for the clock to stabilize. This period of time will not matter if you are responding to the on/off switch, but means you can't service a high speed device out of Sleep mode.
For evidence try a report from the EPA, thisfrom a committee of the National Research Council which included "11 of the nation's top climate scientists, including seven members of the National Academy of Sciences", and a page written by a NASA scdientist.
Can't people read?
In addition to fogging up, it should send a message to the FBI that this person is trying to circumvent the DMCA (or any futurer laws) so the person can be arrested, and another message to the copyright holder so they'll know who to sue for trying to use use material without a license.
I can relate to this. I'm a Mac user, and for about two years there were 0 new Mac viruses. I knew Macs were on the way back when we got a new virus.
There were 5,800 distinct university KaZaA hosts during this time.
A typical large U.S. university has a student + faculy + staff population of 50,000 to 100,000. This suggests that 5 to 10 percent of university people are into file (music?) sharing.
I have trouble seeing most of my code in the same category as a cure for cancer. :-)
Some days my code might actually set the state of the art back - I have bad code days. Some of my code seems so specific and/or idiosyncratic it's hard for me to see why anyone else would want to see it.
The most authoritative look at the subject is the yearly International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors available here. It predicts progress through 2016, at least. And in any case the end of scaling (which is what the EE Times article is mostly about) is not necessarily the end of Moore's Law. Increased die size, 3D structures, etc., can keep things moving. More money has been spent studying silicon than any other substance in history.
Prototyping can be done much cheaper through MOSIS. If you just want to play with a simple processor (say an 8 bit processor in the 0.5 micron process) you can get in the game for $5,900 US. If you want to play in a 32-bit world, but don't need the hottest process, big onboard cache, etc., consider $15,500 US for 40 parts in a 0.25 micron TSMC process.
In amy case, the real advantage to a roll-your-own processor is not to build a better general purpose processor better than P4/SPARC/ARM/MIPS/PPC but to create a special purpose processor that does the one thing you care most about very well.
There is a lot of nuclear waste, so it would take many launches to "heave it into space". Since rockets are not yet 100 percent reliable, some launches would fail and spread radiation around the planet.
At some point in the next few thousand years someone will want to find a way to kill lots of people. Whatever marking they put over this dumpsite will say "Here's the dangerous stuff! Come and get it!"
That's why Spaceballs or Weird Al's "Amish Paradise" don't require the payment of royalties, and don't require the original creator's permission.
According to a Weird Al show I saw on VH1 he does pay royalties to Coolio, the author of "Gangsta Paradise" - don't know about being required. According to the show, even tho Coolio made a threat against Weird Al for releasing "Amish Paradise" Coolio cashes the royalty checks.
I often hear what's streaming to the headphones of other bus riders because they play it loud enough for everyone to hear.
When I was an undergrad in Computer Science one of the grad student offices had a sign that said "We'd like to wipeout FORTRAN in your lifetime". Hasn't happened.
Nice. Tried your example using my brand new key and it works just fine. Now to figure out what to do with my new toy...
I like it too. Is one day a year too much to set aside for irrelevance?