Having not read the paper, it's hard to say how great this works, but it's worth mentioning that optical microchip clocking may be a major development over the coming decade. As clock speeds get faster (4GHz anyone?), small variations called clock skew and jitter become critical difficulties. Basically, because the clock signal doesn't propagate in an exactly predictable amount of time, different chip parts end up out of sync.
Because optical clocking would rely on waveguides, with faster transmission and using uncharged particles that don't pick up random electrical signals, sending clock signals via light waves could be very beneficial.
Of course, this development only speaks of the sending end - the modulator - not the receiving end, but we can be sure that Intel and many others are hard at work developing this technology.
The last time I heard of actual progress on the OpenGL 2.0 spec was around 4 months ago, with the release of a transcript from one of the ARB meetings. It contained mention of Microsoft requiring compensation for IP it owns that is contained in the OpenGL 2.0 spec.
This is particularly icky since Microsoft owns many of "shader" patents that used to be held by SGI - the advantages of having billions in cash on hand, I suppose.
I do not know if Microsoft requires payment from the card companies to release DirectX drivers - they certainly would use the same IP - but one can imagine that MS really doesn't have much reason to discourage DirectX development. And it does have a few reasons to discourage OpenGL...
Slashdot Mirror
UAV research has become more and more popular over the last 10-15 years. A couple of cool projects worth checking out:
MIT Autonomous Vehicle Formation Flying
Frontier Systems unmanned helicopter - sadly, not much info. Of course, they are a military contractor, so that's to be expected. The thing just looks cool, though.
UAV Forum - big listing of commercial UAV projects
Having not read the paper, it's hard to say how great this works, but it's worth mentioning that optical microchip clocking may be a major development over the coming decade. As clock speeds get faster (4GHz anyone?), small variations called clock skew and jitter become critical difficulties. Basically, because the clock signal doesn't propagate in an exactly predictable amount of time, different chip parts end up out of sync. Because optical clocking would rely on waveguides, with faster transmission and using uncharged particles that don't pick up random electrical signals, sending clock signals via light waves could be very beneficial. Of course, this development only speaks of the sending end - the modulator - not the receiving end, but we can be sure that Intel and many others are hard at work developing this technology.
[Linux] now accounts for one quarter of operating systems sold worldwide. Wow, that's pretty high. Anybody know where their numbers are coming from?
The last time I heard of actual progress on the OpenGL 2.0 spec was around 4 months ago, with the release of a transcript from one of the ARB meetings. It contained mention of Microsoft requiring compensation for IP it owns that is contained in the OpenGL 2.0 spec. This is particularly icky since Microsoft owns many of "shader" patents that used to be held by SGI - the advantages of having billions in cash on hand, I suppose. I do not know if Microsoft requires payment from the card companies to release DirectX drivers - they certainly would use the same IP - but one can imagine that MS really doesn't have much reason to discourage DirectX development. And it does have a few reasons to discourage OpenGL...