My point was that there were other chips with bigger potential impacts on interests of most Slashdot readers than this DSP. I have never claimed the Geode to be a cell phone chip, and I am well aware of design implications for a cell phone or a set top box. I was just questioning why this relatively unimportant cell phone chip is on Slashdot.
A lot of posts on this thread emphasized the need for chip that will make integrated, multipurpose appliances faster and cheaper. As I said in my previous post here, this chip is nothing more than a new DSP.
There are much, much more exciting new chips on the market. You want cheaper network appliances running Linux? Check out National Geode SC1400, a single chip combining:
An x86 processor core
3D graphics engine and audio
MPEG2 decoder
Video input
TV output
I/O including PCI, IDE, USB, RS232
I think this is the kind of chip to discuss on Slashdot, not this wimpy glorified DSP. Slap one of these, a cheap hard disk, and some memory, and you've got a full PC compatible settop/network computer you can use with your TV.
Now this is an exciting chip if I have ever seen one.
I don't understand what's really so exciting about this. Unless they have managed to put some of the RF circuitry needed to support all different standards, this is not a technological break through. Most digital cell phones have a DSP for baseband processing, encoding, decoding and stuff, and a general purpose processor for the MMU (man-machine interface). The most recent ones usually employ combo chips which combine the processor and DSP.
The rest of the phone is strictly analog, and deals with the radio reception/transmission. This part has lots of analog circuitry, SAW filters, etc. Other than the software, this is where the standards differ. The digital part is always programmable, unless the standard mandates special purpose hardware for some reason. (The crippled A5 encryption algorithm in GSM phones might be specified to be implemented in hardware strictly, but I'm not so sure about that.)
If they managed to put most radio functionality for all standards on a single chip, my hat's off to Motorola. Otherwise, it sounds like they have just imporved one of their DSPs and announced it as "the mother of all cell phone chips" with great fanfare.
It is only in the US that people suffer because of incompatible phone standards. Go to Europe, and you can travel everywhere with your GSM phone, and it will work flawlessly in every country. This problem is a non-issue in Europe.
Sorry, please check out their financial situation. Microsoft is literally raking in millions of bucks. With this kind of revenue and growth, short-selling Microsoft is financial suicide. Gates, Ballmer and other MS executives will never allow MS stock to slump since MS completely depends on stock options-it is what's keeping those hordes of programmers there.
You might want to check out their past annual reports, and take a look at recommendations of Wall Street analysts covering the company.
We may not like some of their crappy software and business practices, but the stock price will continue going up since they are obviously doing very well financially. And this is not likely to change overnight. Things would probably be very different if it was the sentiment of Open Source geek community that was driving the stock market, rather than the logic of Wall Street MBA types looking at nothing other than actual numbers and sales figures.
No. F-15E Strike Eagle is a two-seater strike variant of the F-15. The back seater is the weapons system officer. A slightly different variant of the same plane is F-15I, in use by the Israelis..
Not really. If you lose the notebook, you're toast; unless you have the habit of "backing up" your contacts/other data by regularly photocopying it or keeping double notebooks. A paper notebook will not allow you send and read e-mail using a cell phone, and you will have to be extraordinarily talented to be able to play a game of Space Invaders with a deck of cards.
Ever noticed how all Palm related discussions on/. have a very similar and predictable flow? There's the obligatory "Palms are expensive, use paper and pencil" note, the "Woohoo! Beowulf cluster!" note, the "Does it run Linux?" note, the inevitable comparison with Game Boy Color, the even-more-inevitable WinCE bashing, and the quintessential "One shall also consider Psion PDAs" post from a *.uk address...
It looks like they have finally added the option to set up a TCP/IP connection using the standard cradle. Previously PalmOS would have only let you use a modem to connect to network; now IR and direct serial are possible..We're getting there, just wait until there is a nice Bluetooth add-on for Palm, or better, the Visor.
I bet a lot of Slashdot users(who were too lazy to set up a PPP server on their home Linux boxes just to connect their Palms to the Internet) will be installing this upgrade and fulfilling their filthiest, hidden fantasies of using PalmVNC to use their Linux boxes or surfing the Web on the Palm from an ADSL connection..I, for one, will be trying them...
Try Flashcom, they somehow manage to give DSL service in places Bell Atlantic can not. This is strange, one would expect Germantown to have DSL since it is home to lots of NIST employees.
I live in Beltsville, and am 2700 ft. away from a Bell Atlantic central office. My phone line can support a 7.1Mbps DSL connection, the highest rate available from Bell Atlantic.
Very good point. I believe the two characters are very similar, too. The Gates = Reardon similarity has obviously been noticed by a lot of people, not only the Objectivist bunch (who have a well-known Microsoft defense site , BTW).
Specifically Microsofties(what people who work at Microsoft call themselves) seem to allude to the connection a lot, I believe the new company of one of the original founders of WebTV (acquired by Microsoft) is named "Reardon Steel".
I live in Maryland, DC metro area. BellAtlantic ADSL is widely available everywhere around here, and if BellAtlantic does not offer service in your area, there is always Flashcom and CAIS Internet.
I had mine since May. I have yet to see a friend who could not get a DSL connection even though he tried to. And BellAtlantic offers good service, I have a 640K link and am quite happy with it. Now this is the scene with Maryland, I know downtown Dc and Virginia are even better wired with many more connectivity options. Business grade DSL is available almost everywhere in the DC metro area, and the area is home to DIGEX, so no connectivity problems here.
Looks like you're really misinformed about the area. DC area is a great place to live in, when it comes to Net connectivity. No cable modem service yet(at least where I live), but DSL wins hands down since it is very convenient to have a single bill for phone and Net.
He did not need to revolutionize the industry, since he created it. Bill Gates and Paul Allen wrote the BASIC for MITS Altair, the first popular home computer that was sold as a kit. And this was done without an actual working example of the Altair-they have done the implementation on a 8008 simulator they have written on a mainframe machine.
I am not particularly a fan of Microsoft software, but let's give credit where it's due. Altair BASIC was the first piece of software that allowed computer hobbyists write programs easily, using a high level language. I don't think anyone on Slashdot will be stupid enough to claim that writing a BASIC interpreter using a primitive assembly language WITHOUT using a real example of the target processor or a native host system is an easy thing to do. After BASIC, business just took off.
Microsoft is behind most popular BASIC implementations of the era. The fact that Kemenyi and Kurtz(creators of BASIC) were not pleased with MS BASIC is irrelevant IMHO, there was very little standardization at that time. And frankly, they did not bother to leave their ivory tower and write a BASIC implementation that run on popular computers at a reasonable price, so I don't think they have a right to complain. Only after watching thousands of people get rich had they the courage to go out and start a company around BASIC, and it was way too late then.
I am as fervent a Linux enthusiast as most people around here, but I really believe the MS and Gates-bashing here is excessive. He may be a marketing and management guy now; but he has impressive accomplishments nevertheless, and deserves to be named among the geniuses in this industry; for starting the personal computer software business, and vision.
If you have a chance to read this post before it is moderated down to -7, I would really like to see a discussion on this.
I do research on decentralized processors, the technology you mention. My thesis advisor likes to use this term, but please keep in mind that there is no common term for this type of architectures.
Sun's new processor, MAJC, is doing this; and Alpha 21364 will, too. Alpha 21264 already employs a similar technique.
You are completely right in thinking that this is the next step. The trend in the last 3-4 years has been in this direction. Decentralization is an active research topic in many institutions and processor companies in various forms: Multiscalar processing, superthreading, etc. You might want to take a look at the Multiscalar pages at Univ. of Wisconsin, where some of the pioneering work has been done.
Hasdi, the reference to Pasteur does not mention the spontaneous generation theory. As you pointed out, it was debunked for good; and has no scientific basis whatsoever. The poster who referenced Pasteur mentions Pasteur's discovery of germs as the reason of diseases-one of the most valuable contributions of science to mankind, perhaps. A discussion of the spontaneous generation theory is, IMHO, irrelevant here. And I don't think spontaneous generation has ever been taken seriously by anyone in scientific circles, anyway.
I once met a guy at a Safeway store in Laurel, Maryland; which is perhaps at most 5-6 miles from NSA in Fort Meade. He could speak flawless Turkish, and his command of the language and his accent were probably better than most high-school educated Turks. We chatted for a couple of minutes only, and I asked him where he worked. He said he was working for the Dept. of Defense. He then cut the conversation short and told me that he had to leave, walked to his car with a Maryland licence plate and left.
I used to study at a university where NSA has a research facility disguised as an administrative building in a remote area of campus, and there used to be lots of NSA-sponsored grad students around. (University of Maryland, College Park) All of those students will tell you that they work for the Department of Defense.
I have to admit the numbers I have are from "spokesuits" (trade publications). If the lowest quoted die-size penalty is %20 over DDR SDRAM, the yield should not be significantly lower in the long run. DRAM processes are relatively very mature, if we consider that DRAMs have been around for a while.
I am not a RDRAM advocate per se. But I like RDRAM because it is a new approach-a fresh, welcome improvement for solving the memory bottleneck problem. It looks like ordinary DRAM can only be improved so much, while with RDRAM, there seems to be more opportunity for further improvement.
Thanks for the useful information. If you don't mind, may I ask you what kind of work with memory manufacturers you are involved in? Based on some of your previous posts, I guess you are more involved in process technology rather..
Thanks, I have written a couple of XML apps myself, and know it is text based. The distinction between what I refer to as "ASCII config file" and XML config file should be fairly obvious.
People creating DTDs on their own is not the whole point of XML. People using standardized DTDs that are widely accepted by the target community is. If you see half a dozen different DTDs for Linux app. configuration files, all supported by various(different) development groups, there will be added confusion to Linux maintenance and installation; which is already being used as FUD material by Microsoft and the gang. That will not be good.
The bottom line is: With XML, you're not supposed to "create DTDs for whatever task is at hand", if your application is intended to interoperate with those of other vendors, companies, etc. Industry groups already started to take the liberty of creating DTDs on their own with the hope that their DTD may turn out to be the de facto standard in the field; and that will cause major fragmentation in the near future. It is already happening in the e-commerce area with different DTDs being pushed by Microsoft's BizLink and Rosetta, etc.
While I agree this can definitely be another good way to use XML; I'm not sure everyone will be willing to abandon the ASCII config file formats they have been using for a very long time, and move to an XML-based configuration registry. But something like this has to be done sooner or later.
People are moving and creating DTDs on their own which has the potential to cause a huge fragmentation on the XML arena; so before someone tries to design a configuration DTD, there must be some concerted effort to start a group within the Linux community that will work on this and other relevant XML DTDs.
RDRAM has significant advantages to SDRAM. In overall latency and performance, it is true that RDRAM is only about as good as SDRAM. And true, RDRAM is more expensive now because of those outrageous royalties paid to Rambus, and the low volume.
But in overall production costs, ignoring the price premiums tacked on the price by companies, RDRAM is more cost-effective. That is, RDRAM is actually cheaper to produce.This alone makes it attractive in the long run.
There are several good papers about comparisons of modern DRAM architectures, which highlight this point. The more technically oriented among you might want to take a look at the following:
But that's because the Dresden fab was not fully ready when they were producing the K6. Even now, I believe they are mostly using the Dresden fab for Athlon, although I'm not so sure about that. I believe Dresden was intended for the Athlon in the first place, they were really depending on this processor to save their butt after the brutal CPU price war.
1 billion $ is not that much if being able to meet the demand for Athlons will give AMD the opportunity to secure a beach-head in the server and corporate market that it was never successful in. It is what AMD has its eye on. Do you think the AMD CEO is happy because most of his customers are enthusiasts or cash-strapped teenagers? Businesses have not been buying machines with AMD processors, period. Athlon was supposed to change that.
Now if AMD throws away the corporate market in return for a big check from Steve Jobs; I believe it deserves a swift death in the hands of Intel. I will be among the first to short the stock..
I personally find this very strange. Both AMD and are suffering from capacity shortage problems. AMD's stock is at its pathetic levels because analysts slammed the company when they could not provide enough AMD K6's to the market. Just recently, Gateway announced that it would not be using AMD processors since AMD can not supply them in volume. How can AMD consider sharing its production capacity with Motorola at this critical time when Athlon is just out and in great demand? If they can not meet the demand for Athlon and provide enough Athlons to OEMS, Wall Street will KILL AMD this time. And unfortunately for us techies, technical excellence does not make a company successful by itself. AMD is having a lot of financial trouble, and I don't think taking the risk of not being able to produce enough Athlons is worth the money that Motorola will provide them in return for this favor..
Here is what I believe: There must be something else behind this, if it is true. Motorola must have made a really attractive offer for AMD to have taken this risk..
SOI drastically increases performance, but there is little hard data other than IBM's own tech reports. I believe IBM is the leading authority on SOI(silicon on insulator). Similar to the situation of Motorola with copper technology, there is no company that "owns the method to SOI"-companies have patents on their ways of implementing SOI or copper interconnects, but since the underlying physical phenomenon is out in the open, you can go and invent a process which uses copper or SOI. Just like copper, other companies will follow suit and introduce SOI processes in a couple of years..
I would agree that Memory Sticks are a terrible idea, but keep in mind that the Japanese market is big enough for any electronics company to justify putting a proprietary product with even the slightest chance of becoming a fad.
Japanese consumer behavior is very peculiar, and relies on fads. A new, totally incompatible, proprietary product may become an overnight success just because it has a flashy name, or a cute design. Just think about the usefulness of Tamagotchi(how many people remember it now?), or more recently the Pokemon cards. Now if Sony can start a digital memory stick walkman fad among Japanese teenagers or enthusiasts, they should be able to drive down the manufacturing costs of the memory stick with the help of economies of scale. Then they can start thinking about what it is really good for.
I bet a huge marketing campaign for Memory Sticks is now under way in Japan, complete with flashy billboard ads and a cute-sounding pseudo-Japanese spelling of "memory stick" using Katakana. I would appreciate if any fellow Japanese Slashdot reader is kind enough to write anything about this...
Have the Russians ever had a couple on Mir for some time? Given that the Russians have the lead in accommodating people in space for the longest periods of time, I would be very surprised to hear that they have tried nothing about sex in space. They have done extensive experimentation on almost all aspects of life in space, this must have definitely been tested by the Russians.
It is difficult to believe that nothing ever happened, if they had ever had a man and a woman on Mir for something like 90 days.
With all due respect for Russian technology, given the pathetic shape of Mir after the squeeze in their space program funding; it should have been difficult to do it on Mir without breaking anything onboard. Perhaps it was the reason for the main computer crashing often.
Slashdot Mirror
My point was that there were other chips with bigger potential impacts on interests of most Slashdot readers than this DSP. I have never claimed the Geode to be a cell phone chip, and I am well aware of design implications for a cell phone or a set top box. I was just questioning why this relatively unimportant cell phone chip is on Slashdot.
There are much, much more exciting new chips on the market. You want cheaper network appliances running Linux? Check out National Geode SC1400, a single chip combining:
I think this is the kind of chip to discuss on Slashdot, not this wimpy glorified DSP. Slap one of these, a cheap hard disk, and some memory, and you've got a full PC compatible settop/network computer you can use with your TV.
Now this is an exciting chip if I have ever seen one.
I don't understand what's really so exciting about this. Unless they have managed to put some of the RF circuitry needed to support all different standards, this is not a technological break through. Most digital cell phones have a DSP for baseband processing, encoding, decoding and stuff, and a general purpose processor for the MMU (man-machine interface). The most recent ones usually employ combo chips which combine the processor and DSP.
The rest of the phone is strictly analog, and deals with the radio reception/transmission. This part has lots of analog circuitry, SAW filters, etc. Other than the software, this is where the standards differ. The digital part is always programmable, unless the standard mandates special purpose hardware for some reason. (The crippled A5 encryption algorithm in GSM phones might be specified to be implemented in hardware strictly, but I'm not so sure about that.)
If they managed to put most radio functionality for all standards on a single chip, my hat's off to Motorola. Otherwise, it sounds like they have just imporved one of their DSPs and announced it as "the mother of all cell phone chips" with great fanfare.
It is only in the US that people suffer because of incompatible phone standards. Go to Europe, and you can travel everywhere with your GSM phone, and it will work flawlessly in every country. This problem is a non-issue in Europe.
Sorry, please check out their financial situation. Microsoft is literally raking in millions of bucks. With this kind of revenue and growth, short-selling Microsoft is financial suicide. Gates, Ballmer and other MS executives will never allow MS stock to slump since MS completely depends on stock options-it is what's keeping those hordes of programmers there.
You might want to check out their past annual reports, and take a look at recommendations of Wall Street analysts covering the company.
We may not like some of their crappy software and business practices, but the stock price will continue going up since they are obviously doing very well financially. And this is not likely to change overnight. Things would probably be very different if it was the sentiment of Open Source geek community that was driving the stock market, rather than the logic of Wall Street MBA types looking at nothing other than actual numbers and sales figures.
No. F-15E Strike Eagle is a two-seater strike variant of the F-15. The back seater is the weapons system officer. A slightly different variant of the same plane is F-15I, in use by the Israelis..
Not really. If you lose the notebook, you're toast; unless you have the habit of "backing up" your contacts/other data by regularly photocopying it or keeping double notebooks. A paper notebook will not allow you send and read e-mail using a cell phone, and you will have to be extraordinarily talented to be able to play a game of Space Invaders with a deck of cards.
/. have a very similar and predictable flow? There's the obligatory "Palms are expensive, use paper and pencil" note, the "Woohoo! Beowulf cluster!" note, the "Does it run Linux?" note, the inevitable comparison with Game Boy Color, the even-more-inevitable WinCE bashing, and the quintessential "One shall also consider Psion PDAs" post from a *.uk address...
Ever noticed how all Palm related discussions on
It looks like they have finally added the option to set up a TCP/IP connection using the standard cradle. Previously PalmOS would have only let you use a modem to connect to network; now IR and direct serial are possible..We're getting there, just wait until there is a nice Bluetooth add-on for Palm, or better, the Visor.
I bet a lot of Slashdot users(who were too lazy to set up a PPP server on their home Linux boxes just to connect their Palms to the Internet) will be installing this upgrade and fulfilling their filthiest, hidden fantasies of using PalmVNC to use their Linux boxes or surfing the Web on the Palm from an ADSL connection..I, for one, will be trying them...
Try Flashcom, they somehow manage to give DSL service in places Bell Atlantic can not. This is strange, one would expect Germantown to have DSL since it is home to lots of NIST employees.
I live in Beltsville, and am 2700 ft. away from a Bell Atlantic central office. My phone line can support a 7.1Mbps DSL connection, the highest rate available from Bell Atlantic.
Very good point. I believe the two characters are very similar, too. The Gates = Reardon similarity has obviously been noticed by a lot of people, not only the Objectivist bunch (who have a well-known Microsoft defense site , BTW).
Specifically Microsofties(what people who work at Microsoft call themselves) seem to allude to the connection a lot, I believe the new company of one of the original founders of WebTV (acquired by Microsoft) is named "Reardon Steel".
I live in Maryland, DC metro area. BellAtlantic ADSL is widely available everywhere around here, and if BellAtlantic does not offer service in your area, there is always Flashcom and CAIS Internet.
I had mine since May. I have yet to see a friend who could not get a DSL connection even though he tried to. And BellAtlantic offers good service, I have a 640K link and am quite happy with it. Now this is the scene with Maryland, I know downtown Dc and Virginia are even better wired with many more connectivity options. Business grade DSL is available almost everywhere in the DC metro area, and the area is home to DIGEX, so no connectivity problems here.
Looks like you're really misinformed about the area. DC area is a great place to live in, when it comes to Net connectivity. No cable modem service yet(at least where I live), but DSL wins hands down since it is very convenient to have a single bill for phone and Net.
He did not need to revolutionize the industry, since he created it. Bill Gates and Paul Allen wrote the BASIC for MITS Altair, the first popular home computer that was sold as a kit. And this was done without an actual working example of the Altair-they have done the implementation on a 8008 simulator they have written on a mainframe machine.
I am not particularly a fan of Microsoft software, but let's give credit where it's due. Altair BASIC was the first piece of software that allowed computer hobbyists write programs easily, using a high level language. I don't think anyone on Slashdot will be stupid enough to claim that writing a BASIC interpreter using a primitive assembly language WITHOUT using a real example of the target processor or a native host system is an easy thing to do. After BASIC, business just took off.
Microsoft is behind most popular BASIC implementations of the era. The fact that Kemenyi and Kurtz(creators of BASIC) were not pleased with MS BASIC is irrelevant IMHO, there was very little standardization at that time. And frankly, they did not bother to leave their ivory tower and write a BASIC implementation that run on popular computers at a reasonable price, so I don't think they have a right to complain. Only after watching thousands of people get rich had they the courage to go out and start a company around BASIC, and it was way too late then.
I am as fervent a Linux enthusiast as most people around here, but I really believe the MS and Gates-bashing here is excessive. He may be a marketing and management guy now; but he has impressive accomplishments nevertheless, and deserves to be named among the geniuses in this industry; for starting the personal computer software business, and vision.
If you have a chance to read this post before it is moderated down to -7, I would really like to see a discussion on this.
"Taksim Nokta". "Bolu Nokta" can also be used, but we usually use "slash" as well...
I do research on decentralized processors, the technology you mention. My thesis advisor likes to use this term, but please keep in mind that there is no common term for this type of architectures.
Sun's new processor, MAJC, is doing this; and Alpha 21364 will, too. Alpha 21264 already employs a similar technique.
You are completely right in thinking that this is the next step. The trend in the last 3-4 years has been in this direction. Decentralization is an active research topic in many institutions and processor companies in various forms: Multiscalar processing, superthreading, etc. You might want to take a look at the Multiscalar pages at Univ. of Wisconsin, where some of the pioneering work has been done.
Hasdi, the reference to Pasteur does not mention the spontaneous generation theory. As you pointed out, it was debunked for good; and has no scientific basis whatsoever. The poster who referenced Pasteur mentions Pasteur's discovery of germs as the reason of diseases-one of the most valuable contributions of science to mankind, perhaps. A discussion of the spontaneous generation theory is, IMHO, irrelevant here. And I don't think spontaneous generation has ever been taken seriously by anyone in scientific circles, anyway.
I once met a guy at a Safeway store in Laurel, Maryland; which is perhaps at most 5-6 miles from NSA in Fort Meade. He could speak flawless Turkish, and his command of the language and his accent were probably better than most high-school educated Turks. We chatted for a couple of minutes only, and I asked him where he worked. He said he was working for the Dept. of Defense. He then cut the conversation short and told me that he had to leave, walked to his car with a Maryland licence plate and left.
I used to study at a university where NSA has a research facility disguised as an administrative building in a remote area of campus, and there used to be lots of NSA-sponsored grad students around. (University of Maryland, College Park) All of those students will tell you that they work for the Department of Defense.
I have to admit the numbers I have are from "spokesuits" (trade publications). If the lowest quoted die-size penalty is %20 over DDR SDRAM, the yield should not be significantly lower in the long run. DRAM processes are relatively very mature, if we consider that DRAMs have been around for a while.
I am not a RDRAM advocate per se. But I like RDRAM because it is a new approach-a fresh, welcome improvement for solving the memory bottleneck problem. It looks like ordinary DRAM can only be improved so much, while with RDRAM, there seems to be more opportunity for further improvement.
Thanks for the useful information. If you don't mind, may I ask you what kind of work with memory manufacturers you are involved in? Based on some of your previous posts, I guess you are more involved in process technology rather..
Thanks, I have written a couple of XML apps myself, and know it is text based. The distinction between what I refer to as "ASCII config file" and XML config file should be fairly obvious.
People creating DTDs on their own is not the whole point of XML. People using standardized DTDs that are widely accepted by the target community is. If you see half a dozen different DTDs for Linux app. configuration files, all supported by various(different) development groups, there will be added confusion to Linux maintenance and installation; which is already being used as FUD material by Microsoft and the gang. That will not be good.
The bottom line is: With XML, you're not supposed to "create DTDs for whatever task is at hand", if your application is intended to interoperate with those of other vendors, companies, etc. Industry groups already started to take the liberty of creating DTDs on their own with the hope that their DTD may turn out to be the de facto standard in the field; and that will cause major fragmentation in the near future. It is already happening in the e-commerce area with different DTDs being pushed by Microsoft's BizLink and Rosetta, etc.
While I agree this can definitely be another good way to use XML; I'm not sure everyone will be willing to abandon the ASCII config file formats they have been using for a very long time, and move to an XML-based configuration registry. But something like this has to be done sooner or later.
People are moving and creating DTDs on their own which has the potential to cause a huge fragmentation on the XML arena; so before someone tries to design a configuration DTD, there must be some concerted effort to start a group within the Linux community that will work on this and other relevant XML DTDs.
Just my 2 cents.
RDRAM has significant advantages to SDRAM. In overall latency and performance, it is true that RDRAM is only about as good as SDRAM. And true, RDRAM is more expensive now because of those outrageous royalties paid to Rambus, and the low volume.
But in overall production costs, ignoring the price premiums tacked on the price by companies, RDRAM is more cost-effective. That is, RDRAM is actually cheaper to produce.This alone makes it attractive in the long run.
There are several good papers about comparisons of modern DRAM architectures, which highlight this point. The more technically oriented among you might want to take a look at the following:
A Performance Comparison of Contemporary DRAM Architectures
But that's because the Dresden fab was not fully ready when they were producing the K6. Even now, I believe they are mostly using the Dresden fab for Athlon, although I'm not so sure about that. I believe Dresden was intended for the Athlon in the first place, they were really depending on this processor to save their butt after the brutal CPU price war.
1 billion $ is not that much if being able to meet the demand for Athlons will give AMD the opportunity to secure a beach-head in the server and corporate market that it was never successful in. It is what AMD has its eye on. Do you think the AMD CEO is happy because most of his customers are enthusiasts or cash-strapped teenagers? Businesses have not been buying machines with AMD processors, period. Athlon was supposed to change that.
Now if AMD throws away the corporate market in return for a big check from Steve Jobs; I believe it deserves a swift death in the hands of Intel. I will be among the first to short the stock..
I personally find this very strange. Both AMD and are suffering from capacity shortage problems. AMD's stock is at its pathetic levels because analysts slammed the company when they could not provide enough AMD K6's to the market. Just recently, Gateway announced that it would not be using AMD processors since AMD can not supply them in volume. How can AMD consider sharing its production capacity with Motorola at this critical time when Athlon is just out and in great demand? If they can not meet the demand for Athlon and provide enough Athlons to OEMS, Wall Street will KILL AMD this time. And unfortunately for us techies, technical excellence does not make a company successful by itself. AMD is having a lot of financial trouble, and I don't think taking the risk of not being able to produce enough Athlons is worth the money that Motorola will provide them in return for this favor..
Here is what I believe: There must be something else behind this, if it is true. Motorola must have made a really attractive offer for AMD to have taken this risk..
SOI drastically increases performance, but there is little hard data other than IBM's own tech reports. I believe IBM is the leading authority on SOI(silicon on insulator). Similar to the situation of Motorola with copper technology, there is no company that "owns the method to SOI"-companies have patents on their ways of implementing SOI or copper interconnects, but since the underlying physical phenomenon is out in the open, you can go and invent a process which uses copper or SOI. Just like copper, other companies will follow suit and introduce SOI processes in a couple of years..
Now that Belluzzo is on the Dark Side of the Force, I believe SGI management may be planning to revive Cray.
I would agree that Memory Sticks are a terrible idea, but keep in mind that the Japanese market is big enough for any electronics company to justify putting a proprietary product with even the slightest chance of becoming a fad.
Japanese consumer behavior is very peculiar, and relies on fads. A new, totally incompatible, proprietary product may become an overnight success just because it has a flashy name, or a cute design. Just think about the usefulness of Tamagotchi(how many people remember it now?), or more recently the Pokemon cards. Now if Sony can start a digital memory stick walkman fad among Japanese teenagers or enthusiasts, they should be able to drive down the manufacturing costs of the memory stick with the help of economies of scale. Then they can start thinking about what it is really good for.
I bet a huge marketing campaign for Memory Sticks is now under way in Japan, complete with flashy billboard ads and a cute-sounding pseudo-Japanese spelling of "memory stick" using Katakana. I would appreciate if any fellow Japanese Slashdot reader is kind enough to write anything about this...
Have the Russians ever had a couple on Mir for some time? Given that the Russians have the lead in accommodating people in space for the longest periods of time, I would be very surprised to hear that they have tried nothing about sex in space. They have done extensive experimentation on almost all aspects of life in space, this must have definitely been tested by the Russians.
It is difficult to believe that nothing ever happened, if they had ever had a man and a woman on Mir for something like 90 days.
With all due respect for Russian technology, given the pathetic shape of Mir after the squeeze in their space program funding; it should have been difficult to do it on Mir without breaking anything onboard. Perhaps it was the reason for the main computer crashing often.