True, functionality will be added that can use this power, but the two basic problems of cost and power remain. The truly significant problem of the future is not making smaller transistors, it is denser power storage. While Moore's law has been accurate for integrated circuits, it doesn't apply to power sources. We haven't been able to beat the power storage density/reliability/cost of gasoline + internal combustion for 100 years!
These powerful processors are not going to be able to run on a watch battery, unless you plan to replace those batteries every five minutes. And even then devices won't be cheap. Will you be willing to pay $200 to replace your $15.00 watch, with a little bit of added functionality?
For a typical consumer product with an embedded processor, the cost of the processor is somewere between 5% and 10% of the retail cost. To put these types of processors in a device, you need to cost the end product between $500 and $2000 to be able to recoup your design, manufacturing and distribution costs. The only way these types of chips will ever get cheap is if they get into a product where there are 10,000,000+ quantities. For embedded products, this price is too high. I don't doubt that these products will catch on, but I think the time frame is much longer than the original article asserts.
I've been building in PICs and AVR microcontrollers into a bunch of devices, and I can tell you, for sure, that they still have a long lifetime ahead of them. I've designed devices that are made in 10's quantities and in 10,000+ quantities and I have a few comments:
When you are designing with microcontrollers, you use the smallest and cheapest that will do the job. It is all about the appropriate use of technology. You don't need Linux to run your microwave oven. 99% of the microprocessors used in embedded systems don't need that much power. They aren't located in PC/104 bussed computers, they aren't in computer racks, they are in devices that are all around us, but not noticed: your microwave, your cell phone battery charger, your car alarm remote... and so on. Price is a very sensitive issue. These system-on-chip devices are very expensive- running $50+ each! If all I need is a $0.73 PIC to do the job, you're a fool (and soon to be unemployed) if you don't use the PIC (or AVR, or COP8, or whatever the latest, cheapest part is)!
The power of a real operating system is undisputed, but use it where appropriate! Rick Lehrbaum's white paper on using 75-200 MHz SOCs to replace 68HC11s and 8051s is ludicrous. If not for the simple fact that 99.9% of your clock cycles would be wasted, think about all the power (electrical) that would be wasted. Sure, Transmeta has some impressive MIPS/Watt numbers, but it doesn't scale well as you go lower. Many applications just don't need that much power. I can run a PIC off a 32 KHz crystal and only draw 50 microwatts off a power source. Not a one of the processors that Rick Lehrbaum mentions will be able to approach that low a power draw, even with a stopped clock.
Microcontrollers are going to be here a long time, just like we still use discrete transistors when we need to. Yes there are some applications that can use these systems on a chip, but for full acceptance they will have to be *cheap*, coming in at a price less than $10.00 each, and preferably less thann $5.00. It will take years for that to happen, and even then, we will still be using microcontrollers. I don't need 20 MIPS to run my microwave or my battery charger, or even my watch.
Jamming is easy, but easy to detect. The FCC would never allow such a device in the US. For any commercial RF device to be sold in the US, it has to have the blessing (not necessarily explicit) of the FCC, including the free-for-all that is the 2.4 GHz band. Even in the part 15 bands, the FCC does *not* allow intentional jamming.
I believe that a cell phone interference device is in place in the Israeli Parlaiment to render the cellular phones of the legislators non-functional while in session. But such a device would never be approved for sale or use in the US.
For this feature to work, the user is going to have to allow it. Once Bluetooth enabled phones come out, users are going to quickly learn that they should not automatically connect to any bluetooth enabled device- first of all, the local Bluetooth piconet (limited to 16 devices, I think) is going to go quickly to capacity. Of course bluetooth will quickly be adopted by spammers and their ilk, which will cause most people to quickly disable the automatic discovery and promiscuous communication.
I have a feeling that the features that allow this sort of thing (stopping ringers) will not be automatically enabled (unless Microsoft dominates the technology). Would you be willing to share the contents of your PDA with anyone who walks by?
The general upper end to the RF spectrum is usually given to be around 300 GHz, as you go higher the more the RF starts behaving as light, very much line of sight. In addition to that, you need to start thinking about the attenuation of the transmission medium. The atmosphere has certain bands that it has relatively high attenuation: There is a peak in attenuation at about 22GHz, 55GHz, 120GHz, 190GHz, and the next at about 400GHz. The gaps between are better in terms of attenuation, still not great compared to the frequencies we are used to using. Once you get into space, you are no longer limited by your atmosphere, so you only have to worry about line of sight and naturally occuring noise. (Galactic noise actually goes down as frequency goes up.)
The higher in frequency you go, the more line of sight you get to be. This can be used to your advantage, especially in terms of frequency reuse, the key to cellular, which employs spatial separation and frequency separation.
Also, as you go higher in frequency, the smaller your bandwidth gets in relation to your frequency, so you have some definite advantages there- 1GHz of bandwidth is much easier to get in the 90 GHz atmosphere "hole" (W Band) than at X band (5-11 GHz).
Is there a limit? Yes. Are we going to reach it? Maybe, but as time goes on we will get cleverer especially in terms of reuse over distance. Before we actually saturate the ether we have the potential for multi gigabit/s information bandwidths.
I took a 6 week long (work) trip on the Altantic last year, and INMARSAT was the only answer. But it is very expensive. In addition to the expensive INMARSAT equipment, you're going to need a stabilized antenna to keep the antenna (a small dish) pointed at the INMARSAT satellite in geosynchronous orbit. The small suitcase sized INMARSAT terminals are really meant for stable, static locations, like solid ground.
I don't know the true price of the connection, but $10.00/minute was what the ship's personnel kept chanting when I was logged on.
We had Iridium too- but I believe that the raw data rate there was only 2400 baud, but you couldn't even get that since they never let us use the data feature of the network. Iridium service was crappy at the best of times, in terms of quality, availability, and just keeping the call going.
I've worked for non-commercial research institutions for over eight years. After 8 years of bad politics and low pay, I'm jumping ship to private industry. Most of the researchers I know do it for the sheer love of intellectual growth. But you still have to pay the bills. In this time of great prosperity, the benefits of my job (health insurance and annual leave) have been reduced. I'm looking at a 20% increase in pay to use my skills for a company rather than a (state university connected) research institution.
What can we do to keep people in research? Make them feel worthwhile and deserved. Compensate them fairly with respect to their peers in private industry. If it can't be cash, improve their working environment or just plain treat them better. Understand the sacrifices we make to do what we love, and try and make it so we don't regret choosing to work in research.
Seeing that the potential SF reader is 13, a great place to start is Heinlein's Juvenile novels. Quick reads, not too complex, without dark overtones that a lot of modern SF has, which could turn off younger readers. For example
Star Beast Podkayne of Mars (original version, save the version with the updated last chapter for later) Red Planet
Most of the novels Robert A. Heinlein wrote in the 50's were Juveniles. He wrote them on contract, and while they may not be his best work, it is a good lead in to his later novels, which are the true classics of Science Fiction. You'll have to guage the maturity of the new SF reader as to when to introduce her to his more "Adult" novels, such as Stranger in a Strange Land.
Harry Harrison's books can also be a lot of fun, especially the "Stainless Steel Rat" series, which was great entertainment for me when I was that age (and younger).
Short stories are also a good place to go- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction has a wide variety of new and established authors in every issue. Heinlein's "Future History" series of short stories and Larry Niven's "Known Space" are also great because they give a sense of continuity to the collections of short stories.
Slashdot Mirror
True, functionality will be added that can use this power, but the two basic problems of cost and power remain. The truly significant problem of the future is not making smaller transistors, it is denser power storage. While Moore's law has been accurate for integrated circuits, it doesn't apply to power sources. We haven't been able to beat the power storage density/reliability/cost of gasoline + internal combustion for 100 years!
These powerful processors are not going to be able to run on a watch battery, unless you plan to replace those batteries every five minutes. And even then devices won't be cheap. Will you be willing to pay $200 to replace your $15.00 watch, with a little bit of added functionality?
For a typical consumer product with an embedded processor, the cost of the processor is somewere between 5% and 10% of the retail cost. To put these types of processors in a device, you need to cost the end product between $500 and $2000 to be able to recoup your design, manufacturing and distribution costs. The only way these types of chips will ever get cheap is if they get into a product where there are 10,000,000+ quantities. For embedded products, this price is too high. I don't doubt that these products will catch on, but I think the time frame is much longer than the original article asserts.
I've been building in PICs and AVR microcontrollers into a bunch of devices, and I can tell you, for sure, that they still have a long lifetime ahead of them. I've designed devices that are made in 10's quantities and in 10,000+ quantities and I have a few comments:
When you are designing with microcontrollers, you use the smallest and cheapest that will do the job. It is all about the appropriate use of technology. You don't need Linux to run your microwave oven. 99% of the microprocessors used in embedded systems don't need that much power. They aren't located in PC/104 bussed computers, they aren't in computer racks, they are in devices that are all around us, but not noticed: your microwave, your cell phone battery charger, your car alarm remote... and so on. Price is a very sensitive issue. These system-on-chip devices are very expensive- running $50+ each! If all I need is a $0.73 PIC to do the job, you're a fool (and soon to be unemployed) if you don't use the PIC (or AVR, or COP8, or whatever the latest, cheapest part is)!
The power of a real operating system is undisputed, but use it where appropriate! Rick Lehrbaum's white paper on using 75-200 MHz SOCs to replace 68HC11s and 8051s is ludicrous. If not for the simple fact that 99.9% of your clock cycles would be wasted, think about all the power (electrical) that would be wasted. Sure, Transmeta has some impressive MIPS/Watt numbers, but it doesn't scale well as you go lower. Many applications just don't need that much power. I can run a PIC off a 32 KHz crystal and only draw 50 microwatts off a power source. Not a one of the processors that Rick Lehrbaum mentions will be able to approach that low a power draw, even with a stopped clock.
Microcontrollers are going to be here a long time, just like we still use discrete transistors when we need to. Yes there are some applications that can use these systems on a chip, but for full acceptance they will have to be *cheap*, coming in at a price less than $10.00 each, and preferably less thann $5.00. It will take years for that to happen, and even then, we will still be using microcontrollers. I don't need 20 MIPS to run my microwave or my battery charger, or even my watch.
Jamming is easy, but easy to detect. The FCC would never allow such a device in the US. For any commercial RF device to be sold in the US, it has to have the blessing (not necessarily explicit) of the FCC, including the free-for-all that is the 2.4 GHz band. Even in the part 15 bands, the FCC does *not* allow intentional jamming.
I believe that a cell phone interference device is in place in the Israeli Parlaiment to render the cellular phones of the legislators non-functional while in session. But such a device would never be approved for sale or use in the US.
For this feature to work, the user is going to have to allow it. Once Bluetooth enabled phones come out, users are going to quickly learn that they should not automatically connect to any bluetooth enabled device- first of all, the local Bluetooth piconet (limited to 16 devices, I think) is going to go quickly to capacity. Of course bluetooth will quickly be adopted by spammers and their ilk, which will cause most people to quickly disable the automatic discovery and promiscuous communication.
I have a feeling that the features that allow this sort of thing (stopping ringers) will not be automatically enabled (unless Microsoft dominates the technology). Would you be willing to share the contents of your PDA with anyone who walks by?
The general upper end to the RF spectrum is usually given to be around 300 GHz, as you go higher the more the RF starts behaving as light, very much line of sight. In addition to that, you need to start thinking about the attenuation of the transmission medium. The atmosphere has certain bands that it has relatively high attenuation: There is a peak in attenuation at about 22GHz, 55GHz, 120GHz, 190GHz, and the next at about 400GHz. The gaps between are better in terms of attenuation, still not great compared to the frequencies we are used to using. Once you get into space, you are no longer limited by your atmosphere, so you only have to worry about line of sight and naturally occuring noise. (Galactic noise actually goes down as frequency goes up.)
The higher in frequency you go, the more line of sight you get to be. This can be used to your advantage, especially in terms of frequency reuse, the key to cellular, which employs spatial separation and frequency separation.
Also, as you go higher in frequency, the smaller your bandwidth gets in relation to your frequency, so you have some definite advantages there- 1GHz of bandwidth is much easier to get in the 90 GHz atmosphere "hole" (W Band) than at X band (5-11 GHz).
Is there a limit? Yes. Are we going to reach it? Maybe, but as time goes on we will get cleverer especially in terms of reuse over distance. Before we actually saturate the ether we have the potential for multi gigabit/s information bandwidths.
I took a 6 week long (work) trip on the Altantic last year, and INMARSAT was the only answer. But it is very expensive. In addition to the expensive INMARSAT equipment, you're going to need a stabilized antenna to keep the antenna (a small dish) pointed at the INMARSAT satellite in geosynchronous orbit. The small suitcase sized INMARSAT terminals are really meant for stable, static locations, like solid ground.
I don't know the true price of the connection, but $10.00/minute was what the ship's personnel kept chanting when I was logged on.
We had Iridium too- but I believe that the raw data rate there was only 2400 baud, but you couldn't even get that since they never let us use the data feature of the network. Iridium service was crappy at the best of times, in terms of quality, availability, and just keeping the call going.
Matt Bennett
What can we do to keep people in research? Make them feel worthwhile and deserved. Compensate them fairly with respect to their peers in private industry. If it can't be cash, improve their working environment or just plain treat them better. Understand the sacrifices we make to do what we love, and try and make it so we don't regret choosing to work in research.
Seeing that the potential SF reader is 13, a great place to start is Heinlein's Juvenile novels. Quick reads, not too complex, without dark overtones that a lot of modern SF has, which could turn off younger readers. For example
Star Beast
Podkayne of Mars (original version, save the version with the updated last chapter for later)
Red Planet
Most of the novels Robert A. Heinlein wrote in the 50's were Juveniles. He wrote them on contract, and while they may not be his best work, it is a good lead in to his later novels, which are the true classics of Science Fiction. You'll have to guage the maturity of the new SF reader as to when to introduce her to his more "Adult" novels, such as Stranger in a Strange Land.
Harry Harrison's books can also be a lot of fun, especially the "Stainless Steel Rat" series, which was great entertainment for me when I was that age (and younger).
Short stories are also a good place to go- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction has a wide variety of new and established authors in every issue. Heinlein's "Future History" series of short stories and Larry Niven's "Known Space" are also great because they give a sense of continuity to the collections of short stories.
Ok, now they can't detect your hearbeat, but you've made yourself a *HUGE* radar reflector.