I will admit off the bat that my info is about 9 months old, and I know that Marvell was working on fixing the main problem of their SoC, namely it's 16 bit bus width. While the core itself is really fast (I'm sure you've been shown the raw performance metrics), the limited memory bandwidth means that the CPU is idling most of the time waiting for instructions to cache. Once they are cached, as in most "core benchmarks", it turns out performance at almost Atom speeds.
Marvell had a specific niche market in mind when it built the chip, but that market hasn't really taken off. They are trying to shop it around to find other markets it might stick, but as a general purpose chip it can't hold its own against the low end of the market on price or the high end on performance.
For what it was designed for (on the fly image processing and display), it is really great. The image coprocessor and video pipeline is much better than the i.MX5x's, but if you ran actual OS benchmarks, you'd see Marvell lose their advantage pretty quickly. In an industrial setting, Freescale has the advantage since their main focus is on markets where ruggedization is required.
It could be different now. They should have revved the chip at least twice by now, so the above could be all old info.
That must be second in a two chip race, because both NVidia's Tegra and Qualcomm's Snapdragon are leaps and bounds ahead of Marvell and Freescale as far as features and performance goes. Price is a different story, of course.
Scorpion core is amazing. It's just too bad about the rest of the SoC.
There are online presence management companies that actively fight this kind of negative publicity.
As long as you can make use of these services, it should not be possible to sue. It should be up to the individual to manage their own online presence.
Although they don't say who it is, it's pretty clear they are trying to lay this on Israel and America.
And, to be honest, they probably wouldn't be too far off the mark.
That we think that Iran doesn't have the right to develop their own nuclear power generation plants without international oversight is pure hubris on our part.
In 50,000 years, humans will probably not even be on Earth anymore. Either we will have annihilated ourselves, or we will have migrated to other worlds. In 6,000 years we have gone from the dawn of history to a worldwide information network and space travel. In 9 times that time, we should be much further along!
What would those constellations look like from our new homes near other star systems?
The great thing about using stem cells from fetii is that for the brief time that they are taking the cells, the fetus is still biologically alive, so the stem cells taken are extremely high quality.
Skin cells cannot be taken without pain to the patient. Since it requires that the skin cells themselves be fresh and alive, the patient much undergo some pain while the cells are extracted.
We have so many fetii who will ultimately be thrown out with the rest of the biomedical waste. Why waste them when they could save lives? Religious extremists are forcing us to waste time finding workarounds to their ridiculous anti-science/anti-medicine policies.
On a side note, I'm worried that these policies will become stricter come November when the Tea Party looks likely to make significant inroads in Congress.
What it means is that Microsoft will fight the legal battle for the OEM, and if the code is found to be infringing MS will replace that code to remove the patent dependency.
Montavista tools are also extremely expensive and restrictive, well beyond what MS licenses cost. As sales volume increases, this gap may invert, though.
So the decision is between low startup costs but high fixed costs or high startup costs and no fixed costs. For a low volume manufacturer, the MS license really isn't that bad.
Of course, we're no longer talking about Windows Mobile. Montavista's software is equivalent to WinCE.
Microsoft has never not charged a license fee. It's pretty steep too.
But they keep pushing this indemnification clause as if it provides some kind of true advantage. It does not. First, it only covers the technology in the OS which MS would necessarily have to protect itself from anyway. Second, if a handset maker were to get sued and lose, they would in turn sue MS for damages. And finally, no one has successfully sued a handset maker for infringed patents in operating systems like Linux.
What this tells me is that they haven't changed their selling strategy one bit, and they haven't got the slightest idea how to change it. Whoever is in charge of their mobile division needs to be replaced. They have a technology that is late to the game and a selling strategy that is worthless to anyone with any experience with other operating systems.
The problem here is that the apps themselves are closed, so you can't inspect the code to see if this kind of thing is going on.
It may just be sending some statistical data so the server can form better assumptions about the user and thus provide better service in the future. Or it may be sending such data for nefarious purposes. Without accessing the code, you can't know, and worse you can't control it.
Java was an interesting implementation language choice in Android, but with the browser-based interface, perhaps Javascript would have been a better system language. It would have been open and users could have more control over their own phone.
Unless removing such control is precisely why Google did it.
These "patent trolls" you're talking about usually work with and fund inventors to develop inventions with working models in order to patent them.
They use these patents not to create trouble for companies, but rather to provide a licensable product that economizes the development process for companies and maximizes return for the inventors.
"Patent trolls" foster innovation because it seeks out inventors and encourages them to do pure research and development.
Slashdot Mirror
I will admit off the bat that my info is about 9 months old, and I know that Marvell was working on fixing the main problem of their SoC, namely it's 16 bit bus width. While the core itself is really fast (I'm sure you've been shown the raw performance metrics), the limited memory bandwidth means that the CPU is idling most of the time waiting for instructions to cache. Once they are cached, as in most "core benchmarks", it turns out performance at almost Atom speeds.
Marvell had a specific niche market in mind when it built the chip, but that market hasn't really taken off. They are trying to shop it around to find other markets it might stick, but as a general purpose chip it can't hold its own against the low end of the market on price or the high end on performance.
For what it was designed for (on the fly image processing and display), it is really great. The image coprocessor and video pipeline is much better than the i.MX5x's, but if you ran actual OS benchmarks, you'd see Marvell lose their advantage pretty quickly. In an industrial setting, Freescale has the advantage since their main focus is on markets where ruggedization is required.
It could be different now. They should have revved the chip at least twice by now, so the above could be all old info.
Duh, not Scorpion core.
Shiva core.
That must be second in a two chip race, because both NVidia's Tegra and Qualcomm's Snapdragon are leaps and bounds ahead of Marvell and Freescale as far as features and performance goes. Price is a different story, of course.
Scorpion core is amazing. It's just too bad about the rest of the SoC.
How are kids supposed to learn unbounded when they have to deal with Windows?
A poor workman blames his tools.
The OS still needs to be supported, as well as any peripherals. That can't be dumped off to the cloud.
Actually, the core of the Marvell CPU is incredible. It's bus width and speed are what hamstring it.
Imagine if Usain Bolt was beat with a whip every day. He wouldn't be a very fast runner after a while.
There are online presence management companies that actively fight this kind of negative publicity.
As long as you can make use of these services, it should not be possible to sue. It should be up to the individual to manage their own online presence.
Although they don't say who it is, it's pretty clear they are trying to lay this on Israel and America.
And, to be honest, they probably wouldn't be too far off the mark.
That we think that Iran doesn't have the right to develop their own nuclear power generation plants without international oversight is pure hubris on our part.
In 50,000 years, humans will probably not even be on Earth anymore. Either we will have annihilated ourselves, or we will have migrated to other worlds. In 6,000 years we have gone from the dawn of history to a worldwide information network and space travel. In 9 times that time, we should be much further along!
What would those constellations look like from our new homes near other star systems?
Because using the state of the art with the higher quality embryonic stem cells would put us well past the point achieved today.
I never would have taken the Slashdot moderators as anti-science crusaders.
Guess I know better now!
Is it better because the state of the art has simply improved past the point where embryonic stem cell research had left off?
Or is it better because somehow skin cells are better than embryonic stem cells?
My guess is the former.
The great thing about using stem cells from fetii is that for the brief time that they are taking the cells, the fetus is still biologically alive, so the stem cells taken are extremely high quality.
Skin cells cannot be taken without pain to the patient. Since it requires that the skin cells themselves be fresh and alive, the patient much undergo some pain while the cells are extracted.
We have so many fetii who will ultimately be thrown out with the rest of the biomedical waste. Why waste them when they could save lives? Religious extremists are forcing us to waste time finding workarounds to their ridiculous anti-science/anti-medicine policies.
On a side note, I'm worried that these policies will become stricter come November when the Tea Party looks likely to make significant inroads in Congress.
If only there were a book to help you build that skillset.
Oh well!
In other words, they would replace the code so that it would not have a dependency on the patent. Which is what I said.
What it means is that Microsoft will fight the legal battle for the OEM, and if the code is found to be infringing MS will replace that code to remove the patent dependency.
Montavista tools are also extremely expensive and restrictive, well beyond what MS licenses cost. As sales volume increases, this gap may invert, though.
So the decision is between low startup costs but high fixed costs or high startup costs and no fixed costs. For a low volume manufacturer, the MS license really isn't that bad.
Of course, we're no longer talking about Windows Mobile. Montavista's software is equivalent to WinCE.
Microsoft has never not charged a license fee. It's pretty steep too.
But they keep pushing this indemnification clause as if it provides some kind of true advantage. It does not. First, it only covers the technology in the OS which MS would necessarily have to protect itself from anyway. Second, if a handset maker were to get sued and lose, they would in turn sue MS for damages. And finally, no one has successfully sued a handset maker for infringed patents in operating systems like Linux.
What this tells me is that they haven't changed their selling strategy one bit, and they haven't got the slightest idea how to change it. Whoever is in charge of their mobile division needs to be replaced. They have a technology that is late to the game and a selling strategy that is worthless to anyone with any experience with other operating systems.
The problem here is that the apps themselves are closed, so you can't inspect the code to see if this kind of thing is going on.
It may just be sending some statistical data so the server can form better assumptions about the user and thus provide better service in the future. Or it may be sending such data for nefarious purposes. Without accessing the code, you can't know, and worse you can't control it.
Java was an interesting implementation language choice in Android, but with the browser-based interface, perhaps Javascript would have been a better system language. It would have been open and users could have more control over their own phone.
Unless removing such control is precisely why Google did it.
Name a single company that hasn't "stolen" an idea from someone else.
RedHat.
These "patent trolls" you're talking about usually work with and fund inventors to develop inventions with working models in order to patent them.
They use these patents not to create trouble for companies, but rather to provide a licensable product that economizes the development process for companies and maximizes return for the inventors.
"Patent trolls" foster innovation because it seeks out inventors and encourages them to do pure research and development.
No. They just want the laws formulated so that they can legally copy ideas from others with impunity.
The USPTO isn't going to change their policies to help one small company steal ideas from others.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noncoding_DNA
Look into it.
In the same way that DNA is responsible for the production of cells in the body.
You might as well ask how a program can manage an assembly line of computer parts. Come on Bruce. You're not that dumb.