It's been years since the concept of a digital convergence was seriously debated. Today, it's rare to see a single-function electronic device.
Digital still cameras can record video, and camcorders can take still photos. Even cheap cell phones include cameras. There are Web browsers in cell phones, cameras, televisions, and digital picture frames. In fact, it seems like it's only a matter of time before everything with a battery or power cord will be connected to the Internet.
So it's a little startling to see a new gizmo that does nothing but display text, especially when that text comes from a preprogrammed memory card...and it's extraordinary when the text came from the Internet in the first place.
Openmoko's WikiReader is a standalone Wikipedia browser with a touch screen and the complete text of Wikipedia on a memory card.
(Credit: Peter N. Glaskowsky)I was initially incredulous when I heard about WikiReader, a $99 device from Openmoko designed solely for the purpose of reading Wikipedia articles. How useful could such a thing really be, I wondered.
The device, which was released about two weeks ago, displays the text only. The user interface couldn't be much simpler. Pushing the power button boots the device in less than two seconds. There's a search button for looking up individual articles, a history button for recalling previously viewed articles, and a button to open a random article from the collection. A parental-control feature allows blocking mature content (imperfectly, as I quickly learned).
And that's about it. It doesn't display images, references, discussion pages, or links to outside Web sites. (The latter point is reasonable enough because the device can't access the Internet anyway.) In fact, all 3 million Wikipedia articles viewable on WikiReader ship on a memory card in the device.
The content on the card is just a snapshot of the active Wikipedia database, complete with whatever errors or vandalism may have been present at the moment each article was copied. But overall, it's still an impressive amount of useful information. (Openmoko will offer quarterly updates that can be downloaded for free, or delivered on new memory cards twice per year for an annual cost of $29.)
Not long ago, distributing Wikipedia this way would have been impractical. Even today, an 8GB Micro SD card is a sub-$15 item in wholesale channels, which is a big chunk of the $99 retail price. Saving money here, however, would have compromised the usefulness of the device. (On the unit I tested, 4.18GB out of 7.4GB was actually used; perhaps some foreign-language versions of Wikipedia could fit on smaller, cheaper cards.)
The other elements of WikiReader show similar trade-offs. In an e-mail exchange, Openmoko President Sean Moss-Pultz told me that the Wikireader design began with the chips commonly used for electronic dictionaries--for example, Epson's S1C33E07 microcontroller. But whereas such devices usually have small screens and physical keyboards, allowing them to hit very low price points (e.g., this $21 device from Royal), Openmoko chose to go with a larger screen that displays about 13 lines of proportionally spaced text--roughly 40 characters per line, 80 words at a time.
Further, WikiReader has a capacitive touch screen, enabling the use of a virtual on-screen keyboard rather than a separate physical keyboard. The touchscreen--equipped with a tempered glass face that resists scratches better than plastic--also handles touch-drag scrolling and selecting links to other Wikipedia pages. As a result, WikiReader is smaller than most electronic dictionaries, but has a larger screen and is easier to use. (Click for more details on the WikiReader hardware platform.)
WikiReader is also more expensive than most electronic dictionaries, but again, the higher price was essential if WikiReader was to accomplish its mission. That mission is simple to express: make Wikipedia accessible to anyone, anywhere, any time. At $99, this device may not be affordable by everyone in the world. On the other hand, it's a lot more affordable than even the least expensive laptops, including the original "$100 laptop" from the One Laptop Per Child Foundation, which is still priced at $199 two years after it first went on sale.
Although the comparison is hardly fair, it's still relevant since the number of parents and schools in the world that can afford a $99 WikiReader is a lot larger than the number that can afford a laptop plus the necessary supporting infrastructure such as an Internet connection and power source. (By comparison, Openmoko says that two AAA alkaline batteries--cheap and widely available--will run the WikiReader for up to a year, and that's the only recurring cost to keep the unit operating.)
I expect the cost of manufacturing WikiReader will come down slowly over time, and the product itself may become more valuable as third-party developers begin to work with the WikiReader's open-source software. Openmoko began as an open-source cell phone project, and while WikiReader has nothing in common with that earlier work, the company still has some visibility in the open-source developer community.
WikiReader isn't quite easy enough for a cat to use.
(Credit: Peter N. Glaskowsky)The WikiReader software load is very simple. There's no OS, not even Linux; just one application to run the Wikipedia browser, for example. All of the software, along with the compressed Wikipedia database, is provided on the Micro SD card. There are some diagnostic programs, and there's even a simple four-function calculator "Easter egg" that comes up in response to a History-Power button combination.
The lack of a full OS is a matter of necessity, but this is the kind of necessity from which virtue is created. The near-instant boot time and ultra-low power consumption couldn't be matched with any flavor of Linux. Software development isn't as easy as it would be for a Linux PC application, but then, the device is simple, so it wouldn't be too difficult to develop new functionality for the WikiReader hardware. I'd like to see the usual combination of dictionary, thesaurus, and language translation found in many other devices, along with a more-advanced calculator.
In the meantime, WikiReader does the one thing it was meant to do, and I think that's good enough.
(My thanks to Pat Meier-Johnson of Pat Meier Associates for bringing WikiReader to my attention. Also, thanks to Openmoko for providing a review unit and answering my questions.)
I'm very impressed by the Nook, Barnes & Noble's new e-book reader. It's clear B&N has studied Sony's Reader and Amazon's Kindle very carefully.
The Nook has almost all of the major features of both product lines, plus a few more, with few competitive disadvantages. B&N has also followed Amazon's lead on support services. The Nook has a very good online e-book store as well as applications to support e-book reading on Macs, Windows machines, and smartphones.
(Credit:
Barnes & Noble)
The Nook doesn't ship until the end of November, but here's what I found most significant from the announcement and the pages at nook.com:
Industrial design
I think the Nook is attractive and well-designed. It looks better than the Kindle 2, but not as good as Sony's Reader Touch Edition, which offers a larger screen in a smaller form factor. Also, Sony's forthcoming Reader Daily Edition is only slightly larger than the Nook, but offers a much larger screen.
Secondary color display
This feature surprised me. It seems expensive and insufficiently functional for what must be a significant added cost. The low resolution of this display (480 x 144, according to a CNET blog post) means it won't be useful for much beyond the basic user-interface features B&N has already described: book covers, menus, and a keyboard for note-taking. (Although I should note for the record that while B&N says "Its full-color touchscreen encourages you to bookmark, add notes, and highlight passages," I haven't found a photo on the company Web site depicting the virtual keyboard shown in some of the pre-release images. Perhaps that's one of the features still under development.)
By comparison, the secondary color screen built into the Alex e-book reader from Spring Design, shown in another recent CNET story, is large enough to be useful. Unfortunately, it's also large enough to be very much in the way, leading to an awkward device. Spring Design and B&N need to make up their minds-- are they making e-book readers or something else?
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Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices' ATI division are taking different approaches to graphics processing in the next generations of their products. Both strategies have strengths and weaknesses, and I think it's too soon to pick the eventual winner in this long-running fight.
Before I get into my analysis, I should say that Nvidia paid me to write a white paper on the implications of its new GPU architecture (code-named Fermi) for high-performance computing applications. The white paper was released as part of the Fermi launch event at Nvidia's GPU Technology Conference last week.
Nvidia also paid for white papers from two other well-known microprocessor analysts, Nathan Brookwood of Insight64 and my friend and former colleague Tom Halfhill of Microprocessor Report. UC Berkeley professor David Patterson wrote a fourth white paper, and Nvidia wrote one of its own. All of these works take a different approach to the subject; all are worth reading if you need to understand what Fermi is all about.
In short, I think the Fermi architecture has been more thoroughly white-papered than any graphics chip design in history. All five of these documents are available on the Fermi home page on Nvidia's Web site, and just in case that page is moved or changed, you're welcome to take advantage of my own mirror of my white paper.
I've spent much of the last several days reading these documents plus David Kanter's excellent article on Fermi over on his Real World Technologies site. David managed to get some details on Fermi that Nvidia didn't give to the rest of us.
I've also had time to go through the coverage of ATI's recent launch of the RV870, which is what Nvidia's Fermi-based chips will be competing against. The first of Nvidia's chips bears the internal code name of GF100, and it's huge. Here's a life-size photo:
... Read moreReady for a 250-watt notebook? Intel is helping its OEMs to design such extremes.
A presentation at the Intel Developer Forum last week discussed how to build notebooks around the Core i7-920XM Extreme Edition mobile processor, code-named Clarksfield XE.
It turns out that when I estimated the maximum power consumption of a 920XM-based laptop at 80 watts to 100 watts, I was way off! (A typical notebook, by the way, averages somewhere between 40 and 90 watts.)
My estimate was reasonable for the kind of typical 920XM laptop I had in mind, but Intel showed how to go so far beyond "typical" that the resulting machine could need a 250-watt power brick.
I looked around, and the biggest power adapter I could find belongs to the Dell Alienware M17x, which needs a 210-watt brick. (I trust someone will tell me if there's a bigger one out there somewhere...Just leave a comment below.)
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Intel promotes the Turbo Boost technology in its new Core i7 Mobile processors as a way to adapt to the needs of the software and get more performance from the chip, but this isn't the real reason the technology exists.
The new "Clarksfield" Core i7 Mobile processors introduced at the Intel Developer Forum last week are certainly very impressive. They're huge high-performance quad-core chips with Hyper-Threading, support for two channels of DDR3-1333 DRAM, and an on-die PCI Express controller for the fastest possible connection to discrete graphics chips.
Intel VP Mooly Eden shows off the new Core i7 Mobile processor and its companion I/O controller at the Intel Developer Forum.
(Credit: Intel)In his IDF session announcing these parts, Intel Vice President Mooly Eden said the best of these parts, the 2GHz Core i7-920XM Extreme Edition, is "the fastest quad-core processor, the fastest dual-core processor, and the fastest single-core processor"-- all in one chip.
The key to this dramatic claim is a feature called Turbo Boost technology. Basically, if the current application workload isn't keeping all four cores fully busy and pushing right up against the chip's TDP (Thermal Design Power) limit, Turbo Boost can increase the clock speed of each core individually to get more performance out of the chip.
It's easy to see how this works when just one or two cores are being actively used; whatever power the other two or three cores would have consumed can be redirected over to the active cores, allowing them to run at higher speeds.
The quad-core mode of Turbo Boost is a little more subtle; it works when the four cores aren't running a worst-case workload--for example, integer-heavy processing, since it's generally floating-point calculations that consume the most power--so they aren't bumping into the TDP limit. Turbo Boost can increase the frequency of all four cores until they're running as fast as they can for the current workload.
Eden said that the Turbo Boost controller ... Read more
The mysteries of the Lynnfield and Jasper Forest die photos (from last week's post titled "Investigating Intel's Lynnfield mysteries") were all cleared up at the Intel Developer Forum last week, and as expected, there was nothing sinister going on--just some confusion in Intel's graphics arts department.
With the help of the always-helpful George Alfs of Intel's press relations department and Intel vice president Mooly Eden (general manager of Intel's PC Client Group), we got everything straightened out. Literally!
Here's the die photo of Intel's Lynnfield chip from my previous post:
Die photo of the Core i5/Core i7 processor code-named Lynnfield, with labels.
(Credit: Intel)This is the newest (shipping) part based on the Nehalem microarchitecture, differing from the earlier Bloomfield by the addition of an on-die PCI Express controller. Both chips are made in Intel's 45nm process technology.
According to Eden, the Lynnfield chip design is shared with several other Intel chips that will be on the market soon, including ... Read more
Mobile data traffic is doubling every nine months, according to Cisco Systems. By 2013, mobile traffic will hit 2 exabytes--2 million terabytes--per month.
For some vendors, the growth rate is even higher. AT&T says its network load has been growing by 4.5x per year for the last two years, in large part (I assume) because of iPhone sales. You may have read about AT&T's pledge to spend over $12 billion this year to expand its wireless and broadband networks, including new 3G spectrum with better coverage and trials of 4G service.
At the Linley Group's Tech Processor Conference this week in San Jose, Calif., we learned what effect this growth is having on equipment makers, especially the companies making the microprocessors that go into network gear.
According to that same Cisco study, the problem goes well beyond iPhones. A 3G-equipped laptop "can generate as much traffic as 450 basic-feature phones" and 15 times the traffic of an iPhone or BlackBerry.
Networks have also gotten smarter, so network processors have much more work to do. Instead of just hundreds or thousands of clock cycles of work per packet on the network, new functions like firewalls, intrusion detection, and antivirus scanning to keep smartphones and laptops safe can require 100,000 cycles of processing on each packet.
Factoring in the growth in the network itself, Michael Coward of Continuous Computing, a company that sells equipment, software, and services to the telecom market, said that network operators need to achieve a 1,200x boost in processing performance between the systems deployed in 2008 and those that will be needed in 2013.
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I'm a big fan of "German engineering"--that combined focus on power and precision that distinguishes the better automobiles designed or manufactured in Germany.
At Frankfurt's International Motor Show, BMW will be showing off two new hybrid cars intended to deliver the full promise of German engineering. This is no small thing because most hybrid cars to date have been lightly built and somewhat underpowered in order to improve fuel economy.
The two new BMWs are more like previous offerings from that company: big, solid cars with lots of power to maintain performance in spite of the weight. They're also real cars, not just prototypes.
Fortunately, I don't need to describe these new cars here; there's a great article by Antuan Goodwin over on CNET's Car Tech blog that does a fine job of that (see "BMW unveiling two big hybrid models at Frankfurt"). What I would like to do instead is to drill down into their respective powertrains, which represent two different solutions to high-performance hybrid design, using images provided by BMW.
The ActiveHybrid X6, due to go on sale in the U.S. later this year, represents one end of the spectrum: higher-power electric motors and a larger battery pack. As the first image shows, the new X6 model has a twin-turbo V8 gas engine with 400 horsepower. Though this is a reasonably efficient engine for its size, it certainly wasn't chosen primarily for its fuel economy.
BMW's ActiveHybrid X6 uses a large NiMH battery pack and a new transmission with two integrated electric motors to augment its 400-horsepower gasoline engine.
(Credit: BMW)The large NiMH (nickel metal hydride) battery pack is also visible in this view, mounted above the rear drivetrain components and below the floor of the luggage compartment. This battery pack holds 2.4 kWh (kilowatt-hours) of energy; BMW also specifies a "nominal" 1.4 kWh figure, but doesn't explain the difference between total capacity and nominal capacity. I suspect the difference may be related to improving battery lifespan, or perhaps provide some extra storage to ensure that electric braking assist (regenerative braking) is always available. BMW does say that this braking mode can generate as much as 50 kilowatts of power and 0.3 g of deceleration force.
In the following view of the X6's transmission, the electric motors are shown built right into a new transmission that BMW describes as an "electric continuously variable transmission"--the electric motors and three planetary gearsets work together to provide the equivalent of seven gear ratios.
The transmission in the ActiveHybrid X6 has two integrated electric motors totalling 177 horsepower.
(Credit: BMW)Interestingly, with ratings of 91 and 86 horsepower respectively, the two electric motors could provide a total of 177 horsepower, but the vehicle isn't designed to operate that way. BMW specifies a maximum system output for the ActiveHybrid X6 of 480 horsepower, reflecting a maximum contribution from the electric motors of around 80 horsepower.
Part of the issue here is that the battery pack is rated at a maximum output of 57 kW, roughly 76 horsepower, so there isn't enough electrical power to drive both motors at full power. I expect there are also some issues related to heat and torque, but BMW hasn't offered a full explanation of this limitation.
It's also interesting to note that while the new X6 supports a pure electric drive operating mode, it's only good up to 37 mph and 1.6 miles. This figure is well below the energy capacity of the battery pack, probably reflecting more limitations imposed in the name of long-term reliability.
The ActiveHybrid 7, a hybrid version of BMW's 7-series luxury sedan due out in the spring of 2010, takes a very different approach. It has only a small electric motor positioned between the engine and transmission, and it comes with only a small lithium-ion battery pack. The following figure shows that the battery pack is located to the side of the trunk, leaving plenty of space for golf bags. (BMW says that four standard bags will still fit, which I suppose is a critical specification for 7-series customers.)
The ActiveHybrid 7 is powered by a 440-horsepower gasoline engine and a small 20-horsepower electric motor with a lithium-ion battery pack.
(Credit: BMW)Zooming into the transmission in the following picture, we can see the pancake-style electric motor in front of what appears to be a fairly conventional 8-speed automatic transmission. In its press release, BMW does emphasize that this is a new transmission design "specifically tailored to the demands of hybrid technology," but the release doesn't explain how this gearbox differs from the 8-speed automatics on previous BMW cars.
The ActiveHybrid 7's electric motor is tucked away between the gas engine and a conventional 8-speed automatic transmission.
(Credit: BMW)The new 7's electric motor produces a mere 15 kilowatts, roughly 20 horsepower. Together with the gas engine, the vehicle's maximum output is rated at 455 horsepower. The electric motor also functions as a starter motor for the gas engine and a generator to charge the two batteries on the car: a conventional 12V lead-acid battery and the 120V lithium-ion pack in the trunk.
The latter is a small pack storing only 400 watt-hours of energy--that's about like eight average laptop batteries. BMW doesn't mention whether the new 7 can run solely on the electric motor, but I doubt it; 20 horsepower probably isn't enough for that. Certainly the range would be negligible given the low battery capacity.
Instead, BMW describes the value of the electric motor in terms of two uses: first, it's powerful enough to restart the gas engine almost instantly (in less than one rotation of the crankshaft) so the engine can be shut down at stoplights, just as the Toyota Prius does. Second, the electric motor provides supplemental power while the gas engine is running, thus improving overall fuel efficiency. Since the battery can be charged by recovering braking energy, the power from the electric motor is often free.
BMW says the hybrid systems in the ActiveHybrid 7 were developed jointly with Daimler, maker of Mercedes automobiles. This partnership also led to some Mercedes models, and indeed, Mercedes has also introduced hybrids with powertrains similar to that of the ActiveHybrid X6. (Mercedes is announcing a new S500 hybrid in Frankfurt but didn't provide such nice pictures, so I didn't include it in this post.)
Both of these approaches will need to be developed substantially before they can reduce the total cost of owning and operating a motor vehicle. But it's clear that BMW, having waited this long to get into the hybrid car business, is giving its customers two very different choices. What the company does in the future will probably depend on how its customers respond.
In a corporate blog post this week, Microsoft Vice President Horacio Gutierrez promoted the idea of a "harmonized, global patent system," in which all the nations adopt common standards for processing and approving patent applications.
Properly done, patents approved in one country could become enforceable in other countries, as is the case with copyrights under the terms of the Berne Convention.
I really have no problem with harmonization if it is properly done, but I think it would be tremendously difficult to achieve good results. The reality of patent protection is radically different from that of copyrights because patents are allowed based on the merits of the application; someone has to make a judgment call.
Would nations be able to compete for patenting fees on the basis of their approval rate? After all, who could say whether I invented a new audio calibration standard here in Cupertino--or Costa Rica, if I just happened to visit a patent agent while on holiday there? Even if this wasn't allowed, I expect all nations would begin to relax their standards in order to give their local inventors an edge in the global marketplace--a classic "race to the bottom."
Or would there be just one international patent bureau, perhaps run as an agency of the United Nations? I shudder to think how that would turn out, with the General Assembly dominated by smaller nations with little vested interest in patent protection.
Unfortunately, Gutierrez takes the latter position:
In today's world of universal connectivity, global business and collaborative innovation, it is time for a world patent that is derived from a single patent application, examined and prosecuted by a single examining authority and litigated before a single judicial body.
Not only does he want an international patent bureau, he wants to create a new international court system with global enforcement powers. The potential for abuse here is truly staggering.
But as objectionable as I find that proposal, my real issue with Gutierrez's post is that it's completely irrelevant to the real problems with the worldwide patent system.
Gutierrez summarizes:
Big challenges certainly confront the global patent system: Escalating patent application backlogs; lengthening pendency periods; increasing costs of patent prosecution; dubious patent quality due to the global explosion of prior art and the time allowed to examine applications; and examination inefficiency due to duplication of work by multiple offices.
Removing the duplication would help a little. About half of U.S. patents go to non-resident inventors. That fraction is increasing, and it's already larger in most other countries because of the stronger emphasis on innovation in U.S. companies. Letting inventors go through the process just once, in their own countries, would eliminate the duplication. But again, I think this approach would create more problems than it solves.
In any event, a factor of two here or there is not going to solve the fundamental problem of patent quality. The high percentage of bad patents in the system--and believe me, I can personally testify to how many bad patents are out there--undermines the whole system.
I've been thinking about this problem for over 20 years now, and I have some suggestions:
Problem statements. All patent applications should include a statement of the specific problem(s) the claimed invention is intended to solve. These problem statements should be published immediately and anonymously, along with whatever prior-art references have been disclosed--but no details of the invention itself. The problem statements and prior-art references would be taken as narrowing the scope of the invention. The public would then be free to point to known solutions, or even submit new ones, which would create a presumption of obviousness if they happen to coincide with the filed claims.
Claim standardization. One social benefit of the patent system is to publish inventions so that others may use them, either immediately if a license is made available, or after the patent expires. A published patent may also serve as the foundation of further inventive work. But patents are difficult for humans to understand and are practically immune to reliable machine analysis and searching. I think patent claims should use a standardized grammar and vocabulary that eliminates ambiguity and precisely identifies the scope of the invention. Although defining these new standards would be a difficult and lengthy process, the rewards would be tremendous.
Examination fees. As an inventor myself it pains me to say this, but examination fees must cover the actual costs of examination. That means charging enough to let the patent office hire enough qualified examiners to handle applications as quickly as they come in, rather than letting a backlog develop. Published problem statements and standardized claims will help a lot, higher fees may cut down on bogus patent filings, and we'd all like to see the patent office managed better. But ultimately, the system has to support itself.
No triple damages. U.S. law provides for triple damages when someone "knowingly, deliberately, intentionally, willfully, or wantonly" infringes a patent. But these damages are routinely awarded whenever there is evidence that an infringer was aware of a patent, even if the knowledge played no role in product development or there was truly some reasonable disagreement as to whether the patent was relevant. As a result, this law discourages study of existing patents, which is directly contrary to the constitutional purpose of the patent system. Knowledge alone is not a bad thing; we shouldn't penalize it.
I'm sure there are many other good ideas out there for improving the U.S. patent system. We need to talk about them, and we need to find solutions to our own problems before we even start thinking about globalization.
Much has been made lately about the trend toward solid-state drives. Now a new Intel technology, code-named Braidwood, may delay that trend, blending the performance of solid-state drives with the economy of old-style hard drives.
Braidwood--like its predecessor, Intel's Turbo Memory technology (formerly code-named Robson)--is basically a solid-state cache for all the disks in the system.
I heard about Braidwood earlier this summer on CNET (see "Intel 'Braidwood' chip targets snappier software" by Brooke Crothers). But I shrugged it off, assuming it would be no better than Turbo Memory, which left a bad taste in the mouth of many PC makers, end users, and Microsoft execs. Turbo Memory (and Turbo Memory 2.0) wasn't cheap, and it definitely wasn't worth the cost. The PC industry operates on such slim margins that every dollar's worth of hardware has to earn its keep--and Robson didn't.
But then I read an EE Times article this week by Mark LePedus describing a new report from Jim Handy of analyst firm Objective Analysis.
The 62-page report is titled "Intel's Braidwood: Death to SSDs?"
Handy's report argues persuasively that Braidwood might actually be worthwhile, and that got my attention. I've known him a long time, and he's a very good analyst--he's been covering memory and caching technology a lot longer than I have. He wrote one of the standard references for computer system architects, "The Cache Memory Book."
So I sent Handy a note, and he sent me a copy of the report. And now that I've read it, I'm inclined to agree with his conclusions, assuming the information he's obtained about Braidwood is accurate. It does seem reasonable, at least.
The first thing to understand is why flash memory can be a good disk cache. This boils down to its much faster access times: microseconds, not milliseconds. Flash can actually take much longer to write than a hard disk. But for reads, it's really quick. So if you can be smart about putting the right hard-disk data in the cache, especially by choosing the right time to do those write operations, you can save huge amounts of time on future disk reads.
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