tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52719522899262613862024-03-18T20:39:51.259-07:00Millicomputing - Open Hardware by the milliWattCPUs that consume less than one Watt are millicomputers. This site is dedicated to defining and building applications and open hardware designs for general purpose millicomputer systems, for personal and enterprise applications.Adrian Cockcrofthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14695336135416848505noreply@blogger.comBlogger86125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271952289926261386.post-47106764039879898022010-03-23T16:04:00.000-07:002010-03-23T16:07:08.984-07:00LTE - Huawei shows off 1.2gbps wireless<a href="http://gigaom.com/2010/03/23/huawei-shows-off-1-2-gbps-wireless-yes-wireless/">Standard setting in 2011, with no-one yet saying when they might implement it, but this shows that the end game is wireless internet as the default</a>Adrian Cockcrofthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14695336135416848505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271952289926261386.post-61004772166998366732010-01-15T21:10:00.001-08:002010-01-15T21:10:27.680-08:00Mobile Trends 2020Check out this SlideShare Presentation: lots of different takes on the mobile future, and some common themes and echoes of some what I've been saying here...<div style="width:425px;text-align:left" id="__ss_2839665"><a style="font:14px Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif;display:block;margin:12px 0 3px 0;text-decoration:underline;" href="http://www.slideshare.net/rudydw/mobile-trends-2020" title="Mobile Trends 2020">Mobile Trends 2020</a><object style="margin:0px" width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=mobiletrends2020lo-100106060739-phpapp01&stripped_title=mobile-trends-2020" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"/><embed src="http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=mobiletrends2020lo-100106060739-phpapp01&stripped_title=mobile-trends-2020" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="355"></embed></object><div style="font-size:11px;font-family:tahoma,arial;height:26px;padding-top:2px;">View more <a style="text-decoration:underline;" href="http://www.slideshare.net/">documents</a> from <a style="text-decoration:underline;" href="http://www.slideshare.net/rudydw">rudydw</a>.</div></div>Adrian Cockcrofthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14695336135416848505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271952289926261386.post-87822268307102183502010-01-08T00:17:00.000-08:002010-01-08T00:25:40.832-08:00Intel getting closer to phones with LG GW990This looks like an over-sized iPhone, and is a cross between a tablet and an iPhone. It has a SIM slot, but it has an Intel Moorestown low power Atom CPU and a 4.8 inch screen. So it can run variants of windows and Linux. <br /><br />I think that Intel needs at least one more generation of even lower power CPUs to get into direct competition with ARM, but this is the closest I've seen so far.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/07/lg-gw990-hands-on/">Here is the LG GW990 hands-on from Engadget Mobile at CES</a>Adrian Cockcrofthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14695336135416848505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271952289926261386.post-49824943467402143732010-01-06T12:26:00.000-08:002010-01-06T12:52:48.083-08:00Quad-core ARM and 2010 predictionsMore than 1GHz per core, and now ARM has two and four core options. This is tracking my predictions from a few years ago quite well. The google Nexus One has a 1GHz ARM CPU with 512MB RAM. I expect that the rumored Apple tablet or iSlate is more likely to be a big iPhone than a small MacBook, so it would make sense for it to use a multi-core ARM and a Gigabyte or so of memory. This gives vendors a nice way to stratify their product, for example, Apple could support multi-core and background/multiple running apps in iPhone OS 4, release a two-core tablet now, then upgrade the iPhone to have a two core high end option in the summer, and push the tablet to have a four core high end option. If Apple doesn't, then the Android vendors will.<br /><br />My other prediction for 2010 (that I made in early 2008) was that as ARM goes up market, Intel will come down-market to lower power consumption. So later in 2010 we may see Android based tablets and phones that use Intel Atom variants going head to head with ARM, as well as running more generic laptop derived operating systems.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.marvell.com/armada/quadruple_core_arm_instruction_set/release/1363/">http://www.marvell.com/armada/quadruple_core_arm_instruction_set/release/1363/</a><br /><br />My <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/adrianco/millicomputing-ignite-talk">millicomputing update ignite talk</a> wasn't showing any text on the slides on slideshare, so I just re-loaded it.Adrian Cockcrofthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14695336135416848505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271952289926261386.post-83708519546817404732009-12-20T08:56:00.000-08:002009-12-20T08:59:50.261-08:00ignite slideshttp://www.slideshare.net/adrianco/millicomputing-ignite-talk #millicomputing updated predictions<div class="iblogger-footer"><br clear="all"/><p style="text-align:right;font-size:10px;">[Posted with <a href="http://illuminex.com/iBlogger/index.html">iBlogger</a> from my iPhone]</p><br/></div><br />Adrian Cockcrofthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14695336135416848505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271952289926261386.post-13998429810068108602009-12-16T08:39:00.000-08:002009-12-16T08:42:54.638-08:004G LTE Wireless data at 43Mbit/sLTE trials have started in Sweden, and a laptop data card shows this data rate, with 5Mbit/s upload and 43Mbit/s download. At this point we are 1 to 2 years away from this in the USA.<br /><a href="http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/16/teliasoneras-43mbps-wireless-data-downloads/">http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/16/teliasoneras-43mbps-wireless-data-downloads/</a>Adrian Cockcrofthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14695336135416848505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271952289926261386.post-45479536714775634912009-11-24T10:24:00.000-08:002009-11-24T10:27:07.663-08:00Mobile Skype Video Calls via Fring on NokiaIt was just a matter of time, now it will spread to other platforms...<br /><br /><a href="http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/24/fring-adds-skype-video-support-on-s60-threatens-to-make-front-c/<br />">http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/24/fring-adds-skype-video-support-on-s60-threatens-to-make-front-c/<br /></a>Adrian Cockcrofthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14695336135416848505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271952289926261386.post-66067459207240604042009-09-07T01:46:00.000-07:002009-09-07T01:50:42.948-07:00ARM CPUs for power efficient Web Servers - James agrees...<a href="http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2009/09/07/LinuxApacheOnARMProcessors.aspx">James Hamilton highlights the power efficiency of ARM for general purpose web servers.</a> It's almost two years since I gave the first talk on <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/adrianco/millicomputing-usenix-2008">Millicomputing</a> at the <a href="http://hpts.ws">HPTS Workshop</a> (which is where I met James for the first time) so its great to see him talking up the principles. He also makes the important point that ARM uses error correcting (ECC) memory, while the Intel Atom doesn't, and thus the Atom is actually less suitable for configuring large numbers in low power enterprise server applications.<br /><br />The systems at <a href="http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2009/09/07/LinuxApacheOnARMProcessors.aspx">http://www.linux-arm.org/Main/LinuxArmOrg</a> are relatively inefficient blades, they have archaic spinning rust storage attached which must dominate the power consumption. A flash based storage subsystem would make much more sense to me. Web content delivery workloads are very well suited to low cost read-mostly flash storage. They do have a 1.2GHz ARM CPU and 1.5GB of RAM per blade, which is the biggest and fastest ARM configuration I've seen so far.Adrian Cockcrofthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14695336135416848505noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271952289926261386.post-33210496530963130352009-09-03T22:54:00.000-07:002009-09-03T22:56:29.017-07:00Wireless HD Video at 60GHz<a href="http://gigaom.com/2009/09/03/europes-approval-of-60-ghz-makes-wireless-hd-video-global/">GiGaOM has an update on wireless HD video</a> It seems that the UWB standard stalled, but alternatives are on the way.Adrian Cockcrofthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14695336135416848505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271952289926261386.post-39550003322351653072009-08-19T10:00:00.000-07:002009-08-19T10:01:58.378-07:00Windows Mobile fades to irrelevance...<a href="http://gigaom.com/2009/08/19/microsoft-mobile-strategy-fail/">see this comment on GigaOM</a> like I said almost two years ago....Adrian Cockcrofthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14695336135416848505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271952289926261386.post-35528464089517257142009-08-06T07:19:00.000-07:002009-08-06T07:21:07.893-07:00Augmented reality for the iPhone<a href="http://www.tuaw.com/2009/08/06/metaio-brings-more-augmented-reality-promises-to-the-iphone/">from Metaio</a> just a demo, but heading in an interesting direction...Adrian Cockcrofthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14695336135416848505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271952289926261386.post-18832303620905970752009-06-23T20:21:00.000-07:002009-06-23T20:23:41.323-07:00TI Sees multi-core phones in 2011Like I said at Ignite #velocityconf yesterday - see ARM Cortex A9 - which is 4x the iPhone 3GS <a href="http://gigaom.com/2009/06/23/ti-sees-multicore-phones-coming-in-2011/">http://gigaom.com/2009/06/23/ti-sees-multicore-phones-coming-in-2011/</a>Adrian Cockcrofthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14695336135416848505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271952289926261386.post-31961406717623243782009-06-19T16:16:00.000-07:002009-06-19T16:38:02.960-07:00iPhone 3GS GraphicsThe new hardware is a huge leap forward, the 3GS is in Xbox territory according to Noel - details: http://www.mobileorchard.com/a-huge-leap-forward-graphics-on-the-iphone-3gs/ and RoughlyDrafted http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/06/10/a-closer-look-at-iphone-3g-s-cortex-a8-arm-and-powervr-chips/<br />My order is in :-)Adrian Cockcrofthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14695336135416848505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271952289926261386.post-88303695800703362202009-06-17T16:37:00.000-07:002009-06-17T16:41:12.072-07:00Ignite talk at Velocity ConferenceI'm at the Velocity Conference next week in San Jose, Mon-Wed. On Monday evening there is an Ignite session where we get 5 minutes to talk about something using 20 slides that auto-advance every 15sec. I've been accepted to do an update on Millicomputing, so I have to figure out how to get a slide deck together. I'm going to look back at what I predicted in 2007 and 2008, see how accurate I was, and look forward a couple of years for what low power devices we should expect to have in our pockets and our datacenters in 2010 and 2011.Adrian Cockcrofthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14695336135416848505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271952289926261386.post-81271803369942304292009-06-01T07:14:00.000-07:002009-06-01T07:19:05.791-07:00Qualcomm Snapdragon - 1.3GHz Arm Cortex A8The performance of ARM architecture chips continues to increase, <a href="http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2009/06/01/qualcomms-1-3ghz-qsd8650a-snapdragon-chipset-is-30-stronger/">this announcement</a> bumps the clock rate up to 1.3GHz and has a long list of integrated features.<br /><br /><blockquote>The new chipset supports multi-mode UMTS and CDMA 3G connectivity in the same 15 x 15-mm package as well as featuring enhanced 2D acceleration and 3D graphics core, integrated GPS, high-def video recording and playback, Bluetooth 2.1, WiFi, and support for WXGA (1280x800 pixels) displays pumping out your choice of MediaFLO, DVBH, or ISDB-T digital mobile television.</blockquote>Adrian Cockcrofthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14695336135416848505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271952289926261386.post-76059406686319267182009-05-26T11:35:00.000-07:002009-05-26T11:36:18.431-07:00Wireless broadband speeds in practice<a href="http://gigaom.com/2009/05/26/everythings-relative-especially-wireless-broadband-speeds/">Useful table of standards and speeds via GigaOM</a>Adrian Cockcrofthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14695336135416848505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271952289926261386.post-13196252972025921602009-05-11T07:05:00.000-07:002009-05-11T07:13:24.124-07:00Spacial audioAnother example of an idea I mentioned in my <a href="http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2009/05/11/ntt-docomos-spatial-audio-tech-provides-superhuman-hearing/">Millicomputing talk turning up at NTT</a>. This is something that could be programmed on an iPhone using OpenAL I think. It's really the idea of using stereo sound to carry conversations, which depends upon people using stereo headsets. I think there needs to be additional value in the headset such as video capture of what I'm looking at, and into-eye video display like the MyVue, then spacial audio is an add-on not the main feature.Adrian Cockcrofthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14695336135416848505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271952289926261386.post-77473903821431140842009-05-06T06:51:00.000-07:002009-05-06T06:54:09.400-07:00Renesas Low power HD Video processor<a href="http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2009/05/05/renesass-1080p-decoding-processor-coming-soon-to-a-cell-phone-n/">Sighted at engadget mobile</a>, where they think it could turn up in mobile devices that do both input and output of HD video at 1080p, 30fpsAdrian Cockcrofthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14695336135416848505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271952289926261386.post-70304097683468491472009-05-05T22:35:00.000-07:002009-05-05T22:51:51.204-07:00Andy Bechtolsheim on the Solid State Storage RevolutionAt the MySQL conference <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPagpPQTaQY">Andy gives a talk that is up on YouTube</a>.<br /><br /><object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/QPagpPQTaQY&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/QPagpPQTaQY&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object><br /><br />He gives a good overview of the hardware changes, but doesn't talk about the software challenges, where many of the assumptions and algorithms that are built into all the common operating systems, filesystems and databases are simply wrong. There is a lot of work to be done here. My own work at Sun involved several attempts to point this problem out over the years, and if I had done a better job of getting traction for my ideas, there would be a lot more preparation and research in this area by now. The specific examples include trying to explain the benefits of embedding NVRAM products into servers during the 1990's, and doing extensive testing with solid state disks around 2002. The current size and cost benefits that we see were very predictable, and so are the problems. The SSD's at the time were very expensive, but they were perfectly capable of supporting research and development of new algorithms, and an opportunity was missed.<br /><br />The next thing that is coming is non-volatile RAM (all the RAM in the system), in case anyone is listening. There need to be fundamental changes in operating systems (user level memory protection models etc.) and we then have the ability to build truly diskless database servers, with safely persistent in-memory databases, in user space, no device drivers.Adrian Cockcrofthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14695336135416848505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271952289926261386.post-1749591223963375262009-04-29T07:56:00.000-07:002009-04-29T08:03:34.032-07:00Wireless Video standards warA bunch of references from GigaOM - it looks as if UltraWideBand 480Mbit USB is in trouble, and the alternatives are a dedicated Wireless HD video standard and Wifi based video streaming. UWB has some nice characteristics, but perhaps the ubiquity of WiFi wins again.... (There have been many cases over the years of technologies losing to Ethernet and IP based networks in the end).<br /><br />http://gigaom.com/2008/10/31/ultra-wideband-near-death-as-wiquest-shuts-down/<br /><br />http://gigaom.com/2008/04/09/wireless-hd-is-the-new-front-in-a-standards-war/<br /><br />http://gigaom.com/2008/08/15/vcs-hope-to-see-wi-fi-everywhere/<br /><br />I just want to be able to stream video from my iPhone to my TV set without any wires, don't care what the technology is, and I'm thinking of getting a WiFi enabled TV with Netflix embedded in it around the end of this year.Adrian Cockcrofthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14695336135416848505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271952289926261386.post-53473455345805469052009-04-20T22:54:00.000-07:002009-04-20T22:58:29.338-07:00MIT Medialab's Sixth Sense<a href="http://www.cio.com/article/489089/MIT_Wearable_Gadget_Gives_You_Sixth_Sense_a_la_Minority_Report_">This is exactly the kind of user interface developmen</a>t that <a href="http://millicomputing.blogspot.com/2008/06/slides-usenix-08-invited-paper-on.html">I've been looking forward to as part of my Millicomputing meme</a>. I hope it inspires some products soon...Adrian Cockcrofthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14695336135416848505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271952289926261386.post-23020406971416314392009-03-26T22:41:00.000-07:002009-03-26T22:45:45.301-07:00iPhone 3.0 hardware interface implications<a href="http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/03/20/the-big-30-how-iphone-will-shift-peripheral-devices/">An insightful posting by Daniel Eran on the iPhone 3.0 hardware interface controller, and its significance</a>.<br /><br />All I would like to add is that I really hope wideband/wireless USB is a feature of the next iPhone hardware. 480Mbits/s without any wires, and with wireless video output, so your pocket can drive your projector sunglasses, TV, meeting room projector or computer screen without even leaving your pocket.Adrian Cockcrofthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14695336135416848505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271952289926261386.post-29913308246316794362009-03-02T21:20:00.000-08:002009-03-02T21:22:08.619-08:00Intel licenses Atom to TSMC<a href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/09/03/02/Intel_opens_up_the_Atom_processor_to_TSMC_1.html">Intel licenses low power Atom CPU design to TSMC</a>. This is another step along the road of bringing the Intel x64 architecture down into low power embedded devices to compete with ARM.Adrian Cockcrofthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14695336135416848505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271952289926261386.post-48237856833008900082009-02-16T10:19:00.000-08:002009-02-16T10:22:54.989-08:00TI OMAP4 is based on ARM Cortex A9Nice summary on <a href="http://gigaom.com/2009/02/16/texas-instruments-to-offer-a-champion-chipset-for-mobile/">GigaOM about the new chip just launched by TI</a>.<br /><br />This continues along the direction I outlined two years ago, high def video and graphics processing, very long battery life, high speed networking and lots of CPU capacity in a multicore chip, sampling soon, and in products in 2010.Adrian Cockcrofthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14695336135416848505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5271952289926261386.post-35151913785724605022009-01-04T23:59:00.000-08:002009-01-05T00:05:33.438-08:00Extended iPhone cookbook XML parserErica Sadun published a tree based XML parser for the iPhone that works quite well. I needed to extend it to parse attributes and I <a href="http://code.google.com/p/cookbooksamples/issues/detail?id=15">posted my code back to Erica's google code forum</a>. This works quite efficiently, my app parses complex XML for 100 movies in less than a second as it picks out the instant format ones.Adrian Cockcrofthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14695336135416848505noreply@blogger.com0