Qualcomm Snapdragon - 1.3GHz Arm Cortex A8

The performance of ARM architecture chips continues to increase, this announcement bumps the clock rate up to 1.3GHz and has a long list of integrated features.

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.

Wireless broadband speeds in practice

Useful table of standards and speeds via GigaOM

Spacial audio

Another example of an idea I mentioned in my Millicomputing talk turning up at NTT. 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.

Renesas Low power HD Video processor

Sighted at engadget mobile, where they think it could turn up in mobile devices that do both input and output of HD video at 1080p, 30fps

Andy Bechtolsheim on the Solid State Storage Revolution

At the MySQL conference Andy gives a talk that is up on YouTube.



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.

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.

Wireless Video standards war

A 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).

http://gigaom.com/2008/10/31/ultra-wideband-near-death-as-wiquest-shuts-down/

http://gigaom.com/2008/04/09/wireless-hd-is-the-new-front-in-a-standards-war/

http://gigaom.com/2008/08/15/vcs-hope-to-see-wi-fi-everywhere/

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.

MIT Medialab's Sixth Sense

This is exactly the kind of user interface development that I've been looking forward to as part of my Millicomputing meme. I hope it inspires some products soon...