Rhythmeering » Hardware

Community Electronics: The Saga Continues

lr — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 17:22:18 +0000

My last post on dematerialization dealt with developments suitable for experienced engineers, but Bug Labs wants to broaden that to include consumers:

Because everything we’re doing is open source, you are free to make it perfect yourself. You want to change something? Go right ahead. And when you do, we’re hoping you share your improvement with everyone else so we all benefit. It’s why we call our work community electronics instead of simply consumer electronics. We, Bug Labs, don’t own the keys to your satisfaction, you do. And this, in our humble opinion, is how it should be.

Bug Blogger: Worth a Thousand Words

via Futurismic and TechCrunch

FPGA-based Processors Move Forward

lr — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 23:00:51 +0000

Via Dwayne Lee at Sun the following video of a OpenSPARC T1 chip running on an FPGA

marks another step towards the kind of software-hardware relationship I think needs to develop. Sun’s next generation T2 has also been open sourced and should have a significant impact. There’s also a pdf with design details.

Dematerializing The Computer

lr — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 05:04:27 +0000

For the hands-on, hardware-minded folk, some links from a Squeak hardware mail list discussion on the state of the FPGA-based Plurion project which zoom in another level on the evolution of the hardware-software relationship.

IDaSS - Interactive Design and Simulation System

JOP - Java Optimized Processor

Hardware Objects

The Evolution of CAD

lr — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 12:19:09 +0000

Via comments on an entry about Fujitsu’s 3D image recognition chip, I came upon this Cadalyst article on visualization which like the commenter, points out the advantages of integrating CAD and traditional design visualization tools

The ability to turn a design drawing into a visualization that mimics reality is an invaluable tool for troubleshooting a design, convincing a nervous client or helping to promote a design firm’s capabilities. This segment of the CAD software industry continues to grow and evolve, with rendered visualizations becoming more sophisticated.

While this trend is indeed a positive one, it is fundamentally constrained by an exclusively designer-centric perspective. This view understandably stems from the historical hardware constraints which made customer/end user access to the CAD data prohibitively expensive. However, as can be seen in the high end, proprietary CAD/PLM offerings of Dassault, this tradeoff is not an inherent requirement. In a rhythmeering environment integration is needed for manufacturing, maintenance, supply chain, marketing analysis - throughout the complete product lifecycle. In order to achieve this level of deep integration, the underlying information models for CAD have to become features of the operating system and eventually the hardware. Open source platforms like Croquet point the way.

More Evidence That Hardware Is Returning To It’s Roots

lr — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 08:33:14 +0000

Along the way to hardware that is really fluid and adapable, software is weaving its way deeper and deeper into the hardware. A couple of writers envisioned the next near-term steps earlier this year:

… virtualization technologies should be pushed down further into the iron and sold in volume. In short, there should be some way to make these technologies a low-cost part of the system, … it should be made in an on-demand fashion, activated with a key for a nominal fee, complete with physical-to-virtual conversion tools and virtual-to-physical tools to undo the virtualization if customers decide to do that, too.

The Unix Guardian: Virtualization belongs in the system, not in the software

The effect of free, hardware based virtualization which is automatically there would make for very interesting x86 servers. Even more so with a few on-board, fully virtualized, multi-fabric I/O channels. Kind a baby mainframe.

Maybe it’s a crazy idea. Maybe its a vision of the future of computing.

Is this a crazy idea?

Now, in the aftermath of the VMWare IPO, we’re seeing it unfold.

“With virtualization, where you can run any operating system on top, it seems a lot more logical that it would be effectively a layer sitting on top of a server,” said Illuminata analyst Gordon Haff. “Why wouldn’t it be supplied with the server?”

XenSource announced XenExpress OEM Edition last week, and market leader VMware this week is announcing VMware ESX Server 3i at its VMworld conference. The products run from flash memory built into a server instead of being installed on the hard drive.

The embedded versions aren’t just a fantasy. VMware has partnerships with IBM, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Network Appliance. “We expect them to begin integrating ESX Server 3i into their servers later this year or early next,” a VMware representative said.

The move has strategic importance in these relatively early days of virtualization, elevating the profile of virtualization specialists’ products. Getting a foot in the door could help the virtualization specialists get a foot in the doors of customers who might be interested in higher-level products to manage the increasingly sophisticated computing infrastructure that can be built atop virtual machines.

Virtualization has been around for decades, but its inclusion in mainstream computers with x86 chips is bringing it out of the shadows. And the money is following.

Virtualization: A feature of the hardware, not the OS? | CNET News.com

There are a number of trends interrelated to this many of which are growing exponentially. Kansas has left the building.

Cisco - The Software Company

lr — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 21:51:05 +0000

More evidence that hardware is returning to its roots:

“We have the view that we have to become a software company,”

Cisco CEO John Chambers at the Networkers Conference via PC World

Water and Ice

lr — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 02:35:33 +0000

In The Roots of Hardware and elsewhere, I’ve spoken about the software-hardware relationship from a bird’s-eye view, but it can be helpful to zoom in a bit to see what’s important about the relationship. Ice and water are made of the same chemical compound - H2O, but in different states. One could cook or wash with ice cubes but things won’t work out as well as with water. Similarly, it would be ineffective to store perishable food in water. Hardware and software are both made from the same mathematical elements - boolean logic, but in different states. Hardware is fast but inflexible. Software has unlimited flexibility but runs more slowly. It wouldn’t be wise to program a payroll system into hardware because requirements can change. 3D graphics software without hardware assistance runs very slowly. I should note that a short but very powerful book - The Pattern on the Stone demystifies computers making it possible for anyone, regardless of technical background/aptitude to understand the basic inner workings of computing.

In our bodies ice is non-existent. Throughout the ecosystems we typically frequent each day, liquid water is more abundant and useful than ice. The same should be true of software and hardware but today’s hardware dominates the information ecosystem. This prematurely crystallized software frequently serves as an impediment to innovation.

Hardware is really just software crystallized early. It is there to make program schemes run as efficiently as possible. But far too often the hardware has been presented as a given and it is up to software designers to make it appear reasonable. This has caused low-level techniques and excessive optimization to hold back progress in program design. … In short, most hardware designs today are just re-optimizations of moribund architectures.

Alan Kay: The Early History of Smalltalk

(more…)

Jazz Semiconductor

lr — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 05:38:53 +0000

Following up on the last entry on IBM’s Jazz software, I came across Jazz Technologies, a company founded by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and two other former Apple execs. Last fall they acquired a company called Jazz Semiconductor whose mission statement lists three key values that resonate with the objectives of IBM’s Jazz:

Innovative
We create breakthrough solutions for silicon technology and business processes that result in product successes for our customers.
Innovation can happen in a more predictable manner than invention, with a shorter time-to-profit
Key components of innovation are motivated people plus an open environment
Our ability to innovate is tested daily by our customers

Collaborative
People are the foundation of our organization. We empower teams to be business owners, foster boundary-less organizations, and embrace diversity. We enjoy working in partnerships, both internally and externally.
Working together toward collective goals
Being a “team player”
Working with customers and for customers to achieve optimal solutions

Agile
We are quick, resourceful, and adaptable; completely focused on meeting customer needs. We do this by:
Listening to customers and doing our best to meet their needs
Being flexible in business negotiations to create mutually beneficial partnerships between Jazz and its customers
Thinking “outside the box” to arrive at creative solutions for our customers, their end products, and their design needs

This synergy isn’t surprising given the close relationship between hardware I recently posted on in The Roots of Hardware. Wozniak, the hardware genius behind the original Apple computer appears to be very involved, holding three positions:

Executive Vice President
Chief Technical Officer
Chief Visionary Officer

Very interesting given the musical relationship between the counterculture of the 1960’s and technology - Apple was born out of that counterculture .
Jazz

Wozniak

Apple