Testing email posting

This is my first email post, and I just thought I should say happy Christmas to any readers out there!

Portable technology I didn't know existed

I am typing this on a Nokia N770 Tablet in my Kitchen. The device is connected by Wifi to my home network, and the keyboard I am using is an iGo Stowaway I bought on ebay for 39 pounds sterling. You'll notice I didn't use a pound sign - that's a flaw I currently have with my techno setup. However, I digress into the world of needing keyboard drivers another time.

This keyboard connects to the tablet via bluetooth, and provides me with a complete touch typing experience on a 4" handheld device.

Speedwise, the N770 has what would be considered a paltry 250MHz ARM926 processor. The thing that will amaze and shock all of you techno-petrol heads is that the experience of surfing the web and typing on this is comparable to doing the same on any other device I own with a keyboard. The experience is certainly superior in almost every way to that which I have typing on my Psion Series 5. It is a somewhat hunched experience, having to get in close to what is quite a high resolution screen for such a small size - proportionally, I think the pixels are smaller on this screen than on any computer monitor, making it harder to see what one is writing.

I have found that adding a 1GB RS-MMC card to the tablet affords me the luxury of doubling the amount of memmory the device has to 128MB. This means more applications can be opened and swapped onto the memory card.

Overall, I am able to do most of things I can on any other computer, and I can fit both keyboard and tablet into a coat pocket with room to spare.

Next time, I will talk about my experiences with the Samsung ST1000 GPS/Wifi/Bluetooth touch screen, gesture driven all singing all dancing camera.

some thoughts on the dual nature of the universe

For most of our waking times, we look at the world around us and see nothing but the usual “this and that”. To ask someone if they truly understood the world around them would be met with strange looks. But do we really know anything about this world? Do we know enough to really be able to say that the principles which govern its mechanics will truly be tied up in one neat formula?

The concept of duality – a paradigm particularly revered by the Egyptians – underpins our very existence to the extent that we cannot perceive it. It is a factor so deeply engrained in the fabric of the universe that, were we to actually be granted an understanding of it, we would not be able to handle its true power. I do not profess to understand duality or its depth. My writings here are a simple mind piece to exercise the brain.

Duality is the natural need for all things to have an opposite. It could be argued that, without an opposite, some things would be imperceptible, and others would run amok. It could also be argued that, were some things not to have an opposite, that our ability to perceive the world around us would indeed have evolved differently to compensate for the absence. Can it be said that the world around us presents the epitome of perfectly balanced opposition?

Take, as an example, the simple duality of night and day. If night were not to exist, and we were to live only in daytime, our ability to perceive time and to carry out our sleep cycles would be governed by very different processes to how they are today. All life would be affected, plants would suffer an over abundance of sunshine and people would be forced to spend half the day away from the blazing heat. The global environment would probably be different, where more sunshine would create more clouds, which in turn would block more sunshine, balancing out the temperatures somewhat. In this world governed completely by day, what if we were then told the concept of a night, and what it could mean for us, having never had an inkling of such a concept? Would we then be better off, at this later stage of evolution, to have night thrust upon us? Would we find it as hard to perceive night as we would today to perceive a world with either night or day missing?

In order for some things to come into being, they must first reside in space either in a state of opposition to itself or as a pre-formed consequence of opposite forces. Take the example of a book to be written by an author. In order for that book to come into being, the author must oppose the “force” willed upon him by the blank writing medium, and by his own writers block and gaps in his creativity. I know it may seem strange talking of a piece of paper as having a “force” opposing a writer, but this is true. Opposition, in all of its guises comes down to one thing – the need to expend energy and effort in changing a void into an act of creation. It’s a simple fact that I cannot get from here into town without opposing the separation of me from the town. It is a fact that I cannot go out with a girl if there is hatred getting in the way. A snooker player cannot win a match unless he knows how to play snooker.

Anything that requires practice and hard work lie within the realm of opposition forces. War does not happen without opposing sides. Reproduction doesn’t happen without a man and a woman.

An understanding of the force of opposition can be a very useful thing. It is a belief of mine that the Egyptians and other ancient cultures had an understanding of this force, and used that understanding to build temples and run their great civilisations. From a simple engineering point of view, there is no adequate explanation of how the Egyptians built the Valley Temple at the end of the Sphinx causeway – containing multi-hundred ton blocks of limestone, hewn very accurately and hoisted foot decades into the air. Slave labour is not an adequate means of explaining this feat. Where are the pulley systems strong enough to lift the blocks? How did they organise the thousands of men required, and how did they order and attach the ropes? The same goes for the fallacy of using ramps to build the pyramids. In order to build the limestone and granite pyramids with ramps, up which the blocks were dragged, the ramps themselves would have had to be made out of a material AT LEAST as strong as the blocks that were being dragged up it. The reality is, however, that the ramp would have been several times bigger than the pyramid they were building. For a pyramid of height ~800feet, with a light incline of 15 degrees on the stone ramp, this would necessitate a ramp of length 2985 feet. So what – wouldn’t they need a ramp to build the ramp? A sand ramp would be decimated by the stone blocks, whether carpeted on top with wood burgs or not. Yet somehow the Egyptians opposed this force hampering the creation of their legacy, and conquered it. How, I do not know. Since everything has an opposite, they obviously found it and used it to build their great structure.

When parallel worlds collide

As ARM and Intel continue to collide in the mobile computing industry, a very significant step forward has been made by the ARM camp.

ARM announced recently the availability of Osprey, which is a hard macrocell of a dual core Cortex-A9 processor customised for production on TSMCs 40G process. Furthermore, this is open for licensing today, and can be integrated into any System On Chip that a customer wishes to create.

This contrasts highly with the approach taken by Intel. For production of an Atom Soc, Intel has decided to create an archaic 2-chip package, whereby chip 1 (called Lincroft) will house all of the graphics, the CPU and an integrated memory controller and chip 2 (called Langwell) will house all of the IO capability (disk controllers, and however else that is defined). Finally, and if you want to build something with bluetooth, wifi or 3G connectivity then you need yet a third chip, which is called Evans Peak. The key thing here is to notice that as portability goes up, so too does the number of functional packages (Lincroft, Langwell and Evans Peak will be required to make a decent smartphone, only Lincroft and Langwell required to make a larger MID device). This, in the arena of any portability centric device industry, is absurd. The second thing to note is that a device manufacturer is not able to choose what graphics, or which CPU, they have from the intel line-up - whatever Intel says, goes. The only differentiation being given is in the IO Hub (Langwell) to a small degree.

However, the real difference that Intel now faces from the ARM camp is that ARM now have a high performance macrocell of a dual core CPU that outperforms any Atom in a lesser power envelope, that individual companies can take and integrate as they please with whatever IP they fancy, in whatever package they wish. The real trick up the customer's sleeve is that the place and route and floorplanning of the macrocell has already been done by ARM for the customer - all they have to do is take that box and integrate it into their system, and concentrate their efforts on everything else, without having to worry about hitting frequency goals in the processor as well.

Intel's arguement that the mobile industry is fragmented is the main one given for not allowing differentiation w.r.t. the Atom platform. They effectively want to do the same thing in the mobile industry that was done to the PC industry, and create an innovation-stifling set of standards so that system integrators can start differentiating on..... oh, wait, they can't differentiate. A standard foisted on the community that is so restrictive will lead business to only one door - Intel.

The mobile industry has operated under its own steam for years, and has been influenced by very different socio-economic factors to those that drove the standardisation of the PC Industry. Fashion, entertainment and most of all extreme portability are the key-factors driving the industry. And in parallel, standards that enable that to fluorish have emerged. Bluetooth addresses the issues surrounding sharing information in-situ with another person; Wifi addresses the need to connect to the internet in an unfamiliar setting where there may not be a cable that fits your device; 3G is the all encompassing protocol that carries both voice and broadband through the towers of the company that contracted out the device on a payment plan.

Each of the aforementioned standards don't relate in any way to a straight-jacket on how a system can be built nowadays. In fact, companies seek to innovate the way that these standards are integrated into their platforms. And companies have sprung up that create IP for each of these standards in licensable form, with tools that allow system integrators to integrate those standards seemlessly into their systems. A whole architecture of system integration components exists that become more optimal for portability with each passing generation, and introducing a standard integrated platform mastered by only one company will cripple the fantastic work undertaken in these areas by numbers of people across the industry that far exceed the numbers of people employed by any one company.

So it is two very different worlds colliding. One takes a hands off approach, leading to explosive levels of innovation that can only be achieved by such an open model; and the other is driven entirely by the mechanics of domination, to achieve a controlled mono-culture where only those admitted to the party can prosper.

We've seen what happens in the latter case before, and it leads to some decidedly megalomaniacal business practices in order to hang on to your precarious position.

My opinion is that the latter world cannot continue to prosper, and as ARM moves upwards into the higher performance computing envelopes, people will get sick and tired of the strangulation being caused by Intel, and no amount of strongARM (pun intended) tactics will be able to outweigh the power that open innovation models have in getting their foot in the door of new and exciting industries.

TSMC full of ARM - what about Intel?

According to reports, Freescale, Qualcomm, TI and others are already placing orders with TSMC for massive shipments of chips for Smartbooks that will max out production lines at TSMC and UMC (semiconductor foundry companies).

By November, the lines should be at 100% capacity.

If Intel starts sampling and putting Atom parts into production, won't the TSMC lines already be chock-full of ARM parts from a myriad other customers? How will Intels poor little Atom part get a look in?

A bit about AMDs new fabs

Here's a really good article about AMDs new wafer fabs.

Some of the business behind the curtain is exposed, and the motivation behind the move for AMD to become a fab-less semiconductor company is discussed. The main motivation is their battle with Intel, and the future seems bright for Global Foundries as well.

I just wonder how long it will be before AMD becomes an ARM architectural licensee. And I will discuss the impact this would have in another post, because I'm busy right now.

There will be no PA Semi designed ARM core in apple tablet....

....unless they are planning to release the tablet in 2012 (do read on for why)....

I've been reading the hype regarding Apple's tablet computer thingummy, and there seems to be a zeitgeist of opinion that Apple's latest gadget will contain an ARM compatible CPU designed by the team they gained after acquiring PA Semi in April, 2008.

This article claims that a device will appear at the beginning of 2010, and that during its development (over a 4 year period) Apple had considered use of the Atom processor, rejecting it on grounds of power consumption. To bridge this gap, it is claimed, Apple bought PA Semi at the end of April 2008, in order for Apple to have an in-house capability for System On Chip (SOC), as well as to allow it to differentiate it's technology from everyone elses.

At the moment, iPhone teardowns reveal exact component specs, allowing the revelation of every piece of hardware (and, subsequently, the processor). This is how we all know that the iPhone 3GS contains an ARM Cortex-A8 (along with the Apple Job adverts specifying knowledge of the ARM NEON instruction set - Cortex-A8 is currently the only ARM silicon that has a NEON pipeline attached). Apple could - by designing its own chips - keep the content completely secret - something you cannot do when you buy an off-the-shelf component.

Right now, talk of this tablet computer has people speculating that it will contain PA Semi's first CPU design for Apple.

I think this is unlikely.

Apple acquired PA Semi in April 2008. It takes nearly 2.5 years to bring a new microprocessor - from initial spec, to releasable quality - into a form where you could conceivably manufacture it, having validated it enough.

Various stories have emerged over the last year or so speculating that Apple will be using the PA Semi team to design an ARM CPU. Who knows if this is true, or if any of the rumours about this tablet are true?

PA Semi's last exposure to ARM CPUs was when some of the team worked on the StrongARM processor at DEC. This was an ARMV5 architecture processor, a very different beast to todays ARMV7 processors. Time has moved on, and there is a whole different architecture to learn, with many new features. Just to learn this new architecture would take an architect 6-8 months to master, during which time they would model some of the micro-architectural ideas they have floating in their head. This could happen in parallel with some Register Transfer Level (RTL) trialling, but only in a behavioural sense. By the time PA Semi has done all of this, it brings us to the end of 2008, with nothing more than an understanding of the architecture, and various models of the micro-architecture of the CPU.

Even with an installed product design team working on concepts and prototypes for the actual look and feel of the hardware (remember, they'd been working on this for nearly 2.5 years, if the story is true), the actual silicon inside is a very different beast. Assuming that work began on the actual design of the CPU, it would still take nearly two years to get the core to a state where ARM would sign off on their architectural compliance (if, indeed, the rumours of an ARM compatible CPU design are true). This takes us to the end of 2010 for Apple to have bespoke, manufacturable Silicon.

So no, the timescales are all wrong. And remember, the task above just relates to designing the CPU - it doesn't include the time taken to design a SOC around that CPU. They may have access to various designs already, but if they are going to the trouble to work on a bespoke CPU, then they won't at the same time go and take some other SOC - htey'll build a new one.

Their recent share interest in Imagination Technologies graphics processor design house indicates that Apple will be using their technology in their SOC, but without an in-house design for a CPU, where will they get that from?

To design a SOC - into which they would drop an ARM CPU - they would need an ARM CPU license. When they just purchase an off-the-shelf chip package - like the ones they get from Samsung - they do not need this, because Samsung are the ones who have taken out the ARM CPU license and manufactured a SOC with it.

I think the likely first set of tasks that the PA Semi team will be doing is to create a SOC using a pre-existing set of designs that they would license, so as to keep the flow of products emerging from their portfolio.

There are interesting times ahead, but I don't believe that Apple have a custom ARM CPU ready to go for an early 2010 release. If this even has a shred of truth to it, expect an early 2011 release for anything like that.