IBM to Unveil Major Tech Advances 165
mr wrote to us to point out an article on IBM in today's SF Chronicle. IBM, starting on Monday at the Internation Electron Device Meeting, will be disclosing eighteen new inventions coming out of their labs. IBM goes to so far to say that it will keep Moore's Law [?] around for at least another decade. The article also talks about some of IBM's recent advancements as well as describing some of the new stuff to be unveiled.
Broken link (Score:4)
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Extra 'an ' in middle of url (Score:1)
The future is a strange trip indeed.... (Score:2)
Never count Big Blue out (Score:1)
It's a pity that they are so big and therefore a bit less focused than other tech companies. Allocating resources and capital for a $180 billion must be a real pain. Maybe I'll get the chance to try that some day
Broken link yet again (Score:2)
I would say that usually about 10% of the links given in a top level story can be counted upon to be broken - pretty poor.
Sure, if you read the discussion someone usually figures out the correct link and posts it, but sometimes I would just like to read the link itself without having to sort through the comments to find the 'real' link.
-josh
For those who haven't read the article (Score:2)
Yada, yada, yada, Silicon-On-Insulators, yada, yada, yada, Moore Law's, yada, yada, yada, still valid, yada, despite what the cynics say, yada, yada, copper instead of aluminum, yada, Moore's Law, yada, yada.
Advances Today (Score:4)
Motorola today said that they had found a way to make transistors 4 times smaller and be implementable in a short time-span. It reduces power consuption and allows for speed increases. This was on your favourite site [theregister.co.uk].
The trench technology looks cool, burying the DRAM under the processor so it doesn't have to be next to it. That should increase yield whilst not compromising on capabilities of the processor. How much DRAM can you fit in 100mm^2? 400mm^2? That would be the amount of 2nd or 1st level cache your Athlon/Alpha processor could have built in, running at full speed!
... (Score:2)
- A new space age cereal that doesn't immediately become soggy in milk...
- Revolutionary new system that doesn't crash (guess which one).
- One-click power-on sequence for computers (amazon.com, eat your heart out!)
- An even *larger* harddrive to store pr0n and mp3s!
- Harddrives now come in designer colors like "tangerine" and "rasberry" (You'll note the lack of a "lemon" color, however!)
- Computers from Intel that actually boot.
- A new Office clone that has REAL useable features like "Extend Deadline", "Make pretty graphs", and "Create Bollocks" instead of a stupid animated paper clip.
Horrah for IBM - working for the common user. =)Faster CPUs aren't what we need (Score:3)
Mike Eckardt [geocities.com] meckardt@yahoo.spam.com
50% only? (Score:1)
Re:achem...buy stock? (Score:1)
Sure, this may not last forever, but what does? It will certainly last for the next few years, and that's what matters today. IBM is a long term stock, and should be treated as one.
Moore's Law Predictions (Score:4)
Re:IBM made money from NAZI efforts (Score:1)
Really, what Nazi technology in the 30s and 40s have anything to do with semiconductors?
Now if we were talking about rocket engines or aircraft wings you might have some basis in fact...
Go Big Blue! (Score:4)
Looks like all the money IBM has historically put into general R&D is paying off once again. That's one thing Big Blue has usually gotten right....and something other large tech firms can learn from. Fund your scientists, and don't necessarily expect products immediately from them. Let them do basic research, and the products will follow.
-- JackCat
Re:50% only? (Score:2)
By fundamentally changing the architecture of the chip (though it could be argued whether these advances are truly fundamental), IBM is giving a new area for improvement. Just as it's hard to double the speed of the chip by improving transitor technology when transitors have not yet been invented, it's also hard to improve the SOI (silicon-on-insulator) technology unless it has been invented. Moore's Law is only partially about new technologies; it also helps to refine old ones.
~=Keelor
OT: Use of moderation descriptors (Score:3)
This is similar to calling the "first post" messages "Flamebait" (well, maybe hot grits and petrified are flamebait). They're not. Trolls at best.
The above is NOT a ulterior plea to be moderated up by folks who want to prove how "fair" they are. I moderate every week or two, just like a lot of you, and I am NOT looking for extra karma points -- each of my posts stands on its own merits (good, bad, or otherwise
Re:Never count Big Blue out (Score:2)
Heh. Thanks, from all the IBMers on /.
It's a pity that they are so big and therefore a bit less focused than other tech companies.
Actually, that is IBM's greatest strength. If you look at any of the markets that IBM plays in, you will note that we are rarely #1, but we are pretty consistently among the top players. If you look at most of those folks in the number one spot, you will note that IBM is usually providing them a fair sized chunk of the technology they use. Lou Gerstner set up the concept of "Coopetition", which is fun, because even if IBM is losing, it is winning. IBM has more patents than any other player in the industry, and the numbers keep growing. For instance, Dell uses IBM hard drives, IBM customer support, IBM... It doesn't hurt too much when Aptiva sales go down, because Dell (amongst others) picks up the slack and IBM gets a cut of the profits.
On the other hand, allocating resources is a royal pain. My manager was going home at 2 AM and coming in at 10 AM for two weeks while we were trying to set up the budget for 2000, and none of it is going to have any meaning by May... *sigh*
B. Elgin
Re:... (Score:2)
A new ai-based patent generator that automatically gleens information off the net, generates patents from it, and submits it to the patent office.
Damn, why aren't I an IBM executive!! We'd make a killing, and absolute killing!
Re:Moore's Law Predictions (Score:2)
Re:For those who haven't read the article (Score:1)
Not much new covered. The R&D folks announced most of this stuff a while ago. It just sounds more impressive if you talk about a bunch of advances together. This is the fundamental flaw and great success of marketing...
B. Elgin
Re:Never count Big Blue out (Score:1)
Re:... (Score:1)
In all fairness, IBM has a reputation for actually creating the things they patent (additionally, those inventions are typically innovative)... unlike some other companies.
Re:Broken link yet again (Score:5)
All the standard benefits of Open Source (bug cleaning, extra features like URL checking, &c.)
The warm fuzzy of knowing that /. is putting its money where its mouth is. IOW, as perhaps the discussion site for Open Source, /. would do well to directly and concretely support the ideals we all support as a community.
So how about it, CmdrTaco? How about letting us take a crack at it?
Re:Moore's Law Predictions (Score:2)
Actually, it started out at 2 years. For the last several years, we have been meeting the 18 month cycle. You know how it is with users, if you treat them better than they they are used to, eventually, they experct the better treatment, and complain bitterly once the original level is resumed.
Also, the original statement said nothing regarding speed of microprocessors. The original statement was regarding complexity of the processors. It's just that the media, and therefore the majority of users cannot comprehend complexity, and substitute speed instead. For the most part, it works.
Re:The future is a strange trip indeed.... (Score:1)
Re:... (Score:1)
Mauve has more RAM.
/.
candy coated marketing happy feely stuff (Score:1)
I'd rather talk about offtopic-topics like the WTO discussion the other day. Now that was interesting...around 800 posts!
Ya think in 20 years Microsoft will do the same? (Score:5)
Now what I'm really wondering is this : at least one theory suggests that the government is in the process of doing to MS what it did to IBM back in the 80's. If that's true, and the DOJ keeps MS so tangled up over the next decade that competitors emerge, does anybody think that Microsoft will reinvent itself in a similar way? Sure, we can all hate MS as the big bad corporate enemy now, but we all did that 20 years ago, too, when it was IBM. Now we love them.
Re:Moore's Law Predictions (Score:2)
In 1965, Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, was preparing a speech and made a memorable observation. He observed that device complexity doubles about every 18 months. This observation is now known as Moore's Law.
So they were sticking to it a year ago... I'd be real interested, though, in seeing a reference to 2 years instead -- that would be quite a change...
Re:The future is a strange trip indeed.... (Score:1)
Re:Advances Today (Score:2)
Would heat dissipation be a barrier to adding more layers to a CPU? Letting the DRAM be basically underneath the rest would seem to increase power consumption per unit surface area... ?
Or are there other barriers (manufacturing?) that mean that they're not looking at N-layer processors yet, N > 2?
Re:For those who haven't read the article (Score:1)
"Who are you, to criticise me? Who are you, to despise me? If your slate is clean, than you can throw stones. If your slate is not, than leave me alone!"
DoomHaven's listening to Jesus Christ Superstar. Damn good musical.
Anyway, to the people who have problems with moderation: if you don't like it, ignore it! Nothing's forcing you to read all posts or even to filter the level of posts that you see!
That said, if it's really a problem for you then you should make a civialized attempt to get it changed.
Faster CPUs are just what I need (Score:1)
Of course, if I were independantly wealthy, I could just get a Penguin computing 8-way Xeon system w/ IBM 10,000 RPM SCSI harddrives. Buy I don't happen to have $100k lying around...
Of course network speed is important, but CPU speed is, too!
IBM and ..... (Score:3)
Probably wrong, but fun to speculate nonetheless.
Re:Faster CPUs aren't what we need (Score:4)
intersting work is being done in this direction under the Processor-in-Memory (PIM) project. [nd.edu]
Another mechanism to decrease the effect of this memory latency is to use large numbers of low-level threads (often automatically generated by the compiler) to mask latency. By decreasing the context switch penalty to a single cycle (or less with interwoven threads) and then switching on every cache miss substantial benifits can be made. One example of this is Tera computing MTA [tera.com] architechture. For certain common simulation tasks the 4-processor TERA machine blew away a multi-node Origin and Cray computer according to This NASA report [esgeroth.org].
Also, Sun's new MAJC [arstechnica.com] architechture uses threads to mask latency.
Interwoven threads (where the processor switches thread every clock cycle) has the benifits of removing branch and data dependancies from a processor pipleine, thus removing the need for processor complexity like data forwarding, speculative execution, and the like. An example of this technique can be found a the TIPSI Project [nd.edu].
Re:Advances Today (Score:1)
Of course, layering processor cores would be a problem, but we aren't doing that.
Mixed feelings on this one (Score:1)
A lot of the article sounds pretty neat, but I admit I don't know if I like the bit about putting DRAM on the CPU...from a sheer speed perspective, it's obviously superior, but who wants to have to upgrade the CPU to put more RAM in the machine? Granted, I'm sure you'd still have DIMM slots, but those would be (of course) slower than the on-CPU memory.
What it reminds me of most is the old days of trying to configure 640K of main memory to squeeze every last byte out of it to run things...personally, I've rather enjoyed that sort of fading into a quaint historical oddity. Putting memory on the CPU just means software (by which I mean games, at the moment) is going to require a certain amount of "CPU RAM," and a certain amount of system RAM, and a certain amount of video card RAM.
*shrug*
Just $0.02 from someone who remembers reading the install guide for Falcon 3.0...
"Let's see...if I don't run an OS, I can get 604K main memory free..."
Re:Ya think in 20 years Microsoft will do the same (Score:1)
I have to wonder if a direct correlation between MS and IBM is possible though? IBM can do general hardware research with no specific application in mind, but will MS (or any other software company) beable to do general software research?
Way to go IBM (Score:4)
These are all nice new technologies, but let' s hope IBM knows how to use them. Historically IBM has created quite a few technologies; unfortunately the management has, in the past, simply thrown the innovations away. Here are a couple examples:
On the other hand, many IBM innovations did make it, such as the magnetic hard drive. IBM still makes great hard drives.
The article didn't say it, but allowing RAM transistors to exist below other circuitry effectively doubles the data density of existing DRAM chips. How does tens of gigabytes of RAM sound? The problem: how do you cool double the amount of heat coming from those RAM chips?
I am looking forward to the faster and better computers and devices that will come from these innovations.
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Re:Moore's Law Predictions (Score:1)
According to http://www.intel.com/pressroom/kits/bios/moore.htm
and
http://www.intel.com/intel/museum/25anniv/hof/moor e.htm
Sorry!
Re:Faster CPUs aren't what we need (Score:1)
1) Processors for network equipment need REALLY fast processors to handle ever faster network links intelligently. (i.e. handling packets at the IP layer and above, instead of acting as switches)
2) IBM believes in practical business applications for supercomputing. This is another step toward ever-faster machines for that purpose. This is part of Lou's "Pervasive Computing" initiatives.
3) Some of these new innovations cut heat production and reduce power requirements, this makes them useful for mobile applications. (Another part of "pervasive computing".)
No, these things aren't really needed for PC's. and IBM is not in the PC processor Biz. (Although they do perform a lot of fab work for those who are.)
Only if we let it. (Score:2)
As I see this the more something costs in time and complexity the more it costs in terms of raw dollars. I really would rather not have to go back to the days of yore when computers had armed guards around them and required the use of a Phd in some obscure field to operate.
Having the 5 richest kings of Europe have access to all the technology makes me sick. I want to have a chance. The only reason that things like the open source movement actually succeeded was because of cheap but powerful/functional computers that everyone could and can now buy. I would hate to think of the world without affordable computing. Now people m,ay not like to think this way but think just how happy all these purists could be if they could have their Ivory TOwer back? They could do all their little research without having all the "rabble" to prevent them from their task.
If this can be done and actually have some useful stuff that can actually make the computer less of some kind of silly tool that still requires a great del of knowledge to get something working to it's full potential (for example to have say True AI, Instant linguistic translation, weather forcasting and the like). If people could write programs that did really interesting things then perhaps we would see an improvement in society. As it stands now most people would reason that *I* should spend the time/money/tallent/fatigue to write something that will do some socially enriching task. However most people don't have time time to go and get a Phd degree and then spend at least another 20 hours a day writing code and have just one area of a project take at least 120 years.
That's why we have crummy programs and systems of programs. People expect anyone who wants to make their life better to actually do it themselves. The whole perpetuated idea is that happiness exists outside computers in something that cannot and will not last be that marriage, family, career, wealth, health, or life. I maintain that existence could be viewed in relation to how well of a computer experience. If I could exist inside a computer even 5 minutes after my own physical death I would say that it would be a welcome thing.
Re:For those who haven't read the article (Score:1)
Correct!
>Damn good musical.
Correct!
>Anyway, to the people who have problems with
>moderation: if you don't like it, ignore it!
>Nothing's forcing you to read all posts or even
>to filter the level of posts that you see!
Yes, I agree. I leave my threshold on -1, because I want to see everything, from the Top Ten comments to the "Hey, I just poured hot grits...". If you don't like moderatation, don't use it. If my comments don't deserve the moderation, it will come out during meta-moderation.
OT: Use of moderation descriptors (Score:3)
I agree. I think that the "overrated" and "underrated" should be used to simply mark a post up or down. The others should be used only if they're descriptive. Also, I wish that the term "Troll" was not a negative score. I'm not saying it should be positive, but not all Trolls are bad.
This is similar to calling the "first post" messages "Flamebait" (well, maybe hot grits and petrified are flamebait). They're not. Trolls at best.
Maybe there should be a "First Post Moron" descriptor.
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Re:Moore's Law Predictions (Score:1)
Re:Only if we let it. (Score:2)
Do you really mean this? You're surely not implying that our 1*10^8 transistor/chip systems, which are infinitely more complex than early computers, are more expensive than their predecessors - are you?
That's one thing I love about being alive right now. The faster and better my toys become, the cheaper they get. I mean, your run-of-the-mill Celeron system is practically a supercomputer compared to the old 808x machines, but only cost a fraction of the price (in current, not even adjusted units!). This is great! I suspected that the 3D petaflop box will cost about $30 2040 dollars. I'll be saving. :)
Re:Way to go IBM (Score:2)
I read an article a few months ago which stated that IBM has issued more patents (whether that's good or bad is another question) than any other company for the last 5 or 6 years. They pumped as much money into IBM Research as is spent on venture capitaling in Silicon Valley in 1996.
Dana
Re:For those who haven't read the article (Score:1)
The "hot grits" comments are witless and juvenile. I laugh every time I read one, indulging my witless, juvenile side
Re:Ya think in 20 years Microsoft will do the same (Score:1)
From what I've read about MS and their people, Mhyrvold apparently spends most of his time writing massive memos that nobody reads. :) This guy was around the company when Gates said the Internet was no big thing. You'd think he would have whispered something in Bill's ear :).
Re:Wonderful IBM Commercials (Score:1)
Re:Moore's Law Predictions (Score:2)
Hey, I saw that X-files....it wasn't an alien :) (Score:1)
I've been thinking about IBM's style lately, and I have a question. How long have they been producing subsystems? I know that other companies use IBM products/tech in their own offerings, which goes against the proprietary mentality I usually hold synonymous with Big Blue. Old Big Blue, anyway.
Re:Wonderful IBM Commercials (Score:5)
:) True. I'd probably be more worried about it if I wasn't surrounded by people who are very interested in that sort of thing. It's a fact of life that industry wants profiling information.
At least IBM is taking the right approach -- "We want profiling information so that we can help streamline the information we're providing to you." If I know you play tennis, there's two ways you can look at it. One is, "Oooo good, now I can sell him more tennis balls." Everybody hates this, of course, because nobody likes to feel like a target. But the second is, "Hey, you know what? Maybe I really am interested in knowing whose got a deal on tennis balls." Sometimes targeted messaging does actually work. It's really the same thing that the demographics have always been, only with better profiling they really know. They're not assuming "Oh, because you're in group X, there's a Y% likelihood that you play tennis."
There's a new movement in this area. That's to get away from the use of the word "targeting" and to start making use of expressions like "1:1" and "relationship". People are happier having a relationship with the businesses they use. The whole point of the IBM focusgroup commercial is a bunch of people being pissed off because the ad people don't know them.
And just in case anybody is prepared to argue that "1:1 relationship" is just new marketing hype for the same old spam, let me put it this way. When my grandfather walked into the local hardware store, the shopkeeper could say "Hello, Dan! Getting ready to send the kids off to college pretty soon, aren't ya? Got a good sale on bookcases down in aisle 3." And he would never, ever say "Have ya seen our sale on house paint?" if he knew that my dad had aluminum siding. And service like that was *appreciated*. People go on to the internet today and they ask where all the service went. The optimist in me says that all this 1:1 relationship stuff is actually a way to try and bring that *back*. If I really thought that I was just coming up with a better mousetrap (or in this case, spamtrap), I don't think I'd be working where I work.
d
Re:Broken link yet again (Score:1)
...that, and the shame factor of bad coding style and/or adult language comments might be involved
18 to 24 months (Score:1)
I always thought Moore's law said 18 months. Is IBM trying to fudge the numbers to make the article sound better?
(OT) does anyone know the equivalant laws for RAM, hard disks, monitor size, etc?
Re:Wonderful IBM Commercials (Score:1)
I think we would appreciate the shopkeepers "service" significantly less if he just busted up in your house yelling "I've got bookcases I've got bookcases" when the two of you have never even met before.
Quite frankly if someone just invaded my house (including spammers if I ever find one of the rat bastards) I don't care what they are selling whether it is bookcases or siding. If I want bookcases I will go to the shopkeeper who has given me such good service and never busted up in my house. On the other hand the house buster/located spammer is going to find an irate home owner holding a baseball bat ready to Laissez les bon temps rouller, let the good times roll!
Re:Mixed feelings on this one (Score:1)
If the price is cheap enough, why not buy a faster CPU just to get more memory?
Re:Commercials (Score:1)
Best commerical I ever saw went like this:
2 minutes of computer chips being put into life support systems and pacemakers, old people running around, celebrating 100year birthdays, with cheesy music in the background and a voice over saying "We have the power today, to help people last longer, the computer chips needed to make life support systems. With our new chips we could save lives, but we thought, Nah, forget it, lets play games" All the chips were removed from the pacemakers, the old people started having heart attacks mixed in with shots of Quake and racing games.
It turned out to be an advert for 3dfx's stuff.
I only saw it once, but it was hilarious.
It was probably axed for being offensive.
Re:Ya think in 20 years Microsoft will do the same (Score:1)
Pick up Robert X. Cringely's "Accidental Empires" for some fun stories about how IBM squandered it's early lead in the PC business. Most of the stories are pretty true.
Having said all of that, let me also defend IBM by saying that big companies faced with radical changes in technology almost always get killed, and IBM did what most other companies couldn't have done: somehow ride out the problems and rise from the ashes to play a new role in the techonology world. That's something to be respected, along with all of their recent initiatives mentioned above.
Re:OT: Use of moderation descriptors (Score:3)
then everyone who replies to it should automatically be moderated
down...
Re:Wonderful IBM Commercials (Score:2)
You're right. Spam sucks in all flavors. But if you've voluntarily walked through the door of my hardwareshop.com, I'm hoping that you will appreciate me knowing that you have kids ready to go off to college so I can point you to the deal on bookcases.
And now I bet somebody's gonna moderate me down as being overrated. I hate it when that happens. :) It's not my fault I'm posting at a natural 2!
Moore's Law (Score:1)
"The ratio of transistors to area doubles roughly every 18 months."
Now, whether this directly translates into performance is to be debated. But by and large, Gordon was right...
How many other companies can do... (Score:1)
My list includes:
Intel
AT&T
Lucent
Nortel
Sun Microsystems
any others?
Re:Broken link yet again (Score:2)
(Mozilla was proof, to many people, that isolated coders can NEVER produce the same standard of code as a large, bazaar-style group. When it was first released, it was remeniscent of the mold in coffee mugs left out for several months.)
food for thought: (Score:1)
IBM says they can keep up with Moore's law for 10 more years.
Intel has said they don't know how they will increase speed after 2000 or so
IBM and Motorola make PowerPC
Intel makes x86
This could be fun for us Mac users.
It would have to outweight die-yield (Score:1)
Re:Go Big Blue! (Score:1)
Let them do basic research, and the products will follow.
True.IBM also has the distribution and manufacturing channels in place.
Having dealt with a lot of retailers, I know that (from a reseller's perspective) a supplier with those two solid is worth it's weight in customers.
Re:Ya think in 20 years Microsoft will do the same (Score:1)
I took a look at the microsoft Research site research.microsoft.com [microsoft.com] which just struck me as more of an after-thought than a real effort to "instutionalize" a dynamic and relevant research culture. Of course this is an "outsider looking in" perception of microsoft, but with that same sort of outsiders view of IBM its pretty clear they have always taken this approach.
Re:...cereal (Score:1)
the cereal you refer to is sold by phillip morris' as "grape nuts".
Re:Commercials (Score:1)
Re:Actually, it is your fault. (Score:1)
IBM's Cunning Plan Revealed... (Score:5)
"I'm worried. We have those press announcements on Monday, and you -know- Slashdot'll cover them. Our servers will never cope!"
"It's ok. I've just put up some web pages, pre-announcing the announcements. If the servers melt down this week, we'll still have the weekend to replace them, and Slashdot readers don't care about repeat announcements."
"That's cunning! Do you think they'll fall for it?"
"I think so. The system load was showing 490% CPU usage, and rising fast, the last time I looked."
* In the distance, the sound of a hard disk spinning out of the drive bay and colliding with a UPS unit. An IL&M techie is on-hand to supply the effects *
* Outside the building, the T1 link is glowing red, then blue, before finally exploding as the energy from the packets causes the fibre to undergo nuclear fusion. *
Re:...cereal (Score:1)
I believe the actual innovation is that it's edible. Can't say the same for grape nuts.
Re:OS /. (Score:1)
I can think of a couple different forums that
I regularly read/post to that could seriously
benefit from a
The benifits to
lots of others would benefit even more.
we could put a powered by
Re:heat dissipation (Score:3)
In fact reducing the number of off-die memory accesses may reduce the power (no need to source/sink to those external bus signal's caps)
The more complex anything gets - the lower the yield (basic rule of nature - I suspect it applies to life too :-)
Re:OT: Use of moderation descriptors (Score:1)
OT: I agree, Open Source /. (Score:2)
The code page claims it's not in a state ready for release - well then, tarball it up and that's good enough for me. It may not work right off the bat on another site, or there may be too many slashdot-isms hardcoded into the scripts, but we'll get things ironed out and smoothed out soon enough. Nobody wants to try and clone slashdot's style, just to use the cool forum design, customizability, and user moderation for sites covering other topics.
There is the security concern involved with open sourcing something suddenly - don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating "security through obscurity" - but while open source software may have fewer security flaws than closed source software, closed source software that suddenly is liberated is bound to have more bugs, more visible, for a while after the initial code release.
I don't think either of those things are a really convincing argument for keeping the code to the epitome of open source advocacy sites under wraps, though. I don't suppose Andover is against releasing the code, worried about competing web portals taking your ad revenue?
Re:Only if we let it. (Score:2)
Re:OT: Use of moderation descriptors (Score:1)
Re:Ya think in 20 years Microsoft will do the same (Score:1)
Except that Nathan is one of the MANY people who have left/taken a long leave from Microsoft.
His leaving was hadly mentioned by anyone....which is shocking, IMNSHO
Re:Ya think in 20 years Microsoft will do the same (Score:1)
Only by creating superior products can we defeat this monstrosity.
Allocation of Resources (Score:2)
There are a lot of smart people at Microsoft, and they do a lot of things well. My personal opinion is that a lot of the problems with their software comes from making a deliberate effort to lock competitors out. If MS took half the time, energy, and money it appears to devote to keeping its competitors down, and focused on simplifying their software and supporting open standards, they'd be producing a lot better products.
Re:50% only? (Score:1)
The "silicon on insulator" advance combined with using copper gives the 50% increase that you quote, but that is only the first advance mentioned in the article.
The second advance, embedded DRAM, is claimed to increase performance two to three times, or 200% to 300%. Combined with the SOI and copper advances, that is enough to meet Moore's law for the next couple of years. It isn't enough to meet it for the next decade however.
Re:IBM and ..... (Score:1)
Re:Moore's Law Predictions (Score:1)
Re:Way to go IBM - but not SQL (Score:1)
Compared to the now-vanquished QUEL from ingres it's pretty weak.
And, of course, it has an icky COBOL-like look+feel.
All, in all, it's the EBCDIC of DB languages.
Re:Ya think in 20 years Microsoft will do the same (Score:1)
Re:OT: I agree, Open Source /. (Score:1)
Re:food for thought: (Score:1)
--
Re:50% only? (Score:1)
I don't know what SOI does, but it sounds like a wildly exaggerated claim by IBM.
IBM *did* develop SQL (Score:1)
To the A.C. in the other post Larry Ellison didn't come up with the idea for relational databases. It was a fellow named Ted Codd in 1970, quite a while before Oracle was founded. IBM developped several relational dbms-es in the 70s, so they didn't appear to think it was a silly idea.
Just happened to have my old databases textbook handy
Dana
Re:Moore's Law Predictions (Score:1)
Windows 2010 (aka 2005, 2002, NT6) will ship by the end of the year, MS promises, if it can just get the billion lines of code debugged.
Re:Moore's Law Predictions (Score:2)
That puts the average software program at about 3.2 GB installed, with only minor functionality upgrade.
Until we can get software manufacturers to stop putting out bigger and more bloated materials, then we're going to need bigger and better hardware.
I know it's nice to have the biggest and the fastest, but for a lot of people (myself included), it's not feasible. I buy about 3 - 6 months behind the times, after the prices have fallen. And sure enough, every time I upgrade, there's a wave of new Win-compatible software packages claiming to be better, and improved, while really only offering me just that much more bloat.
Don't have the problem as much on my Linux box, but it does still occur.
Re:How many other companies can do... (Score:3)
How about the transistor? Or the laser? Or Information Theory? The solar cell, and perhaps the communications satellite? Cellular phones? How about the first photonic computer? How about Radio Astronomy including the Big Bang remnant radiation? The application of statistics to the social sciences? Or waveguide optical fibre (making transoceaninc optical cables possible).
AT&T had the best industrial labs in the world before they spun them off as Lucent. No other lab in the world has come close to contributing as much. Eleven workers at Bell Labs have been awarded Nobel Prizes.
Schawlow and Townes Invent the Laser
The invention of the laser, which stands for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation, can be dated to 1958 with the publication of the scientific paper, Infrared and Optical Masers, by Arthur L. Schawlow, then a Bell Labs researcher, and Charles H. Townes, a consultant to Bell Labs. That paper, published in Physical Review, the journal of the American Physical Society, launched a new scientific field and opened the door to a multibillion-dollar industry.
The work of Schawlow and Townes, however, can be traced back to the 1940s and early 50s and their interest in the field of microwave spectroscopy, which had emerged as a powerful tool for puzzling out the characteristics of a wide variety of molecules. Neither man was planning on inventing a device that would revolutionize a number of industries, from communications to medicine. They had something more straightforward in mind, developing a device to help them study molecular structures.
The beginnings at Bell Labs Townes, armed with a Ph.D. degree in physics from the California Institute of Technology, joined Bell Labs in 1939, where he worked on a variety of problems, including microwave generation, vacuum tubes, and magnetics. He then moved on to solid-state physics, studying electron emissions from surfaces. One day, about a year after Townes arrived at Bell Labs, Mervin Kelley, then director of Townes' laboratory, informed the group, "On Monday, I want you to start a radar bombing system." Townes wasn't enthusiastic about the assignment, but realized that World War II had invaded the quiet hallways of Bell Labs. "We worked at it pretty hard, and after about a year we had a system which we put in an airplane, and actually used. It worked.
For those who are interested in the history of the first transistor, here is
an excerpt from "The TRANSISTOR - A Crystal Triode" by Fink and Rockett in
ELECTRONICS 21, 68-71 (Sep 1948), describing the work at the Bell Telephone
Laboratories:
"Although investigation of semiconductors at BTL dates back a number of years,
with the end of the war a concentrated basic research progrm was undertaken."
"The group on semiconductors, led by William Shockley, one of this country's
leading solid-state physicists, was seeking answers to three basic questions:
(1) physically, what is a semiconductor, (2) how doers its physical nature
produce its observed properties, and (3) how does the fabrication and
processing of the material affect its physical nature? Among the
semiconductors studied were silicon, copper oxide, and germanium."
"A great deal of empirical information had been amassed on these substances
during their use, particularly as detectors in microwave equipment ("Crystal
Rectifiers", H.C. Torrey and C.A. Whitmer, Mcgraw-Hill, 1948). In particular
it was known that their resistivities were determined chiefly by impurities,
and furthermore that their resistivities could be varied over wide ranges by
applying various external influences (light in the case of photocells,
electric potential in the case of rectifiers and detectors, or temperature
in the case of Thermistors)."
"Likewise, a high potential applied externally (without making contact) to
a semiconductor should change its resistivity. Using a sheet of germanium
as one plate of a capacitor, Shockley and his colleagues measured the change
in resistance produced by changing the voltage across the capacitor. The
change in resistance was much smaller than anticipated in the light of
prevailing theory. Conclusion: something wrong with theory. So John Bardeen,
a theoretical physicist in the group, devised a theory of surface states that
would account for the measured change as well for older known effects
unexplained by previous theories."
"The new theory suggested new experiments, which, when performed, called for
refinements in the theory. While W.H. Brattain and John Bardeen were following
up the consequences of the refined theory of surface states they invented the
Transistor."
The discovery was made in December 1947, but not announced to the world at
large until July, 1948, after additional devices has been fabricated and
tested.
-----------------------------------------------
Further details are given by J. Bardeen and W.H. Brattain themselves in
their introduction to "Physical Principles Involved in Transistor Action",
published simultaneously in BELL SYSTEM TECHNICAL JOURNAL 28, 239-277
(Apr 1949) and PHYSICAL REVIEW 75, 1208-1225 (1949) as follows:
"The properties of germanium as a semi-conductor and as a rectifier have
been investigated by a group working under the direction of K. Lark-Horovitz
at Purdue University. Work at the Bell Telephone Laboratories
was initiated by R.S. Ohl before the war in connection with the development
of silicon rectifiers for use as detectors at microwave frequencies. Research
and development on both germanium and silicon rectifiers during and since the
war has been done in large part by a group under J.H. Scaff. The background
of information obtained in these various investigations hs been invaluable."
[A summary of the wartime weapons research can be found in "Development of
Silicon Crystal Rectifiers for Microwavve Radar Receivers" by Scaff and Ohl,
BELL SYSTEM TECHNICAL JOURNAL 26, 1-30 (Jan 1947)]
"The general research program leading to the transistor was initiated and
directed by W. Shockley. Work on germanium and silicon was emphasized because
they are simpler to understand than most other semi-conductors. One of the
investigations undertaken was the study of the modulation of conductance of a
thin film of semi-conductor by an electric field applied by an electrode
insulated from the film. [described in "Modulation of Conductance by Surface
Charges" by Shockley and Pearson, PHYSICAL REVIEW 74, 232 (July 15, 1948)]
If, for example, the film is made one plate of a parallel plate condenser,
a charge is induced on the surface. If the individual charges which make up
the induced charge are mobile, the conductance of the film will depend on
the voltage applied to the condenser. The first experiments performed to
measure this effect indicated that most of the induced charge was not mobile.
This result, taken along with other unexplained phenomena such as the small
contact potential difference between n- and p- type silicon and the
independence of the rectifying properties of the point contact rectifier on
the work function of the metal point, led one of the authors [Bardeen,
"Surface States and rectification at metal semiconductor contact", PHYSICAL
REVIEW 71, 717-727 (1947)] to an explanation in terms of surface states.
This work led to the concept that space charge barrier layers may be present
at the free surfaces of semi-conductors such as germanium and silicon,
independent of a metal contact. Two experiments immediately suggested were
to measure the dependence of contact potential on impurity concentration
and to measure the change of contact potential on illuminating the surface
with light. Both of these experiments were successful and confirmed the
theory. [Brattain & Shockley, PHYSICAL REVIEW 72, 345L (1947)] It was while
studying the latter effect with a silicon surface immersed in a liquid that
it was found that the density of surface charges and the field in the space
charge region could be varied by applying a potential across an electrolyte
in contact with the silicon surface. While studying the effect of field
applied applied by an electrolyte on the current voltage characeristic of
a high-back-voltage germanium rectifier, the authors were led to the concept
that a portion of the current was being carried by holes flowing near the
surface. Upon replacing the electrolyte with a metal contact transistor
action was discovered."
"The germanium used in the transistor is an n-type or excess semi-conductor
with a resistivity of the order of 10 ohm-cm, and is the same as the material
used in high-back-voltage germanium rectifiers." ["Preparation of High Back
Voltage Germanium Rectifiers" by J.H. Scaff and H.C. Theuerer, NATIONAL
DEFENSE RESEARCH COMMITTEE 14-555 (Oct 24, 1945)]
"Our discussion has been confined to the transistor in which two point
contacts are placed in close proximity on one face of a germanium block.
It is apparent that the principles can be applied to other geometrical
designs and to other semi-conductors. Some preliminary work has shown
that transistor action can be obtained with silicon and undoubtedly other
semi-conductors can be used."
-----------------------------------------------
Later that year, William Shockley extended the theory from simple metal-
semiconductor junctions to full semiconductor-semiconductor junctions,
and suggested that the behavior of a transistor made from such junctions
would be easier to predict than that of the point-contact transistors
made so far. From the introduction to "The Theory of p-n Junctions in
Semiconductors and p-n Junction Transistors", BELL SYSTEM TECHNICAL JOURNAL
28, 435-489 (July 1949):
"As is well known, silicon and germanium may be either n-type or p-type
semiconductors, dependig on which of the concentrations Nd of donors or
Na of acceptors, is the larger. If, in a single sample, there is a
transition from one type to the other, a rectifying photosensitive p-n
junction is formed. The theory of such junctions is in contrast to those
of ordinary rectifying junctions because, on both sides of the junction,
both electron flow and hole flow must be considered. In fact, a major
portion of the hole current may persist into the n-type region and vice-
versa. In later sections we show how this feature has a number of
interesting consequences"
"A p-n junction may act as an emitter in the transistor sense, since it
can inject hole current into n-type material."
"The p-n-p transistor has the interesting feature of being calculable
to a high degree. One can consider such questions as the relative ratios
of width to length of the n-region and the effect of altering impurity
contents and scaling the structure to operate in different frequency
ranges."
-----------------------------------------------
With the assistance of several others (Morgan, Sparks, & Teal), Shockley
went on to produce a working p-n junction transistor in 1951, and in 1952
he went on to develop the theory behind the field-effect transistor, which
is the type most commonly used today in computer chips. ["A Unipolar
Field-Effect Transistor", PROCEEDINGS OF THE I.R.E. 40, 1365+ (Nov 1952)]
-George Fergus
Re:... (Score:1)
But I thought OS/2 was about to be declared dead. Again.
Re:Actually, it is your fault. (Score:1)
you've proven an ability to post good material, enjoy that trust while you can, just don't abuse it.
Datapoint: (Score:2)
Why is this? Because it was Pixels: the little company that makes Pixels3d [pixels.net], a modeller/renderer etc for the Mac. I already knew them- in fact I keep a copy of Pixels3D 2.1.4 around because they are one of the many Mac vendors who have taken to releasing their last-year's model at no cost, and I grabbed it. Being allowed to fully use something like that left me with a good feeling about them, and they are the antithesis of a big vague corporation- it's a bunch of computer geeks running a company, and their product kicks butt (except that I hate the Lightwave-like interface :) )
I wasn't able to take 'em up on their promo, won't be buying anything today- but, you know, I am _very_ used to shutting off telemarketers. I don't give them three seconds. I interrupt, I firmly say I'm not interested and then hang right up. Yet in this case these people were able to keep my attention and get my sympathies- why?
Partly because they were ready to put some serious effort towards getting me what I wanted. I learned that the scripting language was like Renderman shaders. I learned people write plugins in REALbasic- hey, I have that! I even ended up talking to the main programmer for about ten minutes on how many semitransparent layers you could stack to simulate volumetric clouds (a POV trick I've been playing with), and he had all the techie details. It was so deeply about what _I_ wanted to know, rather than about what they wanted to sell.
I hear people saying IBM is also taking this approach. Well, good for them! The predatory thing only works when you have a lock on people. Pixels doesn't- they do Mac software, and compete with everything from Metacreations (Poser, Bryce, Infini-D) to Lightwave itself and who knows what else? Seeing this glimpse of how they work with their customers gave me a bit of insight into why they're still around at all. Did you know that you can go to their community page and they will put up _pictures_ of their users? (one wonders if it's pictures of _most_ of their users! ;) ) Looking down the row of faces, next to banner links to the respective websites, was a lesson in PR.
It doesn't always stay- that language I use, REALbasic, is very neat but the marketing people have taken to trying to get people to link to the RB site by offering space on the CD in exchange for posting 'Made With Realbasic' logos on things. That's a 'what can we get' approach, not a 'what do you want?' approach. I don't mind it but I'm not doing it. Pixels is smarter- or wiser. As, apparently, is IBM...
That's for sure. (Score:2)
*hits backlight* (bip!)
*turns it back off, closes cover* (bip! clik)
This was $30. I once wanted an old Powerbook- just something that could take text notes and be carried around. B/W screen, some tiny amount of ram- never could get one, too expensive.
Now I have a toy with 256k of ram (that's an awful lot of little memos!). It has a backlight, which is more than the old Powerbooks had. It's got chiclet keys that go (bip!). There's a fourway arrow key thing that is occasionally relevant. The text editing is rather like vi or something- hell, the whole thing is extremely modal, and yet it's such a little thing that it doesn't matter- I don't need a trackball or color for this. So where a few years ago I could only wish for an old Powerbook (which wouldn't fit in my pocket without _serious_, er, percussive redesign ;) ), now I can actually have a little toy 'laptop' that goes (bip!) and takes notes and shows what time it is in Hong Kong or Berlin.
And this is totally cool- and I can't wait until I get to have one for $50 that's the same size, the same lcd screen with blue backlighting- but has 4M, bash, and vi ;)
That would just feel so good tucked into your pocket. Imagine. Hip-nix ;) (poc-nix?)
Re:OT: Use of moderation descriptors (Score:2)
That's the beauty of the system. You can turn off moderation for you as an individual. Set the preferences to sort based on date, or something, then turn off scores in your preferences. Easy.
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Re:IBM and ..... (Score:2)
There are others, Cypress/Ross (I think they're still around...), AMD, and the Japanese, but they're mostly not on the same plane of process technology as the big four, and excess capacity is harder to come by among those folks - It's definitely a big boy's game now, what with a cutting edge fab costing in excess of $3 BILLION!