Tag Archives: Silicon Architecture

Working to deliver Wireless Innovation in the PRC

My firm has been working in delivering technology innovation to our PRC-based clients now for 16 years.  One key thing we do is tie all of our initiatives to the PRC’s  13th Five Year Plan (Click to see a good slide deck).  The technology section is key in order to understand the PRC government’s motivations and incentives to migrate it’s workforce from a manufacturing culture to an advanced technology juggernaut.

Some investor strategist believe that one way to “Trump-Proof” a technology enterprise’s investments in China is to focus on the current eCommerce explosion.

Michael Robinson just wrote, “ E-commerce growth pivots off of China’s fast-growing middle class, which now accounts for 19% of the population, according to Goldman Sachs. That figure has been rising by more than a percentage point each year – and should keep growing at that rate for years to come.
The rapid growth in smartphone use is another key factor. There are now nearly 400 million of these e-commerce-enabling devices in China, a figure that’s rising at a double-digit pace. And mobile-based spending – that is, purchases made via a smartphone or tablet instead of a PC or laptop – now accounts for 50% of all Chinese e-commerce, says eMarketer.

eCommerce from any smart device

That compares to just 22% here in the United States.
This growth in e-commerce is coming as China’s middle class continues to rise and the nation shifts away from its focus on exports and places a greater emphasis on domestic spending.”

My strategy is to provide engineering tools that will facilitate the enablement of innovative wireless

save energy, better connections

technologies E.G., Active Steering Antennae for the large number of EE and SW designers creating mobile eCommerce enabled devices in the PRC.

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Windows 10 Review from BI Insiders

Great article on Windows 10 here.  It goes at Windows 10 from an in-depth analysis perspective and is quite complete.

Win10_Windows_StartScreen2_Web

 

 

At last - A True Ubiquitous Platform
Is it Possible? – A True Ubiquitous Platform

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4K Video’s significant impact on; info consumers, platform vendors and content providers

As we start to see the uptake in 4K video content, suppliers of CPUs, NIC (Network Interface Cards), networks (LAN, WLAN, Wi-Fi) and storage technologies will all be struggling to “step up to the plate” in meeting the challenges of this disruptive Video format.  Also IAAS platform providers will face huge challenges to configure cloud components that can be rapidly provisioned  for 4K content or Video Streaming.  Even the security industry will be affected regarding the video surveillance infrastructure (see this Video Security Magazine article).

SD VS HD VS 4K
SD VS HD VS 4K

This is a Technologies Strategic Directions “Sleeping Inflection Point” for multiple industries, manufacturers, eworkers  and information consumers.

Ultra-high definition (UHD) resolution is 3840×2160 Pixels now used in displays and broadcast., This does not equal 4K (4096×2160 Pixels) used in digital cinema. People tend to used them interchangeably but there is a significant difference in impact on the networking bandwidth required to service consumption of 4K.

We all are aware from a display technology perspective that TVs are now offering this content.  However, how about other network and computer infrastructure components?  When will they be able to handle  the disruptive impact of 4K?

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International Consortium Announces New Chip Technology

A blessing or curse to the industry?
A blessing or curse to the industry?

This week IBM, Samsung, New York State, and Global Foundries announced a new high capacity silicon chip made with a combination of Silicon and germanium.

Are IBM et al, leading us in the right direction? As the width of connections on chips reach the atomic diameter of the individual atoms of the silicon connectors, EUV etch stations and change in deposition technology are just he tip of the CAPEX impact required to transition and follow the consortium’s lead.  At approximately $2B per FAB cost in the near future, who can afford to follow? What ripples in the ecosystem of silicon equipment manufacturing will this cause and at the commodity pricing of today’s market can the ASPs tolerate this new move? Even though Intel mentions 7-Nano occasionally there seems to be no defined roadmap to get there. Consortiums and research are good things. However, we now have to figure out practical steps to get to the future the consortium has described.

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IoE/IoT KEY Enablers will be Ubiquitous Connectivity & Predictive Maintainence

I’ve been digesting and expanding on an interesting white paper authored by the Microsoft Azure Incubation team titled: Building the Internet of Things Early learnings from architecting solutions focused on predictive maintenance. I agree with the premise tha ubiquity in connection technology will be the key enabler and that predictive maintenance will probably be required to instantiate a true global ubiquitous connection state.  Recently MS is changing their terminology from Internet of Things to Internet of Everything (IoE).  Here I use them interchangeably A key technical enabler of the Internet of Things (IoT) is ubiquitous connectivity. A week or so ago I blogged about a new technology called Active Steering(TM) which should be the winner in patented connectivity hardware/Software/Firmware for antenna products.

Focussed Adaptive Radiation
Focussed Adaptive Radiation by Ethertronics

Just imagine that the antenna on your device was constantly sampling the wireless signals around your location and finding the strongest source and directing the focus of the antenna to that source.  That is what an Active Steering antenna does on your phone, tablet or PC.   By using this technique the system is also performing predictive maintenance on the connectivity configuration for your specific device and location. Let’s first look at the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model. Even though the Internet model uses a simplified abstraction, the models in the previous figure and the associated well-known logical protocols are comparable. Connectivity Model Application-layer protocols are not concerned with the lower-level layers in the stack other than being aware of the key attributes of those layers, such as IP addresses and ports. The right side of the figure shows the logical protocol breakdown transposed over the OSI model and the TCP/IP model.

Interaction patterns

Special-purpose devices differ not only in the depth of their relationship with back-end services, but in the interaction patterns of these services when compared to information-centric devices because of their role as peripherals. They are not the origin of command-and-control gestures; instead, they typically contribute information to decisions, and receive commands as a result of decisions. The decision-maker does not interface with them locally, and the device acts as an immediate proxy; the decision-maker is remotely connected and might be a machine. We usually classify interaction patterns for special-purpose devices into the four categories indicated in the following figure.

Device Coomunications Patterns
Device communications Patterns

CoPathwaysnnectivity Types

All of these models need uninterrupted connectivity to enable the ultimate user experience that Windows 10 could offer with the addition of Active Steering Technologies at the Platform level.

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Windows10 Hands on Revelations

As a member of the Windows Insider Program I have had a while now to install, investigate and update the Windows 10 Technical Preview.  I took a 12 year old HP Windows 7 PC and upgraded it to Windows 10. All of my hardware & programs worked flawlessly. The new browser (code named “Project Spartan” ) is really a big step forward in performance and functionality. Key features are built-in natively to the browser and their major purpose is to make web-services content easier to read, share and comment on.

At last - A True Ubiquitous Platform
At last – A True Ubiquitous Platform

Other more important revelations have to do with the stated goals of Microsoft regarding their key technology – Windows.  According to the new CEO Satya Nadella, “Windows 10 marks the beginning of the more personal computing era in the mobile-first, cloud-first world. Our ambition is for the 1.5 billion people who are using Windows today to fall in love with Windows 10 and for billions more to decide to make Windows home.”  If you look at the new offerings superimposed on the backdrop of existing “must have” applications, Microsoft seems determined to make itself through Windows the big dog in the internet services arena. According to Terry Myerson, “We think of Windows as a Service – in fact, one could reasonably think of Windows in the next couple of years as one of the largest Internet services on the planet.”

He continued to state that, “Windows 10 is the first step to an era of more personal computing. This vision framed our work on Windows 10, where we are moving Windows from its heritage of enabling a single device – the PC – to a world that is more mobile, natural and grounded in trust. We believe your experiences should be mobile – not just your devices. Technology should be out of the way and your apps, services and content should move with you across devices, seamlessly and easily. In our connected and transparent world, we know that people care deeply about privacy – and so do we. That’s why everything we do puts you in control – because you are our customer, not our product. We also believe that interacting with technology should be as natural as interacting with people – using voice, pen, gestures and even gaze for the right interaction, in the right way, at the right time. These concepts led our development and you saw them come to life today. “

Look at their video on demand announcement here.

This will create many new opportunities for HW & SW engineers to make the continuum user experiences a reality and increase monetization of proving add-ons to the Windows 10 new functionalities.

 

 

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Wi-Fi Signal Active Steering Impresive new Technology

Here in San Diego we have a number of new and innovative technology companies.  One of which I’m proud to be connected to by Rick Johnson (their CFO) who was the CFO of Tarari and a fellow Intel Alumni. The company is Ethertronics and makes chip-sets that implement various types of antenna functionality for the mobile market.  Their latest introduction at this year’s CES is ACTIVE STEERING

itac3

The industry is preparing for a 1000x increase in data traffic while carriers are running out of capacity on their networks. The solution to this daunting challenge isn’t as simple as just buying more spectrum or adding more infrastructure in the form of cellular towers, small cells and Distributed Antenna Systems (DAS) equipment. The wireless devices themselves are key to increasing capacity through spectral efficiency. Active Steering technology is crucial to improve device efficiency and performance.

Ethertronics’ Active Steering technology provides

  • Significantly faster throughput –  higher data rates
  • Minimizes unwanted interference
  • Seamless handoffs between towers
  • Better connected experience for users
  • Increased spectral efficiency – more capacity to carriers’ networks
Wi-Fi Active Steering
Wi-Fi Active Steering

 

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New Technology Coming to Marry the Internet of Things with small appliance world!

My firm has been engaged by one of the world’s largest small appliance manufacturing PRC-based companies to architect and implement a cloud/mobile/appliance IoT offering. This new small wine appliance will be launched in Q4 of 2014.

In fact this is an exciting project where WilQuest is Partnering with Microsoft, interKnowlogy, Tridea Partners and others to create a “Cloud of Things” CoT infrastructre where a global software/hardware engineering team is developing products on Azure,Windows 8,  Android, iPhone, iPad, Intel and ARM platforms to create a seamless web srevices orchestration of devices and applications that each perform a segment of a task that the end user request via gesture/mouse/keyboard action.

 

 

 

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Are Cloud Technologies Replacing on-premise Servers?

It seems that that is the case.  In fact the old-style justifications for on site servers and attendant OpEx costs don’t seem to make sense any more.  Read this interesting article  Is the data center in the Cloud or is the Cloud in the data center?

Maybe your next Server won't be collocated with you!
Maybe your next Server won’t be collocated with you!

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Strategic Technology Directions

Using clear targets in various sectors, startegic vision can be achieved
Using clear targets in various sectors, startegic vision can be achieved

If an enterprise needs to establish a strategic vision that maps out a clear path to an end state vision, then specific action items can be set around well defined targets in:

  • Strategy Targets that help expand the footprint of a technology or products
  • Process Targets the sheppard teams to accomplish goals and deciplined cycles of activity
  • People Targets that help increase productivity and creativity
  • Business Targets that set fiscal milestones and performance meterics
  • Ecosystem Targets that help stimulate the health and growth of ecosystem partners and fellow travelers.

Below is an example of process targets that help:

sing Strategic Process to sheppard an enterprise
sing Strategic Process to sheppard an enterprise

Strategic Technology Planning Process

  • Review existing technical plans and strategic direction
  • Develop a Technology Mission Statement
  • Analyze Current raw Data
  • Establish Goals and Objectives
  • Develop and Implement Project Plans and Timelines (Roadmaps)
  • Disseminate, Monitor, Evaluate, Renovate the Technology Plan.
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