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Technology (Apple)

Journal Journal: New iPod Shuffles on the way?

There are numerous reports which indicate that iPod Shuffle sales are slowing. This is somewhat inevitable as a low end product like Shuffle can get obsolete quite fast. When Shuffle was introduced, it not only had a revolutionary form factor (lighter than anything else, if not smaller) but it was also at a very attractive price point. In Jan'05, there weren't a lot of third-party 1GB flash players in the market, and both 512MB and 1GB models from other brands were typically more expensive.

However, flash memory has seen drastic price reductions over the last 5 months and the prices of 3rd party flash players (most with some kind of a display) have come down below the original Shuffle price point. Whosale prices for 512MB flash is around $27 and 1GB flash is $50 in the spot market. Given that NAND flash prices are on a continuously decreasing trend, it will be safe to assume that Apple is getting a much better deal in terms of flash pricing from Samsung and Toshiba. It would be a trivial exercise for Apple to cut the prices of 1GB and 512MB shuffles to $125 and $75, respectively.

Would Apple simple cut prices to stimulate demand, or will they do something more drastic and introduce a new form factor with a small display and increase the high end capacity to 2GB? I think a 2GB iPod Shuffle with a small display at $159 is what Apple needs to fluster the digital music player market one more time...

Technology (Apple)

Journal Journal: First Intel processors to go into Macs will be Yonah

It looks like the first Intel processor to go into Macs will be Yonah. Yonah is a dual-core Pentium-M that will be manufactured in Intel's new 65nm process technology. In addition to SSE3 support, improved floating point performance and a few other architectural changes that should help with media encoding/decoding performance, Yonah also comes with 2MB of shared L2 cache which should improve the performance of multi-threaded applications. Power consumption of the dual-core chip will remain in the power envelope of today's single-core Pentium M processor (about 25 watts).

There is a new article on DigiTimes today that contains detailed information about the projected clock speeds and pricing for Yonah processors and this very interesting sentence:

In addition, Yonah-series processors will be adopted by Apple Computer, which agreed to use Intel microprocessors for its Macintosh computers starting in 2006.

Despite the dual core architecture, pricing seems inline with Intel's existing 700-series processors: $637 for the high-end 2.16GHz dual-core model to $209 for the 1.66GHz low-end single core model. It is interesting to note that the price difference between the 1.66GHz dual-core and single-core models is only $32. We can expect Apple to get a significant discount on these prices, especially for high end models. I wouldn't be surprised to see higher clock speeds, either.

A dual-core 1.66GHz Yonah may be a perfect fit for Mac Mini as whereas PowerBooks are likely to use processors in 1.83GHz to 2.16GHz range.

IBM

Journal Journal: Cell vs Power5

IBM appears to be bringing major innovatinos to processor architecture in two entirely different directions: The Power5 and the Cell. It is interesting to analyze the differences and similarities between these two different PowerPC architectures.

Here is a good article about IBM's Power5.

Here is a good article about IBM's Cell processor.

Power5 is a mainframe processor on steroids. Cell is a game console processor on steroids.

Power5 is a multi-chip module that includes 36MB of L3 cache among other things. Cell is a single chip targeted at low cost, high volume production.

Cell's theoretical peak floating point performance is higher. Power5's real floating point performance is higher.

Cell has a single 64-bit PowerPC core Power5 has two 64-bit PowerPC cores

Cell has a simple, in-order PowerPC core. Power5 has complex, out-of-order PowerPC cores.

The PowerPC cores in both chips support simultanous multi-threading.

Both chips burn a lot of power. 90W is the number that is rumored for the Cell. Power5's power consumption is 160W at 1.8GHz

Technology (Apple)

Journal Journal: Cell in next-gen Macs?

As the hype about the PS3 is slowly dying, first we heard that IBM is preparing to release full chip specifications and software libraries for the Cell processor. And then came the news that IBM is demonstrating new blade servers based on the Cell processor. It sure looks like the Cell processor will end up in more devices than just the PS3 in the near future. Of course, this brings up the question whether the largest PowerPC customer, Apple, will use the Cell processor for some new products. There are several contexts which can lead to Cell processor being used in future Apple platforms:
  • As a media co-processor in next generation PowerMacs, and potentially even high end iMacs, similar to "AV" badged Macs from a few years back. Cell can work as a pretty good general purpose media co-processor to offload video encode/decode operations from the main processor(s). Even the current high end dual processor PowerMacs are being challenged when decoding HD H.264. A co-processor that can enable real-time H.264 encoding would make a big impact on the user perception.
  • As a physics modelling co-processor for Macs to accelerate animation and games. This is really what the Cell processor is designed for in the first place, and there is likely to be plenty of libraries/engines written for PS3. This will go a long way to eliminate the existing perception that Macs are inferior game machines. The same capabilities can be used by professionals for 3D animation work.
  • As the core of a home media center that can encode/decode/store/stream video/audio. If the Cell can fit the thermal and cost constraints of a game console, it would also be a good fit for a next generation media center.

There are already speculations that Cell was the real reason why Apple started developing coreimage/corevideo/coreaudio.

AMD

Journal Journal: AMD Introduces new, lower power Geode processors

Just as motherboards that support AMD's low power (8W & 14W) Geode NX x86 processors are starting to show up in the retail channel, AMD announced a new family of x86 processors that burn less than 1W! The new AMD Geode LX 800@0.9W processor family appears to be targeted at consumer and embedded applications as well as extremely low power mobile devices with full desktop computing functionality.

This will be a pretty cool device to build file servers or media centers that need to remain on all the time using standard (i.e. cheap) PC components. For the media server type applications, you may need to throw in a HW MPEG2/MPEG4/VM9 decoder. Various power consumption benchmarks show that modern PC systems burn in excess of 100W of power even in Idle state, whereas you could probably build a complete system that burns less than 10W using the Geode LX.

The press release says that the AMD Geode(TM) LX 800@0.9W processor and AMD Geode CS5536 companion device chipset is available at $45 in 10,000 unit shipments. Let's see if it will take less than 9 months for this product to be available in the retail channel this time.

Technology

Journal Journal: Matrix introduces world's smallest 1Gb memory chip

Most of the headlines about cool new high density memory technology are from DRAM or Flash manufacturers these days. Matrix Semiconductor, a small Silicon Valley start-up, broke the trend today and announced that the world's smallest 1-Gbit memory chip. Matrix's chip is an antifuse-based one-time programmable ROM. The total die area of the 1Gb chip is 31 square millimeters (smaller than the blue/red pills in the Matrix movie). Matrix claims that they can achieve this density through a proprietary 3D circuit technology that cobines 150nm and 130nm process geometries.

When Matrix moves to 90nm process technology, it should be possible to manufacture a 8Gb memory chip on a reasonable sized (i.e. cheap) die. There are many potential applicaitons of this kind of low cost, very high density ROM technology, mostly in content distribution area. One 8Gb ROM chip would have sufficient storage capacity to store the contents of an entire movie using H.264 encoding.

Desktops (Apple)

Journal Journal: Apple Introduces New PowerMacs

Apple has a different perspective

Apple introduced new PowerMacs today. At the high end are new dual 2.3GHz and dual 2.7GHz G5 models. Many people are already complaining about the "just 200MHz" speed bump for the high end model and the choice of ATI Radeon 9600 and 9650 as the base graphics cards.

This PowerMac revision is obviously not a major upgrade and Apple treated it as such. Apple's home page, is mostly full of Tiger stuff and the new PowerMac intro is just a small image on the lower left corner.

A clock speed increase of 8% for the top model may not be that much of a speed bump, but neither Intel or AMD has been able to pull off dramatic clock frequency jumps lately. Clock speed stagnation seem to be a general problem in the processor design industry.

As for the dual cores, obviously AMD and Intel have much more incentive. The entire PC world is built around a standard form factors: ATX motherboards and ATX cases. Intel's efforts to move to a new form factor (BTX) has been quite unsuccessful so far. It is very hard to put two "hot" processors on an ATX motherboard in an ATX case. PC market is also driven by cut throat price pressure and low margins. There is a huge price difference between the prices of single processor motherboards and dual processor motherboards. Given the stagnation in the clock frequency, the only practical way for Intel and AMD to drive the mainstream PC to higher performance is the SMP model through dual-core chips. This way, all of the rest of the system components (motherboard, chipset, case, cooling system) can stay the same.

Apple does not have this constraint. Apple has been manufacturing mainstream multiprocessor desktops for manty years. Overall, it may actually be more cost effective for Apple to ship multiprocessor system. It may be a lot cheaper for IBM to manufacture two instances of a small die like the PPC970 FX (less than 60mm2) than a larger dual core die. As for Apple, having the source of the heat distributed accross two chips makes thermal management somewhat easier than dealing with one extremely hot dual core chip.

I am sure Apple will eventually move to dual core PPC970MP chips, potentially later this year, but this will most likely be in the context of being able to offer quad systems (two dual-core processors) for higher performance.

As for the choice of the base graphics card, the 9600 or 9650 is a perfectly reasonable choice. The primary driving force behind high end graphics cards in the PC world are 3D games. PowerMac G5 is obviously not the best 3D game platform. Most people buy PowerMacs to use in professional applications. Many pro applications do not require super-duper 3D performance. For those who are planning to do serious 3D work, the 6800 Ultra upgrade is the reasonable choice. There is no reason to burden all customers with an expensive (and potentially loud) graphics card.

Displays

Journal Journal: LCD Monitor Arm

If you have limited desk space and a large LCD display, here is a solution that will enable you to reduce the amount of deskspace occupied your monitor to zero: the Innovative 7000 Radial ARM makes your LCD monitor float effortlessly above your desk. It is built like a rock, comes with a variety of mounting options and can support monitors up to 21lbs (most 20" LCD monitors).
Technology

Journal Journal: 5-in-3 SATA cage

SuperMicro 5-bay Hot Swappable SATA HDD enclosure is a good solution for adding substantial amount of removable storage to a PC within a limited budget. This cage has removable trays for 5 SATA drives. It can be used internally or externally. In internal configuration, it occupies 3 5.25" drive bays. In external configuration, it requires a power supply with the infamous Molex connector. It has a 90mm fan in the back, which provides pretty decent cooling for the drives.

Perfect for those mid-tower cases with 4 5.25" slots or 5U rack mount cases with 3 5.25" slots. This could come in especially handy for RAID configurations.

Another option is this 4-in-3 cage from Addonics. The construction of the cage and the individual drive trays appear to be somewhat higher quality.

Technology

Journal Journal: FireWire RAID-5 box

ProWare DP-405CI is cool external storage unit that supports RAID0/1/5. This box has both a USB2.0 interface and a pair of Firewire 1394b interfaces. It supports 4 hot swappable IDE drives. According to this review on Tom's Hardware, this box has pretty good performance, but the noise from the two 60mm fans on the back is a bit high (55dB). Inside, the box uses Areca's ARC-600 chip, a hardware XOR unit for RAID-5 support and 64MB of DRAM cache.

Unfortunately, this unit is not yet available in the US. Most other Areca based storage solutions do not appear to be sold in US, either. I wonder if there is a patent issue.

Displays

Journal Journal: 17" LCD display for $100 by 2008?

This article claims that prices of 17" LCD panels will drop to $100 range by 2008. Apparently, market research firm Displaysearch expects manufacturing costs for LCD panels to drop by 62 percent in the next four years.
Displays

Journal Journal: Display Technology Shoot-Out: Part III

Part III of ExtremeTech's Display Technology Shootout covers various artifacts that affect the image quality on various display technologies. It is somewhat disappointing as there is almost no quantitative data in this section.
Technology

Journal Journal: AMD Geode NX Motherboards - MIA?

AMD announced a new series of Geode NX processors earlier this year. These appear to be hacked versions of Athlon XP with substantially reduced power consumption: 6W at 1GHz or 14W at 1.4GHz. AMD also announced a neat mini-ITX motherboard in May and showed working demo versions at the Computex show in June. However, these boards are still not available for retail. At least, I haven't been able to find any retailers that sell Geode NX boards. Rather strange, as these boards would make the perfect foundation for a media/file server, especially if the cost of the motherboard is below $100 including the processor.
Technology

Journal Journal: IBM Unveils World's Smallest SRAM Memory Cell

IBM issued a press release today claiming that it has built an SRAM memory cell that is ten times smaller than those currently available. My interpretation of the PRese in this release is that IBM will be able to build 256Mb or 512Mb SRAM chips or integrate 32MB or more SRAM into processor dies for cache applications in the future.

Of course, showing some SRAM cell prototypes is a long ways from being able to manufacture this technology in a cost effective way. There is no information in this PR about the speed or power consumption of SRAM blocks that can be built with this new cell technology. This is not likely to be a potential DRAM replacement for mainstream applications as DRAM already offers more than ten times density compared to SRAM at much better cost.

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