Note to readers

This is to inform you that the author, Siliconstani no longer blogs at this site. To read his latest post readers are invited to visit http://arrafiq.com.

Guess what this is?

It's a hard  disk drive with 5  MB of  storage. In September 1956 IBM launched the 305  RAMAC, the first 'SUPER' computer with a hard disk drive (HDD).   The HDD weighed over a ton and stored  a 'whopping' 5  MB of data.  

Copyright C. WadiBuzz

Inside Qualcomm SmartDragon -- Panel Event

On Tuesday, March 2, 2010 at the Qualcomm campus in Santa Clara I had the privliage to attend an event on the Snap SnapDragon mobile chipset. Following are my notes from the event. 

Panel: smartbook category

Moderator: Tim bajarin, creative strategies

Mark: India one of most tarrif sensitive regions.

To be seccuessful in developing markets in India you need carriers to develop exceedingly low tarrifs.

Carriers are increasing seeing Data usage as an oppportunity

Adam from real networks: how smart book might play a a multi media content vehicle.

- content creation has great opportunity on smart book

Zinio reader. Rich from zinio. Pc mag is on zinio.

Zinio has a Switzerland approach called unity. Idea is publish once and deliver content in sync way to consumer devices around the world

Emergance of smart books and what qualcomm is doing with smartdragon is definitly a catalyst for such delivery high fidelity applications. 

Smartdragon is exciting due to it's high grphic acelertor etc.

Different devices r used for diffrebt type of reading ...

By 2050 67% of all phones will be smart phones in the us.

Mark has internal forcast within QCT . It's proprietary.  Hoping ipad will do for smartbooks what iPhone did for smart phones.

Mark all user interfaces going forward are going to be 3D based rather than 2D. Thinks user interfaces r going to be more sensor orriented. 

See rich 3D graphics, speech, sensors.

Touch is going to get better and better.

Tim, next to yrs is going to be a fundimental discovery. Until people use these smartbooks and tablets we don't know. We could see people using things in a creative manners.

What we are looking at are either markets in web model or app store

Mark: consumer will buy technology with thr right device and usage model. Right device with right user catagory.

Tension in market as screens become higher resolution we have potential of seeing a lot more content.

New platform to throw bits across. Smartdragon is a great technology how ever what's the concern about bluring issue for consumer.

Mark : as an industry if we can't figure out what our marketing messaging is

Copyright C. WadiBuzz

Mobile -- the new bubble ...era of Web 3.0

We are at a pivotal junction where the web from the late 20th Century is maturing with acquisitions by the big 500s, and a new space in Mobile Computing as opened. 

Today mobile or Web 3.0 is where Web 2.0 was 10 years ago.    From computing on a PC we are headed in the direction where your mobile device is fast becoming the go to device for work and play.There are over 4 Billion mobile device in the world, of that  55 million are smart phones. The average smart phone user spends 4 hours per day browsing the mobile web. 

 From socializing with friends to ordering movie tickets, that's all being done through the little black Device in your pocket. Gone are the days of lugging around bulky laptops -- cafe to cafe, event to event.

The power of your laptop computer can be found on your palmtop.

Copyright C. WadiBuzz

The Business of the Brain - VLAB Panel May 18, 2010

It's not every tuesday night that you get to talk about thought  controlled machines.Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) promises a quantum leap in human interaction and technology--enabling our thoughts and emotions to control devices and enabling them to be aware of our thoughts, and to some extent our feelings.

Work on BCI begun in the 1970's at UCLA under a grant from the National Science Foundation, followed by a contract from DARPA. Today there are around 300 Million brain toting people in the United States alone, thus paving the path for Entrepreneurial opportunities of far-reach consequence.

BCI is at a critical juncture in it's evolution. Still predominantly finding life at Universities around the country, there are a small, yet growing group of neuroscientists, entrepreneurs representing a number of different traditions and unrelated industries who are teaming up to develop applications out of the already developed BCI technology and research data gathered.




Showed clips from The Matrix of Kiana reeves getting info downloaded into brain -- I know Kung Fu

There's is reaearch going on at SCU and DARPA to download data into say a military piolts brain

But that's still far off. However we can still do things like control Twitter, send an email , etc

BCI have found a way to record impulses in brain and control it

Monkey in a box video
Andrew schwartz motorlab ar Univ of Pittaburg video ....demo of robot arm xo trollled by monkeys brains

Three kinds of bci ...

1 non invasive : where comercial relm is. It's a cap that goes on scalp . Measures brain waves -- EEG. Brain wave and single fidelloty aren't that strong though ...

CBS reporter amazed -- Scott pelley video 60 seconds

Partially invasive -- ECOG

Invasive -- intracortical electrodes impanted in grey matter

The market -- stage of computers before apple. Very new stage

Key presentor - David Dickinson from Zeo

Zeo -- the birth of sleep wellness
Mission to help ppl discover power of sleep

Found by 3 brown students .

Talks about Sleep Wellness.

75% adults trouble sleeping each year
100,000 fall asleep at the wheel
< 5%: 45% chance of heart disease

Zeo is a headband u wear at night . It tracks your sleep pattern.

People go to bed tired but wired , caffienw, laptop, or tv at night

Most of us don't sleep well becauae of our lifestyle.

You were meant to sleep in a cave

Large in home db of sleep data.

Lessons from a bci startup:
- innovation is stuff. It ain't abut technology it's about pgucology and meeting peoples needs.
- business model, test, test, retest. VCs invest in business models
- creating advantage -- it's a layer cake ... Got to have layers of protection against ur product . Get a superior product, UI, get right lawyers, keep Somethings secret, have high quality stds, sc valudation and endorsement , tm'ing

Bottom line find the benefits of your idea and sell to your customers.

Jim -- see opportunity for bci in middleware, opp to provide solns.
  , bring the prod to mkt. See opp across board ...think it's bottomless ...

Larry: system he developed for brain figure printing is not user friendly .

What do you say to critics that this isn't find tunned enough ?

Tim -- linking systems to the cloud ... That's were the innovation is

Opportunity for software engr ... 20% business .... Most of opp are at software , database, cloud engineering

Real answer consumer should own Data. Business answer that meta data is very valuable -- Tim

How long before an early dedexition device hits market . Larry Just got issued a patent. Texhnoloy is there, take 3 yrs and a whole lot of money .

Technology exist today , merely pulling them together is the challenge right now .

Tim sees this as consumers taking control of there own health .
Consumer would own Data and equipment .
Moving from health care to health

Giving consumer a scale to measure progress .... James

Other opportunities in bci :
- DARPA uses EEG headsets to calm sharp shooters
- fail safe device for pilots -
-
Zeo third qtr this yr they will have an API

Copyright C. WadiBuzz

Notes from session with Marc Anderseen

I had the good fortune of attending the Entrepreneurial Thought leadership session with Marc Andreesen yesterday at Stanford.  

Copyright C. WadiBuzz

Jordi La Forge VISOR comes to life ... from SciFi to SciFact ...

Recall Jordi La Forge and his VISOR, a device enabling the blind to regain a sense of sight. Ever wonder if that could become a reality? Well wonder no more, Scientists at University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) have developed a pair of glasses that do just that, yes allow the blind to regain a sense of sight. Though not normal sight, it's something better than nothing.

Tools Tools Tools - EDA Tools everywhere!

Whether you are a IC logic design engineer or an IC packaging and Signal Integrity engineer you most certainly have faced the number one issue haunting the industry..."what God dam tool shall I use?" For there are so many tools vendors with tools each one of them claims to be "the tool of choice". Whether you work for Cisco, Juniper, Intel, AMD, TI, IBM you most certainly have had extensive interactions with Mentor Graphics, Candence, Synopsys, SiSoft, Dolphin, Sigrity, etc.

All these vendors offer an excellent lineup of tools - each tool tend to compliment each other. So long as they are compliant with Industry standards as outlined by GEIA, IBIS, NIST, or IEEE. However, this is not always the case. Some EDA vendors are pretty good with interoperability between tools from different vendors - but others well lets say they are like thorns in the IC and PCB design industry.



Copyright C. 2007 Rabita Technologies Inc
TechRabita and TheBuzz are trademarks of Rabita Technologies,Inc

Return of the Techies-i ...A Satirical i-Moment

Here is an i-moment, an i-pause in the busy Techie life. The i or , as I in an earlier blitz coined it as the Techies-i is much abused by both individual Techies and corporate entities. Mysterious indeed it is, even though it has been used to death, it continues to be an attention grabber. Have you noticed, recently Google has re-branded its search as iGoogle - you don't believe me, just go to http://www.google.com and check out the icon.

The techies-i isn't limited to the world of Tech, it has infact ventured into a whole new space and being used to brand Political Satire, or PoliTech Satire - only a Techie would think of using the i in such a manner...be it iPhone, iGoogle, iMap, iFaqeer, or why not iRack or how about iRan !

Copyright C. 2007