09-07-2003, 01:30 PM
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Contributing Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 8,228
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802.11b Chips Up To 80% Smaller
http://news.com.com/2100-1039_3-5072001.html?tag=fd_top
"The new chips are based on the 802.11b wireless networking standard and will target manufacturers of portable devices, such as cell phones, handhelds and digital cameras, according to sources close to the companies' plans. Broadcom is expected to announce a single chip Wi-Fi product, while Philips Semiconductors, the chipmaking division of Royal Philips Electronics, will introduce a combined package of two Wi-Fi chips, which is still considerably smaller than current products, the sources said."
Oh what I wouldn't give to have an ad hoc network between my PDA and cell phone, camera, printer, etc. with a wireless protocol that just works without messing around with profiles and such! :rock on dude!:
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09-07-2003, 05:07 PM
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Ponderer
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 77
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Yeah!
Would be cool to have wifi in the cellphone, then you could make calls over wifi when at the office or a hotspot.
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09-07-2003, 05:26 PM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Jun 2002
Posts: 178
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Sayonara Bluetooth. :?
__________________
"Success flourishes only in perseverance-ceaseless, restless perseverance." - Baron Manfred von Richtofen
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09-07-2003, 05:51 PM
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Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 15,171
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Sure! Then you'd have a cell phone that lasts an hour! And it would get cracked by a net stumbler tool and someone else would place phone calls.
Well, we'll have to see. But that's my suspicion. Wi-Fi's power drain isn't the fundamental problem; the problem is using a chatty protocol like IP, which doesn't inherently have a "standby mode".
--janak
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09-07-2003, 07:55 PM
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Pupil
Join Date: Dec 2004
Posts: 24
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WiFi smaller
PHILIPS rules!! :rock on dude!:
I'm proud to be Dutch!!
Check out their work on the new technology: "reconfigurable computing". One chip can take on different functions controlled by a software unit, which boils down to: one single chip can act as a bluetooth chip one moment and be a PDA processor the next and then switch to a GPS chip. The possibilities are unlimited, this will revolutionise gadgets!!
check it
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09-07-2003, 08:06 PM
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Contributing Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 8,228
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Re: WiFi smaller
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Originally Posted by mxm
PHILIPS rules!! :rock on dude!:
I'm proud to be Dutch!!
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Yeah, these are they guys that had the best selling Palm-sized PC (Nino series) then dropped it just before the Pocket PC debut. :evil:
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09-07-2003, 09:28 PM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 123
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Bogus!!
Sorry, but I'm a fan of using technology for the purpose it was designed for. Using WiFi for personal area networks is like using a truck fleet for a taxi service.
Personal Area Networks: use Bluetooth
Local Area Networks: use WiFi
Wide Area Networks: GPRS, etc...
:evil: :roll: :?
Using WiFi for PAN's is a complete misapplication. The technology to connect the last meter with the last mile is WiFi, but it is hardly optimal to BE the last meter or last mile technology.
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09-07-2003, 09:32 PM
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5000+ Posts? I Should OWN This Site!
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 5,133
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Reconfigurable Computing.
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Originally Posted by mxm
Check out their work on the new technology: "reconfigurable computing". One chip can take on different functions controlled by a software unit, which boils down to: one single chip can act as a bluetooth chip one moment and be a PDA processor the next and then switch to a GPS chip. The possibilities are unlimited, this will revolutionise gadgets!!
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Heh. 
So in reconfigurable computing, you generally have a processor controlling the reconfigurable hardware. In a PDA most likely you'd still have a main processor separate from the reconfigurable hardware. Then the reconfigurable hardware would perform the computations for GPS/WiFi/Bluetooth/graphics/MP3s/etc.
One of the benefits of this type of hardware would be that you *are* executing in hardware. Faster, more parallel (even "more faster"  ), and lower power than executing in software. Part of the challenge lies in making sure you have an architecture that can support all the calculations you want when you create the device (as well as potentially new calculations that you hadn't thought of, like new versions of audio compression or encryption).
This type of hardware has really been around for a while. Well, the IDEA has been around since at least 1963, but hardware didn't really support the idea until the mid-1980s with the FPGA, a type of hardware-programmable chip. Essentially you have a set of hardware structures that can form small computations that the user specifies (think computations on four bits that yield a one bit value), and a set of routing resources that lets you connect these little computation together in different ways to form the larger circuit that you want to implement.
You can do reconfigurable computing to some extent (though not always *well*) with chips you can buy now. FPGAs are in a lot of devices, mainly because they allow for a short time-to-market and low-cost solutions when you don't have enough demand to spend the $ to fabricate a custom chip (but you need hardware). There's also been a LOT of research on different architectures that support reconfigurable computing better than regular FPGAs.
In case I've lost you, I'll give my usual non-tech analogy for the differences between software, hardware, and reconfigurable computing.
Think of cooking. Software is like being able to cook anything, but having to read the recipe every time, at every step. At each step, you need to figure out what utensils/equipment are needed, how much of what type of food, etc, and what you do with that food. It gives you a ton of flexibility, but it's really slow.
Hardware is like only being able to make one thing, but you know it by heart, so you're very efficient, you know what you need, you know where it is, and you know what to do with it. Very fast, but only one recipe. So you might need several "chefs" to get the whole meal, which can become expensive, depending on how many you need. And if the recipe changes, you need to fire that chef and get a new one that knows the new recipe. But at any rate, it's fast.
Reconfigurable computing is somewhere in the middle. You read the recipe once, and you "memorize" it right then. You then behave basically like the description of hardware above - you know what you need, where to find it, and what to do with it. But the cool thing is, as soon as you're done cooking it, you can look at another page of the cookbook and memorize a different recipe (forgetting the previous one in the process), and make something new, faster than if you had to read each step at every point in the process - especially if you're making more than one of the same thing, as you don't need to stop to re-memorize the recipe.
If anyone wants to discuss this more, I'll split this into another thread.
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09-07-2003, 09:35 PM
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Contributing Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 8,228
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Re: Bogus!!
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Originally Posted by caywen
Sorry, but I'm a fan of using technology for the purpose it was designed for. Using WiFi for personal area networks is like using a truck fleet for a taxi service.
Personal Area Networks: use Bluetooth
Local Area Networks: use WiFi
Wide Area Networks: GPRS, etc...
:evil: :roll: :?
Using WiFi for PAN's is a complete misapplication. The technology to connect the last meter with the last mile is WiFi, but it is hardly optimal to BE the last meter or last mile technology.
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Hardly optimal by who's definition? Sounds like a crusade to me. BT should be the choice of PAN, but it stinks. I use it every day and I use WiFi every day. I'll take using 802.11b over BT profiles any day of the week.
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09-07-2003, 10:35 PM
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Mystic
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 1,768
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Janak Parekh
Sure! Then you'd have a cell phone that lasts an hour! And it would get cracked by a net stumbler tool and someone else would place phone calls.
Well, we'll have to see. But that's my suspicion. Wi-Fi's power drain isn't the fundamental problem; the problem is using a chatty protocol like IP, which doesn't inherently have a "standby mode".
--janak
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I read recently that a new 802.11b chipset designed for small portable appliances had a lower-range and only supported the 1-5mb (not 11mb) and as a result, consumed less power than a class 1 BT chipset. Even though the protocol has much more overhead, if more data could be transmitted at equal or lesser power, than I would prefer a mechanism of 'profiles over IP' than I would multiple profiles, one of which is IP.
__________________
Jonathan (JonnoB)
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." -Edmund Burke
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Linear Mode
