Friday, December 03, 2010
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
10 doublings in 10 years for SD cards!
I have just realized that SD cards have increased 1000 in size in the last 10 years that means they have doubled their capacity 10 times! I am amazed.
So in 2000 I was starting at Nokia in Vancouver and one of the things I was asked to design was a music player for a touch screen phone. One of the interesting things is that this device was going to be in the market in 3 years at the earliest. At that time music players using SD cards or internal flash memory had between 16 and 64MB of memory. That gave you enough space for around 20 songs max. So we started designing with that in mind. At some point it dawned on me "wait a minute! how much storage are we going to have in 3 or 5 years?". At that time I used the moore's law (1 doubling every 18 months). So the rounded number we came up with was 100 or 200 songs.
Today, 10 years later, your 100 dollar SD card is between 16 and 32GB with 64GB available for a prime. So basically 1000 times more storage than in 2000; that's 10 doublings or 1 doubling per year! Wow!
Another tidbit I have been following is what type of computer you can buy for 2000 USD. This particular trend I have been following since 1987 when I started reading Byte magazine. At that time 2000 dollars was on the cheap side of prices. Typically prices ran a bit higher than that. I think my first computer (1988 or 89) was an IBM 2 or something with an 8086 processor, 640 RAM, 5MB hard drive and the first version of the 3 1/2 floppy disks (they were making their debut in this machine). At that time I am pretty sure the 80286 was already available but it was too expensive to buy. At school we had 8086 clones with 640KB, 2 floppy drives and no hard drives. I am pretty sure that is what you could buy with around 2,000 US dollars (I need to check my facts though).
So today we can buy pretty powerful computers for less than a 1000 USD. But for 2000 bucks you can get a huge gaming machine with an Intel I7 Quad core processor at 2.8Ghz, 6GB RAM and 650GB of hard drive; not to mention an unbelievable graphics card (Dual ATI Radeon HD 5770 with 1GB of memory), DVD/CD reader writer, etc.
Processor speed has increased 500 times; but if we include the quad core idea then it is 2000 times or 11 doublings (is that a word?).
RAM capacity has increased 10,000 times or 13-14 doublings.
Hard drive has increase 100,000 tunes or 17 doublings (approx).
In addition to that I have not included inflation which supposedly has been 27% ; which I doubt. I mean this year alone gold has gone from 700 to 1350! Inflation 27%? yeah, right! At any rate, if we factor the 27% inflation (ha!) then we should be paying 2, 540 for the same 2000 dollars back in the year 2000. But we are now paying around 1,000 for a run of the mill machine. So there you go, another double (or halving of the price).
One side comment: this is why I totally get Apple when they launch a flash memory only laptop or Cannon when they launched a flash memory only camcorder 3 or 4 years ago.
Plus now we can get flat screens, wireless LANS, cellphones, bluetooth, blueray, etc, etc.
This is one of the cool things about working on the high tech industry; you get to design things that will work with technology that will be available in the future. Although this is also a downer when you go to the store and see only the old stuff available. You get so used to working with things that will be available in the future that current things are no longer so exciting.
Anybody want to venture what we will have in 2020? Don't ask me, I only work 3 years ahead :) I get the feeling that we will have a quantum leap that will take us in another direction; totally unexpected. So no need to make predictions, they are overrated.
Senate vote to kill Climate Act disrespects Canadians and democracy
Dear prime minister Harper,
I just cannot believe this government did this!
As a Canadian I feel very strongly about the future of the climate and this planet. I know that with a very adverse climate there will not be ANY economy to defend. What is so hard to understand about that? We need the Climate change accountability act yesterday!
My jaw is on the floor, I cannot believe this government is acting so irresponsibly.
I hope you find it in your heart the courage to act now so that we will not have to answer to our children tomorrow why we acted so irresponsibly and left them with no planet to live in.
Sincerely,
Victor Palacios
Montreal
2010 is almost over
So! 2010 and my contract with Nokia is almost over. Wow how time flies! So many things have happened in the part of the world of tecnology that I follow: iphone 4, Android phones, Google buzz fizzed, Google wave also tanked, facebook places and messages has just been launched (I am interested in what happens there), iPad, N8... etc. The latest political things that I have followed: Republicans take back congress (damn!), TSA scandal, Obama's trip to asia with 3000 guests, 65 airplanes and 35 war ships (whole mole!) and came back empty handed, Gordon Campbell resigned from his post as prime minister in BC, Canada, Canadians for question period reform, G8 in Toronto and the police abuses and that shadowy piece of legislation pulled off from the mayor's sleeve (That's Canada marching to the elite's tune), Lopez Obrador (in Mexico) getting ready for the next presidential election... and of course the economy... yikes have you seen gold?from 700 last year to 1350 today! basically that means that the US dollar is now officially devalued 50%. And I mean officially because with all those bailouts creating so much money out of thin air the real devaluation should be much severe. Mind you the US dollar is supported by nothing, i.e. it's just paper, it actually has no value, thus the wars the US has been involved in just to keep the dollar going. But now after Obama came back empty handed (could not get an agreement on the currency wars going on now) it means that the US dollar and most probably other currencies are going down! Word of advice buy physical gold or else!
I am still waiting for Disclosure... Not much time left.
Holly macaroni there is so much happening that my head is spinning! I did not even went through a quarter of my list. But this much has to happen in order to give way to the new.
Peace
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)