Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Nvidia paints the town green

The fountains flowed a toxic green that puts all those terrible green beer St. Patrick’s hangovers in perspective. You were never that sick. But the point was made. San Jose, at least for these three days in August belongs to Nvidia.

What we find interesting is what Nvidia has chosen to concentrate on. There has been plenty of candy for the game boys, but the emphasis is on business, high end computing, entertainment and the future.
One thing is for sure, stereographics is here to stay—at least for a couple of years. Jen Hsung Huang showcased 3D video in his keynote and showed how much more fun games might be if you had a 3D view. Now, you might well say, we’ve had the opportunity for years and so far, gamers have played with 3D for a bit and their glasses wind up in the toy box with the steering wheels, old joy sticks, pedals, and t-shirts. But this time it’s differerent or at least that’s what the hardware vendors (of graphics boards, glasses, computers, glasses and displays) want us to believe. At Nvision the high quality screen and fast stereoscopic performance was pretty convincing. The next day’s keynote highlighted 3D and stereoscopic views for space exploration as if to say, again, it’s not just fun and games.
And that, really, seems to be what Nvidia is setting out to do with Nvision—bring more people into the family to share the vision of 3D and great graphics. It’s not just fun and games, it’s graphics.

Thursday, August 07, 2008

Larry’s Bee - Part Two

Last week I posed a postulate that Intel could justify the investment in Larrabee (Larry’s Bee) on the basis of obtaining some level of parity with the incumbents, mainly ATI and Nvidia. And in my rush to post and then catch an airplane, I included the total discrete graphics semiconductor market, not just the desktop discrete market – sigh. OK, I’ll eat a little humble pie, give you the right numbers but more importantly suggest something bigger.

First the numbers

I mistakenly used the total GPU (desktop and notebook) in my calculation of Intel’s TAM – although the charts revealed the real numbers.

In any case the desktop potential in 2010 is 100 million units. I’m not including notebooks because I don’t think Intel will have a Bee mobile version by 2010.

So, same speculation, they hit parity by end of 2010, gives them a TAM of $3.3 billion, a little less than the $4.6 Billion I mistakenly quoted.  But read on….

Larry’s bee maybe more

Some of you have seen my forecasts on the expansion of the discrete GPU market due to expanded use of Crossfire and SLI down to the mainstream level, the deployment of hybrid architectures (with integrated and discrete GPUs), and GPU-compute.

Now I want to suggest that Larry’s Bee will have a synergistic impact, and not be just a spoiler for ATI, Nvidia, and others.

Not just a spoiler

Intel has been steadily leaking information about Larry’s Bee for almost two years. Some might call that salting the mine. Others suggest it is a deflection and FUD program designed to defer purchases of current parts and make the consumer wait for the Bee. Not that many, if any, would put such tactics beyond Intel, but I think there’s more going on than even Intel may realize. Intel will by the very nature of its marketing muscle and brand strength attract new attention to the 3D world and gaming in particular.

Regardless of the quality or performance of the Bee, Intel’s brand will raise the awareness of PC gaming, and give the industry increased credibility as a viable entertainment vehicle, and as a safe bet for a consumer’s purchase. No doubt my friends at ATI and Nvidia are not going to be happy with this legitimization of the Bee as I’m suggesting it will happen, but they should.

Why?

Because as the incumbents they (ATI and Nvidia) have made the industry what it is today. Others like 3Dfx, Matrox, and S3 also contributed in the past, but it was ATI and Nvidia who kept at it, had the passion, and made the investments. Their work has brought new gamers to the fold, and that has paid off handsomely for them. In fact, the numbers show why Intel, the only company with the resources needed to enter the market wants a piece of the action.

Intel also wants a piece of the action because as the graphics vendors expand their influence on users and increase the ability of accelerate functions beyond gaming, Intel is in danger of seeing the CPU over shadowed by the GPU.

At Jon Peddie Research we think there are still more people who are curious about PC gaming and would like to try to it, but just a little timid. They’ve tried the free stuff from the web and what comes bundled with a new PC and while entertaining for a while it usually doesn’t hold their interest. However, FPSs, racing, RPGs, and RTSs games would. The action, the cinematic quality of the images and in some cases the stories are attractive. Something is needed to push them over the edge. Something to get them to invest the extra $100 to $300 to get a good enough graphics board to handle the richness of today’s games. Intel will be spending a lot of money to convince them that they want to invest in a good, gaming capable machine.

and the Nintendo

And least we forget, look at how the Wii resonated with people who never thought they’d be interested games.

The vixen Vista

We think Vista is a model for such consumers. Why Vista? Because Vista introduced the notion that to use it you had to have good graphics. Rather than being a turn off and scaring people away, it was a catalyst to new PC sales and to a certain extent aftermarket sales of graphics AIBs.

If a boring, do nothing entertaining operating system can have that kind of effect, which was largely due to Microsoft’s marketing effect combined with some of their OEMs, imagine what the impact of an Intel could be on PC gaming.

So we did

We put our heads together, looked at all our models, especially the ones in our new Gaming PC Market reports we’re introducing soon, and decided that Intel’s entrance, combined with the support of the game publishers and developers (who will lavish praise and testimonials on the Bee and Intel), plus Microsoft’s and the OEMs (Dell, HP, etc) support will make the market jump a full five percentage points, or something north of 1.5 million new users growing to 10 million in three to five yerars

Newbees not loyal

I don’t think once these new PC gamers take the plunge they will remain loyal to Intel, or anyone else. The Bee is going to have to earn and keep the loyalty of these newly hatched gamers. As they get involved with PC gaming and learn more about the ins and outs, they will change allegiances annually at the least. Some new gamers in fact will enjoy tuning their machines joining communities, debating the merits of various hardware rigs and they’ll be the first to jump.

And yeah, Intel is going to steal some market share from the incumbents, that always happens and sticking your head in the sand, or putting too much effort in discrediting the Bee isn’t going to have much if any effect on the its impact. It’s at best a distraction, and at worse a drain.

Friday, August 01, 2008

Why not Larrabee?

Anyone not stuck in outer space or maximum security knows Intel is going to introduce a new chip code named Larrabee. At Siggraph they are going to reveal, after almost two years of teases and leaks, the architecture of the device.

It is not a GPU as many have mistakenly described it, but it can do most graphics functions, Intel says it can do all, we’ll have to wait for proof. Right now its slide-ware, but development systems are supposed to become available in November.

ATI and Nvidia will be very busy discrediting the device and pointing out its shortcomings. They should, given that Intel has all but ruined their share prices with disparaging comments about GPUs. Perhaps Intel needs to be reminded of some of its past triumphs; the Itanium and XScale come immediately to mind.

Nonetheless the question is, in my mind at least, is there room in the market for a third major player in discrete graphics?

What is Larrabee’s market potential?
If you look at the market development for discrete desktop GPUs over time your answer is probably no. In the late nineties when the market was just cresting 100 million units a year, the number of suppliers swelled to over 70. Today, it is approaching 400 million units a year; but the market has consolidated to four discrete graphics chips suppliers plus two integrated (only) suppliers. And of that population, two suppliers, ATI and Nvidia, own 98% of the discrete GPU business (which was 350 million units in 2007.) And, the trend line indicates a flattening to decline in the business as the red line shows in Figure 1. However, Intel is no light-weight start up, and to enter the market today a company has to have a major infrastructure, deep IP, and marketing prowess – Intel has all that and more. So yes, there is room for a third player if that player is Intel.

Figure 1: Shipments of GPUs to date

Assuming flat growth in discrete graphics chips, if Intel could reach parity with the incumbents that would give them 33% of 20 million units a quarter. Are seven million units a quarter worth the investment? Intel won’t be able to charge any more than ATI or Nvidia.

It’s a bigger market
However, you can’t assume flat growth in discrete GPUs. We recently increased the forecast on desktop discrete GPUs to take into consideration multi-AIBs (i.e., Crossfire and SLI), and two new developments: Hybrid configurations (which have a GPU and an IGP), and GPU compute. Clearly Intel sees an opportunity for Larrabee in GPU compute, and probably in Hybrid.

This revised forecast gives Intel a market potential of 46 million units in 2010, the first full year of shipments of Larrabee. Assume they can sell the chips for $100 that represents a market value of $4.6 billion and more if they build AIBs.

Now there’s a lot of “if” in that, not the least of which is that they can bite into ATI and Nvidia’s market share. But $4.6 billion is an admirable goal and can represent Intel’s TAM.

Intel has told me they intend to push Larrabee into graphics applications first, so the GPU compute portion of the market may not be realized immediately in their TAM calculation. However, they will come out with several versions of Larrabee (various number of cores, just as ATI and Nvidia do) and so the entire discrete spectrum is open to them.

Figure 2: Potential increase in GPU shipments due to new architectures and multi-AIBs

When is a GPU not a GPU?
One final note. GPUs. Larrabee is not a GPU in the sense an ATI, Nvidia, or S3 chip is a GPU. It is gang of X86 cores that can do graphics processing, so it is a GCPU – graphics capable processing unit, as are ATI, Nvidia, and S3’s chips. It’s unlikely the industry is going to take such subtleties into consideration and adopt a new term like GCPU and rather will incorrectly label and refer to Larrabee as a GPU.

Probably Intel will come up with a catchy mnemonic for Larrabee. It would be wise of them to do that to differentiate it and to drive home their point that existing graphics processing architectures “will be a footnote in the history books However, the industry, analysts, reporters, users, and investors have demonstrated too many times that they are lazy and will find it easier to simply call Larrabee a GPU.  A GPU by any other color smellith as sweet….

Then and now
Intel is announcing a 2010 part now. Maybe that will influence some potential buyers to wait, certainly that would Intel’s ambition. However, do you think ATI and Nvidia are just going to sit on their hands till 2010 and wait for Larrabee to show up?

ATI and Nvidia are fleet-footed companies and can turn much faster than Intel. So if they chose to they could have a counter punch to Larrabee by 2010.

And lets not forget that ATI and Nvidia have been building hardware optimizations direct and OpenGL for the last 10 years, designs that are based on the APIs. Larrabee can’t do that and so there will be constraints in Larrabee which Intel is confident it can overcome in software. A lot can happen between now and 2010.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

First Person Second

Here’s an interesting chart Jon found which tracks the use of the term “Doom clone” versus “First Person Shooter” (FPS)

It’s fascinating how the term FPS stuck, I mean Mist is an FPE (first person explorer), rFactor is a FPR (first person racer), FSX is a FPF (first person flyer) – why does the shooter get the acronym?

As a representative of JPR, and thus a connoisseur of the pixel, I propose a petition to reclaim FPS to its rightful and appropriate place in history….

....of course we are speaking of Frames Per Second.

So the takeaway is to remember Frames Per Second first and First Person Second. 

Wednesday, July 09, 2008

Paranoid protectionists Prima Donnas of the press plead for protection

We recently sent out about a zillion invites to the press to invite them to our luncheon in LA during Siggraph.

Aside from finding out who’s not working (out of the office till…) and who’s not employed (permanent failure party does not exist) we also learned that there’s a whole bunch of press people who just can’t cope with email, especially from strangers (given such an attitude, I would guess their friends list is small) These timid and violated poor souls seek refuse from the onslaught of email from strangers offering millions from Nigeria, sex forever, and new hair in places you didn’t know you had, and have put a firewall up to block the spam that any semi intelligent Outlook user can do with his or her Junk Mail function.

Their robots says things like:

* I apologize for this automatic reply to your email. To control spam, I now allow incoming messages only from senders I have approved beforehand. This message was created automatically by mail delivery software (TMDA).

* I’m protecting myself from receiving junk mail. Since I have a simple email address, the spammers have flooded my mail box - I need to invoke this challenge in order to read messages from real people (like yourself) that need to communicate with me.

I wonder if they have a cutout service that goes through their newspapers and magazines removing all the unwanted ads, and another robot that operates the TiVo so they never have to watch an unwanted, and certainly unrequested ad. Then there’s the junk mail robot that carefully and cleverly filters all their post mail, strangely and ironically never having anything left – gee, no birthday card from mom again this year.

Such a clean, pristine and unmolested life they lead, one of their robots runs ahead and rips down all billboards, ads stuck on the side of telephone poles, and each and every banner in front of every shop – such offense shall not invade the virgin minds of our pampered press corps.

I laugh at them as I cash the checks from the Nigerian bank of the West Nile, and go off to Scotland to collect my lottery winnings, I actually don’t even have time for the $1,000 gift card at BestBuy someone sent me, and as for never being incapable of sex any time anywhere, well, what can I say, I grin a lot now. The hair thing is a bit annoying, what with a trip to the barber every other day, but with all the money I have coming in from the Bahamas, it hardly matters. And the fact that I no longer have to work for living since I took up that offer from Sam Smaltz to be my own boss, just makes my life as a real estate magnate all the more sweet. Of course I am annoyed with the offers to refinance my credit cards, house, and car, since I’ve long ago paid them off with the money that was left to me by an uncle I didn’t know I had in Egypt.

Alas, I feel sorry for the poor protected and persecuted press that deny themselves this richness and wealth, and I’ve tried to do something about it, but every time I send them a few hundred thousand dollars it comes back.

Saturday, July 05, 2008

iPhone breaks Moore’s law

My new phone cost more than my PC or TV

I’m getting ready to buy the iPhone. I mean buy it, not lease it from AT&T. I’ve been saving my allowance, and taking bottles and cans to the recyclers, and I’m getting close to the $700 needed (plus taxes) for the 16 GB 3G iPhone, I can hardly wait.

While I’m waiting I watch a little TV on my new 32-inch HD LCD TV that only cost $449 from Circuit City. And when I get bored with TV, I turn to my new $649 Dell Inspiron notebook with a 15- inch screen.

Soon I’ll have everything I need, and all of it for under $1,000 each, although I better hurry because I know the next generation iPhone will probably be $999 plus taxes.

How come, I wonder, everything else in the universe electronic goes down in price or stays at the same price with added functionality and the iPhone goes up? Isn’t that what Moore’s law is all about?

Does Apple and AT&T know they’ve broken the law? Will they get arrested and have to go to jail? OMG – if Apple has to go to jail, what’s going to happen to all the Apple stores - will they be bought by CompUSA or Circuit City?

And how come a puny 3.5 inch 480 x 320 pocket computer costs more than my 15.4 inch 1680 x 1050 notebook computer, or my 32-inch 1900 x 1080 TV? Why does a smaller screen, with a less powerful processor cost more? I used to think I understood electronics and economics, but now, well now, I don’t know if anybody does.

You gotta give Steve Jobs credit, he is a disruptive force, breaking the law and changing the rules.

Saturday, June 28, 2008

Missed the Boat

The loudest complainers about PC Gaming seem to have one thing in common - a failed strategy in this market.

Friday, June 20, 2008

Attempted rapprochement

Rumor has it there was an attempt at rapprochement. Long annoyed with The Inquirer’s loose cannon Charlie Demerjian, Nvidia has been shunning him and took him off the invitee list of most events. Water to a duck in the case of Charlie, he has so many sources the only reason he goes to any event is to score food and babes – he does better on the food as not many babes go to those things either.

So Derek Perez, Nvidia’s boss of PR and infamous for having a knife fight with a former competitor and now employee Brian Burke, thought if I can live with Burke, I can live with anyone. Perez sent out a friendly “Hey, how about coffee, or breakfast,” email.

Charlie, not one to turn down a donut, and bored to tears in Taipei, said why not, and met Perez at the hotel restaurant.

If you’ve ever met Charlie, you know he doesn’t suffer fools, is quick to make decision, and not the most tactful person on the planet. Oh, and did I mention, opinionated. The annoying thing about him is he’s often right.

The coffee part went OK, but when the serious talk got started and Perez started laying down some ground rules, Charlie said, no, no, hell, no, what the F**’s wrong with you, you deaf – no.

Body builder and short fused Perez had had just about enough and before anyone could blink, karate trained Perez had ninjaed his dish of eggs right into Charlie’s face.

Swift acting guards quickly defused the situation as Demerjian was in the process of loading his quart bottle of Coke with Mentos – the carnage was avoided but it was a tense few moments. Both men were escorted out of the restaurant, through separate doors and the police took over after that.

Charlie was next seen at the Intel event, and then at the ATI event. Perez hasn’t been seen and isn’t answering email, but then the 9800 GTX+ may have been keeping him busy.

Disclaimer: This is a joke. It did not really happen. Though Derek did invite Charlie for coffee.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

This is a rant about spin - Intel extends command in fast-computers tally

The annual supercomputer conference was just held in Dresden Germany. At it they show off the top 500 supercomputers. Usually there are two or three new ones at the top and the rest shift downward till they fall off.

Look at how the AP reported this event:

Intel extends command in fast-computers tally
Associated Press 06.18.08, 9:14 AM ET

Microprocessors from Intel Corp. run more of the world's fastest computers than ever, according to a report released Wednesday that tracks progress in the computing industry.

The latest list of the world's 500 most powerful computers, published twice a year by academic researchers, shows that 75 percent of the machines are powered by Intel (nasdaq: INTC - news - people ) chips, up from 71 percent in November. Chips from Intel's main rival, Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (nyse: AMD - news - people ), showed up in 11 percent of the top 500, down from 16 percent on the last list.

The fastest computer on the list is the $100 million "Roadrunner" machine built by IBM Corp. (nyse: IBM - news - people ) for the Department of Energy's nuclear lab in Los Alamos, N.M. Roadrunner is the first computer in the world to surpass a petaflop - 1,000 trillion calculations per second. It's more than twice as fast as the IBM machine that ranks No. 2 on the list.

IBM made an industry-leading 42 percent of the supercomputers on the list, but its overall count diminished slightly. Hewlett-Packard Co. (nyse: HPQ - news - people ) gained ground, with 37 percent of the fastest machines in the latest report.

Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed

Now look at the reality of it – Intel is in the bottom fourth of the top ten, and AMD is in the top half. So why does Intel get the headline? Why not AMD or IBM, or even Cray? Because Intel has 75 machines, each one of them slower than a new AIB from ATI or Nvidia?

Are the AP folks in love with Intel or just stupid?

Saturday, May 24, 2008

How many FLOPS?

FLoating point Operations Per Second – FLOPS, one of the more obscure acronyms in our lives, and one of the oldest ones. It’s since been modified with a prefix of M (mega), G (giga) and most recently T (tera). A Terra is a million millions, one trillion (1012) a whole lot of anything, whether its cycles (Hertz), Bytes, dollars, or FLOPS. (And note - the ‘S’ in FLOPS is capitalized.)

So I was asked recently, how many TFLOPS in all the game consoles?

There are two answers to that question.

Do you mean in all the ones built, or just the FLOPS of the specific consoles?

So what is the TFLOPS rating of the game consoles? Well there are two answers to that question too.

If you count central processor FLOPS that’s one answer, if you count the FLOPS potential of the GPU and add it to the CPU’s FLOPS that’s another answer. And that answer provokes all kinds of debate. One side (the one I favor) is that the FLOPS of the GPU aren’t used in computations and therefore shouldn’t be counted because they can’t be measured and just represent a theoretical number. The other side argues that they are indeed being used in computation - the computation of shader operations. However, both sides agree that there isn’t yet a benchmark that can measure them. And therefore I conclude that we shouldn’t use them in evaluating the CPU FLOPS of game consoles.

The other main answer to the original question is do you mean in all the ones built, so I added in the installed base of all the consoles shipped.

The following table lists the FLOPS in consoles.

2007, October: Sony PS3 console, at US$400, that runs at a claimed 2 teraFLOPS; these figures represent the processing power of the GPU. The seven CPUs run collectively at a lower 218 GFLOPS.[14]

All of the GLOPS of all the consoles to date are only 402; where as a modern GPU is over two times that – Moore’s law in action.

You can read this several ways:

1. All of the CPU consoles added up don’t equal 1 TFLOPS.
2. All of the consoles added up don’t exceed 2 TFLOPS even if you count GPU and CPU.
3. All consoles shipped to date add up to 7.318 EFLOPS - Exa FLOPS - 1018 and that’s a number that that thrills the folks at .

Now why did I go through this laborious, pedantic, and sure to be arguable discussion? For several reasons:

1. It’s raining here on Mt Tiburon so I can’t go out and play.
2. I thought it was really interesting to look at how far consoles have progressed
3. I thought it was even more interesting to look at how far PC graphics have progressed – ATI and Nvidia are shipping TFLOPS AIBs, and the next gen coming out in June, with Dual GPUs will be approaching 5 TFLOPS per AIB.

Just think of what the game developers and the movie studios can do with kind of horsepower.

Think of the shader operations that will be offered soon. Those of you reading this who know me know Peddie’s first law – in computer graphics too much is not enough. And although I haven’t made it a law yet, if I did (it would be number three), I’m fond of saying – don’t just watch a movie – be in the movie.

That’s where we’re heading with all these tera and peta FLOPS and I can’t wait to get there because next stop after this one is the holodeck.

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Moore’s law violated by inflation – your new laptop will cost more

Another contributor to sluggish PC sales for this year

Even though one of the applied tenants of Moore’s law is that prices will drop over time (Moore never said that, it’s just a statement that has been applied to his original observation about feature size shrinkage over time), it appears the rising price of oil will change that as nations around the world grapple with inflation. Prices will rise.

This appears to be showing up first in laptop costs as reports of higher priced magnesium-aluminum alloy chassis are coming out of China with cost increases of 10% due to rising metal costs caused by the increasing cost of extracting, processing, and delivering those metals thanks to the higher price of oil. And although some notebook vendors are looking at using plastics, that won’t help given that plastic is made from oil.

Other costs are increasing as well and Acer, HP, and Levovo had indicated their ODMs are raising prices by as $5 to $20. Compal and Wistron the world’s three largest contract manufacturers have reported they will be raising prices for the first time.

At the same time Hynix Semiconductor, the world’s No. 2 memory chip maker raised contract prices for computer memory chips by about 15 percent last month and expected further increases in May although some expect DRAM prices to start falling again in the fourth quarter; this may be wishful thinking.

Desktop PCs won’t escape these cost increases and if personal and corporate incomes don’t increase accordingly then the inflationary increases in PCs could have a dampening effect on already sluggish sales.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Come together … over me

Common people now, smile on your brother, everybody get together, try to love one another - for a while…

We’re getting closer to the dream, the vision, of ubiquity mutual connectivity in the home – and maybe beyond a bit.

My vision, since 1999, has been that everything in the home will talk to everything in the home. Everything that can will be a server, and everything will be a client. Since 1999 I’ve had to modify my vision a bit, I’ve had to learn a strange new alphabet, B, A, C, U, and then N – what’s that all about? And I had to add handheld devices to the mix. But basically the dream is alive and getting closer everyday.

Some folks thought (including me for a while) that we would have a master server in our homes, a data furnace if you will. But it soon became apparent that storage was becoming cheaper and moving in a curve steeper than Moore’s law. We also saw the explosion and proliferation of non-volatile memory in most machines and our pockets. And we saw the ever expanding, and ever faster, proliferation of network technology.

Today’s media addict has at least one, and probably three handheld devices that he or she users as a player and also as a recorder or a storage device – an MP3 player, a mobile phone, and maybe a dedicated media player. All of them have a combination of tunes, photos, and videos on them. Stationary devices like STBs with HDDs, DVD players, PCs, and TVs have similar types of media either stored or streaming to through them; and semi-mobile devices like laptops do too.

We have all kinds of alphabet laws and rules to get these things talking to each other DNLA, UPnP, BlueTooth, 801.11(a, b, c, n, etc.), Ethernet, USB, MPEG 2, 4, WMV AVI, Flash, H.264, and on and on.  We got the stuff, with and without wires. We got the file formats, the display formats, and boy do we have the media, it’s coming out of our pores.

But there are petty jealousies combined with downright stupidity. And so you can’t serve iTunes to your PC via Bluetooth, or Frustrated Housewives to your PSP from the TiVo, or show the pictures on your camera phone to anyone via your TV, yet.

But we’re really, really close. In fact I’ll venture a guess that in two years or less this will not only be possible, but commonplace, and our kids will look at us like we’re from Mars when we tell them, “When I was your age…”

So we may not be able to stop global warming, election campaigns, or roadside bombs, but we will see peace in our homes in our life time – I guranetee ya.

Virtual Reality Resolution

M.C Escher Hand with Reflecting Sphere

A number of months ago I visited a defense contractor who is making virtual reality training simulations for the military. To use the system people put on a VR headset which has a resolution of 800 x 600. At this meeting I asked the developers what the “virtual resolution” of their world was and the concept was lost to them. Well what I meant was how many pixels are in the universe from a single perspective around the user.

Lately I have been flying Microsoft Flight Simulator X with a TrackIR head tracking device which allows me to look around. A static viewpoint is 2560 x 1600 and I can find about six views from the cockpit that do not overlap. So using my concept of Virtual Reality Resolution - the pixel count is (2560x1600) * 6 = 24,576,000

I guess the field of view plays a part in this as well. What I’m driving at is a way to measue the VR world visual definition fidelity by a theoretical sphere of pixels around a user. The larger the pixels; the smaller possible number of pixels - and the less possible visual reality and immersion. On the flipside - the smaller the pixels, the more that can be fit into the sphere - to a theorertically ifinite level. If the Star Trek Holodeck existed - how many pixels would be neeeded to create the illusion of reality? I’m just thinking out loud and may be missing something or someone who has already delved into this area.

Saturday, May 10, 2008

The New Communications Tools…Listening, Helping

Guest blogger Andy Marken has weighed in with his very opinionated view on how, exactly marketing professionals are going to have to change their ways in order to take advantage of the new order: Web 2.0. It’s not business as usual and it’s going to require new attitudes as more people get in on the act.

By G.A. “Andy” Marken, Marken Communications Inc,

Marketing and communications “experts” like to tell us how the Internet and Web 2.0 have opened up new opportunities for the industry to reach out to and influence people in new, exciting, more effective ways. 

Instant information web sites, 10s of thousands of them are ready for your news bloggers, almost free social networks in which you can embed your news. Unique opportunities for the company to tap directly into the consumer before he/she makes a purchase.

How much better can it get? 

Marketing is fired up, and in unison they ask:
- Did you send them the well crafted release we approved?
- How many clips/hits did you get?
- Why are you working with XYZ user community group? How many buyers are there?
- Why did you send product to him/her to review…it’s just an ego, self-expression blog?

Managers and communications people talk the talk when it comes to blogs, podcasts, UGs, social sites. But, at the same time they: 
- Emphasize spending their time on “tier one,” media
- Measure performance and results on the volume of media clips/hits
- Question the reach/influence of specialized user groups/communities
- Ask how many people be influenced by an existing customer influence/sell
- Question the ROI is of a blogger who might have 500 readers a month
- Wonder how to handle it when a blogger writes something negative about the company/product

Social networking really isn’t anything new. It has just taken its individual and collective voice online. 

The Audience(s)
Social networking locations are roughly described as:
- rating, review sites – expressing an individual’s self-esteem and providing information/assistance/guidance
- video, content sharing sites – is all about expressing your identity (10s of thousands of new segments posted for viewing/sharing every month)
- blogs – a way people express their identity, focus on showing their status or improving their self-esteem, providing unique information, insights, assistance (thousands are brought online each month). The community is loosely defined with paid bloggers, ego bloggers, helpful or venomous bloggers. Most every editor, reporter, analyst has his/her own blog where he/she puts down information, ideas, and thoughts that don’t fit in their publication; editorial guidelines; or something simply needs to be said.
- specialty groups – individuals/organizations that come together because they share a common interest and want to share/learn from like individuals (name any subject, there’s an online community)
- social networks – these can be profile-driven (audiophiles, videophiles, Jaguar enthusiasts, etc) – affiliation/belonging – or purpose-driven (video post production groups, home theater specialists, auto restorers). Again it is subject, sharing a common interest/value, being part of a community.

What we have to get past is the focus of tier one, tier two locations/individuals.

Everyone who wants information/assistance is important. 

Each can influence the image of the company and its products.

They’re all part of the new media frontier. 

Fading Importance
In the brave new communications world, less importance is being placed on the basic public relations tool – the news/press release – and greater attention on relationships. Increasingly members of the media view the well-crafted, thoroughly reviewed announcement sent out over the wire or distribution service as old news by the time it arrives. Everyone receives the information, so it’s of comparatively less importance.

News people – print, radio/TV, web, blog – now have new sources. They are very adept at searching the web—scanning white papers, event listings, price changes, job openings, special interest portal sites, user forums and online newsletters.

They find two or three disconnected ideas and piece together their own story lines. As a result, despite what many believe the release is the beginning of the process, not an end product in today’s always on online world.

New Platforms

Finding, tracking and handling social media coverage of company/product news, information/misinformation and issues is a significant challenge for PR/communications people. Social media isn’t traditional media. Rather, social media is more a form of personal discussions. Old-fashioned media service email/telemarketer pitches may get you in print…negative print but print just the same.

Bloggers come in all shapes, sizes, ages and backgrounds. Some are non-journalists; some are seasoned professionals; some are people passionate about a company, product, technology, subject; some are simply passionate about seeing their ideas/opinions read. Then, there are some who have made their mind up before they talk with you; some have an axe to grid, and others (most) are open to discussions, ideas.

The only best approach for the marketer in this brave new world is to listen, gain insights, develop ideas before you launch your blog/podcast program. Next to getting product and service recommendations from user review sites or from friends or other authorities, blogs are almost as credible as word of mouth recommendations.

Value Proposition
One of the greatest opportunities for companies, the most challenging and the most difficult to quantify are user reviews – user groups, blogs, social nets.

It is impossible for public relations to point to a circulation of 10,000, 100,000, 1,000,000 and show any true ROI (return on investment) for someone writing a review or talking about a company/product/service.

Study after study shows that consumers today go online to research a subject, product, solution before they buy. 

The first thing the prospective customer searches out is user reviews followed by comparison charts and expert reviews.

Conventional news media may make the consumer aware of the product/service but people make their buying decisions from peer recommendations. Not from the manufacturer’s web site or literature, not from the retail clerk, not from the expert’s recommendations. 

Social Nets – Common Interest
Social networks like MySpace, YouTube, Plaxo, Facebook, LinkedIn and thousands of niche interest, professional and avocation site members come together because of a common interest. They are also superior avenues for reaching influential decision makers and consumers.

People around the globe are members of these sites because they are able to exchange information, ideas and problems/solutions on specific business, personal or professional topics.

Locations like DigitalMediaNet, OcModShop, Tom’s Guide, AnandTech, CDFreaks, audiophile, digitalmediathoughts and hundreds of horizontal and vertical interest sites have forums, blogs and news available in one community location. 

They represent fantastic opportunities for people to get a quick understanding and indoctrination into the tight social network community where common goals, common problems are shared/resolved. They are such rich locations that many public relations/communications and marketing individuals look at the locations as narrowcast goldmine opportunities. 

Wrong !

Sit on the sidelines. Listen. Observe. 

There will be times and opportunities for company representatives – openly identified – to add information and ideas.

But regardless of how the online discussion flows, these social sites are one of the best product/service focus groups in the world. They have free and open discussions. Even negative statements can yield positive returns for the company in the shape of new policies, new products, new ways of thinking and new methods of working with consumers. 

In the new Web 2.0 environment communications people have to understand, appreciate and embrace the idea that:
- there is no local market or territory any more. We work and live in a global market and information community
- we must have open and continual conversation with our consumers and partners as a group and individually
- the company may have 10 million customers but each is an individual with unique wants and needs
- once you step into the Web 2.0 world you have to take the good with the bad and win one customer, one user at a time

Public relations thinking that encompasses message management, branding and compunctions distribution pipelines is broken. It will never be as it was before.

Professionals have to understand the power and influence word of mouth, blogs, social networking communications has in the digital world. 

There is no clear cut ROI but the dangers of ignoring these communities are obvious. 

Public relations or communications people who ignore customer issues because “it isn’t my job,” are missing a golden opportunity to get personal inputs on the person’s image of the company, why the individual bought the product/service, what they like/dislike and what they feel should be improved. It doesn’t take many of these discussions to see a market pattern.

Certainly it can be a dangerous when you begin your digital world trip. Safety in the trip depends on your ability to shut up…listen…help.

It is the only way your company and you can be certain both make the trip successfully.

Monday, April 07, 2008

Educating the next crop of engineers

As I pondered this ponderous title and the challenge it represents for me to lead the round table at COFES it got me thinking about how we learn.

Studies have shown that children learn fast and do so until they become 19 to 20 years old, then their brains become less flexible and learning takes longer, and it’s more difficult. By the time one reaches full adulthood and middle age  you really have to work at it to learn new things; languages are particularly difficult because of the contextual and grammatical differences, they don’t easily fit our well honed models and views of the world.

Engineering is a language, as is medicine, music, and art.  And not everyone is able to learn those subjects as easily as others,  someone good in art may do poorly in medicine, although there does seem to be a natural linkage between engineering and music.

As we grow we learn not just facts but also falsehoods, philosophies, and fears. And those fears, philosophies, and falsehoods prevent us from learning other, usually important, and often enriching things – we are cast into a channel of self imposed ignorance.

It’s these falsehoods that are the greatest barrier to children entering the field of engineering. These localized common wisdoms found in school yards, barber shops, and local hangouts inhibit and stifle a child’s potential. They are taught that they can’t do certain things, or that such things are too hard, or not cool. The teachers are presenting their own failures as fact, and sadly embedding the crippling idea, don’t try you’ll only fail, into supple young minds.

Some however are so drawn to a vocation or profession that no amount of obstacle, peer pressure, or parental abandonment can dissuade them. They are the lucky ones, the ones who have found a passion early in life and managed to pursue it, and probably do well at it. And whereas we can’t ignore these people, they don’t need as much of our attention as the left behinds and passed over. The challenge is plucking the marginalized children out before they get too stuck in self inhibiting ways and can’t be inspired.

And so with regard to engineering, I think there could be simple tests, tests that are not formed like a test (and certainly not an element of the disastrous No Child Left Behind fiasco.) Rather testing would be coupled with sensitivity training for teachers, counselors, coaches, and other adults involved in the management, guidance, and education of children. The goal would be to identify those students who have a natural knack for problem solving, mechanics, and systems. And even though the theme of this rambling diatribe is about how to find and encourage the next crop of engineers, it is not constrained to just that narrow field of endeavor. The abilities we’re looking for apply equally to an orthopedic surgeon, and maybe even a composer.

In the past, in most countries including the United States and especially those countries with centrally controlled economies, aptitude testing was the norm. Children were evaluated at various grades, often as a way of directing them into studies where they would be best suited to make the greatest achievement (and subsequent contribution to society.) That concept has been abandoned in the US as being narrow minded and limiting. The idea being that testing and directing children towards particular areas of study limits a child’s self expression. Admittedly, using testing to sort children into rigid career paths or trade schools can be dangerous, cruelly limiting a child’s future. But to completely abandon the idea of testing in order to nurture and foster children’s aptitudes is also a mistake. I think it’s especially a mistake in underprivileged schools where children may not have a strong home life and learn about the world on the streets from people no better educated than they are. These are precisely the kids that need focused attention early in their careers.

One of the excuses for not providing such evaluations and guidance for children is the limitations in staff and of teachers. The teachers are over burdened with large classes, and administrative tasks such as checking home work, grading papers, submitting lesson plans, that eat into their time to offer any personal guidance.

So I have a proposal.

We hear the lament of industry that the US does not have sufficient technical people and therefore we should open up our immigration policy to allow more foreign workers in (H-1B visas.) However, if the industry would apply some of its resources to augmenting the schools with special information and teaching programs, evaluations of students, and guidance for students that show promise, I think US industry could find all the technical people it needs. The problem for US industry is that such a program would take at least 15 years from first contact in grammar school and US industry wants an instant solution.  Therefore, I propose the government grant the opening up of H-1B visas but with the provision that US industry pay a special tax to a fund for the evaluation, training, and most importantly, guidance of US students (regardless of where they were born.)

I further suggest that our professional societies assess their members an additional fee (some do this now as an educational fund) for student evaluation programs that are combined with student guidance programs.

I believe there are hundreds of thousands of potential engineers in grammar, middle and high school right now. In our ever more complex and challenging world—and especially so in the US—we need more engineers and technicians than ever before. We have these bright young flowers, let’s find creative and imaginative ways of encouraging them before they get lost in the weeds.

For further reading

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/16/education/edlife/EDSCIENCE.html

http://members.shaw.ca/priscillatheroux/Glasser.htm

http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=s12132002

http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2005/0518visa.pdf