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People ask from time to time, “What do you do?”
People who don’t know me ask that question, assuming I actually do something—it’s
because I’m such a snappy dresser and drive such a nice car, they figure
to have that I must do something. I tell them I chase pixels. That usually
scares away the causal inquiries and allows me to go back to my wine
or laptop. Some people, either not able to take a hint, or just bored,
persist. “What’s that mean?” they ask. I counter with, “Do
you know what a pixel is?” That usually stops the second wave,
and most people will say, “Oh, yeah, sure, very interesting,”
and then turn back to their knitting or sports page. But there’s always
that one person at the cocktail party, or in the elevator, or at the
UFO meeting who will persist and ask, “What’s a pixel?” I
then say, “It’s the tiny little dots of light that make up all
the displays in your life, your TV, computer, mobile phone, and the
giant signs here in the casino.” That usually traps me into a lengthy
discussion, distracting me from my nail clipping, and forcing me to
draw a picture. This is the usual picture I draw, and I’m thinking of
having it printed on the back of my business card.
As the chart shows, we get into a lot of things, usually
at the semiconductor area, but always driven by the impact and influence
of the pixel.
Pixels are so much a part of our lives that we really
do take them for granted, yet it’s amazing how really diverse our business
is getting as many of us chase the ubiquitous pixel. And when you look
at the diagram you see how easily it could be drawn with almost any
other center of gravity and still have many of the same elements—imagine
it drawn for a CPU-centric view of the world, or memory, or displays,
etc.
And those of us in all the five major spheres look at
the others and think how nice it would be if all we had to do was worry
about one thing like they do. But no one can these days. The TV folks
have to know far more about CPUs and OSs then they’d like, and the content
people have to know a lot more about pixel shaders than ever before,
while the industrial and aerospace folks are learning about the benefits
of PCI Express, and 500-MHz memory, and the phone companies know they
have to get SoCs —topics none of them maybe even knew about five
years ago, let alone had to be knowledgeable about.
You can also redraw this kind of chart through linking
elements—APIs, for example, linking GPUs and OS, or CPUs, etc.,
and as an organization chart with the segments as the top-row boxes
and the components stringing down below them.
So our view of the universe is through the pixel. We see
things in terms of how they influence the pixel, and in some cases as
in consumer surveys, how pixels influence them. We see pixels everywhere,
in our dashboards (GPS, radio signage), in our homes (clocks, remote
controls, AV windows, and refrigerators, plus the usual suspects like
TVs and DVDs, etc.), in the streets (crossing signs, animated billboards,
displays in department stores, public transport and taxis, and movie
marquees), the doctor’s and dentist’s office, restaurants, and of course
airports. But we’re sensitized to it; they may be camouflaged to others,
to us they jump out.
So after I draw my pictures and try to explain what a
pixel is and how they are part of our lives, I usually point some out
to the inquirer, “There, see that? Those are pixels.” Amazed,
they usually drift away seeing a new universe and telling their friends,
“Hey, look at this, those are pixels, y’know.”