Teraflop Graphics Cards Beget Technical Innovation in Several Fields

The Wall Street Journal Online blew my mind tonight (June 16, 2008). Here is a quote:

"Nvidia Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. are packing hundreds of specialized calculating engines on new graphics chips to reach a milestone for speed known as a "teraflop," or a trillion scientific operations per second. They plan to offer the chips to gaming fans in cards for personal computers, but also are marketing the technology to accelerate the performance of desktop and server systems on a wide range of technical chores."

Know what this means?

Intel will have to put teraflop capable units into its chipsets to compete. They will do this within 5 years (my foresight).

From now on out, especially when the software catches up, (Read SilverLight and WPF) computers will be able to do real-time raytracing and lots of those other fancy 3D techniques that are so compute-bound. We will see the day in the next 5 years where you will be able to "photograph" (capture 3D modeling, image and gait information from) someone you know, and then make their 3D animated body do anything you want it to do in a computer display. It won't be possible to tell whether that video is real or "Memorex" (Remember those ads?)

You think SilverLight is cool now!? Just wait until it has a teraflop or two behind it. 3D displays will have to come out pretty soon as when you are talking teraflops, 3D imaging is possible, no, it will be demanded.

There is a lot of talk about how network capacity has to grow. The WSJ has another article about how video will grow 7 times the current load by 2012 to 44 exabytes. If you have multi-teraflop 3D video displays, your bandwidth is going to grow exponentially, not linearly for the display of 3D visual information.

Video will be *everywhere*. Every Neighborhood Watch will have video cameras, every city that does not have video on every street will soon have it. Every car will have it. Every videogame will have it. Every robot, every school, every daycare, every public place, and much of it will be publically available. And there will need to be a way to navigate it, hence my insight into a Virtual-Earth or Google Earth method of traversing space (and soon time) to see video from any source on the globe, and from any point in recorded history. You will be able to have a visual historical time machine.

It is apparent to me that the computer industry is on the verge of exploding with technical innovation. Under the current economic times, companies are hunkering down, spending wisely - but thinking about the wildly possible. And the wildly possible is coming into its own starting Now.

Credited or quoted information is copyright the respective authors and publishers, all other material is © 2008 Aaron L. Richards - Richards Media Net LLC
"Great Opportunities for Media Technologies"

http://richardsmedia.net/
Aaron@RichardsMedia.Net

AIR Over SilverLight

Looking at Adobe AIR and Microsoft SilverLight, AIR has the superior application model, even against SilverLight 2.0. Here is why.

(I've got to be short and to the point here, my MBA - Transformational Leadership class homework awaits...)

Lets work backword here for a moment. I think that everyone would agree future productivity applications, frequently thought of as word processors and spreadsheets among others are going to be web capable and web delivered. I know that the University of Phoenix is moving from Outlook to Google Gmail, and they seem to be enthusiastic about the online applications such as word processing and spreadsheets they are getting for free as part of the package as they move to Googles GMail.

So when you are using a word processor, what do you need? You need a fully featured application, that can store files for reuse later on. You need an application that you can use if your Internet connection goes down. You want a word processor that you can use where ever you go that you have a computer, regardless as to whether you can connect to the Internet or not. You want it to be cool, and you DON'T want to have to drag your storage device, no matter how small around with you.

Now lets look at Adobe AIR. I must state that I am speaking from a generalists viewpoint here about what I have read about Adobe AIR. Although I have done quite a bit of Flash programming, I have never programmed applications using AIR up to now.

That said, AIR is a cross-platform, Internet connectible/disconnectable applications development platform. What I mean by that is that AIR will run on Windows, the Mac and soon Linux. It can launch applications from the web, or from your local hard disk and communicate with databases, server applications and other applications written with AIR, .Net or other systems over the Internet.

AIR can store data on your local hard disk. So if you build a web-based word processor or spreadsheet program that you can launch by clicking on a hyperlink on a web page, it can be installed on your local hard disk, and even if the Internet goes down in your area, or more likely, you lose your wi-fi connection, the documents you are working on don't go bye-bye. Assume then that you shut-down your computing device and start again several hours later. Since the Adobe AIR-based productivity applications can reside on your hard disk (or the Internet), you can start your AIR-based application, which can read the docs from your hard disk, and then copy them to your storage in the Internet on a server somewhere.

Sounds like WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) based application you say? Yes! - Except that WPF is Windows only! No Mac or Linux support. Can SilverLight do it? Well, SilverLight by itself is not meant for PC-based Internet disconnectable applications. In other words, SilverLight is meant for always-connected-to-the-Internet type applications. You lose your Internet connection, and if you shut down your browser, you are toast. SilverLight is not meant for writing PC based applications like Word or Excel that launch from your local PC and save data to your local PC. At least not by itself.

So what am I saying here? Microsoft is in catch-up mode. Next week we will be hearing great things about SilverLight coming out of MIX '08. I personally have high-hopes for SilverLight, as I think Microsoft (my favorite computer company) is on the right track. However, Adobe with AIR has been on the right-track for quite a while now, and Microsoft needs to make some adjustments in their targeting. I know that they can and will adapt SilverLight (or WPF) to the PC-disk based, local storage enabled, Internet capable and launchable, Internet and browser disconnectable, cross-platform applications model. It is just a matter of time. But in my mind, the sooner, the better!

(C) 2008 - Aaron L. Richards of Richards Media Net LLC - Great opportunities for Media Technologies!

A vision from a man who grew up in the Internet Age, writes computer software and develops Internet systems for a living, and has visions of the future that keep him up at insane hours of the night.

SilverLight In the Junior Leagues, Now

(C) 2008 Richards Media Net LLC - All Rights Reserved

A vision from a man who grew up in the Internet Age, writes computer software and develops Internet systems for a living, and has visions of the future that keep him up at insane hours of the night.

Richards Media Net LLC - Great Opportunities for Media Technology

I am an oldtime Microsoft fan. Having said that, I have some observations on SilverLight that I will comment on.

When it comes to SilverLight, the current edition (1.0) is not even platform parity with Flash MX 2004 which is the edition of Flash of which I am most familiar with. I, from both a Visual Studio developer as well as a Flash developer perspective have had difficulty getting Blend (A SilverLight development tool) to do the most basic event driven activities with SilverLight. It does tweening OK, however I'd used programs in the 90's that did that well.

One thing Microsoft keeps falling on their face with is how to get software developers and designers to work together while keeping their tasks separate. With Visual Studio .Net/2003/2005 this was supposed to happen through the separation of backend coding from the front-end html development. Unfortunately the RunAt="Server" requirement for .Net controls in web development and the server controls in general pretty much required either the designers to know the idiosyncracies of Microsoft's additions to the markup language, or for the developers to touch the designers work, potentially breaking it and preventing the separation between designers and developers development efforts. In addition, I have not yet met a designer who wishes to use Visual Studio as their design tool, even though it supports Microsoft's server controls.

I think Microsoft has missed the mark again with SilverLight. At one point they were strongly targeting designers who by training are strongly anti-Microsoft. By incorporating the .Net languages into SilverLight, I believe that Microsoft will engage a larger software developer audience, however most of those folks could not develop an aestheticly attractive application to save their souls. Microsoft needs to appeal to the "Renaissance Man" & "Renaissance Woman." Those individuals who have both aesthetic sensibilities as well as programming and development capabilities. These are a rare breed, but there is apparently such a market demographic as the targeting of Adobe's web development tools such as Flash and DreamWeaver attests.

Toward this end it would be great if Microsoft would reawaken their great vector/bitmap tool PhotoDraw with XAML support and additional behavior/scripting ability. In addition, rather than have SilverLight be a "me too" product in comparison to Flash, Microsoft should take the ballsy step of daring to make the SilverLight plug-in larger to incorporate the 3D capabilities of WPF. To support this development path, Microsoft should take their 3D modeling and rendering tool (or did they sell that off?) or buy another if need be and give that SilverLight 3D support/XAML support and downsize the tool to something that could be downloaded for free to compete with Googles SketchUp product. By tying an excellent vector/bitmap tool to SilverLight as opposed to the plain-Jane Expression Design you would gather a greater wow factor and faster uptake. In addition, adding the 3D capability along with an excellent 3D tool, you would position SilverLight at the high end of capability, which we all know becomes mainstream capability rather quickly in the computer/Internet world.

With the prevalence of broadband and the ubiquitousness of 3D capable systems, I believe this is a gamble Microsoft should take.I believe Microsoft programming tools are superior for authoring user generated code, and would rather use Visual Studio for editing compared to the Flash MX 2004 editor.

Microsoft learns quickly. Hopefully they are open to direction and are motivated to develop SilverLight into a premiere product. It may be that they already of plans of this nature, and just need time to envision, design and implement.I think the real battle between Flash and Microsoft is 2-3 years down the road. Until then, SilverLight needs to fill in the gaps and build an identity.