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- Working distance can have a large effect on real estate prices and stress from commute times. Self driving cars may change the nature of this.
- Many of the places Chris has worked have been in the suburbs because of the tax benefits for larger manufacturing facilities.
- Dave has been experiencing shipping delays because of the weather in the US, especially going through JFK.
- On “Still Untitled: The Adam Savage Project” (part of Tested) they talked about the demise of Radio Shack.
[tube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcrD0uVxpTw[/tube] - Logistics are amazing, especially things like Kiva systems, which Amazon bought for $750M.
[tube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KRjuuEVEZs[/tube] - The Hackaday Prize for 2015 was announced. Dave will be a judge again and the theme this year is “improving the world”.
- Element14 has done something similar in the past with an “Eco Prize” though Dave thinks there were probably fewer entries.
- Chris found a document that details the 50 breakthroughs necessary to move humanity forward. Many of these are not electronics related but are very important humanitarian tools that will improve the lives of millions.
- One example is “eradicating mosquitos” because they spread malaria, which reminded Chris of the MAKE magazine cover that showed a mosquito shooter (from Nathan Myhrvold’s company).
- Recently Bill Gates drank water drawn directly off of a waste treatment plant, which was smaller and more portable than in the past.
[tube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVzppWSIFU0[/tube] - Dave hears a lot about Sydney water because his wife is a water scientist. In the past people have refused the water because it was directly processed from waste, though it was all a psychological problem.
- We had forgotten about the Google contest for a super compact power supply, the little box challenge, the prize for which is $1M. It is due in January of 2016.
- On the other end of the spectrum, Apple had an event for their new products showing off the ridiculous prices people pay for technology (like a $10K watch).
- Apple will be using the USB Type C connector on new Mac Books, which should drive the standard forward. After the show was recorded, Google announced they will be using them as well on Google Chromebooks and Android phones.
- While this seems like a unifying standard, Dave brings up the xkcd about n+1 standards.
- We don’t particularly enjoy talking about the cultural aspect of Apple, but it’s impossible to ignore their role in the electronics supply chain (for things like driving standards). They also use their cash to throw their weight around by buying up entire factories worth of parts.
- Speaking of huge money in electronics, Freescale and NXP will be merging (really NXP buying Freescale) for a combined company worth $40B. Former guest and former silicon insider Vincent Himpe had some thoughts about the merger on the forum.
- Jen asked on twitter where we see the industry in 5/10/20 years. With the increased consolidation, Chris thinks there will be less competition and by extension, less innovation. Chris also predicts that Intel will eventually split off its foundry business to compete with the other giants like TSMC.
- The fabless + foundry model changes a lot of things, namely that smaller upstarts and fabless companies can come in and disrupt big old companies (like Freescale) without as much capital. Chris thought Freescale was done for when they switched to ARM because they didn’t have anything to compete on.
- Chris got a t-shirt that is an updated version of Never Trust The Autorouter:
Sweet mail today: The first @ContextualElec PCB design through @oshpark & the new Autorouter shirt by @starsandrobots pic.twitter.com/B8DAN8urO1
— chris_gammell@chaos.social 🇺🇦 (@Chris_Gammell) March 10, 2015
- Dave is looking at motor drives. Chris things the “big stuff” is the area with the most interesting problems right now.
- Don’t forget we have a Patreon page…you can donate on a per-show basis; if we don’t produce, you don’t pay.
- Chris will be at the ECEDHA (ECE department heads assoc) next week, talking to all the profs that are in charge of curriculum. Should be fun!
Thanks to Nikokahkonen for the wonky (modified) picture of the birds
@1:12 made me CRY! Chris you are killing it! 🙂
Zynq – Altium wasnt FPGA manufacturer Dave, Xilinx is.
Bunnies laptop is a good example. Today one Zynq chip delivers most of Bunnies laptop functionality. Whole thing could be redesigned into pcb 1/3 the size with Zynq chip replacing three most expensive ICs (soc, fpga, Gbit mac).
Xilinx just announced Ultrascale+, quad core 64bit ARM + dual core 32bit ARM + bigass FPGA + shitload of IO (pcie, usb3, displayport, sata, 70x 33Gbit serdes!, gpio, GBit ethernet, etc) in one chip. One chip with enough crap in it to deliver whole products on its own 😮
Of course real money and innovation is even lower at the silicon level, and China seems to be leading fabless. Who ever heard about espressif? but they took IoT by storm delivering $3 esp8266, absolutely murdering TIs $30 CC3000 bullshit.
So why is everyone all bonkers over the Zynq but no one ever mentions the Altera SoC devices? They’re both hard ARM cores with FPGA fabric directly attached, they have comparable models as each other. Why is everyone always “Xilinx Xilinx Xilinx?” Altera’s (Terasic’s) dev boards are more useful for me, and I understand that is completely arbitrary, but come on? No Altera love? Sheesh.
And, WHILE I’M AT IT, why is there no existing FPGA code for DisplayPort?
/me goes off to grumble
Is it just me or the 42 214 224 bytes MP3 file is cut before the end ?
Yep, the file seems to be truncated before the end.
Ack, you are correct! Something got messed up there. I just reuploaded and it and redid the post. It should now show as 45706268 bytes for the size and 1:28:42 for the time. Let me know if that doesn’t work.
its still cuts at the end after the outro music (1:26:55), broken mp3 file header?
Outro starts about 1:28:00 for me. Was this serious or a joke about how it’s over after the outro music?
so its a broken mp3 header/index, time index shifts around depending on where you seek to in the file (mplayer)
No, wasnt a joke, I always listen past outro hoping for ‘last words’ you sometimes put there :o)
Regarding Dave’s comment about no revolutions on the horizon: are you familiar enough with current research to say that? Today’s obscure journal articles seed the revolutions of the next 20 years.
Regarding chip printers: you only need a breakthrough in cheap masks. If you have that, multiproject wafers become super cheap. You still need a foundry, unless there’s a new revolutionary technology which doesn’t require tight process control.
Thanks for the show.
What are Dave’s few key ideas to move humanity forward?
Also what in general, was the motor technology that Dave was referring to? It’s such a vast subject that encompasses field theory, analog design, digital design, control theory, filter design, digital signal processing, power electronics, sensor design, EMI, heat transfer, mechanical dynamics, and embedded software engineering.. what are you guys into?
A while back, didn’t Chris buy a high voltage TI motor kit for PFC development? What happened with that? TI and Renesas seem to be the giants in the space.. I’ve been meaning to buy a motor kit and experiment with sensorless control of a BLDC or PMSM motor using Simulink. Then later move to PID or modern state space control.
Indeed I did. I got super distracted with other work, but now have two kits and a huge AC induction motor sitting on my bench.
These kits are awesome! I have one sitting on my desk as well – probably the same as yours, with a three phase induction motor and power factor correction. I suggest you buy a variac if you are going to play with it, as it is usually good to start veeeeeeery low… 🙂
Struth, Adam Savage is drinking Bundaberg Ginger Beer in the linked video!! Queenslander!