Mark Fussell's WebLog : Hardware

Cisco entering the XML hardware processing market

mfussell — Sat, 12 Feb 2005 07:02:00 GMT

As I have discussed in this blog previously, I believe that there in an inexorable move towards XML processing in hardware that can only be offset by the potential improvements to the processing capabilities vs. cost of the general CPU. Even if Moore's law continues, which some such as Herb Sutter are beginning to doubt, the market is going to be so huge for XML and SOAP processing combined with the still emerging web service standards, that there will always be room for specialized processing. XML digital signatures, for example, are ripe for a hardware based solution since it is process intensive. It is significant then that Cisco has decided to enter the XML messaging market and although they are behind in terms of development compared to DataPower, I am sure that they will eventually close the gap. Of course this has ramifications for all companies that are involved in creating XML messaging platforms.

Building my Christmas present.

mfussell — Thu, 16 Dec 2004 08:38:00 GMT

A couple of months ago my wife asked me whether she could listen to her favourite internet radio station on the HiFi stereo system that we have in our living room, rather than having to have the speakers on the PC in the office turned up to maximum volume. This is a UK radio station that only streams on the internet in Real Audio format. Easy I said, leave it to me. However as with all engineering problems there were several solutions. These are the ones that I came up with;

Drill a hole in the wall, run cables from the PC and provide an audio switch box to switch between the PC speakers and the stereo speakers. Pros: Cheap, good reception. Cons: Hole in the wall, house may collapse, only one stereo can be used.
Apple Airport Express. There is the gadget that I thought would easily solve the problem. I can use my existing wireless network attached to the PC. Great solution. Pros: Plugs directly into the mains power, easy setup, small in size. Cons: Unfortunately the airport express has one HUGE problem. You can only use it with iTunes software installed on your PC and guess what - you can only listen to the pre-selected stations chosen by Apple. It is not possible to add or configure your own! There was no chance of them having my insignificant UK station in a sea of US Rap stations. 10/10 for vision. 1/10 for exection.
I started getting hardcore. How about the SqueezeBox. Pros Great product, great reviews, like the blinking lights on the front. Cons: $279 seemed a lot of money just to get radio reception to a stereo15 feet away in another room and only on that one stereo. I could not imagine forking out $558 to listen upstairs also.
I went downmarket a bit and found this from Linksys, the WMLS11B. Pros: Cheaper Cons: Did not seem to be able to stream Real Audio, which was what the station broadcast in. I already have a very decent Tivoli stereo which has beautiful sound. The last thing I wanted was some tinny, ugly stereo.
Knowing that I needed to stream Real Audio I finally started to set up a Shoutcast server/broadcaster. Then you can then relay any kind of audio output you like to a wireless device. My plan was to use an old laptop that I have at home with a wireless card, put this under the stereo and use it as a wireless receiver. Pros: Cheap, since I had all the hardware. Cons: To many bits. I had to run two PCs, set up the Shoutcast, get a copy of WindowsXP from the store etc. Seemed too painful.

I was getting more and more frustrated. Surely it must be easier than this. Finally the most obvious and simple solution dawned on me and I kicked myself for not having thought of this earlier...

The stereo already has a built in receiver. Build an FM transmitter! So I did. I bought one of these beauties which was on offer at the time for $110, took out my trusty soldering iron, multimeter and pointed nose pliars and built this in a day when my wife was out. Needless to say I double checked the solder joints, configured the jumpers to be at the lower end of the FM frequency spectrum, plugged it in and it worked first time. I bought an audio switch box, wired this up to the back of my PC and now enjoy glorious synthesized FM stereo throughout my house on anything that I play on the PC, including mouse clicks. The quote that I love from the manual that comes with this FM transmitter is this.

"many Caribbean folks use a single FM25B to cover the whole island! "

Now I have my wife's Christmas present done, the only problem being that, like software, it is not that tangible so I am going to have to supplement it with something else. Also like software it shows that we can create complex solutions to many problems that often have simpler solutions and without having to convert between numerous different data types and formats.

Disclaimer: If you have not built many electronic things before consider a flashing LED first as a Christmas gift to your loved one and then work your way up.

MEMS and Hardware Specialization

mfussell — Thu, 16 Oct 2003 10:55:00 GMT

In a few years most of our mobile devices will only need to be charged every six months and this innovation will be due to MEMS (Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems) which are microengines a few millimetres wide that use hydrocarbon fuel. Have you ever looked at an aircraft engine and said "How can that generate 500 tons of thrust and lift this that this hunk of metal into the air?" Well MEMs are micro equivalenent. Hydrocarbon fuels have a huge storage density between 40 and 50 MJ/kg where nickel metal hydride batteries commonly used in laptop computers provide only 0.4 MJ/kg. Hence microengines can produce 30 times as much energy for weight as standard batteries because of this high energy density in the fuel. What is interesting about this technology is that the latest innovations are using conventional UV lithography but, in the reverse. The lithography must create huge structures on the micrometer size so that the combustion can take place in the microengine rather than the nanometer size small for transistors.

Software was not my first choice of a career. I spent a number of years design digital hardware for the first GSM base stations in the UK among crazed microwave engineers. As a result I still spend much of my time building hardware devices usually with PIC micocontrollers. In the XML industry there is a continual emergence of XML hardware acceleration devices from the likes of Tarari and DataPower. The interesting aspect is that there is a trade off between the capabilities of a software engineer writing for a general purpose processor vs software on a specialized board, with the developement model following very much along the lines of the video card acceleration industry. The interest in XML acceleration is due to the apparent three ineffeciencies of XML - bandwidth, storage and parse time. This can result in XML parser and writer implementations attempting to cheat the W3C XML 1.0 standard in order to reduce at least one of these, typically the parse time, by say ignore the valid range of character values in the names. Bandwidth is a non-issue. Simply use a compression technique like gzip on the wire and your done. Storage is also a non-issue with tera-byte disk just a few years away. Joshua claims to me to be capturing his life digitally as an example! Parse time is an issue and this is where XML accelerators have some hold. However since general purpose processors are improving in clock cycles and the cost of them reducing by the day, there is only a certain window of opportunity for XML acceleration devices before they are the same price as adding another general purpose box to your server farm. When you combine other services such as encryption onto these specialist hardward boards then they do start to look very attractive again.

My final note on hardware is when will applications be developed onto silicon? Imagine having the Office 2003 suite burnt into specialized silicon. Not only would the cost be cheaper, the device could be tiny with all the power of a current desktop machine and just like the old Atari consoles, software piracy would be completely eliminated.