_______________________________________________
- THE FRIDAY LETTER -
(emailed weekly,
from Gilder Publishing,
for friends and subscribers)
_______________________________________________
| http://www.gilder.com/ | Issue 329.0/February
22, 2008
SIGN-UP A FRIEND FOR FREE!
HEADLINES:
- The Week / Unleashing the ‘Exaflood’
- Friday Feature / Tredennick: Computing
in Transition
- Friday Blogger Bonus / Litigious Exploitation of the Patent System
- Readings /
|
─
ANNOUNCING ─
Register online today: www.TelecosmConference.com
|
The Week / Unleashing the ‘Exaflood’
George Gilder and Bret Swanson, Wall Street Journal (2/22/08): Two decades ago, Sun Microsystems prophesied:
"The network is the computer." Today, BitTorrent video and 3D
graphics flood the Internet, Apple iPhones tap the Net's computing power, and
PC-king Microsoft pursues Net-centric Yahoo. Sun's mantra has become reality.
But as the Internet booms and
moves to the center of the global economic sphere, it draws proportional
attention from politicians and regulators. In Congress and at the FCC,
legislators and lawyers think they can manage overflowing Net traffic and
commerce better than the network companies themselves. Next week, the FCC is
meeting en banc at Harvard Law School to consider two petitions that seek to
ban network "traffic management." The meeting's host, Rep. Ed Markey,
has renewed his pursuit of a far-reaching Internet regulatory regime known as
"net neutrality."
These regulatory efforts
overlook a fundamental shift: An upsurge of technological change and a rising
tide of new forms of data are deeply transforming the Internet's capabilities
and uses.
The first phase of the Net
was the original Arpanet research project that connected a few, and then a few
thousand, scientists. The second phase brought the Internet to the masses, with
the advent of the World Wide Web, the graphical browser and email in the
mid-1990s. Internet traffic boomed 100-fold between 1994 and 1996. In the third
phase of Net evolution, network architecture and commercial business plans
reflect the dominance of rich video and interactive media traffic.
The third wave is now
swelling into an exaflood, or torrent, of Internet and Internet Protocol (IP)
traffic. There's YouTube, IPTV, high-definition images and "cloud
computing" -- in which individuals and businesses use the centralized
computing resources of Google and IBM data centers, instead of the local
computing resources of their own PCs or office systems. Not to mention the
ubiquitous mobile camera….
Read the complete article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120363940010084479.html?mod=todays_us_opinion
__________________________________________
Friday
Feature / Computing in Transition
Gilder Publishing’s Dr. Nick
Tredennick, speaking at Stanford University (2/20/08):
Since shortly after its introduction, the microprocessor has dominated the
design of electronic systems. The success of the microprocessor, sustained by
the march of Moore’s law, stalled innovation in logic design for more than
thirty years because programming became a substitute for hardware design. This
was possible because the design goal of the personal computer and other
microprocessor-based systems, representing the majority of the semiconductor
market, was cost-performance. The advent of the value PC and the burgeoning of
mobile devices have conspired to change the design goal to cost-performance per
watt. Traditional microprocessor-based design cannot meet the challenge of the
new design goal, so computing is in transition. A host of multiprocessor
configurations and a host of reconfigurable systems vie for control of the next
generation of computing applications. Computing is in transition, but the
outcome is currently unpredictable….
Review Nick’s presentation slides and
notes (PDF):
http://tredennick.com/ftp/pub/documents/Presentations/Computing%20in%20Transition.pdf
Additional Stanford EE Computer Systems
Colloquium talks available on
http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380/
SPECIAL OFFER
|
The Gilder Telecosm Forum To learn how to join this powerful network of
talented, tech-savvy investors and thinkers online daily to debate, discuss,
and decode new and emerging technologies and share valuable and actionable
investment advice, visit www.Gildertech.com
today. |
Friday Blogger Bonus / Litigious Exploitation of the Patent System
Commenting on “Qualcomm and the real
story behind Mobile World Congress”
Link: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/20/intellectual_piracy_qualcomm/
George Gilder, Gilder Telecosm Form (2/20/08):
The problem is not the patent system but the litigious exploitation of it by
trolls shopping their synthetic IP baubles and beads before gullible rotten
borough Texas judges high on handouts and Lone Star booze. On target is the
quote about sudsy ideas ginned up in the bathtub, defying non-obviousness and
reduction to practice (which are crucial to a practical patent). The Broadcom
and NBT cases were typical, racing to find a round-heeled court to award
extortionate terms minutes before the news reached the boondock bench that the
patents were getting thrown out with the trash.
Qualcomm actually has inventions, which were so non-obvious that they were
widely depicted as violating physical law and were reduced to practice every
which way by Qualcomm in vertically integrated businesses from infrastructure
to handsets. But Broadcom's claims are typical of the process of debauching the
entire patent system into a circus of grifters with gotchas. There is no reason
the Chinese should respect this debauchery and their current maneuvers seem
like typical disruptive business to me. We have got to get rid of our rotten
borough patent farms.
Qualcomm is meeting the challenge with patented low-cost devices, but it may
not be enough in some of these markets. In any case, Qualcomm has always
ultimately won through its chip prowess.
It is the chip design prowess
and vertical shows of capability that distinguish the Q from other winners of
royalty streams. I am not saying that the royalties are unimportant, just that
they are dependent on engineering demonstrations and chip designs. If Qualcomm had merely relied on its patents,
CDMA would never have happened.
To read more of George Gilder’s
posts and those of the Gilder Telecosm Forum members, visit http://www.gildertech.com/ and become a Forum member today.
__________________________________________
Readings /
Solder made obsolete by growing copper pillars
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120363940010084479.html?mod=todays_us_opinion
Intel Bets on Diamond in Rough
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120360723783683021.html?mod=technology_main_whats_news
Time to plow multiple paths to parallel computing
http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=XYPUQRDDRACD4QSNDLSCKHA?articleID=206801376
IBM unveils atomic memory advance
http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=XYPUQRDDRACD4QSNDLSCKHA?articleID=206801335
Footage of Spy Satellite Blast
http://blogs.spectrum.ieee.org/tech_talk/2008/02/footage_of_spy_satellite_blast.html
__________________________________________
Friday Letter Editor: Mary Collins George / mcollins@gilder.com
ADVERTISING INFORMATION
The Friday Letter is mailed each week to more than 40,000-plus
subscribers and friends of Gilder Publishing, including industry leaders,
financial professionals and individual investors. For information about
advertising, contact Lauren Klopacs at lklopacs@forbes.com.
PLEASE NOTE: The appearance of an advertisement in the Friday Letter
does not indicate an endorsement for the product and/or service by George
Gilder, Gilder Publishing LLC, or the Friday Letter staff.
FEEDBACK AND PROBLEMS
For technical problems, or to send letters to the editor, please
e-mail info@gilder.com.
MAILING ADDRESS
Gilder Publishing, LLC
ATTN: Friday Letter
291A Main Street
Great Barrington, MA 01230
_______________________________________________
The Friday Letter is published weekly for subscribers and
friends of Gilder Publishing. If someone you know would enjoy it, please feel
free to forward a copy.
Gilder Publishing makes the Friday Letter available for free. To
help defray some of the costs of producing this information on a weekly basis,
we will from time to time be sending you offers from companies we think you'll
be interested in. These offers will not come more than once a week. If you do
not wish to receive this related information, please opt out of this process at
the link below and we will not share your name with companies outside of Gilder
Publishing.
To SUBSCRIBE please visit http://www.gilder.com/
To UNSUBSCRIBE please go to http://www.gilder.com/fridayletter/unsubscribe.php
Trouble subscribing or unsubscribing?
Email info@gilder.com
http://www.gilder.com/unsubscribe/specialproducts.php
To SUBSCRIBE please visit http://www.gilder.com/
To UNSUBSCRIBE please go to http://www.gilder.com/fridayletter/unsubscribe.php
Trouble subscribing or unsubscribing?
Email info@gilder.com
_______________________________________________
Copyright 2007 Gilder Publishing LLC