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| http://www.gilder.com/ | Issue 298.0/June 8,
2007
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HEADLINES:
- The
Week / Critical Path Components
- Friday
Feature / Al Gore's Hell on Earth
- Friday Blogger Bonus / Identify the Bottlenecks
- Readings /
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The
Week / Critical Path Components
George Gilder (Gilder Telecosm Forum | 5/28/07): The key bottleneck is reading and interpreting the packets with
some 48 bytes (and with IPv6 even larger headers), classifying them, looking up
(CAMing) their addresses, routing them, and managing their traffic—all at
wirespeed up to 20 or even 100 gigabits per second, flawlessly. This is an
absolutely necessary complement of the optical revolution. It will remain on
the leading, industry-defining edge as long as traffic and bandwidth increase.
Similarly, as high-resolution video streams increasingly dominate layer
seven and push to the extremes the performance of buffer memories and their
management, Sigma Designs (SIGM) media processors and their rivals
(ZRAN) must function at megapixel gigaspeed and are also on the critical path.
It is the missing element that enables Internet HDTV and all other video and
graphics-intensive applications that flow at the speed of eyes rather than of
fingers. This function too couples fiberspeed to digital electronic processing
speeds and breaks a crucial bottleneck in what they are calling Internet 2.
In other words, as the exaflood meets the telecosm, the exacosmic network
and media processors will become the pivotal devices all across the network.
They target the crucial bottlenecks where the electronics is coupled to the
speed of fiber. They make a digital device fiber-ready and high-res video
ready.
By contrast, TCP termination and ordering of packets,
encryption-decryption, virus scanning, intrusion detection, XML file processing
and such can be done at relative leisure on amply buffered packets at more or
less the fingerspeed of the end user. If necessary these functions can even be
done in software with a fast CPU.
Therefore, my premise from the beginning has been that the network
processor and the media processor are the critical path components, the
necessary complement of the all-optical network, the missing element that
completes the fiber optic exaflood.
But comparing the two, the network processor is less dispensable. Clever
buffering and remote processing at the datacenter, dispatching deltas (changes)
rather than every pixel, can render a satisfactory video experience, even HD or
3D, without meeting the full fiberspeed challenge. But if you don't read the
headers and route the packets fast enough you might as well keep the network in
its copper cage.
Compared to EZchip (LNOP), Cavium Networks, Raza Micro, and
Sigma are valuable contributors. But, you could still have an all-optical
network without them. Without EZchip and its diminishing band of rivals, the
all-optical network depends on a different ASIC for every application and every
interface. As the entire network, end to end, every node, moves to IP and
Ethernet, the NPU is a device that can achieve microprocessor volumes.
That is why EZ is my big pick, while Cavium and Raza, (and possibly SIGM)
are nice paradigmatic complements.
My big further bet is that performing the critical path function provides
a better foundation for moving up the stack than does performing an upper level
function that has less exacting and remorseless wirespeed constraints. Atiq
Raza and Syed Ali of Cavium beg to differ. That is what makes a race. I placed
my bet while Raza was still at AMD (AMD) and Ali of Cavium was at HP (HPQ) (as I recall).
Netlogic (NETL) meanwhile is even farther out on the limb,
trying to move memory into the processing money. The legendary David Patterson
outlined the strategy long ago at Berkeley with his iRAM project. Micron has
tried to do iRAM for decades, without success to date. But iRAM is a paradigm,
and memory is on its own leading edge with its own critical path purity and
discipline. It may well turn out that EZ and NETL (and Micron/MU) are
the polar winners and Cavium and Raza get bogged down in the middle competing
with Intel (INTC) and AMD.
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Friday Feature / Al Gore's Hell on Earth
Maggie
Gallagher (06/07/07): Al Gore calls it, "The Assault on
Reason," but his brand of environmentalism sounds a lot more like a new
form of faith.
In his book "An Inconvenient Truth," Al Gore confesses
that global warming: "offers us the chance to experience what very few
generations in history have had the privilege of knowing: a generational
mission; the exhilaration of a compelling moral purpose; a shared and unifying
cause; the thrill of being forced by circumstances to put aside the pettiness
and conflict that so often stifle the restless human need for transcendence;
the opportunity to rise…
"When we do rise, it will fill our spirits and bind us
together. Those who are now suffocating in cynicism and despair will be able to
breathe freely. Those who are now suffering from a loss of meaning in their
lives will find hope." When we rise, "we will experience an epiphany
as we discover that this crisis is not really about politics at all. It is a
moral and spiritual challenge."
Transcendence,
epiphany, loss of meaning, hope. No, this is not really about politics, or
science either, is it, Al? Al Gore's new role is prophet, calling us urgently
to convert on carbons or perish, lest rising temperatures create Hell on Earth.
Environmentalism,
as a movement, seems to breed such prophets. The mother of them all was Rachel
Carson, whose 100th birthday we just finished celebrating. "Silent
Spring," which launched modern environmentalism, began with an outright
fable, a secular Eden: "There was once a town in the heart of America
where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings." But
lately, an "evil spell" threatened to "silence the rebirth of
new life." Many of Rachel Carson's scientific claims -- such as that
pesticides were causing cancer -- were not consistent with the scientific
evidence, points out John Tierney in the science section of The New York
Times this week.
In a fat, rich country like America, the kind of "chemophobia" Carson
championed only led us to waste money on various kinds of nonessential
cleanups. In the developing world, the fear of DDT has led to massive human
deaths from malaria over the last 40 years. But somehow the halos on
environmental prophets remain unaffected by the human destruction their dogmas
wreak.
I am not qualified to evaluate the scientific case for global
warming. But three things about global warming give me pause.
1. It transforms the United States, as the world's most
successful economy, into the chief evildoer in the world; 2. It
justifies a massive extension of government power to regulate all aspects of
our lives; 3. It makes having children a sin against the Earth. (Indeed,
China recently justified its coercive one-child policy on carbon-reducing
grounds.)
Check
out Maggie’s blog:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/06/al_gores_hell_on_earth.html
___________________________________________________
Friday Blogger Bonus / Identify the Bottlenecks
George Gilder (Gilder Telecosm Forum | 5/28/07):
The processing of packets is a difficult
matter;
it is not just one of your holiday games;
you may think that I am beginning to natter;
when I tell you that packets have multidimensional names;
embodied in sesquipedalian headers;
that some super computer just has to read;
encompassing ever more symbols and letters;
parsed not at finger pace, but fiberspeed.
So before sending your investment checks;
Identify the bottlenecks.
Check Out George’s Gildertech Blog:
http://blog.gildertech.com/
____________________________________
Readings /
The
Weekly GTI
http://www.gtindex.com/
The Future of Security
in New York City
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/jun07/comments/1830
A New Display
Lengthens Gadget Life
http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=18828
Hollywood Goes High Tech
http://www.forbes.com/technology/2007/06/07/shrek-pirates-effects-tech-cx_rr_0606movietech.html
Top 8 Indicators That You'll Line Up for an iPhone
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/infomodo/top-8-indicators-that-youll-line-up-for-an-iphone-266786.php
Wireless energy promise powers up
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6725955.stm
__________________________________________
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