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- THE FRIDAY LETTER -
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for friends and subscribers)
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| http://www.gilder.com/ | Issue 303.0/July 20,
2007
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HEADLINES:
- The
Week / Gilder: The Graphics Processor Paradigm
- Friday Feature / Karlgaard: Tax Cuts Ignite Global Boom
- Friday Blogger Bonus / Wolfe: Small Signals, Big Impact
- Readings /
|
Gilder/Forbes Telecosm 2007 CONFERENCE Register online today: www.Telecosm.info
|
The
Week /
The Graphics Processor Paradigm
Gilder
Telecosm Forum Member (7/15/07): I still have no idea what a GPU does
or why it is a hot topic in tech world. Can anyone give a layman's view of what
these things do and why it is important?
George Gilder, Gilder Telecosm Forum (7/16/07): GPUs are graphics processing units and they generate or
"render" 2D or 3D pictures on a screen from instructions from a keyboard
or other input. This takes huge special purpose computing power with intrinsic
massively parallel capabilities (image pixels are a naturally parallel
function).
However, in recent years (months actually), GPUs have enhanced their
shading and light management algorithms that determine the actual appearance of
objects on the screen with supercomputer level vector and matrix mathematics,
attaining high floating-point accuracy and recursive feedback loops. They also
have primitives (instructions) for efficient handling of MPEG motion
compensation and decompression. With their capacious buffer memories, they
constitute a new general purpose computing architecture.
Using conventional supercomputers the rendering of a frame of a Hollywood
animation, for example, may take days. A young genius in LA named Jules Urbach
(come and meet him at TELECOSM 2007) figured out how to
address graphics processor instructions directly to render “Transformer”
images in real time, 30 frames a second, or some 10 thousand times faster than
Industrial Light and Magic could accomplish
the feat. This kind of breakthrough has huge implications for the industry….
GPUs will have a devastating effect on many
companies in microprocessor, personal computers (bypassing Intel and
Microsoft), and game machine business. (All the 3D functions can be performed
at a data center so there will be no need for local "game machines"
except for the I-O.)
I would guess that new processor companies would be
more alert to the opportunity than processor companies with large legacy
burdens.
To become a GILDER TELECOSM FORUM member
and read more of George’s posts, visit: http://www.gildertech.com/ today.
|
The Gilder
Telecosm Forum |
Friday Feature / Tax Cuts Ignite Global
Boom
Rich Karlgaard, Forbes.com (7/17/07): Somebody noticed!
Kudos
to U.S. News and World Report for reporting this oddly underreported story.
The
global economy from 2003 to 2007 has grown about 5% a year. It is a quarter
bigger than it was five years ago--about $15 trillion a year bigger.
That's
equivalent to adding a new North America to the global economy. Each year. Wow.
Writes
U.S. News:
This is the story of globalization, of free trade, of China, of
India. Then there is this: The 21st century has also seen a global effort to
reduce tax rates.
How
often do you read that? My gosh, people and economies really do respond to
lower tax rates. Somebody tell The New York Times. And The Wall
Street Journal, for that matter. (Outside the op-ed page, the Journal
is no great friend of supply-side economics.)
Check Rich’s Digital Rules blog site & comment on his above post:
http://blogs.forbes.com/digitalrules/2007/07/tax-cuts-ignite.html
_____________________________
Friday Blogger Bonus / Wolfe: Small Signals, Big Impact
Josh Wolfe, Nanotech
Insider (7/20/07): I like to
think my office is an organized mess. But there’s long-standing scientific
evidence (despite my wife’s undying love for The Container Store) that some
mess is good. Things tend towards entropy, disorder. Life and all willful use
of energy attempts to subvert this. Some of my most original ideas come from
the random juxtaposition of two unrelated pieces of paper sitting on my desk.
If I were more organized, they’d be neatly segregated and never have the chance
to mingle. Entropy is like the Rosa Parks of ideas.
Disorder is
discomfort. Even in global politics, our leaders and the media are unsettled by
the unsettled. We try to “achieve stability” in “unstable” places. Then the
locals throw violent tantrums—not unlike a child forced to clean his room.
We make personal
long-term plans. Companies have 5 year strategic plans. But the truth is this:
there’s too many concatenated things that need to happen that don’t and too
many random ones that aren’t expected that do as time unfolds.
Back to my
point: there’s long-standing scientific evidence that some mess is good and
it’s got a name: stochastic resonance. The gregariously generous George Gilder
recently pointed me to this concept after I wrote a few weeks ago about how the
noise of a hairdryer in a barbershop made the signal of a crackling,
poorly-tuned radio station, sound clearer. Stochastic resonance is a
complicated idea. Put simply: an extra dose of noise can help rather than
hinder some devices.
Here’s what IEEE
magazine wrote about it: “Stochastic resonance gets its name from the
stochastic, or random, signals involved and the fact that, as in a resonance
phenomenon, you can get a bigger than expected impact from small-amplitude
signals.”
Sound like
anything you know? The market perhaps. Or the brain. Or Per Bak’s sandpile. Or
maybe any complex adaptive system where a small perturbation can have a
disproportionate effect.
The idea is
actually 25 years old, when two scientists used it to explain regular ice ages
in our history. They believed that random climate changes, “atmospheric noise”
coupled with the force of the Earth’s orbit, could kickstart or stop an ice
age. (Of course, today they’d be burned at the stake—which would paradoxically
release more CO2.) Scientists have since seen “stochastic resonance” in
everything from lasers to medical devices and chemistry ….
Read Josh’s complete comments:
http://news.finanmart.com/2007/07/nanotech-insider-jul-20-stochastic.html
Check out Josh’s site:
http://www.forbesinc.com/newsletters/nanotech/nanotech.jsp?page=insider
__________________________________________
Readings /
Punishing Google
http://www.forbes.com/technology/2007/07/19/google-earnings-schmidt-tech-cx_rr_0719google1.html
Verizon and Broadcom in Deal
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/20/business/20verizon.html?ref=technology
Microsoft Game
Chief Moves to Electronic Arts
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/18/technology/18game.html
The Optional Flat Tax
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/07/the_optional_flat_tax_1.html
Motorola Posts
$28 Million Loss After Drop in Sales
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/20/business/20motorola.html?_r=1&ref=technology&oref=slogin
The
Weekly GTI
http://www.gtindex.com/
__________________________________________
FRIDAY LETTER STAFF
Editor: Mary Collins George / mcollins@gilder.com
Research: Sandy Fleischmann / sfleischmann@gilder.com
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