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mattthebaker

172 karma · joined February 27, 2013

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mattthebaker··on Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges
You would prefer the inventor to be basically ensured of financial destruction and disincentivized in the first place, sounds great for society.
mattthebaker··on I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
Personally, I don't really see the value proposition in being able to load and serve you ads faster, compared to a browser with a proper ad blocker.
mattthebaker··on Apple said Qualcomm’s tech was no good, but privately it was ‘the best’
None of these advantages invent you a novel radio technology that is competitive with 5G yet unencumbered by existing patents. Designing a modem to spec is the easy part.
mattthebaker··on The Scientist and Engineer's Guide to Digital Signal Processing (1999)
Easier access to (I think) the same content here: http://www.dspguide.com/pdfbook.htm
mattthebaker··on Count the people around you by monitoring wifi signals
When I was in China we saw this on many straight stretches of roads. Just watching.
mattthebaker··on The Next American Car Recession Has Already Started
Yeah, its not like the sitting president introduced 25% steel tariffs and 10% aluminum tariffs or anything.
mattthebaker··on Modchips of the State
You can draw a small amount of current from the logic signal in high state and store it in a small amount of capacitance, a low enough power device would be able to operate off of it. There is a class of sensors which use and interface called 1-wire which is ground and signal/power (2 pins).

You don't need a very accurate clock (quartz) for ~100 Mhz SPI. A ring oscillator is just a chain of inverters. If you want to match the bus frequency accurately you can train a PLL against the signal clock.

Not sure what the point is about the pullup, to flip the bit you need only to overpower the output buffers of the other chip.

Cramming it all in a 0402 would be a stretch but I could see it being possible with the right resources. Having only 2 pins would be pretty useless if you can't snoop the address though. And modern NOR devices on a motherboard is almost certainly using the high speed 4 pin serial interface rather than standard SPI.

mattthebaker··on Fake Net Neutrality Comments Draw A Federal Probe
Scratch the logs, subpoena email records of Pai and direct reports.
mattthebaker··on A cheaper, smaller Raspberry Pi 3 is now available
What do you do with 8MB when the OS is 512MB+? Adding NOR Flash is normally pretty simple -- No bad blocks and a standard SPI interfaces most embedded devices have controllers for. The high end controllers can typically map NOR flash directly into the system address space.
mattthebaker··on A cheaper, smaller Raspberry Pi 3 is now available
Raw NAND is highly preferable to SD or USB drives. You can at least have wear leveling in the OS/FS. SD/USB are bad because most have dumb controllers and just rewrite a page when it changes. Raw NAND is also consistent and meets datasheet specs, whereas SD you never know what you are getting.
mattthebaker··on HiFive1 – Arduino RISC-V Dev Board
Except most M0 cores will have 1 or 2 cycle internal flash memory reads, and this has slow external flash.
mattthebaker··on The future’s so bright, I gotta wear blinders
> The number of electrons in a flash memory cell is in two digits.

I had worked on one of the last TLC NAND designs before the transition to 3D. You could only afford to leak 1 electron per year to meet the data retention spec... TLC did not make it market on that process/node.

mattthebaker··on Australians who won't unlock their phones could face ten years in jail
Tampering with evidence, which includes destroying evidence is also a crime. IANAL so I'm not sure at what point a phone becomes evidence, i.e. once there is a indictment, once there is a warrant, t=0, etc. John Carmack got in trouble for deleting emails in that IP case if I recall. A better privacy feature might be that the phone stores no history.
mattthebaker··on I Moved To The Bay Area From Belgium A Month Ago. Here Are My First Impressions.
If I had to estimate "common and noticeable" sightings based on our old office near twitter and my experiences:

Homelessness -- multiple per block

Excrement -- every other block

Public drug use (non pot) -- every other day

Public urination -- once per week

Public defecation -- once per month

I was assaulted at the street corner near our office once in the 1.5 years we were there.

My guess is that the homeless population is just too large to manage any reasonable degree of cleanliness.

mattthebaker··on I Moved To The Bay Area From Belgium A Month Ago. Here Are My First Impressions.
I doubt his experiences were primarily in the city -- absolutely no mention of homelessness, human excrement, or hypodermic needles, incredible!
mattthebaker··on PCB Placement Stencils
Not to mention ESD issues from rubbing all your components across acrylic.
mattthebaker··on Alfred Anaya Put Secret Compartments in Cars so the DEA Put Him in Prison (2013)
Reminds me of an article about some powerful men on wall street that do not use email. Doing most of your written communication through an assistant would give you a great deal of plausible deniability. Also reminds me of someone else constantly in the news these days.
mattthebaker··on RISC-V Hardware So Far Isn't Entirely Open-Source
Intel and AMD already provide most of the necessary code to motherboard manufacturers. Why would a motherboard manufacturer want to share their code with their competitors?
mattthebaker··on Intel and the Danger of Integration
Intel lost out on the mobile revolution because the mobile revolution was about radio technology and not processor technology. Outside of buying Qualcomm for patents and radio designs, anything Intel could have tried was doomed to fail.
mattthebaker··on Intel CEO resigns after relationship with employee
I would not rule out 3D from processors yet. Such an invention would be able to reduce die size and likely cost. Heat density is probably the real problem and may need some additional inventions.

The 3D memories will probably see some planar (x-y) scaling, they just don't need all of their scaling from it. 3D scaling will still increase bits/die area, and thus reduce $/bit. If doubling the stacking height doubles capacity but adds 30% to wafer cost with extra processing steps, its still much more efficient than 100% cost for two wafers of the previous design.

Scaling efficiency shouldn't be too dissimilar from planar scaling, at least until the next wall is hit.

mattthebaker··on Intel CEO resigns after relationship with employee
Beyond the complications you raise in management, it is just a straight major legal risk.

How can you argue or prove any relationship between boss and subordinate is consensual?

mattthebaker··on Intel CEO resigns after relationship with employee
Its also company policy that you should be fired on the spot for sleeping at your desk -- some kind of hold over from manufacturing that makes no sense for most office positions.

Risk exposure to lawsuit is incomparable to the relationship case but it was consensual.

mattthebaker··on Intel CEO resigns after relationship with employee
Neither modern NAND (3D) nor 3D XPoint are directly dependent on planar silicon scaling.
mattthebaker··on Intel Announces Optane DIMMs
PCM to Micron is an existing product/design that is NOR-Flash like but utilizes PC material as the storage medium.

3D XPoint is said to be able to stack the storage medium on the die and requires no access transistor -- which "PCM" has. So it is based on PC material but has some new kind of selector.

The 3D/stacking part is important for scaling/density -- even NAND-Flash has hit 2d limits and gone vertical.

mattthebaker··on How to Avoid Distractions and Start the Right Company
The 'unworkable ideas' can typically only be determined in hindsight. Pushing the cutting edge will always result in some paths that lead to nowhere.

Theranos was a good idea, the tragedy was rampant fraud.

mattthebaker··on Electric scooter “mayhem” sounds like when cars were introduced
Police just need to start issuing tickets. Seems like a solid and easy revenue stream. Both riding on the sidewalk and riding without a helmet is illegal. Haven't seen any rider wearing one.

CA Law: "An operator of a motorized scooter must be at least 16 years old, possess a valid drivers license or instruction permit, and wear a helmet.

A motorized scooter may be operated on a bicycle path, trail or bikeway, but not on a sidewalk. On the roadway, it must be operated in the bicycle lane, if there is one. On roads without bicycle lanes, motorized scooters may operate where the speed limit is 25 mph or less, and shall be ridden as close to the right hand curb as possible, except to pass or turn left."

mattthebaker··on It can all go to zero
Wealth is not primarily held as currency, and currency has inflation.
mattthebaker··on Mothers who regret having children are speaking out
Honestly, having children is one of the most selfish things you can do. I.e. thinking your genetic material is special and passing it on to another person in an overcrowded world. Any “sacrifice” in raising a child is not — they are half you and an extension of self.
mattthebaker··on Intel to Launch 3D XPoint DIMMs in 2H 2018
We're talking CPU idle and hibernate being nearly essentially the same. Instant.
mattthebaker··on Intel to Launch 3D XPoint DIMMs in 2H 2018
Intel NVM Systems and Micron have been partnered since the early days of both of their starts in NAND. Investment in R&D and fabs are shared between the two companies. Intel is largely pushing 3DXP down the pipe from the CPU groups as a performance advantage. If/when it really takes off, they will need added support/investment from Micron to increase supply, reduce risk, etc.
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