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For many people mobile phones are the dominant computer in their lives. I for one welcome any attempts to make them less monolithic. In an ideal world I would b

by dman 12y ago

For many people mobile phones are the dominant computer in their lives. I for one welcome any attempts to make them less monolithic. In an ideal world I would be able to freely mix and match the hardware, the OS, the application framework and the language for my mobile device. I admit the modular solutions might physically be clunkier and offer worse battery life. I am willing to live with some compromises on those if it means that I have more control over the device.

dogma1138 12y ago
Well the current trends in personal computing is actually towards monolithic all in one devices, whether if it's the rise of the MAC's or the continuing trend in the PC world to put everything unto the mainboard or the CPU. 25-15 years ago your PC would've had 3-4 different extension cards, today unless you're a gamer or otherwise in need of a discrete graphics card you have none since they've migrated unto the CPU. And modern CPU's can run many games today even AAA title on quite acceptable settings for most casual Gamers, and that trend will only accelerate as they improve. With AMD built in "APU" being based on the same architecture as their discrete cards, Intel's IRIS being able to drive more and more games, and NVIDIA getting more experience in integrating their own discrete graphic cores with CPU's in their SOC i doubt we'll see discrete graphic cards for much longer, beyond that the only thing that you'll have on your board is your memory and that too with stacked and 3D dies will be integrated soon enough. You already have desktops the with a 10cm^2 footprint that have the same CPU and memory that you put in your tower, within a couple of years there won't be a single discrete component on that board at all. I for one don't see how being able to customize hardware translates to having any more control over the device i own than being able to select a device with the hardware i want. Infact the compromises forced by such architecture in my eyes result in less control as they force me to compromise on hardware to begin with. Today i can select a phone which has the screen i want, the battery i want, the camera i want and the SOC i want, yes i might be limited to certain vendors but i don't see this change if my phone comes as a single magical block without as much as a sim card slit or as a complete Lego set.
- dman 12y ago
  I admit that you are completely correct about the trend towards increasing integration. Its possible that as someone who grew up in the PC era I struggle to embrace the concept of a computing device with few degrees of freedom.
  - dogma1138 12y ago
    I got that too, i think that's where more of my resentment to Apple devices comes from (Why pay twice the prices for inferior hardware). But considering the current trend and the fact that your data and software becoming more and more detached from the device you use you get a different kind of freedom. Considering that for virtually every discrete software today there is a cloud service, and eventually even streaming games trough the cloud (or your local network) will become technically viable why should you care whats inside your device? The only thing it will do is some basic processing and input/output it will become nothing more than a terminal. And where the majority of the computation will be at your house or in the "cloud" it doesn't matter. Heck I'm pretty sure that NVIDIA for example is already preparing for the future in which it can't sell graphic cards, at best it will be able to license it's technology. That's why in my opinion they are working on their streaming technology so badly, I mean today there is absolutely no freaking reason to stream Call of Duty onto a tablet but in 2-3 years? That will probably be the default setting whether they sell you some game streaming box which you can buy that can run 3-4 games at the time onto multiple devices or sell their hardware in bulk it to who ever decides to revive OnLine or take on Playcast. I for one can't wait for the time in which i will be completely free to choose which ever device i want because for all intents and purposes they'll do exactly the same thing and that is connect me to my data and applications. I'm sick of benchmarks, reviews, and constant upgrades, sick of throwing money down the toilet just to have a better screen or a faster CPU.
    - dman 12y ago
      In my opinion the software story and the data access story could be a lot better in the new integrated world. 1. Monoculture of a single language per platform needs to go away. Its wasteful in terms of programmer productivity. 2. The data layer needs to be disjointed from the applications completely. Access to this data needs to be available on a system wide basis. 3. Power users frequently want to access their data programmatically. More attention needs to be paid to these use cases. 4. The bottom level cross application data layer needs to be based on some open standard allowing people to trivially get data in / out of the ecosystem via some scripts / programs / tools. 5. Applications need to be extensible by the end user.

by dman 12y ago

dogma1138 12y ago

Well the current trends in personal computing is actually towards monolithic all in one devices, whether if it's the rise of the MAC's or the continuing trend in the PC world to put everything unto the mainboard or the CPU. 25-15 years ago your PC would've had 3-4 different extension cards, today unless you're a gamer or otherwise in need of a discrete graphics card you have none since they've migrated unto the CPU. And modern CPU's can run many games today even AAA title on quite acceptable settings for most casual Gamers, and that trend will only accelerate as they improve. With AMD built in "APU" being based on the same architecture as their discrete cards, Intel's IRIS being able to drive more and more games, and NVIDIA getting more experience in integrating their own discrete graphic cores with CPU's in their SOC i doubt we'll see discrete graphic cards for much longer, beyond that the only thing that you'll have on your board is your memory and that too with stacked and 3D dies will be integrated soon enough. You already have desktops the with a 10cm^2 footprint that have the same CPU and memory that you put in your tower, within a couple of years there won't be a single discrete component on that board at all. I for one don't see how being able to customize hardware translates to having any more control over the device i own than being able to select a device with the hardware i want. Infact the compromises forced by such architecture in my eyes result in less control as they force me to compromise on hardware to begin with. Today i can select a phone which has the screen i want, the battery i want, the camera i want and the SOC i want, yes i might be limited to certain vendors but i don't see this change if my phone comes as a single magical block without as much as a sim card slit or as a complete Lego set.

dman 12y ago
I admit that you are completely correct about the trend towards increasing integration. Its possible that as someone who grew up in the PC era I struggle to embrace the concept of a computing device with few degrees of freedom.
- dogma1138 12y ago
  I got that too, i think that's where more of my resentment to Apple devices comes from (Why pay twice the prices for inferior hardware). But considering the current trend and the fact that your data and software becoming more and more detached from the device you use you get a different kind of freedom. Considering that for virtually every discrete software today there is a cloud service, and eventually even streaming games trough the cloud (or your local network) will become technically viable why should you care whats inside your device? The only thing it will do is some basic processing and input/output it will become nothing more than a terminal. And where the majority of the computation will be at your house or in the "cloud" it doesn't matter. Heck I'm pretty sure that NVIDIA for example is already preparing for the future in which it can't sell graphic cards, at best it will be able to license it's technology. That's why in my opinion they are working on their streaming technology so badly, I mean today there is absolutely no freaking reason to stream Call of Duty onto a tablet but in 2-3 years? That will probably be the default setting whether they sell you some game streaming box which you can buy that can run 3-4 games at the time onto multiple devices or sell their hardware in bulk it to who ever decides to revive OnLine or take on Playcast. I for one can't wait for the time in which i will be completely free to choose which ever device i want because for all intents and purposes they'll do exactly the same thing and that is connect me to my data and applications. I'm sick of benchmarks, reviews, and constant upgrades, sick of throwing money down the toilet just to have a better screen or a faster CPU.
  - dman 12y ago
    In my opinion the software story and the data access story could be a lot better in the new integrated world. 1. Monoculture of a single language per platform needs to go away. Its wasteful in terms of programmer productivity. 2. The data layer needs to be disjointed from the applications completely. Access to this data needs to be available on a system wide basis. 3. Power users frequently want to access their data programmatically. More attention needs to be paid to these use cases. 4. The bottom level cross application data layer needs to be based on some open standard allowing people to trivially get data in / out of the ecosystem via some scripts / programs / tools. 5. Applications need to be extensible by the end user.