Captain Obvious' netbook

Stumbled upon this Squidoo page, which could have been written by Captain Obvious himself: Save electricity by replacing your Desktop PC with a Netbook.

As stupid as it sounds, it is still true.

Google Android on Atom? ARM baby!

A while ago I wrote about how Intel's Atom is badly positioned against ARM-based CPUs. It seemed I was wrong, as in the following months Atom took the netbook market by storm. ASUS released the Eee-PC (in fact I am writing this article on one) and dozens of similiar models followed by other makers.

The missing piece for ARM-based netbooks was a good software story. That changed now. Asus announced Android-based versions of its Atom notebooks. Yes, on Atom -- but it is Android. Android runs on ARM. Android comes with internet and multimedia applications, and has industry support. This is big.

Android + ARM CPUs vs. WinXP + Intel are a huge cost saving for system integrators. Also for the lower power consumption it makes perfect sense.

Even the mainstream media picked up the idea, and I think this really is the tipping point. There are big times to come for Qualcomm, Freescale, and NVIDIA Tegra, and bad ones for Microsoft.

diff large files under Solaris

Did you ever notice that the diff command cannot handle files larger 2 GB under SunOS Solaris? You will get a nice error message like:

Error: Value too large for defined data type

That is because its file I/O calls are based on 32 bit file offsets. Luckily Sun provides the alternate bdiff command, which uses 64 bit offsets. They could have just fixed diff in the first place, but whatever...

Install PIL under cygwin python 2.5

The Python Imaging Library (PIL) seems to be a nice module to dynamically create PNG images for web applications. I managed to install the PIL 1.1.6 module under cygwin, but it took a few turns to get it going. My environment:

• cygwin 1.5.25-15
• python 2.5
• Python Imaging Library 1.1.6 Source Kit (here)

Here are the steps that worked for me:

1. Download and unpack the PIL source package, open a bash shell and type:
   

   wget http://effbot.org/downloads/Imaging-1.1.6.tar.gz
   tar xzf Imaging-1.1.6.tar.gz
   cd Imaging-1.1.6
   

2. Try to build:
   

   python setup.py build_ext -i

   At this point I got the following error message, and the build would just hang forever:
   

   5 [main] python 4188 C:\cygwin\bin\python.exe: *** fatal
   error - unable to remap C:\cygwin\bin\tk84.dll to
   same address as parent(0x18710000) != 0x18C10000
   107 [main] python 5852 fork: child 4188 - died waiting for dll
   loading, errno 11

   According to that error message, tkr84.dll's load address is clashing with another DLL.
   
   
3. "Rebasing" the offending tkr84.dll to a different address is the solution. Here is how to do it.
   
   First close all cygwin processes to ensure that tkr84.dll is unloaded. In Windows Task Manager confirm that no cygwin processes like gcc or python are running. If there are processes left, kill them.
   
   If you have Microsoft Platform SDK installed, you can use it's rebase.exe from a command prompt:
   

   From Start run: cmd.exe
   > cd \cygwin\bin
   > rebase -b 0x1000000000 tk84.dll

   Otherwise you can try cygwin's version of rebase, but it appears it works only from the lightweight ash shell:
   

   From Start run: C:\cygwin\bin\ash.exe (correct path as needed)
   $ cd /bin
   $ ./rebase -b 0x1000000000 tkr84.dll

4. Retry to build, test, and install:
   

   python setup.py build_ext -i
   python selftest.py
   python setup.py install

   
   

Tokyo SSID Scan

The rain season is about to start tomorrow, but for today it left us one last beautiful day. I decided to enjoy the nice weather taking a drive from Yoyogi-Park over Omotesandou to Hirou, and count the number of WLAN access points on the way. This is sooo 2000 you may think. Yes it is stupid.

It's about 6 km, and I was curious about the WLAN density in Tokyo. For the test I placed my laptop running Network Stumbler on the rear window shelf of my car at let it scan. It won't get every access point with this method, because driving at high speed prevents signal lock most of the time. Mostly stops on the traffic lights will bring in batches of SSIDs.

Some time ago I did the same thing over in Berlin, it's a 6 km drive from my home in Friedrichshain to the office in Prenzlauer Berg. That should make a fair comparison - same distance, same method, same hippy districts. In Berlin I got about 50 access points.


So here is the result: A whooping 536 logged WLANs! One router every 11 meters, and that with most of them still skipped. Out of these about 140 were open access, 15 were Martin Varsavsky's FON routers, 19 Apple Airports, 15 NEC WarpStar, 4 Sony Location Free, 7 Livedoor access points, and 2 Google WIFI. The average speed was 49.58 Mbps.

And the conclusion? Obviously Tokyo is a huge city, and it has a lot of hardware lying around. If there is anything like a threshold where an amassment of embedded systems turns into artificial intelligence, Tokyo will be the place where the robot monsters hit first. Maybe I will do the same test in Seoul some day, it is said to have the highest Internet penetration in the world. And Germany? Probably people have more important things to do in life. =) The Apple number is a bit scary.

Evening Walk

Intel unveils the Processor for the Next Generation of Shoephones

Intel announced its new CPU targeted for mobile devices last month. A glimpse of the Intel Atom specifications:

• Core 2 Duo compatible x86 instruction set
• 1 and 2 core version
• 1.6 - 1.9 GHz core frequency, 500 MHz bus clock
• 0.5 - 1MB L2 cache
• 3W power consumption
• Price $40 range
  

This CPU just doesn't make sense. Atom is too big for mobile phones, and too small for Notebook PCs (really?). But as it happened some marketing folks created a new handy class of devices in the middle: Ultramobile PCs, or Mobile Internet Devices.

Now Intel targets this segment with its $40 part from the top of the price range. Unfortunately at the same time a myriad of low-cost $8 ARM clones is attacking from below. In favour for Intel one could say: "But ARM does not run Windows!". True, but is that really a must for UMPC?

As of today it is not clear, whether the UMPC/MID market will be x86 or ARM dominated. I can imagine it is Intel's strategy to pull it towards its camp with Atom. However what sells today is the user experience, not the underlying OS or CPU. Consumers don't really care, just look at Apple's move from PowerPC to Intel.

UMPC users will want to read email, browse the web, and do Office. You can do that very well with an ARM CPU on Windows Mobile in the battery-life friendly 100 mW range. I can't help, but the battle seems already fought.

The next move for Intel could be to lower the price for Atom. But what when traditional Notebook ODMs figure out that they do not need to source a $100 Core 2 Duo to run Windows, when Atom would do just fine? Even with its current price it is set to cannibalize Intel's margins in the notebook segment.

So what is the Atom CPU good for?


Things seem start falling into place when looking at the announcement of an Atom-powered Willcom phone by Sharp, the D4, running Windows Vista.

Maybe it lies in the nature of these West-Japan Kansai-people, but somehow Sharp product designs tend to score with a funny sense of fashion. (Like those wonderful electronic dictionaries with, erhm yes, built-in TV.)

I mean, why would you run Vista on 5 inches of screen, with a $40 CPU burning 3W from your phone battery, to read email and look at Excel spread sheets?

Seems odd enough.

So I guess after all it is this segment of niche devices the Intel Atom processor is targeted at. We are looking forward to try out the new range of Atom-powered Sharp Shoephones.