Silicon Carbide Wafer

IBM has created transistors out of graphene that apparently can be clocked to frequencies well above 100 GHz.  If this is true, we might be seeing a new light at the end of the tunnel for “Moore’s Law”.  And believe me, it is quite dark after the next decade or so.  Intel had already previously announced a 22nm process, but with that we are getting within two orders of magnitude of the size of the Silicon atom (diameter of Si is .222 nm according to Wikipedia).

So, what does this mean for the fate of the transistor?

Simply put, as the transistor asks to get smaller and smaller (this has to be done to create smaller, more robust and power-efficient chips), we arrive at a theoretical limit at which the channel width of the transistor becomes so small that its crucial switch-like characteristics are no longer present.  Up until now, it was impossible to think of a single-atom transistor, but researchers at Helsinki University of Technology claim to have made a single-atom transistor, too.

The Single-Atom Transistor (Finland)

What do these two bits of good news mean?  Well, from the latter it appears that this is VERY GOOD news for Moore’s law, which predicts that the number of transistors on a chip will double every 18 months or so.  (It’s proven to be a very hard law to follow before Intel’s breakthroughs in the last few years.)

Yet without any further advancements in the fabrication process of  the transistor, we risk running into a dead-end soon.  And that would be VERY BAD for technological advancement.

So… what’s it going to be? Smaller transistors? or FASTER transistors?

Who knows.  For me, the smaller transistor seems to make more sense… it’s the way things have been going as of late.  The trend seems to be that the smaller the channel-width, the less power consumption there is.  On the other hand, single-atom transistors are the shorter dead-end road of the two, because a single atom is the limit (which we are very close to reaching now anyway). This is opposed to the theoretical limits of a clock-driven transistor, which are based around the speed of light.

We’ll just have to wait and see… but I’m only hoping that IBM’s breakthrough doesn’t revert us back to the single-CPU paradigm.  Getting all programmers to think in terms of parallel processing is difficult, but it will be necessary.  Many of us have learned the hard way, that 1 CPU can only be clocked so fast… adding an additional processing unit to a system is easy to do and gives two times the performance.  But increasing the clock speed by two times is way trickier, and doesn’t give the same results.

Digital Crabs?

I come across a lot of Realtek integrated circuit products in my day-to-day operations. They make network cards and audio cards mainly for integrated solutions, and yeah… they’re great. They can be found on Macs and Linux generally has good support for Realtek products (Windows goes without saying).

I just wanna know what kind of crack they were smoking when they came up with this logo for their company?

It must have been good stuff.  This logo can be seen on their chips and website.  But don’t misunderstand me, because I actually really love it.  This is the kind of creativity that chip designers should go for.

Portland-based friend, Andreas Tekus, has just opened an online shop specializing in customizing your childhood GameBoy. The customizations offered at “GreightBit Mods” range from ’80s retro artwork to circuit bending and altering the functionality altogether of your prized childhood pastimes–not just GameBoys but other toys, as well–to make all sorts of beeps and noises that the original designers had never dreamed of.

It begs the use of a “Pimp My Ride” analogy right about here, but I will refrain from saying it. Customized GameBoys are the new hipster geek essential. MUST HAVE ONE.

I often see the DVD case for the movie Blade Runner while rummaging around my stuff. Every time I see it, though, I have a hard time recalling why I actually own a copy of this movie. I’m not usually keen on repeat screenings, but one day out of boredom, I popped it into the DVD player and it all started coming back to me.

I am totally blown away by Blade Runner. Ridley Scott really did put together something that has all the ingredients required to cement its place in the list of all-time classics–Blade Runner has action, drama, thriller and sci-fi elements all rolled up into one masterpiece.  And though it’s release date was 1982, its portrayal of the “distant future” is quite tasteful compared to other ’80s sci-fi films.  It’s one of those movies that can’t easily be pigeon-holed into one genre or style of film, with special effects that are still proving to be timeless and an awesome original score, to boot. Watching the movie gives one the sense of total immersion into a futuristic world of grandeur, with intrigue by a dramatic and undying mystery. To say this movie was way ahead of its time is an understatement.

Perhaps the most stirring of scenes in the film comes at the end (frequently referred to as the “Tears in Rain” scene). (Spoiler! Click here to continue reading…)

I totally jocked my girlfriend and went out and bought a betta fish.  She showed up to my house one day with a fish and a bowl and I was like I NEED TO GET ONE OF THOSE.  So, I upstaged her and bought the handsomer, more vibrant $6.99 fish.

Yeah, this dude is awesome.  I dunno why I never thought to do this before. They’re really nice to look at, and they just add this great aesthetic value to my room.

Here are some facts about Betta fish:

• Their natural habitat is found in South-East Asia (specifically Thailand and Cambodia).
• Can live up to 4 years.
• Can’t live in the same space with another Betta fish or they will rip each other apart.
• Grow to about 6 cm (or 2.4 inches).
• Males are prettier than the females.

Check out the Betta fish wikipedia page.  And go out and get one.

This is delayed news, but a couple of weeks back I received an official offer from Intel Corp. to start a COOP as a Technical Marketing Engineer Intern in January right at the heart of Silicon Valley, CA.  This will be my 2nd COOP at Intel and all i can say is

AAAAAAAEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEYEAHHHEHHHH!!!!

I’m totally thrilled about this and was literally jumping for joy when I received the news.  This is one of the cooler jobs in Silicon Valley for an Intern, and no doubt I will be doing fun, interesting and important things all wrapped up into one.  Plus not to mention that I’m working with some really awesome people.

I will no doubt be blogging about the experience in the time to come.  The job includes various benefits such as playing with the latest cutting-edge technology Intel has to offer, demonstrations, presentations and the potential for world travel.  Okay, I’ve said enough… this job is perfectly suited for me! I love people, technology and the world… combining all three aspects into one job is an epic win in my book.

On a side note, there are three weeks of school left and that is all that is keeping me from completing my BS Computer Engineering degree.

Will I ever go for my masters? PhD? Only time will tell. Right now I really like industry.

I’ve been using my friend Yaya’s car for the past year while she’s in China doing a practicum at Wieden + Kennedy.  It’s a ‘92 Toyota Camry, and it is a beast.  Can’t say that it’s running smoothly, but I am perplexed that it is still going so strong after 286,000 miles on the road–compare that to the ‘94 VW Golf that I was forced to trash after a measly 139,000 miles.

15,888 miles per year

God knows who put so many miles on it, or how they did it.  Many of the power locks don’t work, some on the outside, some from the inside… getting inside is like a strange logic puzzle.  And it starts shaking at 60MPH, but this car is probably gonna be around for the 300,000 mark.

I can feel it.

there's a conference room on the inside

Vice magazine’s blogger Alex Hoban ran an article the other day about exploring a Boeing 747 jumbo jet abandoned in the foreground of a Seoul suburb’s high-rise community.  There are only a few words that can explain this find–unbelievable comes to mind when I see these pictures, jealous is another word.

Someone should just pay me to do urban exploring like this because I would bank so hard on it.  (Wait–apparently Vice magazine does pay someone to do this).  You can come across some of the most perplexing things exploring cities… in Wuhan, China I found an entire quarter of the city where (presumably) the French had erected old colonial houses, embassies, banks, apartments, etc.   All of it was totally abandoned, it was like some creepy French ghost-town in the middle of China (more on that, in a future post).

supposedly this is the 2nd boeing 747 ever manufactured

In Beijing, there were closed-off construction sites everywhere, where people who had refused to move were living in houses with one whole side of the building missing.  In Cleveland, there are a myriad of abandoned warehouses to check out (and I’ve seen a good number of them), as in most other American cities, especially the ones that suffered from loss of industry post-WWII.

I’m sure there is no end to it when you take all the metropolises of the world, but I could imagine a few that would be a gold mine to check out: Rio de Janeiro, London, Moscow, Tokyo, and now Seoul.

But this–this trumps anything I have ever seen in real life.  I mean, seriously, could you imagine waking up for kimchi and mandoo breakfast, eating  to a view like this out your window???

Hopefully I can check it out someday if I ever make it to Korea.

Full article and more pics here.

a fusion of beauty and brains

Why can all digital design not look as elegant as this schematic to the left?

Okay, forgive me for tooting my own horn, because fact is that I designed this 4-bit register for a class project. But the Mentor Graphics Design Architect design tools are such an awful pain to use. Converting this to a physical mask layout is going to be the end of me… if I can ever figure out how to get past this step, that is.

Which brings me to a more important point: why do we put up with this kind of thing in our lives?  I understand that the Mentor Graphics tools are very powerful, but they make the design process so difficult.  Why do people continuously put up with using awful tools to create and fix important things??

WHY WHY WHY is there not more of a focus on usability of products but so much emphasis on the raw capability?

Anyway, I love this schematic, and I’ve made a resolution from this point to make sure all of my future designs reflect this kind of meticulous, consistent and graceful design.  I want someone to look at my designs and be like EXCELLENT, can’t wait to start messing around with these cell blocks (while doing the Mr.Burns hand gesture, no less).

What is it with the Asian obsession with noses?

I just found out that AT&T finally activated MMS messaging on the iPhone via a “carrier update” on iTunes.  I was looking for an image to christen my 3G’s MMS capability with, and  I can’t remember what the hell I typed into Google image search to get this picture, but this came up and seemed perfect to send as my first MMS.

lest we forget, big noses are comical here in the west, too

It reminded me of interacting with people in China… those moments when I would attempt to have a brief chat with a stranger.  The old ladies at the shop downstairs, street vendors, subway ticket clerks, girls at the bar, servers, etc.  When my Chinese started improving and becoming somewhat comprehensible, I noticed the people I talked to were just as excited to talk about my nose as to complement me on my speaking.  One time, when my friend came to visit me, we were in an elevator and two Chinese men walked in.  One said to the other, “Hey, check it out! What a good-looking nose.”  Of course they thought we couldn’t understand them.  What’s funny is that they were actually probably talking about my friend, whose nose is almost impossibly bigger than mine.  I think we must have just looked like two huge noses walking down the streets of Beijing to them.

I guess it is important to reveal here that I am, indeed, equipped with a nose of epic proportions.  My girlfriend and I found a small medical tape-measuring device in my room one day and proceeded to measure each others faces.  In the process I discovered that not only are my eyes very close together and incredibly deep-set, but my nose is an astonishing… wait for it… 2″ long from the face to its absolute highest peak.  Yep, a full 2″ length and skinny as hell to top it off.

My nose has an interesting history. It seemed to have grown to its fullest size in a matter of months. I guess this is what happens to Albanian men: they hit puberty, growth spurt, nose spurt. I’ve nearly broken mine a few times (how could you avoid it).  And although most people would be obsessively self-conscious about having such a disproportionate facial feature, one could say I have really “grown” into it.  Besides, the one thing all of my past girlfriends have unanimously told me is that they like my nose.  Who could argue with that?