TechEye

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• Analyst pre-hypes Apple vapourware
• David Cameron praises Assange flick 'The Fifth Estate'
• Bristol researchers develop ultrahaptics
• LG boasts of curved OLED smartphone display
• Intel cuts deal with open source Arduino
• Moore’s Law gets very warped in the sub 20nm era
• Legendary lost Doctor Who tapes turn up in Ethiopia

Analyst pre-hypes Apple vapourware Posted: 08 Oct 2013 04:29 AM PDT Disappointed that Apple has not released anything innovative for a while, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster has started hyping up sales of Apple's vapourware. According to USAToday, Munster has started making bold claims for Apple's iWatch, the rumoured vapourware from the fruity toymaker that no one's ever seen. He claims that Apple will sell ten million of them, even though efforts to create wearable computers by rivals have already shown that the market is limited. Munster said that all this will add more than $2.5 billion to the company's top line and over $750 million in profit To be fair to Munster, he did not think that this level of cash would be that significant to Apple, but he said that the release of an iWatch will show Wall Street the company is still innovating by copying everything that its rivals have already done. Munster's views were based on a survey where 799 US consumers were asked whether they would buy an Apple iWatch that connected to an iPhone for $350. Only 12 percent of those with an iPhone said they would, presumably going on to form an orderly queue outside the nearest Apple store. The rest said that such a gizmo was perfectly pointless and they would rather sell their children for medical experiments rather than waste cash buying such a pointless piece of tat – we are paraphrasing a bit here. However, Apple's user base is so big, with 293 million users, that Munster "conservatively" extrapolated from the survey that two to four percent of global iPhone users may buy an iWatch when, if ever, it comes out. The rest of the users will be happy to take their phone out of their pocket when it rings. This means first year iWatch sales of 5- 10 million units. If Apple ended up selling 7.5 million of the devices at $350 each and with a 30 percent gross profit margin, that would generate $2.6 billion in revenue and $790 million in profit, Munster estimated. But that's only one percent of Apple's annual revenue and profit, so the direct financial impact would be limited. But Munster thinks it will calm Wall Street, where mumblings are that Apple's days of coming up with new ideas are over. Where this all falls down is that Apple has not said whether it will launch a smart watch. The closest Apple has come to saying such a thing was when CEO Tim Cook mentioned that wearable technology is "profoundly interesting" and that the wrist is a "natural" use case. That was before Apple's rivals, such as Samsung, beat Apple to the punch and released their own. The company won't be keen to be regarded as a copycat and would lose any mojo from such a product release. The rival's watches were greeted with a collective yawn from the market, which suggests many do not see the need for them. Apple's own gear will have to be special. Based on its history with MP3 players and tablets, it is possible that Apple has shelved the product until the rest of the industry forgets all about the technology, and then hypes its own version to the skies.

David Cameron praises Assange flick 'The Fifth Estate' Posted: 08 Oct 2013 04:18 AM PDT UK PM and movie expert David Cameron has praised the bio-flick on Wikileaks' Julian Assange - a man he wants locked up - after viewing roughly half of it. Cameron said that Benedict Cumberbatch is "brilliant" as the WikiLeaks founder in The Fifth Estate. What might surprise Assange is that Cameron said he admires his early work. Cameron said he was a big fan when Wikileaks was exposing corruption in Africa. It was only when Wikileaks exposed western secrets that he went off it. He also liked the fact that Wikileaks encouraged open government, but didn't much like the way it revealed secrets about his. According to the Guardian  Cameron was asked to review The Fifth Estate before an appearance on The Agenda on ITV. He only saw the first part of the film. He told ITN's political editor, Tom Bradby, who presents The Agenda, that Benedict Cumberbatch, who played Assange, did it brilliantly.  Cameron felt uneasy that, in the film, Assange appears to be more concerned about the fate of people who leaked documents to WikiLeaks, such as Chelsea Manning, rather those whose security may have been jeopardised by the leaks. That anyone has been directly affected or harmed by leaks from the organisation is up for debate.  The prime minister tutted that, when Assange warns people's lives are at risk, he is thinking of the people who have leaked documents. "Actually you also need to think about the people whose lives are at risk because they have been leaked," Cameron asserted. "In the bit of the film I saw that didn't come out enough. But it makes you think". Cameron appears to have undergone a conversion since he entered Number 10. He campaigned strongly in favour of open government while in opposition - roughly around the time Wikileaks first started making an impact. It seems Cameron had difficulty seeing a difference between corruption in the African continent or within the US or Britain's military. Cameron said people feel sympathy for Wikileaks because some of things the group uncovered in Africa and elsewhere, and they think it is great that information has been revealed. "Transparency, sunlight is a great disinfectant," Cameron said. "Transparency about information and where money is spent and how it is spent – this helps keep governments and politicians honest. So it is a good thing," he said. Cameron opposed the "huge dumps of information" by Wikileaks. He claimed every single telegram they had was made public without thinking of the consequences and lives could have been put at risk as a result. "That is different," Cameron said, before going on to say government secrecy is necessary for national security.  The Fifth Estate has been criticised by Assange, who was not involved in filming. Assange said an early version of the script he had seen was "fanning the flames for war on Iran" and that the piece was a "serious propaganda attack on Wikileaks and the integrity of its staff".

Bristol researchers develop ultrahaptics Posted: 08 Oct 2013 03:38 AM PDT Researchers from Bristol University have emerged from their smoke filled labs with a mid-air tactile feedback prototype that allows people to interact with computers without touching them thanks to the power of sound. Dubbed "ultrahaptics," the system allows users to interact with a screen to feel what is displayed and receive invisible information before touching it. According to a research paper, it works though acoustic radiation force, projected through ultrasonic transducers. Ultrasonic transducers were first first mentioned in the camp flick the Rocky Horror Picture Show as having a different function. In the 70s cult flick, the sonic transducer was an "audio-vibratory-physio-molecular transport device" which can "send you to another planet, Janet". Bristol's sonic transducer emits very high frequency sound waves which when they meet mid-air, create a sensation on a person's skin. By combining several waves, the Bristol researchers create multiple points of tactile feedback with different properties that can be spotted by users. One of the researchers working on the UltraHaptics project, PhD student Tom Carter, said current multi-touch systems do not allow people to feel what is on the screen. The researchers will present the UltraHaptics paper at the Association for Computing Machinery's Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology 2013 at the University of St Andrews this week. Here is a safe-for-work video of the machine in action:

LG boasts of curved OLED smartphone display Posted: 08 Oct 2013 03:01 AM PDT LG is to start mass production of curved smartphone displays and launch a smartphone with the new screens next month. Samsung has already announced that it will introduce a smartphone with a curved display in October. Curved displays are being touted as the next big thing. They allow bendable or foldable designs that could eventually allow mobile and wearable gadgets to take new forms. This could help along the smartphone market, where new ideas are desperately needed to keep it ticking along. According to Reuters, LG has started production of a six-inch display curved top to bottom. It plans to launch a smartphone with the curved display in November. Samsung's phone will have a display curved side to side. Technology firms have yet to figure out how to mass produce the parts cheaply and come up with display panels that can be thin and heat resistant. LG said its OLED is built using plastic substrates instead of glass, and by using film type encapsulation and attaching protective film to the back, it is "bendable" and "unbreakable". The company says its screen is vertically concave from top to bottom with a 700mm radius and is 0.4mm thin. LG boasts it's the world's thinnest and lightest, weighing in at 7.2 grams with a six inch screen. Rumours of curved screens have been floating around for some time now. It was thought while companies were keen to implement them in smartphones, it was first necessary to figure out cheaper production methods that kept phones using the panels cost effective.

Intel cuts deal with open source Arduino Posted: 08 Oct 2013 02:52 AM PDT CEO of fashion bag maker Intel, Brian Krzanich, announced that his company has cut a deal with open source outfit Arduino. Arduino is an open source hardware platform which is big in the education community. Its development kits and software programming interfaces are designed to make it easier for artists, designers and other enthusiasts to create interactive objects or environments. Krzanich said that using Intel's Galileo development board, Chipzilla and the Arduino community will work closely together on future products that bring the performance, scalability and possibilities of Intel technology into this market. Intel will donate 50,000 Intel Galileo boards to 1,000 universities worldwide over the next 18 months. He said that Intel is working with 17 universities across six continents to develop a curriculum based on the Intel Galileo board. Krzanich wants to put the power of Intel technology into the hands of as many educators and students as possible. Stephen Trueman, Director, Sapienza Innovation Centre told the Italian press that an agreement signed between Intel and Sapienza University of Rome will give Intel access to Europe's largest university. In return, Intel will offer the university a dedicated knowledge transfer structure gained from working alongside the technology industry.

Moore’s Law gets very warped in the sub 20nm era Posted: 07 Oct 2013 09:27 AM PDT After all the talk of “innovation”, Walden (Wally) Rhines), chairman and CEO of Mentor Graphics, posed many questions about the future of semiconductors in the post 20 nanometre era at IEF2013.  He called it the Big Squeeze. Even Gordon Moore reckons that Moore’s Law is at an end. “No exponential is forever,” he said. When asked what he would like his legacy to be, his answer was “anything but Moore’s Law”. Moore’s Law might be going away, said Rhines, but not quite yet. It’s a strange law, he said, but it’s been reliable for nearly 50 years and it’s based on a law of nature – the learning curve. That’s even though Intel’s Gordon Moore changed the “law” from a year to two years and then 18 months. Basically, it isn’t a law at all, he said. All cost reduction comes from shrinking the die, and a similar rule of thumb operates in many different sectors. But the cost per function will continue to fall after Moore’s Law is obsolete, he said. Moore’s Law caused people to emphasise feature size. But marketing takes over in the end with people trying to warp peoples’ perceptions by saying, for example that their gate lengths were shorter than their competitors. The claims got out of control on gate length, he said. The lies started again after everyone in the semiconductor industry decided to agree on a set of rules. The marketing started again. And the ITRS, the regulatory body,  said it was going to abandon the technology roadmap. And so now there are no rules. The semi industry has been living in a 70 percent linear shrink for a long time – perhaps as long as fifty years, and in that framework everyone wins and that created a healthy environment.  The system worked well, he said, but now it’s changed at the 20nm node and there’s no cost/transistor crossover for the first time in history going from 28nm to 20nm.  We’re adding complexity and that’s increasing the price of a wafer to 41 percent for the 20nm generation. And if the industry does move to 450mm wafers, it doesn’t solve the problem as it did in the past. A move to 450nm will have an impact but it will be too little and it’s too late. He suggested that cost per function will continue long after Moore’s Law is obsolete – and that could be because computing changes because of 3D stacking, bio switches, or carbon nanotubes. So who gets squeezed? He quoted Lisa Su’s ISSCC keymore this year when she said there will be no cost/transistor crossver for the first time at the 28 to 20 nanometre change. While, in the past, cost per wafer increases by 15-20 percent for each node, at the 16/14 nanometre stage the cost zooms to 41 percent more, with additional cost of double pattern/etch, FinFETs and the now infamous Extreme Ultra Violet delays. A move to 450mm wafers will reduce costs, but while that will be significant it will be too little, too later. Additionally, it’s unclear which vendors will be moving to 450mm wafers. The candidates for margins being squeezed include the food chain suppliers – wafer fabs, lithography, assembly, test and EDA software; silicon foundries, semiconductor companies and end users.  The answer is none of them can get squeezed. While Intel, he said, predicts wafer fabrication cost is the answer, a slide it’s doling out doesn’t make sense unless Intel process technology was really bad in the past. No one in the industry he’d shown this slide to said it made any kind of sense. One answer to this squeeze is for the entire industry to slow down the learning curve. But that’s probably not feasible. Growth in unit volume makes semiconductors different from other industries. While crude oil had a 1.1 percent ten year CAGR, automotive a 3.6 percent ten year CAGR, and computers an 11.5 percent ten year CAGR, semis have a staggering 72 percent ten year CAGR on the transistor front. In fact, the insatiable appetite for transistors, doesn’t need Moore’s Law scaling, said Rhines. You can grow integrated circuits vertically by increasing density and functionality; stack dies in 2.5D or 3D; or place your faith in spintronics, silicon photonics, semisynbio or new materials, such as carbon nanotubes. DNA, he suggested, could be the ultimate hard drive. We just don’t seem to need Moore’s Law any more. But, we suspect, Chipzilla will have a different tale to tell.

Legendary lost Doctor Who tapes turn up in Ethiopia Posted: 07 Oct 2013 09:26 AM PDT A trove of Doctor Who episodes considered lost forever have been found by a team of fans - in Ethiopia. 100 episodes featuring the first two doctors, William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton, were thought to have been gone for good when the BBC sold them off, failing to foresee the popularity of the cult sci-fi show. Each of the episodes was aired just once between 1964 and 1969, sold, with the originals then either lost or wiped. The Sunday People said the dedicated fans uncovered the lost tapes at the Ethiopian Radio and Television Agency. The Beeb hopes it will be able to air the tapes during the 50th anniversary celebrations of Dr Who in November. Dr Who boffin Stuart Kelly told the Sunday People: "I was told by a friend that the episodes had been found in Ethiopia. The BBC is negotiating to get them back right now. I really can't say any more than that".

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