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November 25, 2014
Rediscovering High Resolution AV
November 18, 2014
Making Makers Mainstream
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Going Vertical
November 4, 2014
A New Wearables Forecast
October 28, 2014
The Next Evolution for Wearables: Business
October 21, 2014
Size Does Matter...When it Comes to Screens
October 14, 2014
Insider Extra: Does Windows Stand a Chance With Enterprise Mobile Apps?
October 14, 2014
Does Big Data Equal Big Brother?
October 7, 2014
Is Windows Still Relevant?
September 30, 2014
Tablet and Smartphone Futures: Specialization
September 23, 2014
Is the App Ecosystem Sustainable?
September 16, 2014
The Wearable-Identity Connection
September 9, 2014
The Password Dilemma
September 8, 2014
Insider Extra: SanDisk--Driving Flash Forward
September 2, 2014
Smart Connected Devices: A New Forecast
August 26, 2014
Phablets—aka Pocket Computers—Drive New World Order
August 19, 2014
Device Usage Diversity
August 12, 2014
New Life for the PC
August 5, 2014
Hot Items for the Holidays: Large Phones, Notebooks and Smart TVs
July 29, 2014
Smartphones: Life's Remote Control
July 22, 2014
The Joy of Vintage Tech
July 15, 2014
Digital Generation Gap
July 8, 2014
Virtualization Reborn
July 1, 2014
Portable Digital Identities
June 24, 2014
The Future of UI: Contextual Intelligence
June 17, 2014
Moving to Markets of One
June 16, 2014
Insider Extra: Dell and the Battle for Business
June 10, 2014
Screen Overload to Drive Screen-less Devices
June 3, 2014
Apple Drives Vision of Seamless Multi-Device Computing
May 27, 2014
Surface Pro 3: The Future of PCs?
May 22, 2014
Insider Extra: SanDisk: The Many Faces of Flash
May 20, 2014
The Technological Divining Rod
May 13, 2014
Computing in the Cloud
May 6, 2014
Device Usage a Question of Degree
April 29, 2014
The Next Smartphone Battleground: Durability
April 22, 2014
BYOD: A Work in Progress
April 18, 2014
Insider Extra: AMD Back in the Groove
April 15, 2014
The Mobility Myth
April 9, 2014
BYOD Dilemma: Devices vs. Data
April 8, 2014
Insider Extra: Qualcomm's Evolving Story
April 1, 2014
A Wearables Forecast
March 25, 2014
Measuring Success in Wearables? It's Thousands of Thousands
March 24, 2014
Insider Extra: Intel Strategy Moves Forward
March 18, 2014
IOT: Islands of Isolated Things?
March 11, 2014
Wearables Cautionary Tale
March 4, 2014
The New Platform Battle
February 25, 2014
Watch What Happens
February 18, 2014
Talkin' 'bout Touchpads
February 11, 2014
The MultiOS Conundrum
February 4, 2014
Computing Redefined
January 28, 2014
The Apple Problem
January 21, 2014
The 2-in-1s People Might Want
January 14, 2014
The Post Tablet Era
January 7, 2014
The Innovation Asymptote
December 31, 2013
Top 5 2014 Predictions
December 17, 2013
Holiday Shoppers Gifting Themselves
December 10, 2013
Companion Apps
December 3, 2013
Aisle Check
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December 2, 2014
In day-to-day use, few people regularly complain about the performance of their tech devices. For the most part, people are content with the experience of using them. Sure, there are some curmudgeonly (or cheap) folks hanging onto older devices that still offer sub-par performance, but they’re becoming the exception instead of the norm.
That doesn’t mean all the performance challenges for tech devices have been solved, however—far from it. In fact, now that the overall bar for performance has been raised to a “good enough” level, component and system designers can finally start to tackle some of the thornier challenges that have been with us for some time.
One of the biggest challenges involves what I’ll call the “bursting” issue. It seems that no matter how content we are with a given device’s performance, there almost always comes a moment (or two, or three…) where the performance doesn’t live up to our expectations. Streaming a video, taking multiple photos, playing an online game, and several other types of activities can cause a hiccup in an otherwise decent performance experience. These moments may not last long, but they absolutely impact our overall opinion of the device, application or service that we’re using.
In virtually all cases, these brief slowdowns involve a burst in activity, or series of bursts, that place unmet strains on an otherwise solid-performing system. Interestingly, these bursts can cause challenges in several different device subsystems—CPU, graphics, storage, modem and other connectivity—sometimes individually and sometimes simultaneously.
Regardless, some of the more interesting efforts to increase performance in all of these areas are now directed towards battling these burst issues. In the case of CPUs, it often involves more sophisticated chip architectures, with more simultaneous compute threads and pipelines, better predictive branching, increased caches and other enhancements that can ensure the chip is working as effectively as possible. For graphics, some of these same principles also apply, but there are also improvements in geometry engines, programmable shaders, and more.
For storage, meeting these challenges requires faster types of flash memory, more sophisticated controller chips, and better error correction algorithms. In the case of modems and other radios, new technology standards, like LTE Advanced and 802.11ac and 802.11ad make a difference, but implementing specific technologies within those standards, like carrier aggregation and multi-user MIMO, also have big influence on driving higher levels of throughput.
Raw performance improvement is also a factor in all cases, because sometimes it takes raising the overall performance bar in order to be prepared for the sudden spikes that inevitably occur. While there are different ways of reaching new performance levels in each of those respective component areas, general improvements in silicon manufacturing, shrinking of die size to smaller process technologies, and Moore’s Law overall conspire to make performance enhancements possible in all of these areas.
In the world of audio equipment, the ability to handle extremes in signal strength is called headroom. Well-designed audio equipment, whether it be used for listening, creating or recording purposes, has plenty of headroom in order to handle the sudden bursts in volume that often occur in music. Not surprisingly, it adds cost to design and build in that extra headroom. There are always ongoing debates about how about much headroom is actually necessary and how much it’s worth paying for. While there aren’t necessarily any real right or wrong answers, it’s generally understood that having a decent amount of headroom helps with the overall performance of the audio component (or system) and is worth spending an additional amount on.
For the device and component industry, where “good enough” performance is becoming an increasing threat to upgrade purchases for existing devices, the trick will be to explain how performance headroom can be a valuable, worthwhile investment. Part of the problem is that many existing performance benchmark tests are designed to show off typical tasks and not the bursts in activity that are increasingly the bottleneck for better system performance. As mentioned previously, day-to-day performance on most devices is typically fine for most users, so showing increases in that area can seem like overkill. If new benchmarks were built around the ability to cover (or not cover) the bursts, however, that might provide an entirely new way of looking at today’s performance challenges.
Explaining some of these kinds of concepts in a meaningful way to typical consumers may not be an easy task, but it’s a critical one for future growth.
On a separate and unrelated note, this column marks the 1-year anniversary of the launch of my company, TECHnalysis Research, as well as the appearance of my weekly column on Tech.pinions.com. I’d just like to give a quick note of thanks for all the support, interest and feedback I’ve received over this past year. It’s been great. Thank you!
Here's a link to the original column: https://techpinions.com/the-next-performance-challenge-the-battle-for-the-burst/37155
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