As more factors are going into the design of new computers, interfaces, and hardware the products of these new designs are already beginning to take on a Ubiquitous feel.
Advances in probabilistic system-onchip architecture in the United States are good steps towards creating the small, fast, and light power consumption chips that one would need to for a ubiquitous age to truly begin. Krishna V. Palem, professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, gave a highly detailed explanation that first focused on the size limitations for hardware chips. He said that hardware cannot be made much smaller without each chip pathway interfering with other pathways and creating noise, or mistakes, in the chip's function.
Previously this would be a physical limit on the size of hardware, but a computer chip that makes frequent, predictable mistakes can be utilized for complex tasks without much loss of information. Using mistakeridden chips could lower power requirements and give a 10-290 times more efficient computing system.
In the case of video rendering specifically, errors on a very tiny chip could be predicted, and more error-prone pathways could be used to compute the display of unimportant parts of a selected video image. The more reliable pathways could be used to render the most important parts of the image, the parts near the center where the colors are always changing. This would result in a reduction in display quality, but it would be very difficult to see with the naked eye.
Ubiquitous designing ubiquity
Professor Palem also spoke about his work with embedded platform solutions. He said that the current paradigm of hardware separated from software creates more programming errors and more expensive hardware chip design. He advocated specialized chip design in a modular format.
More specifically, he advocated designing a hardware chip in a similar way to well-organized software programming code. In software programming, sections of the program are divided into blocks and reused in different instances when their function is needed in the program. This gives a two-fold advantage, in that first the code stays more organized and more readable, and secondly the block can be interchanged with another without much difference.
Professor Palem presented the idea that hardware design blocks could also be created, and then specialized chips could be designed with different arrangements of processing blocks. Companies could draw on a large variety of hardware blocks and re-use existing intellectual property. Customdesigned chips are harder, better, faster, and stronger. And custom-designed chips can be combined with embedded software development to take advantage of these customdesigned chips. He ended by saying that everyone should challenge the ISA model of hardware-software interoperability.
More emotional attachments
As computers become more and more a part of our every day lives, they must become more inviting and appealing to the average user. No longer can computers be forbidding machines of metal and plastic that intimidate, they must become small and lightweight toys that people can never be without.
Sidney Fels of the Media and Graphics Interdisciplinary Centre of the University of British Columbia in Canada designs and implements new and unconventional computer interface styles. The most interesting aspect of her work is her emphasis on intimacy and embodiment.
She said at the IT21 Conference that humans want computer interfaces that feel good to use. Humans and machines are inextricably linked together and that the degree of intimacy that a machine supports may determine its commercial success in the marketplace.
The most interesting computer interface that Ms. Fels presented was an electronic two-person flute. The design was called Tooka, and the flute was created in a curved shape and attached to a recording device. The shape of the flute was expressly designed to bring the two players closer together, in an intimate fashion. She said that she had a two objectives in creating the instrument; to first create a musical instrument that requires two people to play, and secondly to explore human intimacy.
As computers begin to be used in more ways than desktop word processing, the capacity for changing the fundamental ways that people interact with the objects around them and with each other can also be changed. The ubiquitous future has the potential to change everything about human interaction and entertainment. The future is full of promise.
