jmpe

How i learned to stop worrying and love the miniaturization:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKGhvKyjgLY

Seriously, watch it. Memristor-tech relies on this kind of miniaturization and can provide a speed boost in several areas in current architectures.

Secondly, having worked for semi: there's a lot of conservative force holding back development. We could have had current tech with much less worries than we have now if they didn't respond so allergically to everything that looks a little exotic in the CMOS process, like high-k dielectrics.

Ok, dug around in the code.

In Smartmontools I found the code for this variable:

http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/doxygen/atacmds_8cpp_so...

It's code 179 (0xB3).

From Samsung's website:

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/minisit...

  ID # 179 Used Reserved Block Count (total)

  This attribute represents the number of reserved blocks that have been used as a result of a read, program or erase failure. This value is related to attribute 5 (Reallocated Sector Count) and will vary based on SSD density.

From Intel's website:

http://download.intel.com/newsroom/kits/ssd/pdfs/intel_ssd_5...

(Ctrl-F for "Available Reserved Space")

.. they use a normalized value (100).

So it can be either percentage or absolute value, depending on manufacturer.

The 100 is a normalized number, it's not the actual number of blocks.

I'm not too sure about that. The only ref I can give is that they use the suffix "Cnt_Tot" which means "total count". When it's a percentage they denote it as such as in "Perc_Rated_Life_Used" and "Workld_Host_Reads_Perc". Don't be surprised by the low count (100).

You wouldn't happen to know how close these ARM cores are to LPC1xxx or STM32? Would it be worthwhile to port Chibios to them?

First: I jumped into the comments before reading the article.

I have quite some experience with Flash in the form of eMMC and SD/CF. SSDs aren't that much different from those on the low level.

The controller that comes with the flash storage contains a core that manages the bad blocks. Comparable to bad sector management on HD. The software these controllers run contain a lot of rules of thumb to manage bad blocks, which is where these full failures come from IMO.

Each controller has access to a pool of reserve blocks that are used when bad blocks are detected. Once those run out the embedded software starts showing weird behavior when using the device and shortly after there's a complete fail.

I think the pool of reserve blocks is "Used_Rsvd_Blk_Cnt_Tot" in your list. Apparently there are 100, of which you consumed 0. There's a threshold at 10 so I assume that's where the diagnostics software will warn you.

The 4 & 5LP are 32 bit ARM, the 1 & 3 are 8 bit.

A TI-73 or TI-83 is $20 or less on eBay.

HP's claim isn't rediculous if you consider that they're not developing memristor tech to replace flash storage. They want to unify mass storage drives with DRAM. You do need an O.S. that can be partially rewritten, because the system can remain in the state where you switched it off. Richard Stanley Williams is the name to Google if you want insight into their roadmap.

Correct, it was wrong of me to point to "architectures" that lack Neon; you're correct in your reply. I should have mentioned specific implementations. My experience with Allwinners without Neon indeed comes from smart TVs and STB. You know your stuff ;)

Anyone experimented with this yet? I'd like to know how this is resolved when the architecture doesn't support Intel's SIMD approach, they map the objects pretty close to the instructions (SIMD.float32x4.sub and the likes).

I'm trying to figure out what happens when you port this to ARM NEON, and how you catch it with architectures that don't support NEON (they often lack them in Marvell and Allwinner).

"Our lives are spent trying to pixellate a fractal planet."

~A. King in Society

you can bend/compress wood with steam. But look at the width of that bottle neck.

The others I looked at (playing cards, rubicks cube, ...) can be disassembled in smaller pieces that go through. That's his technique. So how do you disassemble a plank? I think it's a hollow piece of thin plywood (1 piece, no seams) that was soaked, folded up and then filled with something (resin).

Anyone know what material the mirrors are made from? I'm surprised that the configuration is a horizontal device with the mirrors vertical, I'd assume a vertical device would be easier.

Edit: hmm, on second thought, a vertical device would have the electrode vertical as well and it's probably metal. Maybe a polysilicon electrode?

Probably uniformity & capital. The profit margins on LED aren't what they used to be.

A 6" wafer will also have lots of dies on the edge that don't pass automatic testing. Don't forget that most devices are located near the edge.

Secondly, upgrading your Fab to switch your process to larger wafer size has a 10-figure $ price tag. It's not trivial for digital, let alone opto electronics. LEDs are special in that they deviate severely from the standard mos process. When Monsanto first produced them they almost dumped the idea for LEDs because of all the issues to deal with the exotic materials.

Same as regular chips: in a grid on a wafer, then cut and pick&placed.

Don't forget: yield goes up when the die shrinks because the defects are typically small spots. The smaller the die the better you pixelate the defects.

The wafers are only 2 inch diameter to avoid yield loss due to edge effects: at the edge of the wafer you have lowest quality components (optical ring effects)

Something that is often overlooked: in the EU a dozen countries switched to a different currency overnight. Everything. Accounting and banking, shops big and small, the entire value system was redone.

But after more than a decade I still find myself converting back to the old currency in my head from time to time. Only to remind myself that inflation has made that exercise pointless. The older generation has trouble with it, though.

Their guidelines suggest to use dropbox for that:

https://help.github.com/articles/what-is-my-disk-quota

https://help.github.com/articles/working-with-large-files

Find out what the native pioneer species are and start with those. They're typically fast growing things like bramble, birch, ... Once they get off they'll prevent soil erosion, top soil dehydration and dampen wind whilst adding organic matter to the top soil. After 5 - 10 years you can start introducing slower growing native trees.

You misquoted me, please re-read it.

Yes, you're missing an important detail about the lifecycle of arctic ice.

Multi-year ice is about 6 years old. There's no 100 year old ice there. Every year it gets slushed, reaches a minimum around September and builds up again. The minima are dropping, btw. Both in extent as in volume.

One extreme is ARM cores: incredibly popular, there are several in your laptop and probably half a dozen in your smartphone, ... ARM holdings is an IP & design company, they design & license cores.

But regarding those old cores I mentioned ... lots of use because it's legacy with lots of developers that know the architecture.

"... but it's no longer relevant to any discussion of processor prices"

Kinda pedantic remark:

No longer relevant as a stand-alone device but don't overlook the IP core market. It's pretty common to find one or more of these old cores as a module in a more complex device (e.g. an FPGA) or as the base for an ASIC (esp. automotive). Same for the 8088, 8051, 6502, ...

... or one of those plugins that generates fake mails for email-harvesting bots?

You joke, but people need to start thinking about how to translate adblock to the up and coming IoT ecosystem.

Fireflies. Could be that there's a bacteria involved somewhere, but bioluminescence for communication is a thing.

Also kills water striders.

That would work, but it's more elegant to dig into the bootloader. As long as you don't have the pw you'd have to repeat this approach. Suppose you manage to put your own system on the SD, the bootloader would still have the lock.

Edit, even simpler: hook up a logic analyser and the password should be among the first captures.

Yes. When scaling down semiconductors your oxide shows weird behavior. In transistors this was one of the crisis that hindered miniaturisation, there were alternatives (like exotic high-k dielectrics) but semi corps tend to steer away from such things.

Miniaturization happens not only on the surface (length and width) but also depth. This is where silicon oxides come into play. Flash tech relies either on charge trapping in the oxide itself or in a floating gate. Both become sensitive to effects like tunneling when you scale them down in the 10nm magnitude.

There's a very good documentary about bacteriophages:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6sZ7E9Hh-Y

It's history is muddied, mainly because of money & politics.