Everything is broken
The Sigma Designs SMP86xx chips contain, as discussed elsewhere, multiple CPU cores. In addition to the main CPU (a MIPS 74Kf or 24Kf), there are two MIPS 4KEc cores intended for real-time and security processing. These cores are equipped with full MMUs, and are thus perfectly capable of running a … Continue reading
In a previous post, I recounted my adventures with the Popcorn Hour C-200 media player. Having not given the device much thought since then, I recently decided to dust it off and see what it was really made of. This is what I found. Components The system is based on … Continue reading
In the net neutrality debate, a rarely mentioned aspect is the widespread practice amongst ISPs of over-subscribing bandwidth. Before streaming video became readily available and popular, this was viable, even reasonable, since few users managed to actually saturate their links for extended periods of time. Now that customers are suddenly … Continue reading
Some time has passed since I last wrote about the antics of the IJG, purveyor of the well-known JPEG image manipulation library. With the major Linux distributions as well as the Firefox and Chrome browsers having switched to the libjpeg-turbo fork, there has been little reason to pay attention to … Continue reading
The Cortex-A7 ARM core is a popular choice in low-power and low-cost designs. Unfortunately, the public TRM does not include instruction timing information. It does reveal that execution is in-order which makes measuring the throughput and latency for individual instructions relatively straight-forward. The table below lists the measured issue cycles … Continue reading
Last week s announcements from the White House of steps being taken to begin fighting back against patent trolls, along with legislation passed in Vermont for the same purpose, are worthy of praise. Whether they prove effective or not, they are a sign of the problem finally having been recognised by … Continue reading
Life as a patent troll is hopefully set to get more difficult. In a memo describing patent trolls as a drain on the American economy, the White House this week outlined a number of steps it is taking to stem this evil tide. Chiming in, the Chief Judge of the … Continue reading
In recent weeks, a number of high-profile events, in the UK and elsewhere, have been quickly seized upon to promote a variety of schemes for monitoring or filtering Internet access. These proposals, despite their good intentions of protecting children or fighting terrorism, pose a serious threat to fundamental liberties. Although … Continue reading
Outrage was the general reaction when Google recently announced their dropping of XMPP server-to-server federation from Hangouts, as the search giant s revamped instant messaging platform is henceforth to be known. This outrage is, however, largely unjustified; Google s decision is merely a rational response to issues of a more fundamental nature. … Continue reading
Reading about various patent litigation cases, I am struck by the frequency with which common logical fallacies such as the Appeal to Consequences are committed. We shall look at a couple of recent examples. In conjunction with the Federal Circuit ruling in CLS Bank v. Alice Corp., Judge Moore, joined … Continue reading