Brian's Brain

Continued from 'Technology's Relentless Transitions: Tangible Illustrations'...

Moore's Law integration-driven obsolescence

You might wonder why I'm holding onto any of my 802.11 adapters, given the commonality of integrated Wi-Fi nowadays. The short answer is that commonality doesn't yet equate to ubiquity. There are plenty of places in my home, for example, where running CAT5 cable would be a hassle and powerline networking might be sketchy, and where I might therefore instead want to attach a USB- or Cat5-based Wi-Fi bridge to a piece of gear. Also, I've still got two ancient PC Card-based laptops that don't have integrated 802.11g (one of them doesn't have integrated 802.11-anything!) or, for that matter, embedded Bluetooth. However, I definitely don't need my wired Ethernet and 56K modem PC Cards any longer. And I 'spect that a year or a few from now, I'll be writing again, telling you how I've retired the last of my 802.11g and Bluetooth adapters...along with the laptops.

For nostalgic reasons, I held onto an ancient i740-based graphics card far beyond the point of its practical relevance. Last week, I sent it off to one of my primary Intel PR contacts with a suggestion that he might want to put it in the Intel Museum (he jokingly replied that he'd pass it along to his Larrabee counterpart). Intel rapidly rolled the graphics engine it co-developed with Real3D into its core logic chipsets and, as a result, today boasts a leadership graphics silicon shipment position.

Similarly, I sent an Analog Devices contact the CNR audio cards that I'd (too) long been clinging to. Motherboard-based audio codecs (along with, for that matter, networking PHYs) are now pervasive...which is why I've retired the majority of my audio add-in cards. ISA-inclusive motherboards are virtually impossible to find nowadays, with PCI-inclusive descendents soon following them into extinction. And Microsoft's Windows Vista has also acted as obsolescence catalyst; I'm disappointed (albeit, unfortunately, not surprised) at how many manufacturers haven't bothered developing Vista-compatible audio drivers.

Integration-induced retirement occurs at the system level, too. Last month, I told you that I'd migrated from a traditional-design Windows Smartphone to one with a built-in keyboard. At the time, and as a result, I told you that I'd sold my first-generation Dell Axim X5 Pocket PC and its accessories suite. Well, last week I broke down and Ebay'd its planned replacement, a high-end VGA-capable Dell Axim x50v. Between my T-Mobile Dash and Nokia Internet Tablet, the Pocket PC ended up being functionally redundant and, therefore, unnecessary for someone determined to de-clutter his life. Are you surprised, given the plethora of my past Pocket PC advocacy? Me too...which is why I delayed so long before taking this step.

Along with the Pocket PCs went all of my CompactFlash-based peripherals (modems, wired and wireless Ethernet adapters, and Bluetooth adapters), which no longer have homes at my home. And don't get me started on all of the formerly voluminous-sized flash cards and USB 'sticks' which I've lately been giving away to friends and family members...

Moore's Law performance-driven obsolescence

I had a good chuckle when I came across my RealMagic XCard, developed by Sigma Designs as a time when the company wasn't just an IC supplier, and intended to offload the CPU from DivX decoding at a time when it wasn't capable of handling the task by itself. Similarly, somewhere I still have an ISA add-in card that Creative Labs bundled with a DVD-ROM drive, to handle decoding of then-nascent DVD's MPEG-2.

But, as I wrote in detail last fall, CPUs (in recent partnership with the shader processors and dedicated logic in modern GPUs) have slowly but surely taken over the entirety of video processing. Both for standard- and high-definition video; within this week's Ebay for-sale stash are several boards based on TeraLogic's Janus chip. Eight years ago, when it won an EDN Innovation Award, its accomplishment was well-deserved and its capabilities were well-needed. But no more...at least within a PC.

Specialized software (some of which is in my to-donate stash) that originally cost hundreds or thousands of dollars, carefully crafted to encode to and transcode between various standard- and high-definition video formats, now costs a few pennies-to-dollars per copy...that is, if the open source community hasn't yet developed a freeware version. And speaking of CPUs, I've also sold or donated all of my NetBurst microarchitecture-based Intel processors, along with the Intel Architecture motherboards that aren't upgradeable to Core microarchitecture-based descendents. Created for a multimedia-centric and leakage current-absent future that never came to pass, their poor performance-per-watt characteristics on commonplace code dimmed my continued interest in them.

Voila: my clutter (partial) confession. I suspect I'm not alone in this situation. Got any obsolescence examples from your own life that you'd care to share, readers?