Embrace The Ecosystem

It occurs to me that at least some of you Brainheads (and those who will join you in the future) might be asking yourselves one or both of the following questions:

1)Why is a technical editor for a chips-and-software focused publication like EDN writing so much about systems?

2)I don't design systems for the insert-application-here industry, why do I care about what Brian's writing about in this particular blog post?

The answers to those two questions are actually related, at least to my admittedly twisted thinking. Here's a few points to ponder:

1)For many of EDN's readers, a ready-for-production reference design is increasingly the only form in which they'll ever see the chips and software. Tear open a half-dozen routers from different OEMs, for example, and you'll likely find the exact same Atheros or Broadcom reference design inside; the only differentiation between them is the price, the plastics and the after-sale warranty and customer support. Texas Instruments is also going this route with digital audio players based on its DA295 chip, aggressively marketing its reference designs (as is Intel's XScale group with Asian cellular phone design houses). Finally, I'm reminded of a comment I heard from someone in Intel's motherboard group one time, when asked about seemingly competing against Intel's tier-1 customers (who buy chips) by seeding the tier-2 PC vendor market with motherboards (and even ready-to-go white box systems). This person positioned the motherboard as simply another packaging option for the chip.

2)Keeping in mind the practical consideration of bandwidth-i.e, available time, money and energy-a system design based on a chip and/or software is often the optimum means by which I can test those products. It also allows me to wring them out in a real-life setting, versus a sterile, 'friendly' laboratory environment.

3)To that prior point, I'm reminded of Walt Mossberg's (personal technology editor for the Wall Street Journal) comments at the recent EDN Innovation Awards event. Walt said he refused to review a product if he found the word 'hex' anywhere in the instruction manual, or if he saw the word 'root' in the documentation or the product's GUI. Developing a successful product is much more than sticking chips together and throwing assembly code at them, especially when the product is intended for a non-technical audience. This is why my spouse is a key participant in many of my product reviews!

4)Here's another stat, this time from Steve Jobs' keynote at January's MacWorld Expo, that to date over 400 accessories had been developed for the iPod. The folks at Rio, who I talked with last week, disputed that figure; they claimed that 200 of those 400 products were cases in various color, style and manufacturer combinations, and that another 100 were audio peripherals such as speakers and FM transmitters that worked off a generic headphone jack and weren't iPod-specific. However, they begrudgingly admitted that even 100 iPod-custom accessories represented an impressive showing of industry support. There's money to be made in products that enhance other successful products; Apple partners like Altec Lansing, Belkin and Griffin Technology certainly know this. For another example, look at the cables and software that FutureDial and Susteen make for various cell phones. Embrace the ecosystem.

5)Finally, even if your products aren't directly related to an application I'm writing about, you may need to be aware of the application so that your products don't adversely interact with it. One timely and particularly obvious example of this issue is the increasingly polluted 2.4 GHz broadcast spectrum, which I ranted about a while back with respect to the hands-on evaluation of simultaneous use of Bluetooth, a cordless telephone, a microwave oven, Wi-Fi and other 2.4 GHz-centric devices. Plenty of other examples exist.

Your thoughts? And regarding point 5 above….can anyone please explain why my new 900 Mhz cordless (or so the label says) phone clobbers channel 6 in the 802.11b/g 2.4 GHz band whenever I'm using the phone?