Archive for the 'Technology' Tag
This article describes a version of USB that is not related to the new USB 3 spec that Intel has released for 2010 products
I originally planned the Powered USB article as two parts, one explaining why USB took off, and another explaining why USB isn’t the best solution because it can’t power large devices plus why Powered USB isn’t the greatest solution either because it isn’t in consumer electronics yet and has the different plugs for different voltages issue as well.
What I didn’t plan on was all the Firewire fans popping up and saying I was wrong for pushing a Powered USB/USB 3 combo. For the record, I’m also a Firewire fan but haven’t gone to the fanatical levels some people have. Part 3 is for you guys.
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This article describes a version of USB that is not related to the new USB 3 spec that Intel has released for 2010 products
The Universal Serial Bus, or USB, is right now the most common serial peripheral bus in existence. Allowing all the most common devices to connect to your computer, to each other, through hubs, and now even wireless USB has become the dominant method of low bandwidth communications between devices and their peripherals.
However, USB is not without flaws, in fact, it has tons of issues that other less accepted standards have already solved, and USB has either not solved them or solved them only recently. One of those problems is that, although USB does provide electrical power to peripherals, it is rarely enough to run devices that suck juice like no tomorrow. Powered USB exists to solve this problem.
I will tell you why Powered USB will never be widely accepted, and also why we need it. However, to do so, this article is split into two three parts: the first part discusses the history of USB and previous peripheral ports, and why it it became widely accepted, the second part contains the meat of my argument on why Powered USB is both needed, yet failing to be accepted, and the third part describes a possible future USB 3 specification in detail.
This is part 2. Part 1 is available here, and part 3 is available here.
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This article describes a version of USB that is not related to the new USB 3 spec that Intel has released for 2010 products
The Universal Serial Bus, or USB, is right now the most common serial peripheral bus in existence. Allowing all the most common devices to connect to your computer, to each other, through hubs, and now even wireless USB has become the dominant method of low bandwidth communications between devices and their peripherals.
However, USB is not without flaws, in fact, it has tons of issues that other less accepted standards have already solved, and USB has either not solved them or solved them only recently. One of those problems is that, although USB does provide electrical power to peripherals, it is rarely enough to run devices that suck juice like no tomorrow. Powered USB exists to solve this problem.
I will tell you why Powered USB will never be widely accepted, and also why we need it. However, to do so, this article is split into two three parts: the first part discusses the history of USB and previous peripheral ports, and why it it became widely accepted, the second part contains the meat of my argument on why Powered USB is both needed, yet failing to be accepted, and the third part describes a possible future USB 3 specification in detail.
This is part 1. Part 2 is available here, and part 3 is available here.
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(Last updated January 11th 2013)
Ahh, I’ve been planning to write this one for awhile: an entire article on archival quality media. As I do professional software development as well as professional photography (what a weird combination), I need archival quality CD and DVD media to store my data on.
However, one of the hardest things to is actually find good media, or even understand why it is good media. This article focuses on the history of Compact Discs, writable CD/DVD media, and why DVD+R is superior to DVD-R. If you want to just know what media is worth buying, skip to the summary at the bottom.
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I’ve noticed one thing on the Internet, that stands out above almost all others: most people on the Internet have no clue what they are talking about. Case in point, a lot of ricers and gamerz like to say that DDR is lower latency than DDR2 because DDR2 takes more cycles to do things; except they forget one important thing: cycles are not a measurement of time, they are a measurement of iterations.
That said, there is only one case where DDR actually manages to be lower latency than DDR2 (and this doesn’t mean it has higher performance, or effects benchmarks in any measurable way in favor of DDR), and that is with DDR400 memory vs. DDR2-400 memory: latency is theoretically lower, but you pay a penalty for giving up DDR2’s larger prefetch buffer and better power efficiency. Also, no one actually uses DDR2-400 memory, only 667 and 800. DD2-800 compared to DDR400, latency ends up being similar in impact, and the actual performance is at least twice as much as DDR400, probably even more.
Another thing people say is that DDR2 is slower because it takes more cycles to do things. Yet another thought that hasn’t been fully thought out, and in a similar manner to the whole latency problem (infact, they are directly related; faster timings usually decrease latency across the same memory archetecture). As I said earlier, cycles do not measure time; however, cycles combined with cycles per unit of time measure time. DDR2 in most, if not all, situtations simply performs better.
So, to anyone out there that says that DDR2 is a step backwards: You’re an idiot.