Have you heard about binaural recording? It is beautiful recording using using multiple microphone to create a 3-D stereo sound. My curiosity of this topic brought me to the following works.
Don’t forget to plug in your earphone, close your eyes, and feel the the beautiful atmosphere. These are astonishing and inspiring works by Pogo.
Upular
Bloom
You could visit this page for others work. Enjoy!
During my last 2 weeks, I was a little bit busy for my project of Advance Computer Architecture course. In this project, the performance and power dissipation of superscalar processor are observed. The suitable processor for running gcc application is examined by tuning the parameter of single-core simplescalar architecture simulator. The performances and power issue of the processor are analyzed.
The development of processor design nowadays is driven by the parallelism at multiple level with energy and cost being the primary constraints. Superscalar architecture is one the processor architecture that implement instruction-level parallelism which exploits data-level parallelism using compiler, out-of order issue, pipelining, and speculative execution.
To develop superscalar efficiently, further studies and observation about performances and energy efficiency of processor configurations should be exploited. In this assignment, SimpleScalar and Wattch tools are used to find out the most suitable superscalar architecture configuration for gcc benchmark. 2 metrics IPC and EDP are observed to assess the performance and energy efficiency of processor. To analyze the IPC and EDP of processor, a testbench C code fmath which is available in the SimpleScalar toolbox is used.
Several configurable parameters in the processor performances are branch predictor, memory system, datapath, and function units. Using the toolboxes, changes of processor parameters are observed and 2 configurations of superscalar processor are designed to to increase the IPC and decrease the EDP of processor running the fmath application. The first configuration is designed for high IPC while the second configuration is designed for low EDP. From the simulation, it could be observed that the maximum IPC configuration is 60% higher than default IPC and the minimum EDP configuration is 38,3% lower than default IPC using specific application.
Through this course, I could learn more about processor configuration and performance analysis. Using a proper and formal analysis, a broad knowledge of processor characteristic could be obtained and used for implementation, which is important to reduce the research time for implementing high performance system. Next assignment is multi-core processor analysis using Intel Parallel Studio which will be done to observed the implementation of multiple core for running specific application.
This is another song that was usually brought by ITB Student Orchestra during my work there. This piece is beautifully composed by Guruh Sukarno Putra about tributes for Indonesian patriots.
In the following video, Melati Suci is performed for Independence Day of Indonesia 2010 in the direction of Avip Priatna, arranged by Irsa Destiwi, and sang by Bernadeta Astari.
I got an email from TU/e about their energy saving campaign. This invitation of energy saving is very attractive for me since it puts fact about the previous energy saving percentage. Using the facts, people could know that the effort makes progress and they will be more motivated to do more.
Lets save energy, save the future. 
Nehalem Architecture
Recently, I am studying the Superscalar architecture for one of my course, Advance Computer Architecture. This architecture employs instruction level parallelism (ILP) which is implemented in a single processor. This architecture is widely used in current processor, for instance 64-bit itanium processor, Core i7 (using Nehalem Architecture), AMD 64-bit cores, etc. The first impression when I studied this architecture is that this processor is really complex, more than I expected. My studies about pipeline architecture and DSP processor is definitely only small piece of all topics related to computer architecture, which make me more challenged to learn it.
Instruction-level-parallelism is a method to execute multiple instruction simultaneously in a parallel scheme. To implement this into processor, parallel multiple executable unit (ALU, multiplier, etc) should be added. This addition definitely would bring a lot of hazard in the processor, for instance data hazard and control hazard. This is happens since there are dependences between instruction and between register in parallel architecture.
To solve the hazard, a lot of schemes are developed. These are scheduling, speculation, and branch/jump prediction. Scheduling is used to manipulate the flow of the instruction and do the renaming register so executable unit is efficiently used and the data dependence is solved. Speculation is used to fight the control hazard caused by branch/jump. Branch/jump prediction is used to reduce the penalty cost caused by branch instruction.
All of the schemes are not simple. A lot of research are done to produce the robust algorithm and architecture to solve these problems. It impress me since the methodology used in this architecture could bring outstanding performance in the processor which I never imagine before. From this course, my interest in processor grows. I could learn advance implementation of processor and enhance my knowledge in this area. In the next course, I will study the Itanium processor, which is an architecture for 64-bits Intel processor, and will work on the parallel processor using system C. I am looking forward to work on it. Wish all the best.
A beautiful song that really remind me of my city, Bandung. It is the place I spent my childhood, attended high school, learnt the meaning of life, struggled for my dreams and met all of my friends. It’ll always be the place I put my nice and beautiful memories, I’ll always miss Bandung. Take care there.
This song is about an old lady in the Netherlands who speaks over the phone to her son in Bandung, and hears the voice of her grandchild for the first time. The song is from 1929, shortly after the first telephone connection between Europe and the East Indies/ Indonesia had been established.
Last Saturday, I had an opportunity to discuss about the current model of company in both east and west. It is started when we knew that 2 of the biggest companies in Europe will fire most of their employees due to its decreasing revenue. Some people said that it is because of the economic crisis faced by Europe and the emerging of the technology company in Asia. It could make a conclusion that the western companies loss its touch so it could not catch up the significant rising of the eastern company’s business and technology. We were questioning whether it is really the reason or not and a little discussion is made.
As we knows, in the early stage of the electronics industry, companies from Europe and US began to start their investment and research on these area. They tried to develop a robust electronics devices such as communication technologies, digital computing electronics (processor), and instrumentation. They also designed the IC technology that allow the growth of IC development satisfies the moore’s law, which mentions that the performances of IC would be twice each year. They are really working on the quality and put the knowledge and innovation as driven.
Started by Japan, the industry of Asia grown significantly since the end of the World War II. Japan and the other Asia country drew ambitious plan to meet the task of industrialization and modernization. They found an opportunities in one of the emerging technologies in that era, electronics.
Although working on the same fields, most of Asia companies put themselves in different perspective, which fortunately brought them to their position now as one of the leader market in the world. They realized that the electronics those day were very expensive for the customer. They put it as a company opportunities to provide low cost electronics for them. It is adapted in companies like Samsung, Toshiba, and Huawei. This method is also used to conquer the automotive industry nowadays.
So, does it mean that the western companies will lose the markets? In my opinion, no. They both have different market. Although for some electronics product it seems that now Asia conquer the market, the western company also adapt. They know that the low-cost strategy is very useful for it, but they also don’t want to lose their “robust” strategy. They keep enhancing their product toward robustness and innovation, for example Apple, Microsoft, and Rohde-Schwarz. They produce product with the quality that is hardly to imitate. Some of the company also changing their focus when the previous technology is already mature, for example Philips who diverse their focus from lighting to biomedical equipment. Those product has to be strong and accurate, and it is the western company competences and is hard for eastern company to catch up.
For a conclusion, although the eastern company nowadays seems to take over the market of electronics in the perspective of the customer, the western company still plays their important role in this area of technology. The western company put the robustness and innovation as the main focus of their company and the eastern company put mass product and low cost strategy. Both are very challenging and both are working to improve the quality of life. Without both of them, we could not have technology like we have nowadays.
“The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year. I believe that such a large circuit can be built on a single wafer.”
Gordon Moore
