ITE 221 - Spring 2012 - Chapter 7

My blog for Chapter 7 is related to speech-recognition software.  The article, titled “Can Speech-Recognition Software Work in Mandarin?”, was published on BusinessWeek.com in March 2012.  At the time the article was published, Apple was getting ready to release a product called Siri in Chinese and in anticipation of that event, the author decided to try Nuance Communications’ Dragon software in Mandarin Chinese. Dragon is another speech-recognition product and Nuance Communications also produced the speech-recognition technology that Apple's Siri is built on. Although the author appeared to be impressed by Dragon's functionality/ability, he noted that Mandarin is a particularly challenging language for speech-recognition software, as there are only “400 monosyllabic sounds in Mandarin, which are differentiated by tone." Additionally, Nuance's vice president for Dragon research, Jim Wu, noted that "within mainland China, everyone has a different accent;" so basically, Nuance was tasked with creating a software that would work for “people who speak Mandarin with a slight accent." As mentioned in the textbook, as speech-recognition software Dragon is not 100% accurate, but it is built to "learn and improve." Dragon does this by selecting user speech data and updating your profile at the end of each usage, so the more it is used, the more accurate it becomes.

I actually used Dragon to produce this summary :-)  I am a HUGE advocate for Nuance Communications!

The link to my article: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-03-19/can-speech-recognition-software-work-in-mandarin

ITE 221 - Spring 2012 - Chapter 6

My Chapter 6 blog is related to the subject of multicore processing. Published on PCWorld.com in December 2011, my article describes trending more multicore processors in smartphones for 2012. While in 2011 "dual-core" processors became the "standard for high-and smartphones, in 2012 it's all about quad-core.  At the time this article was published, there was only one actual quad-core product on the market, Nvidia's Asus EEE Pad Transformer Prime TF201 tablet.  This Nvidia tablet is the first device to hit the market with Nvidia's 1.3 GHz Tegra 3 quad-core processor; the product was praised for its "stunning graphics" and superfast processing speed. Nvidia was tight lipped about when their quad core phones would be released, but noted they were on track for Q1 2012.  QUALCOMM was also slated to release its quad core snapdragon chip, the APQ064 (part of their S4 line), in 2012.  The S4 chips run specs indicate that they run at clock speeds between 1.5 GHz and 2.5 GHz.  The article author questioned whether more cores are indeed better. According to Nvidia, a quad-core processor will "bring your phone level of performance comparable to that of desktop computer." One argument against quad-core mobile devices is that not enough content is optimized to fully take advantage of the CPUs power. When looking for examples of applications that could fully take advantage of quad-core processors, gaming is often a popular example. Quad-core processors are able support apps that run multiple processes at once, allowing the user a more fluid experience with more high-quality graphics.  Another challenge is battery life. Processors are evolving at an exponential rate and batteries are having difficulty keeping up. Both Nvidia and QUALCOMM they that they are adapting their system cores to handle different processes at different power levels (i.e. when you open an e-mail versus accessing a flash-based website with video).

My article link: http://www.pcworld.com/article/246011/quadcore_phones_what_to_expect_in_2012.html

ITE 221 - Spring 2012 - Chapter 5

Although not published in incredibly recent history, my article has absolute relevance to Chapter 5 and the subject of data storage. The article, titled "In the Race between Optical and Magnetic Storage, We Win," published on discovery magazine.com in September 2009, states that in 2009 scientists at Cornell University developed ferroelectric materials which would allow memory chips to "remember" even when the power is off. Ferroelectric materials are substances that hold an electric state without additional power. Applying a layer of a compound called strontium titanate to silicon caused the strontium titanate to become ferroelectric; scientists had theorized this result, but it had not been previously achieved. Jonathan Spanier, a materials scientist from Drexel University, noted that ferroelectric could "significantly reduced time spent reading by allowing a computer to keep a browser or document open without using energy."

In a separate project, a scientist at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia, James Chon, led a group of researchers in potentially shattering the current limitations on storing data optically. Chon's group was able to demonstrate the data could be stored in five dimensions, allowing more than a terabyte of data to be stored on a single DVD-size disk.  The researchers were able to achieve this by embedding the disk with tiny gold particles (nanorods). The article states that "by varying the length and orientation of the rods, the researchers were able to record data based on the three dimensions of space, plus polarization (the orientation of light waves) and color.  Currently, the most commonly used DVD type (DVD-5) holds about 5 GB of data. There are a little over 1000 GB in a terabyte, so using Chon's process would increase storage ability by more than 200 times.

My article link: http://discovermagazine.com/2009/sep/22-in-race-between-optical-magnetic-storage-we-win