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| Series 3 Apple Watch : The Ultimate 2017 IoT Device |
While newer smartphones are computationally more powerful than many office building sized computers from 40 years ago, moving computer data in digital devices today equates to shipping a button sized watch battery in a shoe sized box, where ~70% of the data moved is wasted underutilized memory block headroom.
Memory Chunks
Exascale computing architecture development is aimed at tightening up these memory block chunks of 64 or 128 bit size by using asymmetrical pipeline headers and unique low power processing cores (ARM style) to optimize small byte memory processing without significant less wasted space. Many times a small memory request of 8 bits has to be put into a 128 bit container, leaving tons of extra unused space in the header pipeline that reduces performance.
The memory optimization focus stems from trying to improve average system performance balancing in continuous operation rather than simply boasting of peak performance for headline grabbing TOP500 news reports, the architecture of memory handling taking the focus because there is so much room for improvement with a memory handling architecture change, even within a given processing node like the well establish Intel 14nm or TSMC 16nm nodes.
Wrist Computing
The IoT revolution evident in popular wrist worn FitBit & Apple iWatch computers, namely bluetooth + wifi enhanced touch screen LiPO powered computers that wear like an oversized classical wrist watch. Smart clothing & smart shoes are just at the fringe of availability while smartwatches are already made by the million by several vendors in dozens of flavors.
Apple Watching that Revenue ^^
Apple has captured about 1/2 of the worldwide watch sales revenue with its iWatch lineup. The original, Series 1, Series 2 & now Series 3. The newly announced Series 3 even became an LTE smartphone so you can use it like Dick Tracy. The hefty size & short battery life of the aforementioned Apple watch variants originating from the energy density & safety limitations of Lithium Ion batteries.
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| Dick Tracy "Smart Watch" |
Lithium Cobalt Oxide : Carbon or LiCo:C exists as a box of compromises. By the end of 3 years a fully charge LiPO battery tends to lose its functional capacity, meaning poor battery life. Sensitive to heat above 77 deg F, harmed by charging to 100%, damaged while charging if frozen to 0 deg F, harmed by deep discharging to below 3vdc, harmed by charging above 4.11vdc & flammable & prone to catching fire if shorted or punctured. Samsung Galaxy Note 7.
Batteries Critical for Function
If you are wondering why go on a tangent about batteries, consider how all mobile electronic devices require a functional battery to do anything, especially IoT wearables like smartwatches. All day battery life sounds great, until the lithium ion battery starts to fade. In electric vehicles battery fade means range lost, fewer mile per charge.
Most modern vehicles are useless without a functioning battery, typically a 25-70 AH 12vdc Lead Acid or AGM battery of an antique design in most cars, motorcycles, boats, RV's, 4 wheelers, snowmobiles, trucks, etc. Many aircraft still just a cheap heavy lead battery or flooded NiCD battery for starting, lighting and load buffering.
A cell phone, smartphone, tablet or laptop became a cord connected desktop if the battery no long holds a charge. Mobile electronic devices need good batteries to provide the kind of user experiences that people have to expect.
Consider the classic battery powered wrist watch. When the battery dies, the watch no longer keeps time. Dead car battery, you can not start your car. Dead phone battery, no calls text or data. Batteries are the enabling technologies that give the Tesla Model S its gusto.
Fitbit focused on electrical energy optimization to eek out 4 or more days of continuous heart rate & sleep tracking from its popular HR equipped fitness trackers. The high end Fitbit Surge utilized a transflexive B&W LCD typical of older power efficient digital watches like the Casio G Shock Solar model I am currently wearing. Even with a weak 2 year old battery my Fitbit surge can go 3 full days per charge.
I do not own an iWatch, though I have been watching the Apple "watch" developments closely over the years. I was primarily put off by the extremely poor battery life (18 hours) and lack of sleep tracking that iWatches provide. Not even the latest greatest Series 3 with LTE can run for more than 18 hours according to Apple, though I am sure that it is possible to get 3 days of battery life from an iWatch using battery life optimization low power modes & special detuning operating methods (turning off functions, disabling radios & raise to wake, dimming screen, etc)
More Different Cores
The computer architecture of devices today almost all suffer with reduced performance from the one size fits all memory handling methodology of the information processing architecture. One size fits all CPU cores gave way in smartphones to slow & fast core models that similarly sought to reduce power consumption more of the time. which translates to enhanced standby battery life & improved performance during gaming, videography, HD streaming or other peak workloads. Sadly the memory management architecture was never addressed.
Simulating Molecular Reality
The supercomputer space provided the impetus to focus beyond die shrinking lower than 6nm for improved performance. To simulate the human brain or human biochemistry for enhanced medicine, more supercomputer performance is needed. Accurate weather & climate modeling, supply chain logistics and labor utilization, aerodynamic optimization, there are many industrial applications of supercomputing that can benefit from improved computer performance with even bigger data! To simulate reality on the interactive molecular energy scale, huge big data of almost unimaginable sizes on massively powerful computing platforms will be required.
New Architectures Informed by Machine Learning
The entire Van Neumann architecture will be superseded by system architectures informed by artificial intelligence. Many novel new information processing architectures for CPU, GPU and FPGA have all be developed by electrical engineering deep learning artificial intelligence machine tools utilized by IC designers to accelerate innovation developments. More smaller & many different cores is the key! The human brain for example uses hundred of billions of memory computer cores called neurons, connected into 300 million adaptive information handling modules (ideas) that fire together in cloud burst transient operations that are beautiful to visualize using computers!
Amazing Human Brains
Human natural intelligence represents the most amazing natural empirically observable phenomena. Look at all the amazing things that people have been able to achieve working together in competitive teams, the modules or architure of human civilization operating with and against itself with war across time through history and space (location & place).
Apple Watch Extension
If you are wondering why the Apple watch Series 3 image is the intro image for this posting, let me explain by saying that wrist worn computers represent the latest iteration of computing platforms that benefit or derive from more than 60 years of intense miniaturization and power optimization efforts done by thousands of electrical engineers working across time & space, communication through writing and higher education, in a process stream history of information exchange that can described as a technological positive feedback loop.
The original Apple watch from 2015 shipped with an OLED screen of 450 nits brightness max, a single core processor integrated into a system in a package chipset, optical sensors for heart rate monitoring, motion sensors, wireless bluetooth etc to connect with an iPhone. The Apple watch became the ultimate iPhone accessory.
In terms of platform power efficiency, many iPhone users who now have an iWatch report that they unlock their iPhones far less often, able to use the watch interface to accomplish many tasks they previously did on their iPhones. By allowing the iPhone screen to stay locked more often, these same users said they were achieving longer single charge battery life on their iPhone as a result of using the Apple watch.
Similarly iPhone users who use the Apple watch also claim fewer iPhone screen breaking incidents from the reduction in times they remove their iPhones from bags or pockets which often previously resulted in finger fumble screen glass breakage incident. Using the Apple watch with the iPhone over bluetooth and leaving the phone on your desk away from your body also means less higher level RF exposure, the bluetooth being some 10 orders of magnitude less powerful than the cellular radio in terms of RF power.
I am not going to buy an iWatch Series 3, especially not the one with LTE. The Cost $400+ in addition to a $10+ taxes per month cellular e-sim contract makes that platform too costly. Similarly the LTE borks the battery life of the iWatch 3 so badly that I would hold off until the next generation of later if you want real Dick Tracy Action happening. The Series 1 Apple watch does everything I desire a wrist worn computer to do except sleep tracking! For $249 base price and no cell contract, the Series 1 still provides much better performance than the original Apple Watch. $329 for the Series 3 seems like a good deal if you need waterproof for swimming & or GPS for running without your iPhone. Most people have their iPhones with them at all times, so the non LTE version should work fine for most people!
Surge to Sleep Tracking Only
I recently parked my Fitbit Surge, having long struggled with the polymer band trapping moisture between my wrist & the band. I resorted to perforating the band with additional holes using a leather punch to allow more airflow, but alas still ended up with skin rashes. Part of the problem stemmed from by use of the fitbit 24/7 as a sleep tracker & fitness + cardio tracker. As a result, I will relegate the Fitbit Surge to only being used for sleep tracking, eliminating the 24/7 wear cycle that was causing the skin rashes.
I parked the Surge about 2 weeks ago to allow the skin around my wrists to heal up, mounting my classical Casio G-SHOCK WAVE CEPTOR TOUGH SOLAR 5600 on the left wrist in loose mode which never cause any skin issues, even on skin that was injured by moisture trapping by the Fitbit Surge being worn 24/7 for 3-5 days at a time, minus shower time as previously noted. I think another part of the moisture trapping problem comes from the all polymer construction of the Surge, the way its charging port can trap moisture, and the way it must be worn snugly to keep it from moving around for accurate motion tracking & cardio tracking.
I would like to also note that I stopped showering with the Fitbit Surge, and carefully cleaned it every couple of days, including the charge port and charging pins. I would let my skin dry before putting the surge back on and still trapped sweat within 1 day would cause skin rash issues that never went away. The bifurcating the platform between an iWatch during the day and the Surge for sleep tracking at night will help to mitigate the skin rash issue. Likewise the short battery life of the iWatch will become a non issue since I will rarely wear it for more than 16 hours, switching back to the surge in the evening.
IBM Watson at Home
For now I have to cope with Siri, Cortan & Alexa LOL first world problems for sure! While I dream of an Ironman Jarvis like setup, the cost of making it happen the way it is depicted in the referenced films would be on the order of an exascale supercomputer. My utility connection only supports 100amps at 240 so no supercomputers at home for now. IBM did say that Watson will fit into a 60w pizza box sized computer by the middle 2025ish era given the advent of their True North neurosynaptic processor technology that can perform computing with thousands of times less energy than classical Van Neumann architecture computers! 42
Series 1 Apple Watch
The 38mm Aluminum + white sports strap Series 1 Apple watch is on my day use wrist, updated to Watch OS 4 yesterday after configuring it, now it is my day use voice texting dream come true. The iPhone SE now gets to spend more time in Low Power Mode with it's IPS LCD locked black in a way that greatly enhances its single charge battery life in very noticeable and highly enjoyable way. Using your phone while driving may be illegal, but I was able to respond to incoming text messages very easily in a non-distracting way using my voice alone :) I would strongly advise against using information technology consumer electronic devices while driving! Entering data into a phone while driving increases your odds of getting into an accident by 26X according to the washington state commission on traffic safety, part of Target Zero, an ambitious plan to reduce road fatalities to 0% by the year 2030.
The Hardware
Fluid touch-screen performance, the OLED screen is plenty bright, if only 450nits max. The button & scroll wheel digital crown interface are nicely executed. The dual core SP1 processor has plenty of gusto to rapidly accelerate the APPs and user interface (touch control screen). The lack of barometer & GPS & brighter screen of the more expensive Series 3 did not put me off. Those extra features actually cause more energy use, which drains batteries faster. The OEM white sport pin & tuck strap is ok, somewhat hard to put on! Battery life remains a mystery to me. The Update from 3.2.3 to 4.0 (15R372) took almost an hour! I launched with 83% indicated yesterday and lost about 42% charge after 11 hours of use. I switched over to my Fitbit Surge for sleep tracking after that point. I swapped back to the S1AW (Series 1 Apple Watch) upon waking today at 6:54am :) Now 7:46am it indicates 36% charge. I will continue to study the discharge behavior for a more comprehensive review. Much to learn yet about how to use all the features in a faster more efficient way. I have the basic hang of it, but do not feel fluent with the user interface yet! Day 2 begins. Cheers people! Life as an experiment!
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