One recent processor variation of the quad core variety came out earlier than predicted. That probably is the way Intel wants to fight AMD, churning out these processors at a fast and furious pace! Lot of products have already adopted the processors. We faster performance than the dual cores processors of course.
Is it double the performance? It never could be. However how much flattening does happen will decide how many cores can one put together. If the performance starts saturating at 4 cores, will it make sense to scale up to 8!! One of major reason for the performance knee is the saturation of the system bus or the main bus to system memory.
That this is on the minds of the designers is evident from the specs for the FSB or the front side bus or the bus to the main memory has been enhanced.
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Monday, December 4, 2006
Toyota Way IS Different!
On two recent posts I had talked about how innovation is essential. Innovation in defining a new product rather than a "me too" one. However, we have noted that in the same class of product quality makes a large differentiator. How big!!
Toyota made a gain in sales of 34% in 2005 from three years before
Its profit per car is $1587
60% of its cars sold in America are made in America.
Contrast that with the struggles of the big 3 makers.Between Ford and GM, 46,000 jobs have been lost, and they are closing 26 factories over the next 5 years. Toyota opened a new factory in Texas already and planning another one in Ontario by 2008.
In a story, fastcompny.com magazine talks about how the focus on quality at the Georgetown, Kentucky factory let's Toyota make half a million cars a year that are perceived by consumers to be ultimate products. Continuous improvement is almost a cliche so is statement about taking care of process so that product quality takes care of itself!
Anybody with inetrest in product quality must read this article to understand how these principle need to become the way of thinking rather than a company dictated method or an way of documentation. Or even a one time project!
Getting everybody to change to a way of thinking is a wonder! I am just curious if this is a cultural/national thing ! But, obviously it's not, this plant is in US of A! From the description in the article, just about everybody in the plant are convinced that's the way to go, it has become their mental make up! While top guys bring it from Japan, everybody else is local! Right from hiring people with the right attitude to constant emphasis on the process oriented thinking seems to do the trick. The article talks about managers and improvement examples that clearly indicate this. For people in this plant, improvements are not destinations but a journey that never ends! These things become so entrenched in the minds of people that they get into thinking of improvements of things they do at home too. AMAZING!!!!
Toyota made a gain in sales of 34% in 2005 from three years before
Its profit per car is $1587
60% of its cars sold in America are made in America.
Contrast that with the struggles of the big 3 makers.Between Ford and GM, 46,000 jobs have been lost, and they are closing 26 factories over the next 5 years. Toyota opened a new factory in Texas already and planning another one in Ontario by 2008.
In a story, fastcompny.com magazine talks about how the focus on quality at the Georgetown, Kentucky factory let's Toyota make half a million cars a year that are perceived by consumers to be ultimate products. Continuous improvement is almost a cliche so is statement about taking care of process so that product quality takes care of itself!
Anybody with inetrest in product quality must read this article to understand how these principle need to become the way of thinking rather than a company dictated method or an way of documentation. Or even a one time project!
Getting everybody to change to a way of thinking is a wonder! I am just curious if this is a cultural/national thing ! But, obviously it's not, this plant is in US of A! From the description in the article, just about everybody in the plant are convinced that's the way to go, it has become their mental make up! While top guys bring it from Japan, everybody else is local! Right from hiring people with the right attitude to constant emphasis on the process oriented thinking seems to do the trick. The article talks about managers and improvement examples that clearly indicate this. For people in this plant, improvements are not destinations but a journey that never ends! These things become so entrenched in the minds of people that they get into thinking of improvements of things they do at home too. AMAZING!!!!
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Quad Core Processors Are Here Already!
The transition from 2 core to 4 cores per processors cam really fast! Not only the chips are available, real products has started becoming commercially available. Looks like this strategy must have been in process for quite some time now. Intel had started deemphasizing higher clock speeds as the solution for higher performance for quite some time now. In between came hyperthreading architecture, then the multi cores!
Chip performance has jumped significantly with each of these two generations. To harness this enhancement in raw power there's quite a few things that are needed. Very first thing would be the system bus just outside the chip boundary or the FSB in a desktop. Then of course OS needs to be able to schedule processes optimally. Load balancing and hence scaling will depend a lot on how fine grained processes are or can be made. Ideal situation is of course when all 4 cores are busy all the time, except the task switching times.
So it is safe to assume that by the time all these factors have been fully utilized it'll be another couple of years. Hopefully some more multi core upgrades can be expected by then. However, performance gain has to be approaching the diminishing return part of the curve. I had speculated on some factors that would cause this to happen in an earlier post.
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
More on Innovation
As I was writing the last post the weekly newsletter "Working Knowledge" rom Harvard business school arrived. It had an item about how every generation of managers learns about importance of innovation over again. Item was appropriately titled "Lessons not learned about Innovation". Why does this happen! Tom Peter's book appeared almost a decade back and was such a rage. One would think managers would have learnt the lessons and importance of innovation would become a tenet of management and be part of the standard curriculum! Not so apparently!! See earlier post to get an inkling of why that happens.
This article had several references to back publications. My interest was at a peak anyway, so I dug around. Some of the findings are as follows.
1. Mar 19, 2001, Stefan Thomke, The Essentials for Enlightened Experimentation
This appeared exactly 5 years ago. Quick innovation requires change in technological as well as managerial ways. Author comes up with four rules.
a. Organize for rapid experimentation- This is kind of obvious, if we have to find quick solution, we have to experiment and arrive at conclusions fast.
b. Fail early and often but avoid mistakes- Again necessary to avoid wastage of time in following wrong tracks.
c.Anticipate and exploit early information- Any early conclusion about direction that can be taken, should be take.
d. Combine old and new technology- Newest technology is not necessarily the last word.
New technology has made experimentation easier and hence the urgency/velocity required also has increased.
2.Aug 5, 2002, Loren Grey, Understanding The Process Of Innovation
Work of Clayton Christiansen is analysed here. He says the process is important, the "process of innovation and value creation," How to generate sufficient amount of innovative ideas and the ability to choose what to back for the next product. The nalytic approach, the MBA way may uncover niches/gaps in existing product lines in the market. But it takes intuitive leps of faith to create disruptive technology. Unfortunately in most organizations "There's usually some process by which a potentially great idea gets prostituted into something lackluster"(Clayton Christensen)
3.Sep 29, 2003, Rob Austin, Lee Devin,Why Managing Innovation is Like Theater
Rapid experimentation and frequent reconfiguration of the process are essential components of innovation. Team that works towards this ia a lot like a theater troupe. Each individual with unique talent working together towards making the overall play a successful one. In this regard authors feel, "A company of exceptionally talented big stars can ... create a less effective play than one made up of ordinarily talented artists who have, through hard work,learned how to collaborate." Certainly collaboration is the key alright!
Copyright:2006 Debasis Das
This article had several references to back publications. My interest was at a peak anyway, so I dug around. Some of the findings are as follows.
1. Mar 19, 2001, Stefan Thomke, The Essentials for Enlightened Experimentation
This appeared exactly 5 years ago. Quick innovation requires change in technological as well as managerial ways. Author comes up with four rules.
a. Organize for rapid experimentation- This is kind of obvious, if we have to find quick solution, we have to experiment and arrive at conclusions fast.
b. Fail early and often but avoid mistakes- Again necessary to avoid wastage of time in following wrong tracks.
c.Anticipate and exploit early information- Any early conclusion about direction that can be taken, should be take.
d. Combine old and new technology- Newest technology is not necessarily the last word.
New technology has made experimentation easier and hence the urgency/velocity required also has increased.
2.Aug 5, 2002, Loren Grey, Understanding The Process Of Innovation
Work of Clayton Christiansen is analysed here. He says the process is important, the "process of innovation and value creation," How to generate sufficient amount of innovative ideas and the ability to choose what to back for the next product. The nalytic approach, the MBA way may uncover niches/gaps in existing product lines in the market. But it takes intuitive leps of faith to create disruptive technology. Unfortunately in most organizations "There's usually some process by which a potentially great idea gets prostituted into something lackluster"(Clayton Christensen)
3.Sep 29, 2003, Rob Austin, Lee Devin,Why Managing Innovation is Like Theater
Rapid experimentation and frequent reconfiguration of the process are essential components of innovation. Team that works towards this ia a lot like a theater troupe. Each individual with unique talent working together towards making the overall play a successful one. In this regard authors feel, "A company of exceptionally talented big stars can ... create a less effective play than one made up of ordinarily talented artists who have, through hard work,learned how to collaborate." Certainly collaboration is the key alright!
Copyright:2006 Debasis Das
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Innovation is all!!!
In a recent post on the older "Blogger" blog I had talked about Tom Peter's book "The circle of Innovation". He went on to recommend a process of going about becoming innovation focused. Given that in this era of the internet, distance is dead as well as intermediary is no more useful, businesses need to be really, truly customer focused. Service becomes very important. It becomes necessary to encourage everybody to become a business person. He then virtually owns a piece of the business, logically independent. Since he is able to think as a business person he is required/encouraged to innovate to provide even better service. By extension he is able to focus on innovation that extends the business beyond other "me too" competitors. Supervisors, next level managers then are coordinators for a collection of businesses! Whole concept of business, management needs to be revised.
What triggered this thought processes again was an article that was featured in the Harvard news letter that I get once a week. What's surprising is an article " lessons not learned about Innovation" that appeared on Harvard Business Review on No16,2006. Almost 10 years after the book under discussion! Contention of the author Roberta Moss Kanter is that every generation of managers( a time span of average 6 years) forgets and relearns how to encourage innovation!!! She finds "grand declarations about innovation are followed by mediocre execution that produces anemic results, and innovation groups are quietly disbanded in quiet cost-cutting drives." That really is a mystery! Why do we have to collectively forget and rediscover that innovation is the essence for organizational growth!
Copyright:2006 Debasis Das
What triggered this thought processes again was an article that was featured in the Harvard news letter that I get once a week. What's surprising is an article " lessons not learned about Innovation" that appeared on Harvard Business Review on No16,2006. Almost 10 years after the book under discussion! Contention of the author Roberta Moss Kanter is that every generation of managers( a time span of average 6 years) forgets and relearns how to encourage innovation!!! She finds "grand declarations about innovation are followed by mediocre execution that produces anemic results, and innovation groups are quietly disbanded in quiet cost-cutting drives." That really is a mystery! Why do we have to collectively forget and rediscover that innovation is the essence for organizational growth!
Copyright:2006 Debasis Das
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