Several Challenges Going Forward
Know Zone Lecture
The Tech
5 May 1999
Gordon Bell
Microsoft Corporation
The Tech
The two great inventions

The computer (1946… realised in 1948).
Computers supplement and substitute for
all other info processors, including humans
–
–

Memories come in a hierarchy of sizes, speeds,
and prices… the challenge is to exploit them
Computers are built from other computers in a
iterative, layered, and recursive fashion
The Transistor (1946) and subsequent
Integrated Circuit (1957).
–
–
Processors, memories, switching, and
transduction are the primitives in well-defined
hardware-software levels
A little help from magnetic, photonic, and other
transducer technologies
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Moore’s First Law

Transistor density doubles
every 18 months
60% increase per year
–
–

Exponential growth:
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–

Chip density
Microprocessor speed
1GB
128MB
1 chip memory size
( 2 MB to 32 MB)
8MB
1MB
128KB
8KB
1970
bits: 1K
1980
1990
4K 16K 64K 256K 1M 4M 16M 64M 256M
The past does not matter
10x here, 10x there … means REAL change
PC costs decline faster than any other
platform
–
–
2000
Volume and learning curves
PCs are the building bricks of all future
systems
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Bell’s Law of
Computer Class Formation
Log price
Technology enables two evolutionary paths:
1. constant performance, decreasing cost
2. constant price, increasing performance
Mainframes (central)
Mini
WSs
PCs (personals)
Handheld ??
Time 1/1.26 = .8
1.26 = 2x/3 yrs -- 10x/decade;
1.6 = 4x/3 yrs --100x/decade; 1/1.6 = .62
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Bell’s Nine Computer Price Tiers
1$:
10$:
100$:
1,000$:
10,000$:
100,000$:
1,000,000$:
10,000,000$:
100,000,000$:
embeddables e.g. greeting card
wrist watch & wallet computers
pocket/ palm computers
portable computers
personal computers (desktop)
•
departmental computers (closet)
site computers (glass house)
regional computers (glass castle)
national centers
Super server: costs more than $100,000
“Mainframe”: costs more than $1 million
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an array of processors, disks, tapes, comm ports
Platform evolution:
What do they do that’s useful?
How do they communicate?
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Extrapolation from 1950s:
20-30% growth per year
Tera
Giga
Storage
Backbone
Processing
Memory
??
Mega
Kilo
1
1947
Telephone Service
17% / year
1957
1967
1977
1987
Tech
1997The 2007
Gains if 20, 40, & 60% / year
60%=
Exaops
1.E+21
1.E+18
40%=
Petaops
1.E+15
20%=
Teraops
1.E+12
1.E +9
1.E+6
1995
2005
2015
2025
2035
2045 The Tech
Going forward… Seven challenges
Turing test...
Voice or Video Avatar
any conversation
Everything will be in Cyberspace
Electrons, etc. replace atoms for
“money”, “ownership”… “risk”
Telepresence
The Guardian Angel for health
The Cyber Admin for personal use
The Tech
Infinitely scalable systems
Turing test: you can’t tell whether
you are communicating with a
person or a machine using:


Text… limited context
Voice
–
–

context
speech to text and text to speed
Visual image and voice
–
–
more context
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synthesis of dynamic, human images
Going forward… challenges
Turing test...
Voice or Video Avatar
any conversation
Everything will be in Cyberspace
Electrons, etc. replace atoms for
“money”, “ownership”… “risk”
Telepresence
The Guardian Angel for health
The Cyber Admin for personal use
The Tech
Infinitely scalable systems
Everything cyberizable will be
in Cyberspace!
Continent
Body
Car
Region/
Intranet
Home
Campus,
World
including SANs
Fractal Cyberspace: a
network of … networks
of … platforms The Tech
“Everything will be in
Cyberspace”


Is this a challenge? goal?
quest? fate?… or
Cyberization enables
new computing platforms that
require new networks to connect
them
–
–
Infrastructure supports the content
Three evolutionary dimensions
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Cyberization: interface to all bits
and process information





Coupling to all information and
information processors
Pure bits e.g. paper, newspapers, video
Bit tokens e.g. money, stock
State of: places, things, and people
State of: physical networks
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Atoms vs Electrons for bits
Atoms (mass)
people know
bricks & mortar
Electrons, etc. (massless)
computers know
anywhere
(personnel/clients)
office hours
anytime
database & reports
web access for review
and transactions
letter & fax
email & web access
phone
email, voice & video mail
personal visits
videophone / videomail
signature
authenticated images
envelopes
digital envelopes / store
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voice, text are unique bits take on any form
By January 2001 there will NOT be 1
billion people on the “net”.
Bet: Nicholas Negroponte $1K
Bet: Nicholas Negroponte
$1K:$5K… it happens by 2002.
Also $1 T of commerce by 2001.
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Why this is the keystone bet!

It determines the market
–
–

It says something about the utility
–
–
–

for networks
for access devices… especially PCs
commerce
communication
entertainment
Increased network capacity & ubiquity
enables
–
–
–
–
phones
videophones
television
serendipity
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Internetters growth
12000
10000
8000
6000
4000
2000
0
‘95
World Population
extrapolated at 1.6% per year
Internet Growth
extrapolated at 98% per year
‘96
‘97
‘98
‘99
‘00
‘01
‘02
‘03
‘04
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Cyberspace: A spiraling quest
in 3D real space
Computation
Communication
Cyberization
Programs, Content & messages
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Cyberspace: one, two or three
networks? in 2005, 2010, 2020
Data
Telephony
Television
Will we have
gateways? The Tech
Going forward… challenges
Turing test...
Voice or Video Avatar
any conversation
Everything will be in Cyberspace
Electrons, etc. replace atoms for
“money”, “ownership”… “risk”
Telepresence
The Guardian Angel for health
The Cyber Admin for personal use
The Tech
Infinitely scalable systems
Atoms that represent money,
ownership, … risk
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New or old money… it’s just bits
Credit
ATM /
Prepaid
Check
Cash
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Prepaid
Put those checks & statements in
Cyberspace or eliminate them!
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Buying & selling stock: what a pain!
Faxes? (Electronic signatures are legal in Georgia.)
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Paperless transactions: put them all
in Cyberspace
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Atoms vs Electrons for financial bits
Atoms (mass)
money
statements
bills / checks
coupons
Electrons, etc. (massless)
database, smart card,
credit card, debit card
web access
bill present. / check free
cyber-coupons
stock
database, web
statements, reports
web access, email
+company infor, analyst reports, etc.
private placements
web access, email
trade confirmation
direct trades
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mail voting
on line voting
Going forward… challenges
Turing test...
Voice or Video Avatar
any conversation
Everything will be in Cyberspace
Electrons, etc. replace atoms for
“money”, “ownership”… “risk”
Telepresence
The Guardian Angel for health
The Cyber Admin for personal use
The Tech
Infinitely scalable systems
Telepresence
… being there while being here,
at another time, and
with time scaling



Telepresentations
Telemeetings and telecollaboration
The “work”
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Motivation:
Telepresentations
• Presenter and/or
audience
telepresent
NOT: meeting or
collaboration settings
Forget the nasty social
issues!
Mostly one-way
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Telepresentation
Elements
 Slides
 Audio


Video
Script,
text
comments,
hyperlinks,
etc.
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Telepresentations:
The Essentials



Slide and audio a must
Add some video
(low quality)
to make us feel good
Storage and transmission
costs low
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Telepresentations:
The Killer App
Increased attendance & lower
travel costs
 Practical and low-cost NOW
 e.g. ACM97 - 2,000 visitors in real
space, 20,000 visitors on Internet

http://research.microsoft.com/acm97
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What about telecollaboration?
… working together at a
distance
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Conference Rooms with
Teleconferencing
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Telework: it’s the sound,
screens, and bandwidth, stupid
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http://research.microsoft.com/barc/GBell/
Mobile
videophone
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Honda
Robot
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People
surrogates
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“
By April 1, 2001
videophones will ship
in 50% of the PCs
and be in use.
”
Gordon Bell vs Jim Gray
1996 (one paper,
loser gets fed)
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Living in Cyberspace
… the infrastructure
being always connected is
essential
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Intrastructure
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SOHO (small office, home office)
network computing environment
POTS
(legacy services)
IP Dial tone (Internet, phone,
videophone) >1.5 Mbps
NT Server for:
comm/network, POTS/IP
gateway, file, print, compute
LAN
PC
Phone
...
PC
Phone
...
NC*
Phone
*NC, NetPC,
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Xterm,
etc.
Attending simultaneous meetings
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Telepresence Challenge
hold a meeting of type, m
university or technical course
interview, staff meeting, co-ordination, board
meeting, annual meeting, “town hall”,
with p, distributed persons
with as much interactivity and feeling
such that people prefer being telepresent
meetings are provably more productive
meetings will evolve to be asynchronous
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versus traditional synchronous
Milli-bill, another type of
telepresence...
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Fujitsu 42” plasma panel
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MilliBill

Large, general purpose panel
–
–
–


Paintings, photos, videos, a new art
medium, and
even TV
Becomes a true “window” to anywhere
Voice interface
Evolves to cover entire wall so that
everyone can be by a “window”
The Tech
Going forward… challenges
Turing test...
Voice or Video Avatar
any conversation
Everything will be in Cyberspace
Electrons, etc. replace atoms for
“money”, “ownership”… “risk”
Telepresence
The Guardian Angel for health
The Cyber Admin for personal use
The Tech
Infinitely scalable systems
The Guardian Angel
Knows about your state of
health.
Has the latest medical
knowledge.
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Your
husband
just died,
… here’s
his black
box
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Steve Mann
in
Cyberspace
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Not shown:
ECG; GPS;
Compass;
altimeter
PCS; Pilot
Libretto,
.5mm
pencil
Libretto PS,
Ricoh Camera;
Swiss Army
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Knife
A device that would have
saved me from a heart attack
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BAN, PAN or whatever for
people networks




Temperature monitoring with the flu
Saved me from a heart attack
Where is the person, exactly… a baby
sitter
Let’s interact… ala Barney
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Medtronics
Implanted
Cardioplastic
stimulator
cardiorecorder
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Moore’s law is less important
than MEMS
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4 Experts Predict Bionics
Wired, February 1997

Hi-Fi Cochlear Implants 2005

Bionic Limbs 2013

Artificial Vision 2040

Bionic Person (unlikely)
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Audio, pix, T, P, ECG,
location, physiological
parameters…
1 GB
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Going forward… challenges
Turing test...
Voice or Video Avatar
any conversation
Everything will be in Cyberspace
Electrons, etc. replace atoms for
“money”, “ownership”… “risk”
Telepresence
The Guardian Angel for health
The Cyber Admin for personal use
The Tech
Infinitely scalable systems
The Cyber Admin or
the prosthetic memory…
When we can store
everything we’ve:
read/written,
heard/said,
seen/acted, plus
physical parameters.
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What does Cyber Admin do?



Captures the creation of all
personal/professional information
Stores and organizes
Retrieval is the challenge
–
–


recalling readings, conversations,
presentations, images
helps the “guardian angel”
What are the apps?
when we can do this?
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There will always be plenty of things to
compute ... With millions of people doing
complicated things.
memex … stores all one’s books, records,
and communications, and ... can be
consulted with speed and flexibility
Matchbook sized, $.05 encyclopedia
Speech to text
Head mounted camera, dry photography
Vannevar Bush c1945
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The Tech
My project … putting my legacy
and future bits in Cyberspace
http://www.research.microsoft/

Personal paper documents
–


Encode video and audio lectures
Current electronic media
–
–

Books (encoded by CMU), papers, articles,
memos, notes, email, notebooks, drawings
email, files, papers, photos (now digital)
voice notes and records
Would like to capture photos and The
slides
Tech
The other side…
finding and getting the bits
out of Cyberspace

Retrieval is the next challenge
–
–
–

Database(s)
Indexers (Magnifi, Virage, etc.)
Icons so people can help the computer
Being able to see and use electronic
bits as well as paper bits will have to
wait until display technology appears
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Capture and encoding
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HP Digital Sender…
color document scanner
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Sony voice notes recorder…
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Evolving cameras to capture
images and voice notes
The Tech
A word about storage… CDs
hold 6 “near VHS quality”
videos (300 Kbps)
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Coexisting with Paper



Paper is the best GUI (screen dump) without peer
– portable: read anywhere, anyway, anytime
– contrast ratio
– resolution (3-30x screens)
– form factor, weight
– ubiquity, cost, infrastructure
– with good OCR, it is a loss-less medium
For many documents, paper is very expensive
– large and multiple documents are heavy
– hard to transmit
– difficult to store (only access is via people)
– computer cannot access them
Goal: use paper as a loss-less “bit” The
medium
Tech
Book
page
The Tech
Computer-Paper Co-existence


Goals for encoding paper for the computer
– Handling must be as easy as discarding it
– Input, Identify, OCR, Index, save, and
retrieve in every possible context
– Interface: unobtrusive and humane
Put all documents in Cyberspace
– Ubiquitous scanners are key!
– Totally eliminate the need for copiers
– Totally eliminate the need for file cabinets
The Tech
Storing all we’ve read (written),
heard (said), & seen (participated)
Human data-types
read text, few pictures
/hr
200 K
/day (/4yr)
2 -10 M/G
/lifetime
60-300 G
speech text @120wpm
speech @1KBps
43 K
3.6 M
0.5 M/G
40 M/G
15 G
1.2 T
video-like 50Kb/s POTS
video 200Kb/s VHS-lite
22 M
90 M
.25 G/T
1 G/T
25 T
100 T
video 4.3Mb/s HDTV/DVD 1.8 G
20 G/T
1P
The Tech
Now how do you find or
use the rich information
The system must:
locate,
retrieve,
visualize,
order,
up load the corporation’s IP assets
(text, proposals, images, videos,
presentations, etc.) …
with appropriate controls.
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Thumbnails to aid retrieval
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SmartMedia Technologies
Context
Relevance
Image Recognition for Objects
Speech Recognition
Image Recognition, Lexical Cues
Transcripts
Close Caption
Lexical Analysis
Viewing
Color
Previews - Power Point, PDF,
B&W
Brightness Video, Sound, Artwork
Contrast
Volume
Speech-Music
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Meta Information
Virage Video Cataloger
The Tech
Going forward… challenges
Turing test...
Voice or Video Avatar
any conversation
Everything will be in Cyberspace
Electrons, etc. replace atoms for
“money”, “ownership”… “risk”
Telepresence
The Guardian Angel for health
The Cyber Admin for personal use
The Tech
Infinitely scalable systems
Billions Of Clients
Need Millions Of Servers

All clients
networked to
servers
 May
be nomadic
or on-demand


Fast clients want
faster servers
Servers provide
 Shared
Clients
Mobile
clients
Fixed
clients
Servers
Server
Data
 Control
 Coordination
 Communication
Super
server
The Tech

Cluster: Shared What?
Shared Memory Multiprocessor
–
–
–

Shared Disk Cluster
–
–
–

Multiple processors, one memory
all devices are local
DEC, HP, IBM, Sequent, SGI, SUN
an array of nodes
all shared common disks
VAXcluster + Oracle
Shared Nothing Cluster
–
–
–
each device local to a node
ownership may change
Tandem, SP2, Wolfpack
The Tech
SNAP: Scalable Networks
and Platforms





Standard (I.e. commodity) platform
The SAN (System Area Network)
standard makes the network ubiquitous
… and great!
Common operating system for platform,
reducing vendor and customer costs,
and enables affordable, standard apps
Cluster technology
The Tech
Apps are TRANSPARENT!!!
SNAP Systems circa 2000
Portables
Person
servers
(PCs)
Local &
global
Mobile
data
Nets
comm
Wide-area
world
global
ATM network
Telecomputers
aka Internet
Terminals
???
TC=TV+PC
home ...
(CATV or ATM
or satellite)
ATM & Ethernet:
to PC, workstation,
& servers
A space, time (bandwidth),
generation, and reliability
scalable environment
Legacy
mainframe &
minicomputer
servers & terminals
scalable computers
built from PCs &
SANs
Centralized
& departmental
servers built from
PCs
The Tech
Scaling dimensions include:


reliability… including always up
number of nodes
–
–


most cost-effective system built from
best nodes… PCs with NO backplane
highest throughput distributes disks to
each node versus into a single node
location within a region or continent
time-scale I.e. machine generations
The Tech
U.S. Tax Dollars At Work
ASCI for Stockpile Stewardship




Intel/Sandia:
9000x1 node Ppro
LLNL/IBM:
512x8 PowerPC
(SP2)
LNL/Cray:
?
Maui Supercomputer
Center
–
512x1 SP2
The Tech
The Alliance LES NT Supercluster
“Supercomputer performance at mail-order prices”-- Jim Gray, Microsoft
• Andrew Chien, CS UIUC-->UCSD
• Rob Pennington, NCSA
• Myrinet Network, HPVM, Fast Msgs
• Microsoft NT OS, MPI API
192 HP 300 MHz
64 Compaq 333 MHz
The Tech
The Grid:
Blueprint for a New Computing Infrastructure
Ian Foster, Carl Kesselman (Eds), Morgan Kaufmann, 1999

Published July 1998;
ISBN 1-55860-475-8

22 chapters by expert
authors including:
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Andrew Chien,
Jack Dongarra,
Tom DeFanti,
Andrew Grimshaw,
Roch Guerin,
Ken Kennedy,
Paul Messina,
Cliff Neuman,
Jon Postel,“A source book for the history
of the future” -- Vint Cerf
Larry Smarr,
Rick Stevens,
Charlie Catlett
John Toole
and many others
http://www.mkp.com/grids
The Tech
Infinite or indefinite parallelism…
use installed machines






10,000 nodes in 1998 or 10x Increase
Assume 100K nodes
10 Gflops/10GBy/100GB nodes
or low end c2010 PCs
Communication is first problem… use the
network
Programming is still the major barrier
Will any problems fit it
The Tech
Challenge: Is it possible to
use millions of computers for
a single, large scale project?
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The end
The Tech