Technology/Internet – Doesn't Fit In

March 31, 2013

Los Alamos Lab's Roadrunner Supercomputer To Be Shut Down

The fastest supercomputer in the world in 2009 will be shutdown today, according to the Los Alamos National Labs.

Roadrunner, the first supercomputer to break the once-elusive petaflop barrier—one million billion calculations per second—will be decommissioned on Sunday, March 31.

Roadrunner’s design was unique, and controversial. It combined two different kinds of processors, making it a “hybrid.” It had 6,563 dual-core general-purpose processors (AMD Opterons™), with each core linked to a special graphics processor (PowerXCell 8i) called a “Cell.” The Cell was an enhanced version of a specialized processor originally designed for the Sony Playstation 3®, adapted specifically to support scientific computing.

Future supercomputers will need to improve on Roadrunner’s energy efficiency to make the power bill affordable. Future supercomputers will also need new solutions for handling and storing the vast amounts of data involved in such massive calculations.

June 12, 2012

Extracting Gas From Air

A article on azcentral.com titled “Air Products grows to keep up with Intel” explains how Air Products makes air products and ships them to the Intel site in Arizona. This is probably similar to how it’s done for Intel in Rio Rancho, NM.

The company removes all components of air except nitrogen, oxygen and argon. Then in those white, angular towers, it separates out those three gases with very low temperatures. Oxygen turns to liquid at minus 297.3 degrees Fahrenheit, and nitrogen turns to liquid at minus 320 degrees.

Then the liquid is boiled, producing pure gas.

“We use compression and expansion, like the air-conditioning unit on the outside of a house,” Jordan explained.

Nitrogen gas made in Chandler goes directly into the pipeline, a structure intended to last 100 years.

September 17, 2011

Some Company To Build Fake City In New Mexico

Some Company I never heard of is going to build a fake city somewhere in the Albuquerque Metro area. the 20 square mile city will be used to… test technologies? Why they can’t do the same thing is a real city is beyond my understand of the press release.

Pegasus Global Holdings, an international technology development firm, is announcing plans to develop The Center for Innovation, Testing and Evaluation (The Center), a first of its scale and scope fully integrated testing and evaluation facility for new and emerging technologies. With offices in Washington, DC; Reston, Virginia; and London, UK, Pegasus Global plans to locate the privately owned, commercially operated facility in the State of New Mexico
The Center will resemble a mid-sized American city, including urban canyons, suburban neighborhoods, rural communities and distant localities. It will offer the only of its kind opportunity to replicate the real-world challenges of upgrading existing city infrastructure to that of a 21st Century smart city, operating within a green economy.

June 10, 2011

Motorola's 52nd Street Plant Still A Superfund Site

My parents didn’t work at the 52nd street Motorola plant (now a superfund site), built in 1956 near 48th Street and McDowell Road in Pheonix, Az but I think my Grandfather did. The EPA is still testing near the site nearly 30 year later.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials told about 15 residents at a community meeting Wednesday that their preliminary test results from some spots in the Lindon Park neighborhood, near 48th Street and McDowell Road, show some soil samples had unsafe levels of two industrial cleaning chemicals.

The chemicals were used at the former Motorola plant years ago to clean machinery and other equipment.

EPA scientists said the risk to residents’ health probably was small, but they believe they need to test for chemicals inside some homes to be sure.

“The kinds of soil vapor or the soil gas concentrations that we’re seeing do not lead us to believe that you would have the kinds of levels or exposure that would cause extreme health effects,” said Gerald Hiatt, an EPA toxicologist. “We may have some exposures inside homes that are high enough to create a (health) risk over long-term exposure, but I would be very, very surprised if we saw exposures that would create acute health effects.”

The neighborhood is the focus of an EPA Superfund monitoring and cleanup effort that has been under way for more than 20 years.

Apparently there was chemical tank that leaked into the soil in the 1980. It doesn’t surprise me from what I heard from my parents and what I saw working at electronic companies in the early 1990’s in Arizona. Companies were not that concerned about such safety issues.

Motorola's 52nd Street Plant The factory is now owned by On Semiconductor. It’s been remodeled and I couldn’t find any pictures of what the factory originally looked like except one on the semiconductor Museum’s page.

May 30, 2011

Intel's D1X In The Oregonian

The Oregonian has an article titled “Intel goes big to get small — an early look at its new Hillsboro research factory, D1X” which looks at the construction and impact of Intel’s new factory in Oregon. Even in Oregon Intel is a big employer.

“If you’re talking even a thousand jobs on one project, that will have a substantial impact on overall construction employment in the Portland area,” said David Cooke, an economist with the Oregon Employment Department. “The construction jobs are very important to the overall economic picture over the short term.”

Those workers will haul away up to a million yards of dirt as Intel excavates for D1X’s foundation and brings the site level with D1D, the fab next door.

Of that, 150,000 cubic yards are headed just up the road, to SolarWorld’s Hillsboro property. That company is contemplating a second factory someday and needs to elevate its property to ensure proper drainage.

The castoffs will raise 4 1/2 acres of SolarWorld’s site by 21 feet.

May 7, 2011

Is The Picture Of Mechanically Separated Chicken Pink Bubble Gum?

A video on YouTube from the Discovery Channel’s “How It’s Made” shows how Pink Bubble Gum is made.

http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/WB3st6SQnsk?fs=1&hl=en_US

The extrusion process looks like the fake picture of mechanically separated chicken I posted about in October of 2010. The video doesn’t show the bubble gum being put into cardboard boxes so I can’t say for sure that the mystery has been solved, it could still be a foam rubber product. Bubble gum is also not MSC by the way.

March 1, 2011May 1, 2016

How To Fix The Sony “for use with compatible battery only” Error

Find Sony Camera Parts

I bought 4 extra batteries for my Sony DSC-HX5. After a while when I would power on the camera with of the batteries the camera would give me an error “for use with compatible battery only” and then the camera would shut down. I didn’t think this was a problem with the camera since 4 of the 5 batteries (including the one that came with the battery) would work without error.

I did a google search for the error “for use with compatible battery only” and found lots of people with the problem but not very many solutions. It took some searching through the pages and I found that if the center pin is shorted by the other two pins it would reset the battery.

for use with compatible battery only

First I fully charged the battery. Then pressed a piece of aluminum foil over all three contacts at the same time to short the center contact. It took a few tries but I knew the reset took when I put the battery into the camera and it wouldn’t start up. I put the battery back into the charger. The camera charged for about 5 minutes, I then put the battery back into the camera and it started up without error.

Find Sony Camera Parts

January 9, 2011

Intel Advertisement "The Chase Film"

Sometimes Intel does a good job with an advertisement, The Chase Film is on of them. Intel’s marketing speak for the film:

To build excitement around the 2nd Generation Intel® Core™ i5 processor, Intel is launching an action-adventure video titled “The Chase.” The spot demonstrates the performance capabilities of the new processors by creating an action-movie style chase sequence that takes place through a wide variety of program windows on a computer desktop.

The highest rated comment:

If it happened on my computer she would probably end up in porno.

February 3, 2010

Tour Of The Intel & Micron Factory In Lehi, Utah

PC Perspective was able to tour and take pictures of the Intel Micron Flash Technologies (IMFT) flash factory in Lehi, Utah. I found the pictures inside the factory of interest since this is exactly what the factory I work in looks like. Although no ever ever caries around raw wafers, especially completed ones.

September 28, 2009January 14, 2016

Ahwatukee Arizona's House Of The Future

When I was a kid growing up in Arizona one of the few memories I can recall is visiting the Ahwatukee Arizona “House of the Future” with my Cub Scout group. The house was built in 1979 at a cost $1,200,000 dollars. It was a demonstration for a planned community. It appears to have lost money every year it was sold.

Surprisingly there is no Wikipedia entry on the subject but I did find a June 23rd, 1980 article from InfoWorld on Google Book Search.

The house was designed by Charles R. Schiffner of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. Built over 30 years ago it featured an advanced home automation system with five Motorola 6800 processors linked together. The system was designed by Motorola who was the major employer in Arizona at the time.

It’s important to note that the Ahwatukee home is not a computer controlled home, rather the home permits the tenant to to be in complete control of his environment, making the important decisions which will then be carried out by the microcomputer system.

That’s a quote from Charles E. Thompson, some marketing genius who seems to want to keep people from being scared of the computer controlled house. It’s also worth mentioning that 30 years later, I have been able to reproduce everything that house was capable of for a few thousand dollars and that such home automation capabilities have not yet caught on although the energy saving technologies have.

The house still exists today at 3713 Equestrian Trail, Phoenix, Az and can be seen on Google Maps. Although they gave tours back in the day for $3, I can’t seem to find any information on who the current owner is or even pictures of the interior on the internet.

Update 2016-01-14 More pictures of the house can be found at PrairieMod’s “More House Of The Future“.

Update 2012-12-27: I have found 10 photos from my trip from the early 1980’s.