Consumer Electronics

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Table of Contents Letters From the Editors.................................................................................................... 4 Meet the Super On-task Team The Designers Behind Your Phone...................................................................................... 6 A designer’s process of making phones What Phone Should You Get?............................................................................................. 10 A consumer’s guide on your next new, shiny phone 5G Revolution..................................................................................................................... 12 How 5G will take over the world 5G Roadmap....................................................................................................................... 16 How and when 5G mobile cellular connectivity will be implemented Consumer vs. Business Products........................................................................................ 18 A comparison between business and consumer products On-the-Go Workstations..................................................................................................... 22 Why mobile workstations are so important The CPU’s Power................................................................................................................. 24 How CPUs evolve every generation.

What is Worth it?................................................................................................................ 28 A guide on what to put in your all-new PC A Smart Home.................................................................................................................... 30 The future of smart homes The Practicality of a Smart Home....................................................................................... 34 Why your house should be smart.

3 | Spring 2019

Letters From the Editors Meet the Super On-Task Team

Andrew Lu Andrew Lu was born on April 18, 2004. His social security number is 821245397.

He enjoys a variety of outdoor activities such as hiking and fishing. He also enjoys staying at home sleeping, watching TV, and of course, playing video games. When in school, he enjoys hanging out with his friends and napping during Chinese class.

On the weekends, he often stays close to his families and he participates in many family activities such as going to the park or simply playing around with his little sister. He enjoys life, and hopes to progress into a better future off alone!

Gaurav Mitra Gaurav is a avid video game player and is interested in aeronautical and aerospace engineering. He has swam since he was five and plays the piano and the electrical guitar. He is also a member of the Boy Scouts and enjoys backpacking and survival campouts. He is interested in consumer electronics because it is a large part of the market and has been “taking over the world”. He chose Smart Home as his topic for his feature article because smart home technology is the forefront of consumer technology and has had a huge increase in popularity over the last few years.

Harry Wu Harry Wu attends the Liberal Arts and Science Academy in Austin, Texas as a freshman. He’s been involved with technology his entire life. He’s been using technology since he was a little kid. His parents both have jobs related to technology and they’ve introduced a lot about technology to him. Harry decided to focus on technology because he’s very familiar with it and is very knowledgeable about it.

His parents and their have or had jobs related to technology that are being used in businesses. They were great sources of information for businesses, so Harry wrote an article about consumer and business technology.

Consumer Electronics | 4

Justin Xia Justin Xia is a freshman at LASA High School. He is a Life Scout in Troop 505 and loves camping with his friends. Justin also is also in band and plays the french horn (the instrument where people wonder why you have to put your hand in the bell).

He is very excited for the upcoming marching season. In addition, Justin plays ultimate frisbee for the Vertikills, making layouts both on the field and during Ezine.

He also loves playing with his dog named Max. He has always been interested by tech and is constantly curious about the upcoming future. Justin is also an avid meme follower (that’s why Elon Musk is a god among mere mortal men) and enjoys playing all the Supercell games (except for Hay Day).

Sidharth Baskaran Sid is a 9th grader at the Liberal Arts and Science Academy High School. He is an avid computer enthusiast and enjoys tinkering with electronics in his spare time. He is also often found on a professional flight simulator, tying his interest in computers with his interests in aviation and engineering. His decision to co-found the successful Consumer Electronics magazine with his peers originated from these interests and the diverse knowledge brought by these peers has contributed to the development of a truly unique magazine. Furthermore, his magazine article topic, “5G Revolution,” was influenced by his father’s career in the 5G sector (semiconductor design).

5 | Spring 2019

The Designers Behind Your Phone

By Justin Xia

A Dive Into the Future devices different from other companies and stand out of the crowd; this is where the designers come into play. Designers are responsible for all the revolutionary devices that have an abundance of intuitive features, such as Face ID and iOS on the iPhone or the ultrasonic fingerprint sensor and triple lens camera on the Samsung Galaxy S10. These

iPhone X. Photo courtesy of Pexels.com

P

hones have helped people wake up in the morning, give entertainment and most importantly, communicate with one another. These revolutionary and powerful pocketable products are now a part of almost everyone’s daily life with all of the apps they wield. Eventually, phones have to be upgraded, and when it is time to get a new phone, there are so many options to choose from. Understanding the minute differences between each type of phone is frequently confusing for the average consumer, and with flagship phones rising in price, it is even more important to understand which phone packs the most amount of features.

designers are constantly striving on experimenting and improving upon the fundamental aspects of design: keeping the product relatively easy to use, convenient and aesthetically pleasing.

With competition so fierce, phone manufacturers need to make their

“Being a designer requires thick-skin as we have to be able to take criticism, even

6 | Consumer Electronics

A designer also has to be hands-on; they have to play around and visually figure things out to improve an idea.

Communication is also essential while designing. The team needs to understand what is needed in order for it to be delivered and the vision must be clearly articulated or else the quality of the project is at risk of jeopardy. And with all the criticism and problemsolving designers have to deal with every day, being a designer is not easy work.

“Apple, being such a unique company, makes working a unique experience.”

-Chris Wilson

functionality, intuitiveness and aesthetics. They also work on further refining the experience of the device through the many tools they have at their disposal, such as prototypes and customer service feedback.

The iPhone X sparked the notch trend in 2018. Samsung, on the other hand, has avoided adding a notch on the Galaxy phones. Photo courtesy of Pexels.com when we don’t necessarily agree with the feedback,” Chris Wilson, a designer at Apple, said.

Wilson said that when designing, the design team has to think about every single aspect of the design. He created a simile between design and a space launch; if the designers do not address every issue that could arise, something could end up going wrong. Wilson said that not every idea works right off the bat, and they have to go through many prototypes before any thing begins to be finalized.

Throughout each generation of phones, designers implement feedback delivered from previous years while maximizing

“We always listen and take into account of what our consumers say about our products and strive to improve on those aspects the next generation.

Having the ability to have prototypes and experiment with different aspects are super helpful. We also receive feedback from the customer support teams to learn what the main complaints are about our devices,” Jiaxin Liang, a user experience designer at Samsung, said.

Samsung has always had good feedback on their phones because of how they

listen to their users. For example, Samsung has always kept the headphone jack while being extremely reluctant of implementing a notch.

Liang said that Chris Wilson, a designer the notches at Apple, explains the seen in other designing process. Photo devices are not courtesy of Chris Wilson aesthetically pleasing, so they opted to keep the thin bezels on the Samsung Galaxies while not compromising on the functionality of the phone.

However, not all new designs receive pleasant reviews. Google’s Pixel 3XL received a lot of backlash for its large notch on the top of the screen. Many people were very puzzled at Google’s decision of adding a notch, especially because Google mocked the notch on Apple’s newest flagship phones.

On the other hand, what attracts customers and keeps them in is the ecosystem. Apple is the main example of this. The so-called ‘Apple ecosystem’ keeps customers wanting for more

“UX design is fun, challenging, interesting, and rewarding all at the same time. Without UX design, a lot of things would be much more complex and not as intuitive.”

-Jiaxin Liang 7 | Spring 2019

who created the Apple logo, said that the the single bite out of the Apple logo originally served a very practical purpose: scale. The size of the bite showed that the shape was an apple, not a cherry or any other vaguely round fruit. Having a recognizable logo is vital for successful advertisements and branding. Apple’s affluence has been because of their nonstop innovation, but products have been becoming dull.

Because of competition, companies begin to copy one another. Most flagship phones look very similar to each other with a rectangular shape, big screen, and a notch or bezel at the top. This makes choosing a phone confusing for a consumer.

Despite being over two years old, the top selling Apple product of 2018 was AirPods. They are praised for being very convient and compatable with other Apple products. Photo courtesy of Pexels.com.

Apple products because of the fluidity of connection and functionality between each device.

“As a designer and especially as a designer at Apple, we are always trying to figure out and ask ourselves how we can make certain actions less complicated and more intuitive. We make sure that each product works well with each other and the actions between them are fluid,” Chris Wilson said.

Jiaxin (Raymond) Liang, a UX designer at Samsung, describes what a user experience designer is and does

Consumer Electronics | 8

For example, iMessage and AirDrop allows Apple products to seamlessly

transfer messages and photos with each other. Also, if a customer enjoys their iPhone, they might as well buy an Apple Watch, AirPods or a MacBook, pulling them further into the Apple ecosystem and enticing them to not leave for other companies’ devices.

Apple is also the main company to start the smartphone revolution, starting with the original iPhone that was released June 29, 2007. The iPhones uniquely stood out from the competition because this innovative product was one of the first phones to fully incorporate a full touch screen with no physical, mechanical keyboard. Phones have also continued to become slimmer with even larger screens ever since Apple made the leap toward changing the way people interact with their phones.

Also, the Apple logo is among the most iconic symbols that can be recognized in a slight glance, such as the McDonald’s Golden Arches, Olympic rings, Christian cross, and Nike Swoosh.

The Apple logo has a design element to it as well. Rob Janoff, the designer

The reason why phones look very similar to each other is the limiting factor of hardware innovation.

Hardware, such as batteries, can only get so small, but what powers these

“We found that notches seen in other devices were not aesthetically pleasing so we kept the thin bezels that don’t compromise on functionality.”

-Jiaxin Liang

CPUs are the brains of computers and are in almost every technological device. Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com machines are the central processing units (CPUs).

“The central processing unit is the brain of a computer and is responsible for computing calculations and making logical decisions at a speed of several billion operations per second,” Ray Henling, an electrical engineer at NXP Semiconductors, said.

And as time goes on, hardware keeps on improving. As a result, designers can think of new ways to change how a consumer interacts with a product.

Innovation is right on the doorsteps and the devices that will be created will change the future.

Steve Job’s legacy is legendary, and the amount of innovation he brought to technology changed the world and the way people utilize technology.

Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

9 | Spring 2019

What Phone Should You Get?

A Consumer’s Guide on Your Next New, Shiny Phone.

By Justin Xia

Looking for an UPGRADE? Yes Best bang for your buck Pocophone F1 6.18” 1080p display Snapdragon 845 $315 4,000 mAh battery

On a Budget?

Yes

No

Which Operating System?

Or

OnePlus 6T sung

$549 Sam

Most flagship features for a cheap price 6.41” AMOLED display 3,700 mAh battery with speedy fast charging On screen fingerprint sensor

Android

Samsung Galaxy Note 9

Samsung Galaxy S10 or S10+

$899

$899 or $999

6.4” Infinity Display S-pen 4,000 mAh battery Headphone Jack

Amazing 6.4” or 6.1” Infinity-O display Triple camera setup Ultrasonic fingerprint sensor 4,100 or 3,400 mAh battery Wireless PowerShare Headphone Jack

iPhone X, XS, or XS Max $999-$1099

Fast 7 nanometer A12 Bionic chip 5.8” or 6.5” OLED display Face ID

iPhone XR

Or

$749

Fast 7 nanometer A12 Bionic chip 6.1” Liquid Retina display Comes in 6 vibrant Colors Face ID

Cheap Supported by latest iOS updates Small, light, and easy to hold Headphone jack Touch ID

Iconic Apple Design 16:9 LCD display 2nd Gen Touch ID

New Design

iPhone 7+ or 8+

iOS

Old Design

$569 or $699

Or

iPhone SE $250

Samsung Galaxy S10e $749

5.8” Infinity-O display Fast capacitive fingerprint sensor 3,100 mAh battery Wireless PowerShare Headphone Jack

Pixel 3XL $899

Best camera quality Pure Android experience Good front-firing speakers

Sources: •LASA student survey, conducted Jan. 29 – Feb. 4, 2019 •www.theverge.com •www.techradar.com

5G Wireless

Exploring the Future of Our Connectivity

by Sidharth Baskaran

ucrative clicks of the keyboard are a symphony to the man’s ears as he punches in numbers on a calculator and scribbles furiously in a notepad. Evening is already approaching and the noises of the rush hour permeate his cubicle, spurring his pace. Despite the calling of the world, this man must complete his task: a circuit design critical to his

Consumer Electronics | 12

company’s lead in the race to implement 5G. The 5G Revolution has arrived and every participating company and its employees are keen to make it a reality. 5G is the newest generation of cellular technology — the “5” denotes the current generation number and the “G” represents the generation.

Throughout the dynamic history of cellular technology, there have been four

generations available to the consumer market: Edge, (1G), 2G, 3G and 4G (including LTE).

The estimated speed figures when 5G is available are said to be close to 20 Gigabits per second. In comparison, today’s home internet speeds top out at around 1 Gigabit per second. However, this is not the main highlight of the 5G technology. What truly differentiates 5G from 4G LTE is the latency, or the time delay in which data are transferred. 5G has very low latency, something that is only efficiently achieved through the implementation and utilization of very high frequencies for cellular signals.

Sridhar Hariharan, a Computer Aided Design (CAD) manager at Silicon Labs, said that 5G will leave a positive and lasting effect on the Internet of Things (IoT) space. According to Hariharan, Silicon Labs is a company with a different approach to 5G and the company will enter 5G through the IoT space rather than challenge the leaders of the industry.

However, this does not mean that Silicon Labs will have no involvement with 5G as of now because Silicon Labs works in the cloud service space and produces chips that will be compatible with 5G speeds.

“Silicon Labs is one of the leading companies in the Internet of Things (IoT) space, so essentially we support all of the sub-gigahertz protocols. So, for us, we — the way we define Internet of Things are low-powered devices connected in a sort of ‘mesh’ format. So 5G won’t really be something that is directly supporting what we do now. But having said that, we do have a few chips that we use in the cloud service spaces. These are timing chips and these will actually be used at 5G speeds,” Hariharan said. Though there seem to be a few leaders in the 5G industry, not everything always meets the eye.

Hariharan also says that infrastructure and 5G must align in order to allow the service to truly reach its place, and since the frequency of the cellular 5G signals have a very high frequency, the range is greatly reduced; a trade-off for data rate/

speed as well as latency. “So obviously the 5G standard has to mature number one, and number two, the 5G frequency is very high, so it does not have that much range, so one of the biggest problems is the infrastructure, right,” Hariharan said. “So like all the big companies: Verizon, and then AT&T, they have to now provide these towers — at really close distances.”

5G has a variety of useful applications besides consumer electronics. Anush Krishnamurthy, a software development manager at Amazon, has a positive outlook on the future of drone delivery services incorporated with 5G. At a sector leading company such as

13 | Spring 2019

Amazon, cutting edge technologies don’t take much time in order to gain attention.

“I think Amazon as a hardware company is very interested in the growth and adoption of 5G. The more common 5G gets, the better it is for Amazon devices or new delivery drones and robots to communicate back to the command center,” Krishnamurthy said, “Especially with package delivery, latency is important as delivery estimates need to be accurate.” The network of technology has deep roots and 5G is nearing the heart of this network.

Consumer Electronics | 14

The 5G speeds are highly anticipated in the technological industry but applications in the full utilization of this speed aren’t considered as often.

According to Ravikanth Suravarapu, deputy technical manager at MediaTek, “If you really need real time connections, and real time decision making applications such as autonomous cars, virtual reality or even like a drone kind of monitoring system. This could even be used in surgery, you know, like remote surgeries. So I think for those kind of things, latency is very key.”

Suravarapu said the basis for all of these technologies that could change our lives

“I don’t think there has been much research that suggests that those power levels on your cellphone. We measure power in what is called dBm, or dB milliwatts. So there is not that much of a difference between the previous generations and 5G. Considering all of that, I don’t think radiation levels are that much different,” Suravarapu said.

Though radiation levels do not seem to be different, there needs to be concrete evidence and testing in order to repudiate or confirm any sort of speculation or rumor.

confirmed by anyone in particular yet and any rumor of such would be considered as speculation, according to Suravarapu. His expertise in millimeter wave technology confirms these questions as well.

“The 5G revolution has definitely gained speed and traction over the years. With the predominance of technological careers and companies taking the top listings, new technologies are almost a daily occurence,” Suravarapu said.

5G has the potential to not only improve consumer technology in general but to also improve all of the new technologies dependent on it and when this is considered, 5G is indeed the true pinnacle of technological innovation.

is latency, and that if this is utilized as effectively as possible, it has potential for a huge impact on our lives.

He also touches on an interesting topic concerning health issues. There has been linkage between high power radiation (EM waves) and cancer or other health-related issues. This has not been

15 | Spring 2019

ROADMAP P 5G ROADMA

Learn about how and when the fifth generation of mobile cellular connectivity will be im

By Sid Baskaran

The Research, Prototype, and Trial

RELEASE 10

The 5G Standard

RELEASE 11

LTE Advanced (Phase A)

Initial Phase

WRC-12

RELEASE 12

A timeline of 5G, from the past to present to future. Learn how 5G will be incorporated and how will it be done.

mplemented. Follow the visual below to learn more about 5G and the steps taken to implement it.

THE RESULT

The 5G Deployment

The 5G Product

RELEASE 15

RELEASE 16

Ultra-Fast Video

LTE Advanced (Phase B

Tech Eval. Phase

SMS

IoT

1 - 10 GBpS

WRC-16

WRC-18/19

Sources:  www.quora.com  www.gsma.com  www.cic.org.sa

The Wyse product. Photo by Annie Chen

Consumer Electronics

Consumer Versus Business Products The differences of each market and product By: Harry Wu he difference between business and consumer products is the reason why businesses can make so much revenue. Business and consumer products have major differences, but business products may often have th e exact same or very similar hardware as a consumer product, the main reason is the use case of these products. Usually, consumer and business products have a considerably large gap in price because of their targeted market and a few minor differences in their hardware. Dell, a multinational company, has many different companies and organization contacting the company for products

T

“We can leverage the other aspects of business and then we can sell it.”

—Bala Natajuran

A person working on Macbook. Photo by Cristian Dina designed specifically for them.

By having a business customer that can The Dell XPS’ features were all based afford to purchase a more expensive and on its projected market. Being a direct professional solution, Dell can design andcompetitor to Apple’s MacBook, the produce products designed specifically XPS was designed mainly for its looks and its portability said Xu. The design for the business. This enables the company to charge a higher price for the is also quite similar to the MacBooks to appear even more of a competitor to the product and profit more.

MacBook and to make the laptop seem familiar to Apple users.

The design of business products are meant for performance, while consumer The components in the XPS are products are designed for aesthetics.

Dell selects the components for business designed for performance as the market products by how stable they are Jeffrey it was projected at had requirements for high end and well-performing Xia said, global component sourcing manager at Dell.

19 | Spring 2019

that would like to have the better performance, and better graphic solution Xu said.

and securely from a server said Bala Natajuran, a global component sourcing manager for the Wyse product at Dell.

Although the components are better than the components in consumer products, they may often be the same.

The same configuration of components can often be found in both consumer and professional products such as the XPS and Inspiron, although they have a completely different design. The XPS is slim and light, while the Inspiron is less portable and more clumsy.

Most business products are very similar to their similar consumer counterparts.

The Wyse takes advantage of many features that Dell offers it can be plugged directly into the laptop said Natajuran. Giving it the ability to use existing consumer hardware to function.

Another reason for business products is the security of these devices. Business products usually have a more secure software and operating system as the Most of the time, there are business information stored on there or that are users that don’t require graphics cards accessible are very confidential and or products that are the most powerful. sensitive. Wyse products store hospitals’

“The size, dimension and whole design of xps, it’s more of a fashion product” — Jeffrey Xia EMC software. As these are related products, they often benefit the customer, but the premium is shown in the price.

EMC is a very important project of Dell’s at the moment, and it fits right in with the use of Wyse. They are both cloud-based and they both utilize cloud features such as storage, and computing power.

Zheda Innovative Edata Science Ltd. Co. designed custom solutions, mainly servers, which are mainly meant for businesses. The businesses gave specific requirements so Zheda designed custom solutions using high-end parts, therefore allowing them to charge a higher price.

They had many clients, including Alibaba cloud.

A Dell Rugged Laptop at Dell. Photo taken by Annie Chen.

Instead, they need a very portable and optimized solution to connect to a server and that’s where the Wyse comes in.

The Wyse product was designed for institutions and hospitals and are currently used to pull data quickly

Consumer Electronics | 20

patients’ information that is sensitive and in critical situations, can mean life or death. Therefore performance has to be top notch for a hospital to use in these events.

Wyse allowed its consumers to utilize their other products, such as Dell’s VMWare, Optiplex products and even

The price they charge is mainly for the components as they will use highend, and expensive parts to guarantee functionality. Zheda used to profit at least 30 percent from each server said James Hu, Founder of Zheda Innovative Edata Science Ltd. Co. But now as the market is filled with similar companies, they can only profit 5 percent from each server.

Zheda also has their own trade secrets, one being, they optimizing the software their servers run on to improve the performance. Their components may occasionally be custom parts that they receive from suppliers such as Intel,

Supermicro and Asus. Zheda is able to get parts for lower prices, thus giving their customers a good price.

Consumer products are more prone to damage, while professional products are solid and sturdy according to LaptopMag. com. Like the Thinkpad, those are professional grade computers, and a few models are even bulletproof.

Often the extra cost of business products will be labor and the design fee. It could be the add-ons that the company or provider will give to the consumer such as customer support and training. Those add-ons may affect the product and give the product even more functionality.

In the future, business and consumer products will have more differences as the

needs and requirements of the two will grow further apart. It’s been happening for a while now. Business components aren’t designed for gaming, meaning that even though they’re more expensive they perform at most on par or they’ll be subpar to consumer components.

Business products are meant to last a very long time and have many features that consumers don’t even know about, but has a lot of importance in businesses.

Consumer products are priced lower but don’t have the same quality. These two different products may seem very different, but have major similarities in most components. The price difference is based mainly on the marketing and other services. All this means is that people can stick to the product that was meant for

the required purpose, but the products may be lacking or have too many features.

The diagram below explains how the products are connected.

Image courtesy of Pixabay

21 | Spring 2019

On-The-Go Workstations Why mobile workstations are so important By: Harry Wu

80%

Around

of businesses believe that information technology is a strategic enabler of the business

Majority of the use cases by the consumer is work, showing how much of an effect technology has on businesses. It’s usage is the comparable to all the other the other use cases.

Work(46.7%) Web Browsing (26.6%)

School (13.3%) Other (13.3%)

Apple laptops, such as the Macbook Pro was designed specifically for business use and are the most popular for businesses, as 30 percent of the laptops used by businesses are Apple.

Dell (13.3 percent) Microsoft (13.3 percent)

HP (13.3 percent)

Asus (13.3 percent)

Apple (46.7 percent) Brands of computers used by consumers represented by the ports of a laptop Sources: SWC, 6 Must Read Stats on Technology‛s Impact on Business Infographics vectorstock.com Google Survey, Conducted February 2, 2019 Google Survey, Conducted February 2, 2019

The CPU’s Power How did the CPU really evolve?

by Andrew Lu games played now, but it allowed for simple calculations such as three digit multiplication to be done at a speed much higher than that of any human being at that time. That was more than 50 years ago. Chips took off quite quickly after that, as demand began to rise for more powerful chips and more powerful computations.

The second processor manufactured by Intel was the 8008 in 1972. This already was an enormous improvement from the 4004 five months back. It could now run at 500 KHz and had 3500 transistors. It also now supported 16KB of memory as well as interrupts. There was also the Intel 8008-1 that came along with the 8008 that could now run at 800 KHz.

Intel Building at the Hillsboro site in the winter. Photo by Ting Lu. “The energy density on some of the chips are actually more than that of a jet engine,” Henry Stracovscky, a CPU Architect at Intel Corp., explains. Central Processing Units (CPUs) have directed the lives of computers for the last 40 years. So tiny, so minuscule, yet when told on a larger scale they are so large, almost extravagant. They seem like what would be used in the most exaggerated of hyperboles. A typical CPU nowadays can run 3221225472 cycles (3 GHz) per second. No wonder such a processor could be so insanely powerful and fuel today’s

Consumer Electronics | 24

computers. All the tasks a computer runs at once — playing a video, deleting files, creating graphics for Fortnite — being communicated to do so from only 1s and 0s. However, it wasn’t always this way. Diving back, deep into the history of the computer, it started with the Intel 4004.

The Intel 4004 at 108 KHz and 2300 transistors was the first official processor on the market. This processor is hundreds of thousands of times slower than it is now. It was introduced in 1971, as the first programmable processor on the market. It obviously couldn’t run

“Intel went through what was essentially a dynasty,” said Stracovsky. More and more people began to realize possible uses for these chips, whether it was for games, calculations, etc.

The demand for processors with higher power began to explode as the chips quickly evolved through time. The major chips followed the following timeline: •1974- Intel 8080 Processor at 2 MHz and 4500 transistors •1978- Intel 8086 Processor at 5 MHz and 29000 transistors •1982- Intel 286 Processor at 6 MHz and 134000 transistors •1985- Intel 386 Processor at 16 MHz

and 275000 transistors •1989- Intel 486 Processor at 25 MHz and 1.2 million transistors •1993- Intel Pentium Processor at 66 MHz and 3.1 million transistors •1995- Intel Pentium Pro at 200 MHz and 5.5 million transistors •1997- Intel Pentium II Processor at 300 MHz and 7.5 million transistors •1999- Intel Pentium III Processor at 600 MHz and 9.5 million transistors

At this time, according to John Goodcare from News Electronics, people realized that they couldn’t continue increasing the size of their CPUs simply for more threads. This was both difficult and not energy efficient.

That was when Intel was noted of multicore solutions. “If you are capable of using ‘many’ cores, the aggregate cost for this performance will be significantly less

“The energy density on some of the chips are actually more than that of a jet engine” — Stracovsky

An Intel Manufactured Chip placed into its slot on the Motherboard. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock 25 | Spring 2019

than either a single core or a ‘few’ multicore processors,” Goodcare said. Thus, the processor had not yet a roadblock and was continually evolving with the following processors after 2000: •2001- Intel Xeon processor at 1.7 GHz and 42 million transistors •2006- Intel Core 2 Duo processor at 2.66 GHz and 291 million transistors •2010- Second Generation Intel Core processor at 3.8 GHz and 1.16 billion transistors As seen, processor speeds have multiplied continuously throughout a period of about 40 years and the number of transistors that were fitted onto the few square centimeters of a modern CPU.

Consumer Electronics | 26

“Removing the heat is one of the biggest problems in silicon because we can make the silicon run very fast,” — Stracovsky

Intel’s Interior in one of the work buildings. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

Today, processors can clock at 5 GHz, but the increase in speed possible from these CPUs is slowing down as the transistor size as well as many other parts begins to approach the molecular level. It is also difficult because the energy density within a processor is reaching extreme highs, and cooling fans for the processors cannot necessarily keep up with the power of such high energy CPUs. “Removing the heat is one of the biggest problems in silicon because we can make the silicon run very fast,”

“Copper is one of the better heat conductors we have. So what will happen is that the copper actually has a bunch of tubes on it.

Those tubes actually have a liquid which tends to go from liquid to gas, and when you change phase, what happens is that you tend to give up a lot of energy, so what happens is that these tubes are full of this liquid that wicks up into the heat sink so those tubes run into the heat sink and the liquid moves up using wicking action and then, it will be hot enough so it goes into a gaseous state and it goes up into the heat sink then it’s cooled will return back to

transistors every two years.

According to MIT Technology Review, large corporations such as Intel and AMD found “a few places to nip and tuck, picking up a few percent in performance here or there”, but it was clear that there was a significant decrease in the growth of a CPU’s speed in recent years.

CPUs have evolved significantly throughout history as their transistor number frequency constantly increased until recently when progression has slowed down significantly. Transistors that exist nowadays are approximately 20 nanometers. This is so small that one would need to stack 100,000 of these transistors on top of one another to cover the thickness of a sheet of paper. Chips have still made it thus far in one tiny speck of human history, and as Stracovsky would say it, the speed of chips on old IBM processors fifty years back would now be a “rounding error on modern processor speeds”.

Intel Building from the Outside. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

Stracovsky said. He also explained why CPUs began to slow down in terms of evolutionary speed.

“What you have is you have a big chunk of metal sitting right on top of the processors and at the bottom of the heat sink you usually have something like copper and that copper is matched onto the processor top which is also meditatively using some kind of a paste, so a paste that actually carries and conducts heat very well,” Stracovsky said. Stracovsky then continued to talk about the use of copper.

liquid state and wick back into the bottom and get heated up again,” Stracovsky said. The fans couldn’t cool the CPUs quickly enough.

Because of this anomaly, CPUs have hit a roadblock toward progression.

Currently, processors that range near 8 GHz require liquid nitrogen -- at 300 degrees below zero -- for cooling power. Their power may still slowly increase, but on Intel’s 50th birthday, Intel officially announced the end of Moore’s Law, the law which claimed that CPUs could double their

27 | Spring 2019

What is Worth It?

by Andrew Lu

What really is worth buying for your all-new PC?

GraphiX

GPU

GraphiX

1020

1070

208x

GraphiX

A low cost graphics card will most likely cost from 60 to 120 dollars. They function well for daily tasks and are often used for typical laptops and non-high end products such as gaming computers. Many Intel CPUs already have GPUs built into them instead of placed separately as you see to the left.

A mid-end graphics card normally functions perfectly well in most games around. They should not be bought if you do not have an interest in gaming; a low end card would do that job perfectly. Their price normally floats from 120 to approximately 200 dollars.

A high-end graphics card can be insanely expensive and should only be bought if you play insanely fancy games or if you own a monitor with a very high resolution or framerate. They are normaly upwards of 200 bucks and could cost a couple thousand dollars!

CPU

SwanT N3

A low end CPU can run daily tasks with little lag. However, it may begin to lag on typical games.

2-3.2 GHz

SwanT N5

SwanT N9

A high end CPU is often used only with high end gaming PCs and can cost upwards of 500 dollars.

They should only be chosen if there is severe multitasking required or very complex games being played.

A middle end CPU is often used in Gaming PCs or high end laptops, it would normally only cause issues on fancier games 3.2-4.6 GHz

Motherboard

5+ GHz

Motherboards are very different from both CPUs and GPUs themselves. They are essentially what puts the computer itself together: what makes it work.

Different motherboards can only fit different CPUs. Motherboard of higher quality are often able to transfer information at a higher rate and look much nicer aesthetically. They may also contain more components, such as WiFi, Bluetooth, extra USB Ports, etc.

Sources How to choose a motherboard, newegg.com Compare GPUs, gpuboss.com The difference between Intel Cores, pcworld.com

Smart Home

A Consumer’s View of Smart Home

by Gaurav Mitra

O

ne morning, a woman woke up and asked Alexa for a cup of dark roast coffee with some whole milk. Alexa turned on the coffee machine and communicated the exact type of coffee she wanted. This might seem like something that is far in the future, but it is real. Philips, a smart home designer, has designed a smart coffee maker so it’s possible to make coffee from the relative warmth of bed. This is just one example of how smart home is evolving.

Smart home has recently had a huge spike in popularity, and the market has grown immensely.

Many companies have entered this market, with some of them growing to become the biggest leaders in the market, including Amazon with Alexa and Google with the Google Assistant. People interested in smart home have many options to choose from, like the mainstream companies such as Amazon or Nest, or some of the lesser-known companies such as Lutron. People value smart home for its convenience and the ability to manage their home when they’re traveling, whether it’s for vacation or business.

Ramesh Soni, a Smart Home User.

Photo by Ramesh Soni “I researched quite a bit on the internet and I ended up buying both the Google Home Hub and Alexa, the Amazon Echo, and I finally decided to go with Google because it integrated better with the existing Nest Thermostat I have and the Hue lights I have, but also I don’t like the fact that the Echo

A Illustration of a Smart Home and the elements that are controlled using smart home. Photo courtesy of Pixabay

Show which is the display for Alexa, it has a built in camera where Google does not and I don’t like to have a camera in my house.

— Ramesh Soni

Consumer Electronics | 30

Ramesh Soni said that he integrated smart home in order to save energy.

Most people research the different types of smart home before they buy a system, so the elements that factor into that decision were research. Several smart home consumers had many thoughts on smart home.

in your house. So all the convenience is really something that made me made me make that switch,” Rajat Rai, a smart home user, said.

The consumers were knowledgeable about Consumers are the most important part their own smart home systems and of a product. They buy the product, the benefits of that they use it and they troubleshoot it. system which factored Consumers have gone crazy about into their decision: smart home in a way not seen since “I primarily use the Apple showcased the first iPhone.

Google Smart Home system combined with “People are becoming, including the Nest thermostat myself, are becoming very energy and the smart doorbell efficient. So to have a Nest thermostat and the Hue lighting or to have the ability to only turn the system, also the lights. thermostat when you are at home. All those are energy saving features that are So those are my 3 good for the environment...the second primary systems that I use in the smart home. big piece is the convenience. It’s super convenient once you’re in the bed, you I chose Google because just tell Alexa to turn your lights off and I already use a lot of Google products, and it does that for you, you don’t have to get out, turn on and off the switches off it helps. It’s already

David Finkel, another Smart Home User that uses non-mainstream smart home comapnies such as Lutron. Photo Courtesy of David Finkel “I can go to my alarm.com app on the phone or on a tablet or computer from anywhere in the world and I can tell it to open my garage door, turn on and off lights, and I can have macros.”

— David Finkel

integrated. Right? So it helped me know smart home better,” Ramesh Soni, another smart home user, explained over his choice of smart home system. A common theme with the consumers was that they valued their system’s ease of use and security.

A Bird’s Eye view of an Amazon Alexa dot, a smaller version of the infamous Amazon Alexa. Photo courtesy of Pixabay

They also had many thoughts on the recent controversies over the concern that these smart home speakers are listening to what people are saying in their home. “I am concerned, of course, about the ability for people to hack into this single device, that the device that is automating

31 | Spring 2019

your home, and to be able to, if you have cameras in the house to be able to record and watch the data is confounded. But I’m not overly concerned, because you know I, at least at this stage, I don’t think it’s happening,” Rajat explained.

The consumers had formulated some predictions for the future of smart home: “I think it will become the norm like all homes that are built will be built with the smart home, with the smart home device where all your lights, your thermostat. So it will be expected by the consumers or the buyers for it to be a smart home. That’s the way it is trending and two, with that, with the market being flooded and is becoming a norm, I think the prices for the devices would also start coming down.”, said Rajat.

Ramesh said that he would welcome

more automation that could help him be more productive. Most of the consumers remarked that they thought that the system was worth the cost, but they would like to see the price go down.

Some smart home consumers have incredibly advanced systems. “When I leave the house, I push a button on my car. That is a macro called away and what it does is make sure all of your automated lights are turned off. It sets the alarm on and it closes the garage door, “ David Finkel, a smart home user, said.

Employees from leading smart home companies have a high regard for the idea of a smart home. “Smart Home make things possible that were not possible before. Like, it’s hard to realize this, but coming from an age where cell phones, like the iPhone, has been

“The ability I most value is being able to push one button when I leave the house have it do lots of different things like turn off lights, set the thermostat, close the garage door, etcetera.”

— David Finkel

around for 10 years, like, it’s really hard to remember what it was like before then, but before, well if I had my Nest, every time I had to walk over to the thermostat, there would be times where I would rather not just walk over to the thermostat, and just leave it at what is was.”

They also had thoughts on the monetary benefits of smart home. “And depending on the temperature outside or whatever, that might’ve saved me money, and I’m most likely saving money with my Nest thermostat that I’ve programmed now, and that would’ve been really hard or even impossible, or really expensive before smart home was there, where the concept that I should be able to control this machine in my home from my phone wherever I am. So, I think that, like this is just revolutionary, in terms of what it is allowing people to do, it goes beyond just its regular use, there wasn’t anything you could use before to do what you can do now,” Rohan Parolkar, a software engineer from Amazon, said.

Rohan Parolkar, a Amazon Software Engineer, explained Amazon’s view on Smart Home and its market. -Photo By Rohan Parolkar “Amazon, at the end of the day, they really aren’t a online store company as much as they are just an internet and technology company. “ — Rohan Parolkar

Consumer Electronics | 32

Smart homes is an idea of the future.

Gradually, this will become a reality. A truly smart home has many practical uses, and will be a major step in humanity’s future and environmental conservation.

“It’s super convenient once you’re in the bed, you just tell Alexa to turn your lights off and it does that for you, you don’t have to get out, turn on and off the switches off in your house. So all the convenience is really something that made me made me make that switch.”

— Rajat Rai

A Visual View of all the connections and possibilites that smart home has to offer. Photo courtesy of Pixabay

33 | Spring 2019

Smart Home What is Smart Home, the Different Types of Smart Home, and the Smart Home Market

by Gaurav Mitra

- Google's answer to Alexa landed with the Google Home speakers in 2017.

- There are four Google Home speakers powered by Assistant on sale now: Regular, Mini,

Max, and Home Hub.

- There are 2 types of Google Assistant devices – those with the Assistant built right in and those that can be commanded by it.

- Alexa was the original Echo smart speaker.

- It has spread to numerous speakers and devices since.

- There are 2 types of Alexa device – smart speakers and devices with Alexa built right in, and devices that simply work with Alexa - One important part is Alexa's prevalence. Alexa isn't only built right into smart speakers, it's built into thermostats and other smart home devices.

amazon

What is Smart Home?

“A system of networked, controllable devices that work together to make your home more comfortable, customized, efficient, and secure. ” Households with “Smart Systems” 25 Million Households

2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

100

200

Sources: The-ambient.com Buisnesswire.com somfysystems.com

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