[wellylug]The top 10 dead (or dying) computer skills

[Rob Giltrap]

Bruce Hoult wrote:
> We're not having to deal with 8 bit (?) systems with 8 KB of RAM like
> nic.  Thankfully it's 32 bit ARM/Thumb which is at least saner than
> x86 and seems firmly entrenched in embedded devices (unlike 68k and
> PPC in PCs ... sob).  But we have to help people to fit graphics-rich
> high frame rate games onto machines with as little as 400 KB of RAM,
> with as little as possible of that for the code.  It's like going back
> to 1985 PCs, except people expect more now. 
There's a interesting thing happening in the low power CPU space.

Sun 'open sourced' the Niagara CPU design which was also based on the 
open www.sparc.org API (NB: Fully 64bit)

Now there is an open API (okay, it officially costs $99 and then you can 
build as many as you want) with an open reference design and that is 
stirring things up.

Many universities are now teaching CPU design based on the opensparc 
processor.
A few companies have produced products based on the design and it looks 
like it may well end up being used in some form in mobile phones.

It's having a bigger impact than anyone expected.