Travis Swicegood

MTS07 - Microsoft Research, Kevin Schofield

Published On
March 26 2007
Author
Travis Swicegood

Kevin Schofield, General Manager of Strategy and Communications Microsoft Research.

"General manager of research of everything else... Things that don't require researchers."

They're working on some cool new computing models. Cameras and computers that can recognize a "virtual/real" environment that allows you to interact with real environment that is representing a partially virtual environment. i.e., playing checkers with a half

They found out that the light in the refrigerator does go out using a 'SenseCam' in the frig. Practical uses include memory aids for people that have problems with memory. On one patient, there was a 2.5x memory recall over 3 months for someone who couldn't remember longer than one week.

Heat density on Pentium processor is currently hotter than a nuclear reaction and approaching that of a rocket nozzle. AMD/Intel think that a 5.0Ghz processor is as fast as it'll be able to get. That's the reason behind multi-core processors.

Capers Jones, Estimating Software Costs, pg. 140
Capers Jones, Patterns of Software Systems Failure & Success

35% of project time spent on debugging.

"Composability allows us to deal with complexity in a way that yields orders of magnitude more concurrency."

The focus in the abbreviated Q&A was concurrency and when it'll be available. Kevin is optimistic, but some in the audience seemed to believe that it wasn't going to happen due to the time/money/energy that had already been put into it.

About

Travis Swicegood is a professional programmer and owner of Domain51, a web development company with a focus on non-profits, NGOs, and online activists. He doesn't change the world, he supports those who do.

He has personal a focus on web applications, performance, and stability; is author of Pragmatic Version Control using Git; and working on his second book. He has been using PHP; since '99 and still remembers how revolutionary PHP 4 was, but can't remember why. He's a TDD, open-source, and open government advocate—sometimes called a zealot—and lurker on many an open-source project mailing list when not learning other programming; languages; for fun, exploring his surroundings on bike, or tasting his latest kitchen and home-brew creations.

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