In the case of my friend — who is one of the best engineers I know — the ALS is now really starting to take its toll. When he eventually lost the ability to speak around the end of the summer last year, he could still tap away on his computer and stay in touch with his friends around the world. Sad to relate, the disease continued to progress, and several months ago he lost the strength and ability to hold his arms up long enough to use the keyboard for more that a few seconds at a time. He can however lay his arm on his wheelchair, rest his hand on the mouse on his desk, and move the mouse small distances (measured in perhaps tenths of an inch).

The reason I mention this is that just about everyone knows someone who is physically challenged and who may have difficulty with this sort of task. Well, a couple of weeks ago my friend made it clear that he was eager to show me something, and powering up his electric wheelchair he raced over to his computer and set an application running.

At first I thought we were looking at some strange sort of computer game, in which random combinations of letters were flying across the screen from right to left. Then I realized that by making minor movements with his mouse, my friend was quickly building words and constructing sentences (Figure 1).

Figure 1 -- The Dasher user interface

In addition to the window shown in Figure 1, there's another window/area in which the complete sentences, paragraphs, and eventually entire documents appear as you create them. The program is called Dasher — available for free download from the University of Cambridge website in the UK. The more you learn about this application, the more you realize how fantastically cunning and clever this little rapscallion really is.

Although it looks chaotic, working with Dasher is actually incredibly simple and intuitive once you get the hang of it. Also, the fact that Dasher acts so much like a game makes difficult to decide whether its key feature is that it's so useful or that it's so much fun to use.

In reality, this program is way more clever and way more useful than I can describe here. Its underlying predictive engine alone (which ensures that more probable letters and/or pieces of text are given more weight and real-estate than less probable pieces) is incredible. And the way in which the program automatically learns your writing style and the words you like to use and then incorporates them into its predictive model is elegant in its simplicity.

So if you know anyone who is finding it hard to type, I strongly urge you to tell them about the Dasher website. Even for those of us in the peak of health, rooting around this website and learning more about the concepts underlying this program leave one awestruck at the incredible imagination and vision that conceived this little rascal. I personally cannot find the words to do Dasher justice, except to say that it rates an official "MEGA Cool Beans" from me!

PicoChip takes another leap forward

It seems like only last week that I was talking about PicoChip in my column entitled PicoChip offers parallel idea. As I recall, they had only just come out of their "secret squirrel" (stealth) marketing mode. But when I come to think about it, that article actually hit the streets on December 3, 2002. I tell you, time really flies when you're having fun.

As you may recall, PicoChip has created a new class of digital IC called a PicoArray, which features a heterogeneous node-based structure in which each of the nodes comprises a RISC processor. There are a number of different nodal "flavors," because there are a suite of 16-bit processors that are optimized in a variety of different ways. For example, one type of processor may have lots of memory, while another will support special algorithmic instructions that can perform operations like "spread" and "de-spread" from the CDMA wireless standard using a single clock cycle (as opposed to 40 cycles using a general-purpose processor).

Each of these processor nodes is approximately equivalent (in processing capability, not in architecture) to an ARM9 for control-style applications or a TI C54xx for DSP-style applications. The trick is that each picoArray (which is what these devices are called) can contain hundreds of such nodes, resulting in a truly ferocious amount of processing power.

One really cool aspect of the PicoChip solution is the fact that they provide a complete library of picoArray programming/configuration modules that can be hooked together to implement a fully-functioning base station (or users can "tweak" individual modules to implement their own algorithm variations, thereby gaining a competitive advantage).

The interesting thing is that PicoChip has just announced that they've achieved a "world first," which is to use this library of modules to implement a fully 3GPP compliant "carrier class" base station and to make a 3G call on that base station! The entire base station was designed in-house and implemented in a matter of weeks on the company's technology platform of picoArray devices, which makes this a truly "Cool Beans" announcement!

Until next time, have a good one!

Clive (Max) Maxfield is president of Techbites Interactive, a marketing consultancy firm specializing in high-tech. Author of Bebop to the Boolean Boogie (An Unconventional Guide to Electronics) and co-author of EDA: Where Electronics Begins, Max was once referred to as a "semiconductor design expert" by someone famous who wasn't prompted, coerced, or remunerated in any way.