This should be tagged (2004)
Closing in on the “perfect code” (2004)
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Re: Closing in on the “perfect code” (2004)
#22This should be tagged (2004)
Added. Thanks!
Re: Closing in on the “perfect code” (2004)
#23The article is from 2004.
Year added above. Thanks!
Re: Closing in on the “perfect code” (2004)
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately, one of the common scenarios when it comes to percolating results from academia to industry is the following: 1. Academics make discovery/invent something. 2. Academics attempt to convince industry to adopt discovery. 3. Discovery is laughed out of industry as "impractical", "academic", etc. 4. Academics teach discovery to their students. 5. Students get into industry. 6. Students get into position of t…
1.5 More established academics deride, scoff, and do their best to extinguish this new work.
4.5 some of the less arrogant academics internalize the complaints about their solutions and iterate on it to make it 20% easier to use and/or 20% better in practice, making the cost of change more attractive.
Re: Closing in on the “perfect code” (2004)
#2530 years ago? What took so long for broad adoption? Patents? edit Article doesn't elaborate on why that might be, but it does note: "an alternative that has been given a new lease on life is low-density parity check (LDPC) codes, invented in the early 1960s by Robert Gallager at MIT but largely forgotten since then...Now researchers have implemented LDPC codes so that they actually outperform turbo codes and get even…
Unfortunately, one of the common scenarios when it comes to percolating results from academia to industry is the following: 1. Academics make discovery/invent something. 2. Academics attempt to convince industry to adopt discovery. 3. Discovery is laughed out of industry as "impractical", "academic", etc. 4. Academics teach discovery to their students. 5. Students get into industry. 6. Students get into position of t…
Wait, what exactly is metacompilation, and in what form is it used in the industry? I've tried searching the internet, but only found theoretical explanations I'm too tired to parse right now, and something about yaks and bisons.
Re: Closing in on the “perfect code” (2004)
#2630 years ago? What took so long for broad adoption? Patents? edit Article doesn't elaborate on why that might be, but it does note: "an alternative that has been given a new lease on life is low-density parity check (LDPC) codes, invented in the early 1960s by Robert Gallager at MIT but largely forgotten since then...Now researchers have implemented LDPC codes so that they actually outperform turbo codes and get even…
Unfortunately, one of the common scenarios when it comes to percolating results from academia to industry is the following: 1. Academics make discovery/invent something. 2. Academics attempt to convince industry to adopt discovery. 3. Discovery is laughed out of industry as "impractical", "academic", etc. 4. Academics teach discovery to their students. 5. Students get into industry. 6. Students get into position of t…
While that does sort of happen, that's not the reason.
Article says it was used in satellite links and deep space networks before it was cool. Those applications had hit their technological limits and no one was making something new they could buy next year, so they had to do it themselves.
Contrast that with phone networks being able to rely on the next G coming out. Now we have 5G, but it's 5G with an asterisk, so it's time to look for a new approach.
Same with Moore's law. The semiconductor industry was really focused on smaller transistors for a long time until they started getting close to the physical limit. Then suddenly everyone is talking about chiplets and other ideas that had been around a long time but weren't mainstream.
Changing approach requires a lot of coordination and carries a lot of risk. It's easier to finish milking one cow for as long as possible before moving on to the next. The laughing is just because your advisor knows how long it will probably be before the general market has exhausted its old approach.
Re: Closing in on the “perfect code” (2004)
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately, one of the common scenarios when it comes to percolating results from academia to industry is the following: 1. Academics make discovery/invent something. 2. Academics attempt to convince industry to adopt discovery. 3. Discovery is laughed out of industry as "impractical", "academic", etc. 4. Academics teach discovery to their students. 5. Students get into industry. 6. Students get into position of t…
While that does sort of happen, that's not the reason. Article says it was used in satellite links and deep space networks before it was cool. Those applications had hit their technological limits and no one was making something new they could buy next year, so they had to do it themselves. Contrast that with phone networks being able to rely on the next G coming out. Now we have 5G, but it's 5G with an asterisk, so…
Yep, as in all things, we do the easy thing until it stops working. Only then is it worth putting more work into harder things.
I’m not deriding this approach, mind you. It’s efficient.
Edit: Also the incremental improvement over the current system needs not only to be big enough that it outweighs the cost of the changeover (including hidden costs like risks and opportunity cost), but also to be big enough to bother with in absolute terms. Things like zip, mp3 and jpg are good enough that even though there are now alternatives that are better by any reasonable metric, for most users it's just not worth the bother of changing over.
Re: Closing in on the “perfect code” (2004)
#28I worked on forward error correcting codes for a variety of systems.
A few big issues with Turbo codes: 1. Decoder complexity - often 4x or more the complexity of simpler codes.
2. Encoder delay- you need to have a really long interleaver at the transmitter to get the big dB of improvements.
3. These work best an pure additive white gaussian noise channels - most channels suffer from multipath, fading and other disturbances.
So while they are good far satellite broadcast system they don't always work as well in other applications.
Re: Closing in on the “perfect code” (2004)
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately, one of the common scenarios when it comes to percolating results from academia to industry is the following: 1. Academics make discovery/invent something. 2. Academics attempt to convince industry to adopt discovery. 3. Discovery is laughed out of industry as "impractical", "academic", etc. 4. Academics teach discovery to their students. 5. Students get into industry. 6. Students get into position of t…
Wait, what exactly is metacompilation, and in what form is it used in the industry? I've tried searching the internet, but only found theoretical explanations I'm too tired to parse right now, and something about yaks and bisons.
I don't think it's a really standard term, but I guess from context it's referring to partial-evaluation-style approaches to compiling.
(In the Forth world it means a special Forth vocabulary the Forth system can use to bootstrap itself.)
Re: Closing in on the “perfect code” (2004)
#30> key to the next generation of multimedia cellphones How is perfect data transmission a make or break feature for lossy compression and transmission of audio and video?
You get less overhead from the code. Actually, this article is from 2004, so if you use a 4G cell phone you actually already are using the code. 5G uses something different though.