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A 60 GHz phased array for $10

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Re: A 60 GHz phased array for $10

#81

Post by Animats »

aidenn0 wrote: post #14
droithomme wrote: post #12

I wonder what sorts of things the chips were used for inside laptops and smart TVs. He mentions it being used for streaming, but it's a directional radar chip, seems it would be used for doing a 3d scan of an area?

It's a directional transceiver. Directional transceivers happen to be usable as radar, but these were not intended for that usecase: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WirelessHD

Whatever happened to that Google millimeter radar project to allow devices to see your hand positions? It ended up in the Pixel 4 as Motion Sense, but all it does is let you make swiping gestures in the vicinity of the phone. There should be more useful applications for that technology.

Re: A 60 GHz phased array for $10

#82

Post by perl4ever »

variaga wrote: post #76
AaronFriel wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is taken as axiomatic by people who believe in the efficient market hypothesis, but I don't think there's much reason to believe it's true.

Even if the EMH were true, it only says "_IF_ a market is efficient, THEN all information is included in the price." The EMH does not imply that any particular market is efficient, and if the market isn't efficient, the EMH doesn't apply. Lots of people do appear to assume the axiom "All markets are efficient", but that is plainly incorrect.

I think there was some nobel prize winning refinement to the theory that basically said markets approach theoretical efficiency in the limit as transaction costs go to zero, and interesting deviations from efficiency happen because transaction costs are not zero. Like, the whole reason we have firms and markets in real life is because zero transaction costs don't exist globally and so it helps to have ways to reduce them here and there.

Re: A 60 GHz phased array for $10

#83

Post by bordercases »

perl4ever wrote: post #80
bordercases wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There needs to be a larger gradient of funding options than "Waste cash until unicorn" or "rent-seek until next bailout", and "dominate small-to-medium market niche" or "sponsor and penetrate next manufacturing commodity". We've seen so much wastage from the prevailing financial model in SV tech.

I don't understand. Your options are (1) be small, try to grow fast, (2) be big, (3) be small, don't try to grow fast, and I'm not sure what (4) means. What else is there?

What behavior would prevent a technology like ultra-cheap phased arrays from being locked up due to the corporation seeing some potential in either the technology or the team to buy them, but then not giving both the leeway to develop the market for the technology further?

In this specific case I guess we don't know the full picture of what Lattice Semiconductor intends to do, but there are many examples in software of startups getting acquihired and then the team dissolving into new projects that are more familiar or closely aligned with the pre-existing business model of the company.

Since it's always possible to just turn the startup into a subsidiary I'm sometimes confused as to why this happens, unless if it's an issue of maybe brand dilution or the market opportunity being too small to be worth the overhead of keeping a separate entity tied to a larger one. Which is a part of why more opportunities for low-growth or long-tail companies would be important, since now in the case where the means for bringing the IP to the market are eliminated no one gets anything at all.

Re: A 60 GHz phased array for $10

#84

Post by lachlan-sneff »

darkmighty wrote: post #77
lachlan-sneff wrote: post #18

Phased arrays are very cool tech. Personally, I can't wait for visible-wavelength optical phased arrays to hit the mainstream (they're just now being implemented), since they'd enable tech like legitimately holographic displays and video cameras with digitally programmable optical zoom.

Microlens arrays, for all intents and purposes of consuming and recording media (for human consumption), are essentially equivalent to ideal phased array optics (while having spacing much larger than phased array usual requirements). We perceive light non-coherently, phase information is lost to our eyes; microlens arrays suffice to reproduce a light field sans phase effects[1] -- that includes the perception of most…

Microlens arrays seem very interesting! I haven't seen any that are very high resolution... Is that because they kill the resolution of the display they're placed upon (as well as technical problems with very small microlenses)? So, we'd need extremely high resolution displays for microlens array displays to look reasonable by modern standards?

Perhaps actual phased array optics wouldn't have that issue?

For those just entering this thread, [1] is an example of a rudimentary microlens array display.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGJe0AdszJg

Re: A 60 GHz phased array for $10

#85

Post by etrk »

AaronFriel wrote: post #31
ChickeNES wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>yet the second the sale is closed 90% of the things that the company did that made it valuable are jettisoned If it were valuable they wouldn't be jettisoned

This is taken as axiomatic by people who believe in the efficient market hypothesis, but I don't think there's much reason to believe it's true.

This isn't new technology. SiBeam came out of Berkeley Wireless Research Center in the mid-2000s. They had mmWave phased arrays from the start (60 GHz is pretty much useless without a phased array, or a large dish antenna if you're outdoors), but in 15 years, they never managed to find a compelling consumer use case.

I think at that point, the burden is on the company to prove its value.

Re: A 60 GHz phased array for $10

#86

Post by angry_octet »

strbean wrote: post #69
stefan_ wrote: post #6

I love how industry came up with ever crazier schemes to stream content from phones and laptops to TVs. There must have been three different attempts involving WiFi alone, but this phased array mmWave 60 GHz million bucks basic research abomination surely takes the cake. Meanwhile, some Google engineer realized you could solve 90% of phone-to-TV streaming applications and 100% of the hard technical problems by just t…

And now it's easy to tell my TV to play a Youtube video via my phone instead of just using the remote, but a magnificent pain in the ass / impossible to share my screen to my TV or stream an actual video file directly. Pretty lame outcome.

You can share a Chrome tab or your desktop to a Chromecast. Playing a video requires a low enough bit rate and decoding requirements, but it works.

https://support.google.com/chromecast/answer/3228332

Re: A 60 GHz phased array for $10

#87

Post by [deleted] »

bordercases wrote: post #83
perl4ever wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand. Your options are (1) be small, try to grow fast, (2) be big, (3) be small, don't try to grow fast, and I'm not sure what (4) means. What else is there?

What behavior would prevent a technology like ultra-cheap phased arrays from being locked up due to the corporation seeing some potential in either the technology or the team to buy them, but then not giving both the leeway to develop the market for the technology further? In this specific case I guess we don't know the full picture of what Lattice Semiconductor intends to do, but there are many examples in software…

[deleted]

Re: A 60 GHz phased array for $10

#88

Post by Dylan16807 »

lachlan-sneff wrote: post #84
darkmighty wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microlens arrays, for all intents and purposes of consuming and recording media (for human consumption), are essentially equivalent to ideal phased array optics (while having spacing much larger than phased array usual requirements). We perceive light non-coherently, phase information is lost to our eyes; microlens arrays suffice to reproduce a light field sans phase effects[1] -- that includes the perception of most…

Microlens arrays seem very interesting! I haven't seen any that are very high resolution... Is that because they kill the resolution of the display they're placed upon (as well as technical problems with very small microlenses)? So, we'd need extremely high resolution displays for microlens array displays to look reasonable by modern standards? Perhaps actual phased array optics wouldn't have that issue? For those ju…

Looking glass factory is currently producing a display that puts microlenses on an 8K screen. The video of it looks quite good. It outputs 45 different angles, so the effective resolution is roughly 640p, right about at the bottom end of HD. Not the best but it's good enough for an lot and I'm sure the limit will improve over time. It's only horizontal parallax, but that's generally fine for a fixed screen.

Re: A 60 GHz phased array for $10

#89

Post by numpad0 »

tlrobinson wrote: post #67

> What would be really cool is to build a USB board that plugs into one of the SB9210 boards and connects to gnuradio. You could do all kinds of neat radar experiments, presence detection, beam forming, you name it. Kind of like a 60 GHz RTL-SDR. Maybe a dumb question, but how is it even possible to do SDR with 60GHz signal on a ~4GHz CPU via a 5Gbps USB3 connection? EDIT: I guess via down-conversion? https://en.wiki…

Modulated carriers are rarely directly synthesized by logic circuitries, even with phased arrays. You tap off a “white light source” of correct wavelength just like you do with LCD.

TX/RX rates are thus independent to the carrier frequency. Only local oscillator must to be able to be configured to the correct carrier frequency.

Re: A 60 GHz phased array for $10

#90

Post by Reelin »

Animats wrote: post #81
aidenn0 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a directional transceiver. Directional transceivers happen to be usable as radar, but these were not intended for that usecase: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WirelessHD

Whatever happened to that Google millimeter radar project to allow devices to see your hand positions? It ended up in the Pixel 4 as Motion Sense, but all it does is let you make swiping gestures in the vicinity of the phone. There should be more useful applications for that technology.

It's not limited to Google. For example, this TI mmWave sensor (http://www.ti.com/product/IWR6843) has an associated reference design for gesture control (http://www.ti.com/tool/TIDEP-01013).

(Disclaimer: I've never actually used that chip or reference design and have no idea how well it actually works in practice. I just think it's really neat that mmWave radar chips are readily available at very affordable price points.)

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