Xantrex is Rebranding

Re: Xantrex is Rebranding

I think it is less planned obsolescence verses just how fast electronics are improving...

1994--how is that 200 MByte IPOD brief case and portable 2kW gasoline generator doing for you...

I worked in an industry around that time (large voice mail systems for telephone companies) where it was a pain because our marketing/sales folks were charging huge amounts of money for storage, using non-standard format on disk drives, old technology processors and memory--because we did not need better, and customers that were expecting 40 year design life from the hardware/software.

For embedded controller technologies--we were much less interested in cutting edge processor speed and cost--but looking for something that would be around for 10+ years--and it was very difficult to do (and, many times, we paid much more for the parts, and our purchasing department had to have vendors hold years worth of out of production parts for us).

Processor power and storage capacities that are doubling in performance/capacity every two years (see Moore's Law)... For at least the last thirty, if not 50 years--since the invention of the integrated circuit (1958).

1994 to 2010 is 2^8=256 times more powerful, and uses less power too...

In the end--it was not the hardware evolution that was so difficuilt (for us hardware engineers we could slap in new processors and devices pretty quickly). It was the software development that was killing us.

Everyone starts out with their first product software and its basic assumptions. Every time there was a processor change and memory increase--it forced a painful migration of operating system and applications to make use of the increased address space. And to support more concurrent users (10's of voice mail users to 100's to 1,000's over the eight years I worked there). Single hardware to networked/distributed systems, etc.

In the end, it was not planned obsolescence in the industries that drove us--it was the guy next door that doubled capacity at 1/2 the price 2 years later--and the customers that streamed to his product--that drove us.

Back in the 1980's--we were working a 2 year product design cycle (from blank paper to product shipping). That was killing us because in two years--the major components were going obsolete on us (processor and memory were driven the PC volume)--Our major parts were already going obsolete by the time it came for volume production.

In the Mid-1990's, we were down to a 12 month cycle. End of the 1990's, we were aiming at a 9 month cycle.

And no longer, was it hardware cycle time that was limiting us--it was software migration, QA, and regulatory compliance that was. I was testing and certifying hardware just using the boot diagnostics and mfg. test software because there was no OS/Application code that would run.

In a startup I was at, the software guys were buying evaluation boards with pre-production processors, memory, I/O hardware (new networking chips, etc.) as their design platform to get ahead of the hardware development. And this worked pretty well. As soon as first few boards were stuffed--they blew the boot proms and the board (100% brand new design) was up and running.

It has been more than a decade since I have been in the R&D at that level... But with a huge chunk of our manufacturing moved to Asia -- the problems with hardware evolution has only gotten worst (from a developer's point of view)--but yet the customers see their XXX GB IPOD with digital video by Christmas.

Sorry for the rant...

-Bill