<story><title>Darpa Plans a Major Remake of U.S. Electronics</title><url>https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/hardware/darpas-planning-a-major-remake-of-us-electronics-pay-attention.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bsder</author><text>&amp;gt; Quite interesting is the bit about hiring the &amp;quot;former lead of GNU Radio&amp;quot; who had experienced pain in getting closed&amp;#x2F;proprietary hardware things to be useful. I wonder if this will lead to more open platforms. If for no other reason, that bit makes the article worth reading.&lt;p&gt;This makes me more worried, not less.&lt;p&gt;The reason why you couldn&amp;#x27;t repurpose those things targeted at &amp;quot;specific technologies&amp;quot; is that they were &lt;i&gt;engineered for purpose&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;You don&amp;#x27;t want a general &amp;quot;radio decoder&amp;quot;.  You want a 4G modem.  You don&amp;#x27;t wan&amp;#x27;t a wideband ADC--you want low power for battery usage so you want to narrow the bandwidth as much as possible.  You are willing to give up generality in order to get a couple more dB in order to increase your range by another couple miles, etc.&lt;p&gt;The problem is that it is so expensive to do your own chip that everybody tries to shoehorn their solution into something that exists in volume but really isn&amp;#x27;t quite right simply to avoid that expense.&lt;p&gt;If you want to fix electronics, find a way to make VLSI fabrication cost $500 and have a 5 day turnaround.</text></item><item><author>galeforcewinds</author><text>Quite interesting is the bit about hiring the &amp;quot;former lead of GNU Radio&amp;quot; who had experienced pain in getting closed&amp;#x2F;proprietary hardware things to be useful. I wonder if this will lead to more open platforms. If for no other reason, that bit makes the article worth reading.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Animats</author><text> &lt;i&gt;You don&amp;#x27;t want a general &amp;quot;radio decoder&amp;quot;. You want a 4G modem.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s consumer products. DoD wants generality even if it costs more.&lt;p&gt;The electronics industry ignores what DoD wants because DoD won&amp;#x27;t buy a million parts a month. That&amp;#x27;s been going on for a long time. It really upset some USAF generals in the 1980s; they were used to driving the industry, not following it.  It&amp;#x27;s gotten worse since, because the center of the electronics industry has moved to Asia.&lt;p&gt;This project is a niche thing for military short-run production.  That&amp;#x27;s fine. There may be commercial spinoffs. But it&amp;#x27;s aimed at DoD&amp;#x27;s needs.</text></comment>
<story><title>Darpa Plans a Major Remake of U.S. Electronics</title><url>https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/hardware/darpas-planning-a-major-remake-of-us-electronics-pay-attention.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bsder</author><text>&amp;gt; Quite interesting is the bit about hiring the &amp;quot;former lead of GNU Radio&amp;quot; who had experienced pain in getting closed&amp;#x2F;proprietary hardware things to be useful. I wonder if this will lead to more open platforms. If for no other reason, that bit makes the article worth reading.&lt;p&gt;This makes me more worried, not less.&lt;p&gt;The reason why you couldn&amp;#x27;t repurpose those things targeted at &amp;quot;specific technologies&amp;quot; is that they were &lt;i&gt;engineered for purpose&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;You don&amp;#x27;t want a general &amp;quot;radio decoder&amp;quot;.  You want a 4G modem.  You don&amp;#x27;t wan&amp;#x27;t a wideband ADC--you want low power for battery usage so you want to narrow the bandwidth as much as possible.  You are willing to give up generality in order to get a couple more dB in order to increase your range by another couple miles, etc.&lt;p&gt;The problem is that it is so expensive to do your own chip that everybody tries to shoehorn their solution into something that exists in volume but really isn&amp;#x27;t quite right simply to avoid that expense.&lt;p&gt;If you want to fix electronics, find a way to make VLSI fabrication cost $500 and have a 5 day turnaround.</text></item><item><author>galeforcewinds</author><text>Quite interesting is the bit about hiring the &amp;quot;former lead of GNU Radio&amp;quot; who had experienced pain in getting closed&amp;#x2F;proprietary hardware things to be useful. I wonder if this will lead to more open platforms. If for no other reason, that bit makes the article worth reading.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mcbits</author><text>Personally I&amp;#x27;d rather have a 4G modem that can I can reprogram for something useful after my phone is obsolete, but I&amp;#x27;ll take the special purpose chip if it&amp;#x27;s cheaper. What I don&amp;#x27;t want is a general purpose SDR that&amp;#x27;s been artificially nerfed to provide only 4G while 90% of the cost is in licensing.</text></comment>