To many people, the floating point–universal number debate is something extraneous: an academic issue that involves computer scientists, engineers, and hardware manufacturers.

But as John Gustafson said during his keynote at the Supercomputing Frontiers 2015 conference on Tuesday, the inaccuracies of floating point estimates have real world implications. They can be deadly both in the real sense  — with missile defense batteries mis-calculating intercept times — or as Gustafson explained they can also lose battles in a virtual sense.

During intense battles in multiplayer games, floating point estimates would give different answers for different players. The calculation of if a players’ shot would be a lethal headshot — or a frustrating miss — would have slightly different answers on different platforms. In order to get reliable, reproducible results in the event of discrepancy the software would need to switch back to integers.

In order to have a better understanding of the benefits of unums, and the challenges of implementing them into hardware, the VR World team spoke with Gustafson on the sidelines of the Supercomputing Frontiers 2015 conference in Singapore to learn more.

The VR World team interviews Dr. Gustafson

VR World: You mentioned in your keynote that the implementation of Unum is challenging — in the words of one unnamed Intel executive ‘you can’t boil the ocean’. Why is this?

John Gustafson: What he’s saying is that you can’t change the world. All you have is IEEE floats. That’s the standard. ‘You can’t add a new number type, that’s not going to happen’ is what he said.

VRW: How would you categorize the feedback you’ve gotten from CPU vendors about implementing unums?

JG: People at AMD also didn’t get it. That was a kind of different opposition. They just didn’t see that I could save them so much power, electricity and bandwidth. Maybe it just looked too ambitious to them.

I’m not worried about what the hardware people think. I know they are going to hate it. They’ll have to build it, re-design circuits and all of that. I’m  more interested in everyone else.

VRW: What’s the cost of keeping the existing floating point system, versus implementing Unums? What’s the cost of transitioning hardware to support this, versus the cost of errors in everyday life?

JG: Remember: everything you can do with floats you can do with Unums. They are a subset. It’s a choice between one or the other; if it were I think it would never get off the ground. But if you can do everything you can do now if you have Unums, and you can also do other things, you can then incrementally work your way into them.

The other thing is right now we have to deal with at least two, or three, different precisions. Half precision is now out there. Nvidia has got the half precision out there in hardware as a native type, and single precision as well as double precision are everywhere. Quad precision is not supported by anyone’s hardware… I keep watching to see if it’s going to pop up.

But we already have to manage two, or three, different sizes.

I say replace it with one. And the hardware will let that slide continuously from all different sizes. It will simplify things so it may be cheaper and smaller on chip to do it that way then to have a bunch of single precision units and double precision units. That’s the way they do it now. They have to build separate hardware. Which is very wasteful.

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Developers of wearable technology have been gaining inroads into consumer end-markets, with the likes of virtual reality glasses, smart watches, fitness bands and other such devices becoming increasingly available and affordable. While the likes of the upcoming Microsoft HoloLens and AppleWatch bode well for consumer-facing products, the bigger potential is for platform and hardware makers that stand to gain from the boom in this space, just like how Qualcomm experienced a renaissance with the rise of ARM-based computing in mobile devices. One such startup that will stand to gain with the rise of wearable computing is Tel Aviv-based LifeBEAM, which designs and builds wearable instruments for measuring human performance.

Aerospace tech made accessible

LifeBEAM’s main products are hats and helmets with built-in heart rate and performance trackers. The novelty is with the fact that the technology behind these devices originated from the aerospace industry, in particular fighter pilot helmets. The startup is actually founded by former Israeli air force pilots who aimed to incorporate military technology into consumer products. Trackers embedded on these headgear help reduce the discomfort and weight associated with cyclists’ and runners’ having to wear chest straps for electro-cardiogram needs.

The startup launched its first product through a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo in 2013, and marginally exceeded its goal by 29%. The company also provides its bio-sensing technologies to other brands and partners. In November, it was announced that Samsung has picked LifeBEAM’s technology as one of the sensors that will power its Simband, which is the Korean company’s reference design for upcoming health-tracking wearables.

Finding the right form factors

For LifeBEAM, it’s a big deal to find the right form factors to build its technology into. “Our challenge is to keep finding ways to integrate our bio sensing technology into real products that users want,” says Omri Yoffe, LifeBEAM founder, in an interview with VR World. “This keeps us at the front line as a company who understands both the barriers and opportunities in these different wearable form factors and possible products and content to be created out of them.”

According to Yoffe, there are certain industries that more easily warm to wearable technologies, although it may not be fair to identify any single industry that is dominant. For the  company, leading consumer brands are a good place to start when looking for trends in this industry. “The emerging wave of wearable technologies popular in the last year or so apply to consumer lifestyle, safety and security, enterprises, health and such industries,” he says. “There are different barriers to entry and key factors, such as policy, privacy and pricing, at play.”

Finding the right applications

Yoffe says there will always be early adopters and that “the most natural place to start with should be the leading consumer brands that will look for feasible ways of implementing wearable technology into their current and future products and services.” He adds that “the goal is to provide more value to the users and consumers.”

According to Yoffe, health and fitness remain to be at the forefront of wearables, because of the relevance of bio- and motion-sensing technologies to this industry. “Looking at 2014 and seeing the main trends for 2015, there is no doubt that the well-being and fitness markets are currently pioneering vehicles for wearable technology adoption, because these provide the target users a real and valuable way to track their personal wellness and well-being.” he says. “This is done in a relatively seamless and convenient, but still fashionable way,” he adds.

A focus on user experience

There are still challenges, however. For LifeBEAM, these include optimizing devices for the component sizes, connectivity, convenience and wearability. “Smart textile production also involves questions about washability and pricing,” Yoffe says, adding that even power consumption and the “lack of new disruptive and mature charging technologies” can also be an issue that builders of wearable tech need to address.

But going beyond devices and sensors, the wearable technology needs to take into account user experience. “We need ways to provide users a simplified, unified and insightful feedback mechanism, without the need for extra effort in terms of both wearing a designated wearable form factor (such as wrist bands) and the need to drill down into lots of saturated data and statistics.”

Beyond glasses and watches

The future is not necessarily about watches and glasses. Yoffe says that segmentation borders between two major groups. First is wearable and sensing tech embedded into clothing and apparel. “Wearable sensing solutions are invisibly implemented into all sorts of wearable gear apparel, with focus on low power consumption and wireless connectivity to a display-enabled device and/or the cloud.”

The second group involves purpose-built devices. “These are consumer electronics — watches, earbuds, phones and maybe a bit of smart glasses — participating as the user’s data aggregation, display and communication ‘hub’ to be able to simplify data collection and pitch the data to the user in real time.”

At this point, the job of companies that produce wearable tech is to make this technology more accessible to the end user — in essence making it invisible so it becomes more easily integrated into our lives, Yoffe says. “We need more focus on the UX and the ability to provide the end user an insightful, meaningful, simplified and unified feedback about his daily activity and personal well-being, and less focus on the raw bio-sensing parameters the and other more techy parts.”

The post LifeBEAM: User Experience Should be Focus of Wearable Tech appeared first on VR World.

In its latest earnings guidance, Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) highlighted the company’s big push to build and develop VR and augmented reality technologies as part of what it believes will be the major evolution in computing platforms in 10 to 15 years’ time. “Every 10 to 15 years, a new major computing platform arrives and we think that virtual and augmented reality are important parts of this upcoming next platform,” said CEO Mark Zuckerberg during the investor guidance call.

It seems convenient for Facebook to make this bold claim, says entrepreneur and PR strategist Murray Newlands, co-author of How to Get PR for Your Startup: Traction. In an interview with VR World, he says that the social network is obliged to say VR is the future of computing platforms, given its huge investment in acquiring the hardware startup and its plans to develop the ecosystem around it. “Having spent a lot of money on Oculus, I think that Facebook needs to say that is where the future is.”

Given the fast-changing nature of computing and technology, however, the future of computing is still fair game for enterprises and startups alike. “I think it is very hard for anyone to predict where we will be and what will be hot in three years, let alone 10 to 15 years. If Google, Facebook and Apple knew where we were going to be in 10 to 15 years they would be spending a LOT more money on just that one thing.”

Startups: Focus on Both Traction and Business Model

Newlands also talks about startup marketing, crowdfunding and the changes in the venture capital community, at least in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he is based. He says venture capitalists are increasingly looking to fund entrepreneurs at latter startup stages. This might mean a crowding-out effect for early-stage startups looking for early funding rounds. However, mature startups often mean less risk and better potential for actually gaining traction and profit.

In terms of marketing, Newlands finds concern in how some startup companies are focused on gaining traction first, but leave the business model for later. Investors also need to see potential profitability rather than just market share, he says. Newlands cites the case of MySpace, which had millions of users, but eventually fizzled out after being overtaken by other social networks. “Having tens of thousands of users is a great sign, but not does not necessarily mean profitability.”

Given the recent trends in crowdfunding, Newlands says this method of raising money may not necessarily work for everyone. “People also need to recognize that a successful crowdfunding campaign takes a lot of time,” he says. It may only run for 30 days, but they will need to prepare for a lot longer than that beforehand.” In fact, crowdfunding has been criticized by some quarters as a way for trivial products to proliferate, but without adequate accountability (say, if the product fails to ship on time). Newlands does praise crowdfunding as a good “litmus test for success” for one’s business.

Read the full interview on BSN*’s sister site, VR World.

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Oculus’ big conference, Oclus Connect,  took place last weekend in Los Angeles, and while the company didn’t  unveil the consumer version it did show off a next-generation prototype version of the Oculus headset.

Before the conference began VR World had a chance to sit down with Simon Solotko, founder of All Future Parties, a consultancy that partners with companies developing augmented reality products to help them accelerate and get to market.

Below is the second part of the conversation.

VR World: What sort of insight do you have into Oculus right now as the eventual release date for the consumer version of the Oculus headset grows closer?

Simon Solotko: Recently Oculus has been very optimistic about the technical capabilities they can deliver with the [first consumer headset]. I would say this marks a change from being cautious to being a little more aggressive and excited. I think the community-at-large will be very excited about it, and [its release] will continue the mainstream discourse on head mounted displays and virtual reality.

There’s a lot of core technology around improving presence in virtual reality that is rapidly improving and Oculus has a lot of energy in. The other thing that’s going to be evident is, Oculus has done its job in providing head mounted displays that the developer community has embraced. It will be interesting to see what other action we’re going to see in terms of developer and ecosystem tools that become available for software development. I’m curious to see what Oculus will do to accelerate this development.

VRW: Are open standards so important that they will make or break VR platforms?

SS: One thing I want to say about open standards is that developers need to know what input to expect, and in ideal world have a relatively simple framework for doing so. I think open standards are a big big exaggeration of what really needs to happen. What really needs to happen is that big companies need to figure out the answer and everybody needs to go along. That would work too.

The key thing we need is that we need to let developers have accessibility and predictability in obtaining complex input. That may result in open standards, but as an intermediary step they simply need multi-device API. I’m curious what Oculus might propose as that model. I have faith that we are going to see some exciting and compelling solutions to the input problem. Is VR broken without fixing the input problem? You bet. Absolutely.

VRW: It seems like once the input problem is overcome, VR will be a much more mature platform and you’ll see a development race following.

SS: You can say that broadly, but it’s going to take time. VR input is a multi-decade problem. What’s important now is that we’re seeing some solid momentum. That’s what needs to happen now.

VRW: Thanks for your time.

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