My Hit or Miss claims, and some comments for just how close I got are in-line below..
--- On Mon, 5/14/12, Duane - N9DG <n...@yahoo.com> wrote: "Here's my WAS (Wild As_ Speculation) for what I suspect it will be, it is not a wish for list for what I want. Each item is followed by my % guess for the likelihood of the specific item." "1. It consists of both new HW and SW - 90%." Hit. "2. The HW component will be some steps above the 5K for raw RF performance , and be priced accordingly (~$6K) - 70%." I'm going to claim this as mostly a hit, but what I wasn't thinking of was that it would consist of multiple models. But my notion that it would exceed the 5K in performance, and therefore be priced accordingly was clearly a hit. "3. If there's a new piece of higher end HW it will be DDC/DUC and not QSD/QSE - 50%." Hit. "4. If there's a new piece of higher end HW it will be performance enhanced QSD/QSE - 50%." Miss, but I also knew it had to be one or the other between items 3 & 4, and I also knew that Flex had previously done work in both areas for gov't entities as mentioned at Dayton different times. That is the reason why for my 50/50 guess for items 3 & 4. What I didn't have a good feel for was whether the chips used in the DDC design mentioned a few years ago at Dayton would have come down enough in cost to be viable in the amateur market space yet, now we know. "5. If there's a new piece of higher end HW it will be 5000C-esque with built-in motherboard - 60%." Mostly a miss. What I didn't really see coming was the transition from using commodity PC based HW to using "network appliance" like chips on Flex purpose built board(s) instead. But my speculation that the new HW would not be passing ADC and DAC data over anything like Firewire or USB was correct. In my mind I was picturing a PCIe type card with the ADC/DAC, and a sizable FPGA on board. Then this card being plugged into a carefully selected motherboard with a tightly controlled Linux OS install. The Linux OS thus becoming the back end server and gateway to the rest of the UI presentation world via Ethernet. "6. If the there's new HW the built in motherboard will be a ATX form factor - keeps the COGS down for a given level of CPU performance - 50%." Miss. "7. If there's the new HW it will be running Linux (also for lower COGS) - 70%." I'm not going to declare Hit or Miss until I know what is running on that ARM processor! "8. Will connect to the rest of the world via Ethernet -100% (thanks to today's hint)." Hit - OK, so that was a gimme. "9. While the new higher end HW will have a built-in PC, users will primarily driving it through network connected external devices or other machines, PC's etc. The built-in PC will eliminate the headaches (DPC's, Firewire and USB chipsets etc.) caused by wildly varying end user PC hardware - 80%." If you substitute "built-in PC" with "built-in DSP" this would have been a pretty solid hit. "10. Support VITA 49 - 50%." TBD - saw an item recently posted that suggests that it may include this. "11. The new SW will embody many, but not all, of the concepts that were bantered about on the discusion forums and lists under the guise of the "New Architecture" several years ago - 90%." Seems to, but still TBD just how much of it will be, so I'm claiming it as a likely hit. "12. There will be a iPad, and probably Android app to optionally drive the new SW (running with or without the new HW) either remotely within your house, or anywhere else on the web - 70%." TBD - but has been hinted at. "13. The SW will be much more modular, designed to decouple the signal processing from the UI dsiplay functions, allows for distributed deployment - 95%." Hit, it is really too bad that this wasn't done to replace PowerSDR back when the 5K first came onto the scene 5 years ago. It has been very clear for a very long time that this concept is a must to be able to do anything remotely game changing. "14. The new SW will include Cognitive Radio features - 75%." TBD. "15. The new SW UI elements will have user selectable "skins" - 100%." Have not seen it mentioned yet, but I really can't possibly believe that it won't. "16. The New SW will support the 1500, 3000, and 5000 to the extent of their respective HW capabilities - 90%." Miss. And this one REALLY hurts. And it seems like a MAJOR missed opportunity to fulfill many of the things that were being asked for as part of DI while the 5K and its lower price point follow-on models were still front and center. "17. The new SW will not support the SDR-1000 (would need to be done to prevent other non Flex HW designs from taking advantage of the new game changing SW capabilities) - 75%." Hit. Mostly by extension of 16. "18. The new SW will not be open source - 90%." Hit. Actually saw this one coming for quite some time now. "So that's my speculative list for what I can think of for now... Will the person who "guesses" what it actually is the closest win one of the new radio HW boxes for being the most right???? :)." Well???? ;) Duane N9DG _______________________________________________ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kc.flexradio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flexradio.com/
