Making the Photo: Generic Edition - Part I

So I've been doing a few leaks about this blog post on my community lately and I want to introduce to you my newest series. It's a series I call "Making the Photo". The series will run on this blog and this will show readers how to take and edit amazing photos using their cell phones. I'm starting with my daily driver, the Droid Bionic, which is known for it's average camera quality. I will first start by making all of my readers familiar with the tools I will use. 

The Camera

So people who use android know that all software camera's are not born equal. This is a generic blog post, and I used a camera that people can use on all phones. Android Authority has a download for your phone. It will get you the exact same camera that I'm using and the photo editor I use to make the photos look better.

The Gallery

The Gallery is a connected the camera app download from android authority. Basically when you swipe the phone's camera over to the right you'll begin to go through all of your photos as if it's a film strip. Below is a video that is that perfectly explains all of the features I will use, so it would be perfect if you looked at that video first. I will attempt to make a video of my own going into further details after this blog is completed.

The Device

The device I'm using is the Droid Bionic. The Droid Bionic is a Motorola Phone for Verizon. It was released in November 2011. This was my first major Android phone, and I've loved it. I learned a lot about computing using it. It's no SIII or S4 in terms of camera quality, but it works well for this tutorial.

This is the Bionic

Your Comfort zone

So I can say that one of the biggest things you need to do is get out of your comfort zone. When I say this, I mean that you need to do things that you normally wont. Don't worry though. The things I ask of you will not be too much.

Skip to 1:50

Getting Down to Business

Okay, now that I've stated all of my tools, we can now begin to explain how you can take an make an amazing photo.

Before we begin this, keep in mind that every single picture here was taken and post processed on the smartphone. There was no Photoshop, illustrator, LightRoom, GIMP, or any other desktop editor used. I will bring up the topic of Snapseed in the next article, "Supercharging Your Photo", but I will not mention that particular mobile photo editing software this time.

Hopefully you looked at the video to learn how to take photos on using the camera that was available on Android Authority, because you're going to take your first set of photos right now. Also, I plan to split this chapter between philosophies then skill. To take a good photo, you need to do both.

Getting started

Philosophies

I remember hearing a quote from some unknown teacher, "You don't have to be excellent to get started, but you have to start to be excellent". This means that to be great at anything you have to try at least in the beginning. I think that philosophy is great for all components of life, but this particularly applies to this photo article. So this philosophy leads to the first exercise of the article:

Exercise I - Stop and take a photo:

After you download the photo the photo app from Android Authority and install it, immediately take a photo where you're at. So you can be at work or a on lunch break reading this article. Take a photo of the table you're at. Or take a picture of candy, a building out of the window, the hallway either at home or your office. Just make sure you take a picture. It will get you off to a rough start.

Here's some photos I took a while ago of my personal area:

I know the pictures are bad, but you can't expect your pictures to be amazing from the start (though they could be). These pictures are representation of some random fun times. You'll probably take your pictures in some random way. Remember another step of the path to amazing photos is about changing your perspective. I took some other pictures another time and these are my results:

Exercise II - Take a photo, but change your perspective:

That's cool guy Luis and my roommate Ross(in the green shirt) at the NASA hackathon

So these photos still aren't amazing. They're not supposed to be, but they are better than my last set of photos. I basically changed my perspective to create a different photo. Changing perspectives is the main component to doing anything great, but changing perspectives is especially a key to taking a good photo. In fact, often times I feel like the philosophies and methods used for taking good photos are the methods you would use for doing amazing in many things.

Capturing the Moment

Being ready for random situations is crucial for good photography. You will be surprised at all the things you can do with in the moment situations. You can capture an animal doing something rare, see a random car go by or watch your child walk for the first time. Having a camera phone in your pocket makes that rather easy, but this also requires you to look around and pay attention to your surroundings. That is something many people don't do. Here are some photos that are in the moment. These photos weren't taken with any mind for skill, but I they turned out decently. 

Exercise III - Capture any moment you can: 

Take a photo of any situation you can. Make sure it's a scenic moment and/or moment you want to remember for a long time. This could take a day, or take a week. You will be doing this along with the rest of the exercises. This exercise can be done along side skill exercises: 

There's Zachariah (Zach)
He was also in my team

Civil Rights March Anniversary

Celebrating Brian's Birthday (Guy in birthday hat)

Coming from the birthday party

Best Looking Sky I have Ever Seen

So besides the last two, the pictures are only "decent". I wouldn't have taken any of those photos IF I had not payed any attention to current situation. Most of the great photos you'll remember are photos taken in the moment. The next part would deal a lot with the skill aspect and not the philosophies of taking great photos

Skill

Beside the philosophy of taking a great photo, you have to use a decent amount of skill for taking a photo. For the most part the skills you use are broken into separate parts: Focus, Lighting, Colors, and Composition. I hope to teach you about each of these separate parts. So let's jump into it.

Focus

Generally speaking, the path to a great photo is drawing the audience's focus to a certain point. We basically do this one of two ways. We mess with the depth of field, or we change the composition. This will be a short look at the changing the focal length to give a nice effect called depth of field, which is just a stream of blur where ever your camera is not focused. You don't have to remember these things. All you just have to do is tap on what you want to focus on, and your camera will do all the work for you. Below are some images I took playing with the depth of field:

I have no clue what kind of plant this is.

I love cake :-}

Glad to go ninja on some Jones Soda

The two photos above are actually starting to get to the point of good. Both of these photos used several elements, but the biggest elements is a change in perspective and change in focus. If you can do both of those, you can get a decent picture no matter what camera you have. So that leads to your next exercise.

Exercise IV - Changing Focus 

Use the camera app from Android Authority to change the focus of your picture. You do this by tapping what you want to focus on. It would leave out the rest blurred out.

Lighting

Light is what makes a photo a photo. Well I think that it is what makes a photo great. You can see all good photos use tricks with lights. So the I will tell you a few tricks that will help you make an amazing photo. 

Use Sunrise or Sunset lighting

I cannot stress that sunrise and sunset are both amazing times to take a photo. The plant photo above was taken during sunset as I was walking back from my local coffee shop. 

These are a few other photos I took during sunset hours:

Such a beautiful building

Nice shot of my sister

So as you can see, these photos are looking pretty good. The main magic between all three of them is the lighting. Not only is the lighting for sunset nice and warm, it's also relatively uni-directional. Meaning it will shine mostly one surface, then leave a shadow everywhere else. This type of lighting can be used to add a great natural emphasis to anything you want. 

Unidirectional Lighting

There's a such thing as unidirectional lighting. Basically it's when a light comes from one source and generates a massive shadow on anything it touches. This will draw attention to everything in the photo but for each different reasons. You'd first look at the brightest part of the main object of the photo, then the darkest side of the main object of the photo, lastly you'll look at the background. At least that's generally speaking. Check out a few photos I took using unidirectional lighting models. Just know that these models can happen naturally by jumping into the shade of anything and letting the light release from one direction:

This is of my mentee Jose at Imagine RIT. I personally think it's good for a festival

Taking a picture of a window shadow

So non of those photos were entirely unidirectional. They each had a dominating source of light. 

Color

I'm running low on energy. I'm going to release color and composition in part II, as they're entire beast of their own. I will probably have to write my next article on those two the exact same size as this one.  I'll catch you later in my next part of the series - Making the Photo: Generic Edition - Part II.

Getting the job: Google edition

If you're like me, you really want to work for Google. In an attempt to try figuring out what I would have to do to get the internship from the company Google I asked the engineering Googler Jake Hambly for some advice, and I decided to share much of the chat with the public. Below is a Hangout we've had on the social network Google Plus. There will be commentary and useful links by me to help break the conversation into smaller, easier to read segments. 

I started the conversation on the chat introducing myself and asking what it would take for me to get an internship with the company.

Getting the job

Google employees teaching each other

Me:

“Seeing you work at Google, I think it would be a good idea to ask you. How do I work there? I'm a web developer and I study psychology and user experience design to complete the web creation package. Right now I'm trying to build a social network from scratch. I think it will give me some experience. I want to mostly get an internship with them next summer.”

Jake:

“Sounds like a plan (everything you just wrote). I actually interview a lot of people myself, for the engineering positions. And I can say that besides having the technical skills on your resume and being able to demonstrate them...”

As a break from the conversation, I'd like to say Demonstration seemed to be one of the key parts of the getting employed by Google. Just like how a venture capitalist want to see if you can build a company in real life (not just on paper), Google wants to know if you can use your skills for the real world. A good set of projects to show off your skills usually shows everybody looking how good you are. Back to the conversation:

Me:

“I can hardly wait. I've wanted to work with Google for the last 3 years, It's good to know that I'm at least on the right path.”

He went on to explain what a “culture fit” really is.

Jake:

“Yeah I was at Microsoft for a year because my company got acquired by them and it was awful. Google is like the exact opposite of a dysfunctional corporate bureaucracy (this made me happy).

So they like people who are good at working independently and don't need someone to hold their hand and say exactly what to do. So you have a lot of freedom as far as work hours, relatively few meetings, but you gotta make sure you are getting your work done.

They set goals for each division from the top (called OKRs) but you have a lot of freedom and input into how you accomplish them. I'd recommend a book "Inside The Plex" by Steven Levy. He had a lot of inside access & tells a great story of the history and how it is like today.”

Before you even apply, you need to make sure you meet these requirement at the very least.

Me:

“That settles it, already thought it was, but now I know. Google is my kind of place.”

Jake:

“:-) Yeah I was fortunate to get a job myself. I always like to encourage people who recognize just how special it is.

So by make your own social network, what exactly do you mean? Like designing your own site? I'm curious what your plans are because I'm actually kind of terrible at website design and UX stuff. I'm better at writing the plumbing code inside the phone. I'm fascinated by how LinkedIn, G+, Twitter, FB etc. all have their own take on it, so I'm curious what yours might be.”

I felt no pain explaining my social network project. I was able to see what kind of response I would get.

Me:

“Right Now I'm building up the back end, but I'm still in between a few ideas for what the site will actually accomplish. So my main idea is to get a bunch of university students from around the country to find others in others for help in making a startup.

It would be like linkedIn but for people (mostly students) that don't have a complicated hiring structure just want to accomplish a project, and are willing to find people to work with them on projects for free.”

Getting the interview (and doing well)

I went ahead and asked how I would first get the interview. Because we all know that getting the interview is the first step to getting your dream job.

Me:

“So how would I be able to get an interview with the company?”

Jake:

“As for interviewing, basically it sounds like you're on the right track to have some interesting projects to put on your resume (same demonstration). It doesn't matter if they make any money or not. :-)

And then after you submit your resume, generally you'll be contacted by a recruiter who will schedule you for a 45 minute phone interview with someone at Google with similar areas of expertise to what you put down as skills (UX, psychology, site design, etc)”

Me:

What would the interview be like for programmers?

Jake:

“Two good examples would be the type of questions they ask at the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (I think you can find examples from previous years) and the questions in the TopCoder Arena (which has thousands of practice rooms containing each problem set used in all the previous rated competitions).

Though we don't ask questions like how many marbles could fit in an airplane or what you'd do if you were shrunk to the size of a nickel and put at the bottom of a blender or the other wacky brainteasers that people think are asked at Google interviews. maybe they did 10 years ago, but now it tends to be more directly relevant engineering-related questions.

If you find a stack overflow question or something like that where someone says they were asked a particular question at a Google interview and is soliciting answers on how to do it, that question will most likely be banned from the internal database of questions that people submit for other interviewers to look at.”

For any interview you should properly prepare so worry not. Here and here are links on the best tips for a phone interview. So with further conversation, Jake gave some extra advice that I think is important for almost anything. I have found the TopCoder to be the most diverse. It holds examinations for programmers, engineers, UI designer, design and Development.

Jake:

“Anyway, my only other advice would be to take your time and wait to put in an application for an internship until you're 110% confident you'll do great (or at least as good as you're gonna get) because Google will be around when you're ready, but if you apply too soon and don't get a position, that's not as good.”

Doing a good job

Much further down the conversation, the topic about doing a good job while on the job came up. It's an Important aspect of getting a job in general. I was talking about how I like the javascript programming language and he stated something to not be: “It's a good sign you're excited by the power of a good programming language. Just one piece of advice on that is nobody likes an insufferable functional language snob. (I'm sure there's some comical yet educational piece to this)”

I didn't know what this meant at first, but luckily he went on to explain by using a real life example:

Jake:

Don't be the guy on the left.

“There's one guy who worked at Google for less than a year who just ranted continuously on an internal eng mailing list about how awesome ML and Haskell and Scala were, and how stupid Google was for writing everything in boring old C++ and Java. Despite a ton of well-meaning advice from others, none of which he took, I guess he quit after a bad performance review (because apparently he didn't do any actual work the whole time)”

If you've been at any school, you've probably met somebody like the guy in the previous paragraph. Having been immersed in both the arts and technological world, and I can say that if you say that you hate Helvetian font --still no clue what's up with that-- and that a certain group of colors are perfect and shouldn't be broken out of in design, or if you're the type that states all things should be programmed in a “perfect” programming language and nothing else, then you're the type. If you are, recognize it, and kick the habit. As he said: “Another big part of Google's “culture fit” is not being a braggart or arrogant / condescending / etc. Yeah:-)”

Me:

“So what would make a good employee?”

Jake:

“What's interesting is how completely rare that case was. Normally everyone at Google is nice and friendly and laid back but also scarily smart and competent. So if you can act the part, you'll do just fine as an employee, even if you secretly think that all your coworkers are way smarter than you (which is a common feeling for Googlers). The environment is intentionally very much like your college experience now, most likely. Read "Inside the Plex" for a pretty good description. It hasn't changed since the book was written other than the # of employees is much bigger.”

It's good if this is you

Conclusion

So there you have it. Thanks to the Hangout with Jake Hambly, we were able to get an accurate understanding as for how we could get a position with Google. I created a checklist for getting a position with them.

How to get an internship/Job with Google:

• Prove your skills with projects
• Be a Independent and highly competent worker
• Make sure your happy, open and well rounded people who aren't condescending to fit Google's culture.
• Be well-prepared

What the cheaper Moto X would be like

Just yesterday the Moto X was release. I must say that it left many people feeling ruined. The device had a lot of people interested until they saw the price was almost equivalent to the S4 or HTC One. The exact same day, people from the Moto X said that the device would have a cheaper alternative. After doing some research I have figured out how the cheaper Moto X will work, look, and the specs it would include as well.

Starting with design

The cheaper Moto X will have a case almost the exact same as the current Moto X. This is because normally it's cheaper to continue producing large volumes of the same case instead of having to redesign the case and manufacture a small volume of a different case. This means the phone will have the same ergonomics as the Moto X, which is said to still feel good. This also means that the cheaper Moto X could gain the capacity to be customized just as the normal Moto X is. Because the normal Moto X is made of plastic, there should be no problems in the design continuity.

The inside matters too

Many of you hardcore users will probably wonder what the specs will include. The list I am going to include is all theory for now, but I picked a list of parts that's cheap and still powerful.

Screen - qHD AMOLED screen; Equivalent to 234.5ppi; Also NOT PenTile

Processor- Snapdragon 400 w/ Adreno 305 + Motorola's Special Cores

Ram - 1.5GB

Connectivity - 3G/4G World/multimode LTE on select processors/CDMA/GSM/Wifi

Camera - 5.2 RGBC ClearPixel Camera

Battery  - 1800-2000 mAh (Still allows for 24 hour battery Life) 

Here's my reasoning for the following:

Screen

qHD is the same ratio as the Moto X, meaning a 4.7" screen would fit nicely with the already existing case. The qHD ratio also has a smaller PPI rating, meaning a weaker GPU will still be perfectly smooth.

Processor

The processor Snapdragon 400 is perfect for good speed and price. The 400 has connectivity better than the S4 Plus while having a reduced price. The CPU is a krait 300 dual core, and the GPU is an Adreno 305. The graphics are likely 50% - %60 better than the Galaxy S3 with optimizations, and the the GPU also comes with the OpenGL 3.0LS support, which makes it slightly future proof. Since the QHD screen would have less pixels to push, the graphics would still move amazingly fast. Also, the processor as a whole draws slightly less power than the S4 Pro. With Motorola’s special chips included, the processor would be perfect for a cheaper Motorola phone.

RAM

The RAM size is a 1.5GB because that’s the lowest possible RAM for Jelly Bean 4.2.2 before sacrificing performance. It’s rumored that Android 5.0 ‘K Release’ is light on resources, which would make this device fly on 1.5GB of RAM.

Camera

I remember reading something on web suggesting Kodak’s ClearPixel Cameras require 5.2MP of size to function properly, which actually explains why the Moto X’s clearpixel is 10.5MP instead of 13MP. By cutting the Number of megapixels in half, the cheap Moto X would still have a decent low light camera that can record in both 720p and 1080p video. If the S400 processor is as good as I’d hoped, it would be able to record in 60fps allowing for slow motion recording as well.

Connectivity

Because this device needs to go everywhere, it would need connectivity that can go all around the world. The S400 has connectivity that can be used almost world wide, I just listed what type of connectivity the processor will have.

Battery

Because both the processor and screen are weaker, the device will drain less battery overall. With 1800mAh I suspect that the device will have about the same battery life as the normal Moto X.

Overall performance & Price

The cheaper Moto X will still be one powerful and smooth device. At a glance, most people will barely notice a difference between the normal Moto X and the cheaper one. I’m estimating it will be $0 to $50 on contract and around $250 while off contract. The specs are similar to the S3 mini, and that is $279 off contract, but with production bundled together, the production cost could be reduced by up to $40, which is how I came up with this price point. The battery size could still make the device purely $300, but I still think It would be around $250. The performance would place the device higher than the S3 in some areas.

A cheaper device for the emerging market

The Motorola CEO said that he wants motorola to tackle emerging markets. By doing so, they will have a long term standing in places that could amass a lot economical power within the next 5 - 10 years. I can conclude that they would make an even cheaper device for those countries. A cheaper device would end up having a 640x360 (same PPI as iPad Mini) display and a S200 (can be quad-core A7 ) processor. It might not have the same features as the original Moto X, but it will work well at the given resolution and processing demands. I think this device would end up costing between $50 - $100 and it would run about as well as an iPhone 4. I should mention that the S3 mini received a rating higher than any other flagship device. The cheaper Moto X will have some better specs and possibly get unprecedented results.

Google Needs to buy Nvidia (If they let them).

It's no secret, I'm a Nvidia fan, but disregarding that I say Google needs to buy Nvidia. Nvidia would give Google a strategic advantage in pretty much every part of their company. Here's a list of reasons why I think Google needs to buy Nvidia.

Google uses computers a lot

He's Using a Computer too

The obvious thing is that Google uses computers a lot. All of their employees have laptops, cell phones, some have desktops, and the company has servers that they use to handle request from billions of people each year. If Google is able to produce the computer GPUs for their employees, servers and mobile devices they would all together spend less money. 

Nvidia's servers easily outperform Google's

Incredibly powerful server tech

Just recently I read an article stating that Nvidia in conjunction with Stanford developed a neural network that surpassed Google's with merely 16 servers. Sure you may see that as a whatever thing, but keep in mind that Google used 1000 servers for their neural network. That's a big difference. Nvidia's methods are cheaper than Google's and more power efficient.  Nvidia's GPUs has up to 3000 cores within them. Basically each core can be used for parallel computing, therefore the server is able to add another 1000 processes into a server with ease. 

Google already is producing phones

The Moto X

Google is already producing phones with their consumer hardware company Motorola. They've recently been emphasizing on GPUs for their products, and Nvidia happens to be very good at it. Also, if Google creates phone processors custom tailored to their devices, they would have a greater deal of perfection within their devices.

Nvidia is filled with computer hardware geniuses

Looks fun to work there

Google is made of software geniuses, while Nvidia is filled with hardware geniuses. I can fairly say that Google has been pretty bad at creating low leveled software. Since Motorola became part of the company, Google has been able to speed up Android's kernel development by a lot. It shows off with the performance and battery life increases with Android 4.3. With Nvidia, they would be able to advance low level software further and faster compared to before. When you see things like DirectTouch coming from Nvidia, you really begin to see how far these Nvidia can go. Google needs to get a piece of the action.

Can quickly design chips for anything

If Google has an idea, they can easily get a chip designed between Motorola and Nvidia in no time, prototype a device with the chip they design, make quick modifications, and deploy products much faster than any of their competition (until you look at Samsung). 

Android 'could' be a Killer Laptop/Desktop OS

In the last two days I had a stroke of genius - okay, maybe not genius, but still good - and I have come to the conclusion that he Android operating system could actually turn out pretty well inside of a laptop. It could get to the point in which it competes with the likes of Mac OSX, Ubuntu and Windows, which hasn't happened yet with any other operating system. I'm not just saying it will because I love Android, which I do and I'm sometimes pretty bias, but I considered many different components from all sides of the "Computer Spectrum". Here are my list of reasons why the Android OS could be "the Killer Laptop/Desktop OS":

Software

It's Linux based

Android originally began as a major fork of the Linux kernel 2.6. For those of you on android that don't know what a kernel is, fear not. A kernel is the bridge between the physical hardware and applications. Windows uses the word "driver", which is why most people have not heard the term before. Below is a diagram of the structure of android. Never mind the green, blue and yellow sections, focus on the red. If you look, you'll see a number of drivers that are in the kernel to help the hardware connect to the overall operating system.

If you're like most people, you're probably asking "Where are you getting at?", so allow me to explain. Well, Linux is the fastest moving operating system in the world. According to the video here, Linux has on average 8000 developers developing the operating system collaboratively from all over the world, from multiple companies each year. This means the kernel is changed every few months instead of every few years like with Mac OSX and Windows. This also means there's less issues in the operating system, because usually people will fix a problem and send a patch to the creator and the people in his office for widespread change. With it's support, Linux has brought some features most mainstream OS's haven't implemented like 3D printing and compiler changes that would make the OS snappier and use less memory. 

While Android's kernel originally began as something drastically different due to the quest of keeping the OS small, Android is now going back to the mainline of the Linux kernel as it has proven to keep the performance up while making sure the resources used are low. The "K Release" , also rumored as Android Key Lime Pie, will likely introduce an almost fully merged Linux Kernel, which will create the opportunity for the OS to add a massive amount of features that you'd find from Ubuntu, Debian and Red Hat. This means you'd be able to add plenty of compilers (mostly like more a versatile GCC) on the android laptop/desktop OS. IDE's, and other special development tools  for programmers can be imported to the Android operating system. That would make the tech guys pretty happy. 

Android So Far...

So far, Android has been able to reach a deeper sleep than it ever has with the latest release, Jelly Bean 4.3. Before now, Android has had a problem reaching a deep sleep, which is why it ran hot people's pockets. It's also one of the main reasons manufacturers needed to place massive batteries into their phones compared to the iPhone where the battery is extremely small. The latest android introduced a few other modifications like security, and performance increases. 

Android 5.0

Android 5.0 is when Android reaches practical perfection. The operating system is supposed to be able to be used in many different configurations like in Google glass, watch, and even laptop like form. The entire theory that Android will soon come in laptop form came from analyst reports. This OS will have many internal modifications for speed and battery purposes just like 4.3 brought. 5.0 will be ever closer to a fully functional linux laptop OS in no time.

App And Developer Support

Android is known for it's wide selection of applications. As I'm writing this blog, there has been 806676 android apps added to the market. An Android Laptop will have at least 50,000 of those apps within the first year or two. With chrome for android, Android will have a unified experience between laptops, web browsers, and other mobile devices. 

Gaming

Nvidia's Shield

Facing the facts, Android has a robust game developer support. It could get to the point where it can compete with Windows. Seeing they are now working on solid multiplayer API, and Nvidia's Tegra graphics are getting to the same point as the PS3, I think Android laptops and Gaming systems can compete directly with Xbox and Sony's Console.

Floating Apps and Windows

One true advantage mainstream OSs like OSX and Windows have on Android is Window multitasking support. We've seen with Facebook Messenger that Android can have applications that sit on top of each other, and Samsung has proven that Android apps can be viewed side-by-side too. Android has the capacity for full window support as well. I think Google will implement full window support into Android 5.0 to allow the OS to compete with big league Desktop OSs.

Hardware

No matter what form of common hardware you use (ARM or x86), Linux and therefore Android will be able to run on it, the Motorola Razr i is a good example of how x86 architecture works with it. ARM is on 95% of android phones to date, therefore there's no need for further proof that it works with ARM.

Outside of the basic architecture, ARM has a wide array of designers and manufactures that could make the chip's architecture go viral. Here is a list of unique processors that could bring it's technology to Android.

Nvidia's Kepler GPU

Look at the tessellation. So cool 

Nvidia's Kepler GPU technology is truly a very efficient technology. Compared to most other GPU technologies, the ARM Kepler is said to outperform every mobile GPU technology by up to 5 times while using around 1/3 of the power. Now I've been looking at the special details for this, and I couldn't find anything extremely specific. I did, however, find a bit of info about Kepler graphics in general. 

Mobile graphics will make a major leap in the next year

How Kepler Works

Dynamic Parallelism vs Conventional

The main goal of Kepler chips is to reduce the work load of your CPU.  The common CPU/GPU model requires the GPU to send a response every time an action takes place. Sure it works, but it could be a lot more efficient by requiring the GPU to respond less while still getting the sane amount of work completed. To do this Nvidia brought a couple of parallel computing concepts into their Kepler GPU. The first is Dynamic Parallelism, the second Hyper-Q, the third GPUDirect. 

Perfect Graphic Control

Dynamic Parallelism allows one GPU core to send processes to other GPU cores without having to send a signal back to the CPU. Therefore the CPU is able to reduce the load taken while completing graphic intensive operations. The GPU is also able to do calculations where the based only on what moves much more efficiently.

Hyper-Q allows each CPU core to complete work on the entire GPU at the same time. That allows the GPU to work at full potential all the time and reduce the latency of the CPU. I particularly love this, as this means the processor can finally compute graphical information to the fullest more efficiently. 

GPUDirect enables the GPU to directly make transfers to other 3rd party devices. This means devices such as SSDs or NICs (Network Interface Controllers) can transfer information almost instantaneously, which is why Nvidia technologies can be used with cloud computing. This technology can also allow for other clustering/parallel technologies like insanely powerful mobile peer-2-peer technology or using SSDs to cache large sets graphic information instead of normal mobile disk. The download speeds can greatly be increased too, as downloads are directly connected with the NICs. You'll notice that nvidia's shield has powerful download speeds. Some is contributed to MIMO Wifi, some is also contributed to a slight integration with this technology. Hopefully Nvidia uses this to the full potential. 

Here's a picture of Ira
He's so Cooooool

Nvidia's technology can make the phone in the next 12 months up to 5x more powerful. While many people reading this blog are probably annoyed that I haven't talked much about other people like the creators of PowerVR GPUs, or Qualcomm's Adreno, but understand I've looked at them both and they didn't impress me enough to focus on. That's mostly because while they will provide powerful graphics, they won't be as efficient as Nvidia's Kepler technology. Qualcomm's Adreno technology won't be licensed out to other chip designers either, making them slightly less relevant in 2014 as the main players in the smartphone business now want to design their own chips. 

Motorola's X8 

The X8 Chip

Motorola's new X8 processor impressed some, didn't impress others, but it certainly impressed me. The new chip is meant to have the usual dedicated CPU and GPU within the chip, but they introduced a concept I personally didn't think would come about. They made a special core for each natural language and sensors!

I feel some of my readers probably don't care all that much about this feature, and call it bluff, but there's a reason it's the exact opposite. This setup is very similar to the way our brain works. Our brain has something called the Limbic System. While we have the frontal lobe which does allows us to use logic and reasoning skills, the parts in the Limbic System and other lobes control other important functions: memory, speech, emotional responses, cognition, body regulation, visual perception, color recognition, spacial orientation, touch and information processing. The mere fact that they now have specialized cores for specialized task means that they can grow ever closer to a human like robot. 

So, the CPU is like the frontal cortex and the GPU is like the Occipital lobe, which is responsible for visual perception and some processing . The Natural Language Chip would be a lot like the speech processing part of our brain, the auditory cortex, and the new sensor chip is much like the Thylamus, which is responsible for registering and transmitting senses within our own brain. 

You can probably see where the Motorola X8 is going now. It's heading to the point of having a chip/core for each dedicated task. I had no idea Linux had this type of capability within it's kernel, but now I see it does, I can't wait to see what this will bring about. 

Adapteva's Parallella Cores

It's coming!!!

Parallella uses the same concept of Nvidia's GPU parallel processing, only they increase the number of CPU cores instead of GPU. The CPU cores run in parallel in order to increase the speed of certain compilations. As of now, Linux barely supports parallelism within small processors. Usually parallel processing is only found within GPUs and within multi-million dollar super-computing systems. The video below shows the computing difference when parallel CPU processing is utilized. 

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Android will be a killer Laptop system because it will be able to run smoothly and implement the best parts of hardware and software well before other mainstream operating systems do, much like how normal Linux does. With all of the above Android would seriously be one Killer Laptop OS.