INSIDE THE MOTHERSHIP: TOUR OF MICROSOFT REDMOND CAMPUS PART 2

In the first part of our Microsoft‘s Redmond campus tour, we kicked things off from Microsoft Store in Bellevue and then progressed to the actual campus ground itself starting with Microsoft Visitor Centre as well as the campus own public transportation network. From there, we checked out some of the current projects that researchers and engineers at Microsoft Research Lab are working on.

So now, it is time for Part 2 of the tour. Let’s begin this with this question: where do Microsofties in Redmond campus go to eat?

Well, they could choose to go outside of the campus but then again, there are actually plenty of places to eat within the campus itself with variety of cooking style to choose from. One such cafeteria that we visited is called Café 34 which is located in Building 34 of the campus that not only feature variety of food but also a hydroponic installment that produces fresh microgreens for the café and part of the company’s sustainability effort.

Next, we head on to the nearby Microsoft Executive Briefing Center which is where the company hosts highly focused briefings with their invited guests and customers. Within the center is a section called Microsoft Envisioning Center which houses proof of concepts and prototypes that showcases Microsoft’s vision of the future.

The Envisioning Center itself contains several spaces that represents several scenarios in workspace and home. For example, there is a space dubbed as Action Center that is designed to drive collaborations and features a really large wall-sized touch display. There is also the highly impressive smart kitchen concept that mixed interactivity and contents together with object recognition capability in order to assist users.

Being proof of concepts, all the products and services shown in the company’s Envisioning Center have no exact roadmap in terms of engineering or availability for end users but considering the level of technology that we already have at the moment, majority of them are not far-fetched at all. The showcase spaces do change from time to time though as prototypes come in and go.

As a huge corporate organization, it is not surprising to see that Microsoft maintain a number of art pieces. In fact, Microsoft Art Collection is one of the largest corporate art collections in the world with around 4,728 pieces which include a section of Berlin Wall (yes, the real wall) that was a gift from Daimler-Benz AG to Bill Gates in 1996.

While we were walking and commuting from one building to another, we can’t help but to notice the beautiful sceneries all over Microsoft Redmond campus thanks to the abundance of trees within the area. The arrival of autumn further highlight the lushness of the campus which also has its own jogging/biking trails and numerous playfields.

So, here it is: Building 1 which is one of the six original building that Microsoft occupied when the company moved into its Redmond campus in 1986. As you can see from throughout our tour, the campus has significantly grown since then. Just don’t go looking for Building 7. 

While we have our own theories, none of the Microsoft staff that accompanied us knew why this rather lonely chair is here, at the lake in the middle of the campus original buildings. Like, seriously.

This particular part of the campus is called The Commons which is considered to be some sort of a shopping mall specially developed for Microsoft staff at the campus. There are plenty of things that Microsoft staff can get done here as the area houses post office, credit union, bicycle shop, telco providers and hair salon (yup).  Of course, there are quite a number of restaurants in The Commons which include a bar as well.

This life-size elephant statue was used during Kinect for Xbox 360 World Premiere event in 2010 which involved a massive show performed by the world renowned Cirque du Soleil.

Located in the same building as per Microsoft Visitor Center is the Company Store which is also opened for public with the exception of a small section within the store that is specifically reserved for Microsoft staff. The store features tons of merchandises bearing Microsoft’s branding as well as its products. We spotted the legendary Ninja Cat Unicorn t-shirt in the store as well but only Microsoft staff is allowed to purchase it. Too bad then.

So, that’s it for the second installment of our Microsoft Redmond campus tour. Stay tuned for part 3 next week where we’ll be meeting some of the folks that are working in the campus (including a Malaysian) together with a tour of Microsoft Garage and Microsoft Cybercrime Center.

INSIDE THE MOTHERSHIP: A TOUR OF MICROSOFT REDMOND CAMPUS PART 1

As a global force in computer and software technology for both consumer and enterprise,Microsoft has plenty of establishments throughout the world. However, Redmond is where Microsoft considers as its hometown since the Pacific Northwest city is the location of the company’s corporate headquarters. We recently visited the massive campus and had a glimpse of what it feels like to be among the Microsofties right at the heart of Microsoft.

Interestingly, our tour didn’t begin at the Redmond campus itself. Instead, it started at theMicrosoft Store that is located in a mall at a nearby city called Bellevue which itself holds a special place in Microsoft’s history as the company was based in Bellevue after it was relocated from Albuquerque in 1979 and before Microsoft permanently moved to its Redmond campus in 1986.

Surprisingly, the outlet in Bellevue was not the first Microsoft Store around as that honor belongs to the outlet in Scottsdale, Arizona. Instead, it was the seventh outlet in the line and if you wondering, no, there is no Microsoft Store in Redmond campus. However, there is a different kind of retail outlet called the Company Store (more on that later).

While we have previously explained the differences between Microsoft Authorized Reseller Store in Malaysia and Microsoft Store in United States, those differences were very apparent and felt amplified once we stepped into the outlet itself.

The first stop of our actual Redmond campus tour is Microsoft Visitor Center which is one of the very few areas within the campus that are openly accessible to members of the public. It acts as a “museum” that briefly explains the history of Microsoft and showcases a selection of products as well as technologies that the company produced.

For those who are well-versed in computing history and technology, we feel that there is nothing new to learn at the Visitor Centre for them which might be even too limited for such crowd but nevertheless, it might be able to help generate interest in computing and information technology for the youngsters.

Microsoft’s Redmond campus is so massive that the company decided to implement its own transportation network called Microsoft Connector. The network not only allows Microsoft staff to travel from one building to another within the campus but it also helps them commute to the campus from their home and vice versa.

Located in Building 99, Microsoft Research Lab was first opened in 1991 and soon expanded to 10 other locations throughout the world including including Microsoft Research Asia lab that we visited earlier this year in Beijing, China. In total, there are more than 1,000 researchers and engineers working on various subjects including machine learning, natural user interface, hardware and devices, quantum computing and many more.

In general, the work done by Microsoft Research can be categorized into four: Disruptive, Blue Sky, Mission-Focused and Sustaining. It might not be obvious to end users but plenty of the work done by Microsoft Research did actually end up in consumer products.

One example is in the area of machine learning which powers plenty of Microsoft products out there that are required to process huge amount of data continuously. Such products include Bing Search which itself a big machine learning system as well as Cortana and Microsoft Band wearables.

We were told that even the matchmaking system in Halo games for Xbox consoles also utilizes machine learning in order to players according to their playing patterns and skills. During our tour, Microsoft Research has also showcased several projects that are currently in progress at the division.

There are still more to come from our tour of Microsoft’s Redmond campus. So, stay tuned for part 2 of the tour coming your way next week!

Apple gives a foundry lesson

People in the market for an iPhone 6s or 6s Plus, may have heard that there’s two different chips (Apple’s A9 SoC) powering the phones – one manufactured by Samsung and the other by TSMC. While the chip from both foundries are supposed to perform identically, the manufacturing processes used by TSMC and Samsung are not the same.

Once the secret of the Apple dual sourcing was out, gadget Web sites began testing the phones to compare the two version of the A9 processor. The result showed that the two versions do not appear to operate exactly the same. This could have a legitimate impact on which phone consumers chose, depending on how they use their phones. This situation has led to some consumer concerns that may have been inflated by some unrealistic testing.

One real difference is the physical size of the SoC - the Samsung die is 8% smaller than the TSMC chip. The size difference could be due to some small difference in the transistor size. Both companies have new 3D transistor processes - TSMC advertise its process as 16 nm FinFET, while Samsung calls its process 14 nm FinFET, implying the Samsung transistor should be smaller than the TSMC transistor. But the process names are no longer directly connected to process feature sizes and are now more marketing designations.

The difference in die size might also be explained by the different design libraries used to build the two chips. Even though the chips are functionally identical, the A9 design team had to work with each foundry’s unique design libraries. For example, the SRAM cell used for caches can differ in transistor count and area depending on the design of the standard library. But this difference in die size should not impact a consumer's experience in any way.

Testing from a number of sites have shown that there’s another difference – the TSMC parts (at least those few tested so far)  have shown to have longer battery lives than the Samsung version. The actual extent of the difference is a matter of some controversy. Some tests, like GeekBench and AnTuTu, have shown a significant difference in battery life between the two chips.

Apple felt compelled to comment. The company said the differences should be only 2 to 3% in real world conditions. Apple’s response gets to the core of the problem: Were the tests real world enough? The tests did show that under heavy CPU-focused processing, the battery did drain faster. But in real world conditions, a normal user would use the CPU periodically, not constantly. That said there does seem to be some significant differences between the two chips and the question is why the difference.

There are two primary reasons why the TSMC chip could get better battery life is lower leakage current or a slightly lower supply voltage than the Samsung part. In general, higher leakage current would mean shorter battery life even during standby operations where as the effects of higher operating voltage would most likely show up under heavy workloads.

Leakage current is the result of transistors that don't completely turn off in the logical off state, allowing a small amount of current, “leakage,” to pass through. This leakage current is a slow, subtle drain on the battery even while the processor is idling.

In this case, the primary power difference is most likely the operating voltage of each part. In smartphones there is a chip called the power management IC (PMIC) that controls the voltages to the processor that vary under different operating conditions. The PMIC is used to control the fine-grained details of the power management that help stretch battery life by lowering the power of the processor and slowing the clock speeds when workloads are light. In order to hit the same performance and clock speeds as the TSMC part, it is possible that the Samsung parts operated a slightly higher voltage, drawing more power from the battery.

The test that showed the most difference in battery life, suggests the Samsung part is running at a slightly higher supply voltage to meet the Apple’s clock speed requirements. The higher operating voltage could be a result of many different process variables, but the result is higher power consumption under load. For this to be a true judge of the variation in a Samsung vs. TSMC process, it requires a larger statistical sampling than just two chips. Even within one foundry, there can be a significant variation. So the limited tests performed by a few publications cannot be considered the definitive word on the situation.

While the TSMC chip saves some power, the smaller Samsung die size could save Apple some money. Assuming both foundries have similar yields (the percentage of chips that test good over the raw die produced), the smaller die area means that more die can fit onto the same wafer. With additional units yielding from one wafer, the fixed costs for each good die will be lower. The difference in die area is only 8% but this leads to just over 9% more gross die per wafer.

When factoring the effects of early manufacturing yields, this actually translates into about 11% more good die per wafer. The higher good die yield per wafer translates into lower costs per die. The actual cost depends on the cost per good die of packaging and test, but even an 8% die cost savings is significant over tens of millions of units.

In addition, more good die per wafer means Samsung is able to deliver more parts if wafer production is normalized between it and TSMC. With the cost and production volume advantages, Apple may have overlooked a little higher power consumption in favor of lower pricing from Samsung.

For consumers, differences between the chips will be hard to discern. Extreme tests have exaggerated subtle chip differences, but few products get as over-analyzed as those from Apple.

PURRADISE CAT CAFE @ TAMAN TUN DR ISMAIL, KL

Pets reduce stress and depression and brings joy to their owners hearts. As a owner of two dogs and a cat, I know that for a fact. For the people who love animals but can’t have a pet at home, you can always drop by at the handful number (and growing) of pet cafes in KL such as Purradise Cat Cafe to hang out and play with cats, dogs and other furry animals.

Purradise Cat Cafe at Taman Tun Dr. Ismail‘s resident cats are either rescued or taken from the streets, fosterers and shelters. During our visit, we met and played with more than a dozen of cats, each with their own wonderful personality.

At Purradise Cat Cafe, there are only a couple of house rules to observe and they are fair and reasonable enough. The most important rule of all is that you are not supposed to bring any foreign cat to the cafe because it will upset the harmony of the ‘house’.

Secondly, each guest is required to pay RM15 for the first hour and RM3 for any subsequent 15 minutes spent at the cafe. The fee is worth it because it also comes with a free juice or smoothie of your choice.
If you want to grab a bite there are also a couple of sandwiches too at RM15 each. I think you get the idea, buy a sandwich or drink and you get to spend time at the cafe with the cats.

Here are the smoothies we got. To be honest we couldn’t care less for it since we were here for the cats. But if you are wondering, it was not bad – just a simple and fresh smoothie made with real fruits. As long as it’s not the kind that’s poured out of a carton, it’s good enough for us. For first timers, you will also receive a loyalty card that rewards you with a freebie for every three visits.

The owners are friendly people and they trust you enough to leave you alone with the cats. But of course, a few security cameras are always watching so as long as you don’t try anything funny, you’d do just fine.
From what we were told, the cats are fed with raw chicken and various supplements such as Taurine to ensure they are always fluffy and healthy. It is obvious that the owners take good care of the cats so they are in really good hands. OK lets see the cats!

Brie

This was the newcomer (not named yet when we went) in the cafe and the other cats are still getting used to his presence. However, he’s the friendliest one and will walk up and cuddle with you.

Miki

Patches

Mocha

Houdini

Hiro

Foxy

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Fluffy – obviously loves to be caressed.

Snowy – also friendly and playful.

Yuki – one of the two white cats around, more active than the rest.

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What better way to kill an hour or two by playing with these cute furballs? Time flies when you’re here and I am sure you will leave happier and more relaxed than when you walked in. As the saying goes, You cannot look at a sleeping cat and feel tense.

The easiest way to look for Purradise Cat Cafe is to look for 99 Speedmart, as the entrance is just right to the mini mart – you can’t miss it!

Purradise Cat Cafe (food menu)
No. 24A (First Floor), Jalan Tun Mohd Fuad 2
Taman Tun Dr. Ismail, 60000 KL
Tel: 03-2389 0976
Business hours: Tue – Fri (2pm – 10pm), Sat & Sun (11am – 11pm), Closed on Mondays