and if Bob is going to talk about
something a little bit different state
of the union and roadmap for mobile
wearables SBC's and IOT running
aetherium
hello let's see if this works this time
hey hey okay fantastic slides so hi i
i'm bob sim well i've most of my career
has actually been in the games industry
at EA sports i have been working on arm
linux cross builds of the c++ client for
the last year or so and then since
february i've been working for the
foundation as well on the c++ client and
various other things this is my desk in
vancouver got a Raspberry Pi here its
various other PI's a no droid a project
chip and in the background there I've
got a Commodore 64 and an Atari I'm not
trying to get a theory I'm thorough on
it would be great if we could but I
think they're a little bit low spec but
I have been looking at mobile devices
and wearables so what are resource
constrained devices there's lots of
different kind of constraints that you
might have I mean ultimately all
computing devices are constrained but
really it's talking about things which
are less capable than desktop machines
and there's lots of different dimensions
that might be happening in you know you
might be limited CPU you know most
desktops now 64-bit but 32 is going to
be around for a long long time lots of
them in these kind of devices are just
single core they may be pretty low
frequency as well limited memory limits
its storage limited bandwidth limited
power as well and also the OS itself may
be limited lots of such devices are
basically you know single app at a time
so some kind of examples of these
wearables you know be those smart rings
or watches or health tracking devices
mobile devices though they are very
prevalent now they are very constrained
compared to desktops even tablets same
thing games consoles people often don't
think of those as being constrained but
they they are and more generally just in
embedded devices lots of single board
computers like Raspberry Pi and really
IOT devices of all stripes is really
where this stuff gets interesting so I
mean why why would you care about having
aetherium you know on your SmartWatch or
any such device well really when you
look at mobile computing I mean mobile
computing now is mainstream computing
for lots of people in the world their
smart phone that they get is likely
their first computer and really if you
look at the specs on mobile devices they
are of comparable specifications to what
desktops were not so very long ago
you've got mobile and then after that
wearable taking it down a bit
edge computing is a term that you'll
hear more and more in the coming years
really long along the theme that if you
have billions and billions of devices
they're not going to run client-server
there's no way that you can have some
you know mega farm that they're all
talking to and waiting their
instructions devices need to become
autonomous to scale and also really
along Andreas's analogy boundaries
security is a dying
paradigm really you need individual
notes to be working on the assumption
that they are in a hostile place and
they need to be responsible for their
own security this is not new on my right
hand here I have a Java ring don't know
if anyone is aware of the Java ring 1998
at the Java developer conference in 1998
this was a giveaway and what it is is a
there is basically a chip in there
running Java with a battery in there and
the external part is actually a physical
contact and it was doing public key
encryption in 1998 and this is how it
was envisaged it would be used lots of
things that we're talking about now
smart locks the the the blue dot the way
that that works is you would you would
physically touch your ring onto on to
the blue button that would do signing
using the private key that was in this
device and really I mean barring the
fact that you haven't got NFC at that
point it's a lot of the sort of things
that we're looking at now coming right
up to the future this is the Samsung
gear s 3 SmartWatch just being announced
but not released yet on my other wrist I
have a an s2 which is pretty similar
spec to it but if you look at this you
know you've got a you've got a dual core
ARM chip 3/4 of a gig of memory 4 gig of
flash storage not only Bluetooth and
Wi-Fi but also LTE and GPS accelerates a
gyro heart rate monitor and so on
and and I mean the other thing that you
have on this device is actually you've
got a GPU with hardware accelerated to
3d graphics on your watch so this kind
of caliber of devices obviously you know
it's it's kind of top-end for that but
it's indicative of how even these
constrained devices are really moving up
in spec but it's expensive project chip
nine dollars and what you have there
again you know you've got a system on a
chip an arm device you've got a Mali GPU
you know nearly as good as speck but
it's nine dollars if you go down lower
you're not gonna run a theory on this
but espresso systems who are
shanghai-based this chip you can get it
for about for about $2 and it's it's
about the cheapest kind of Wi-Fi capable
device you can get you know again 32-bit
risc chip I mean very very low specs but
this kind of price point and this kind
of caliber of device is likely to sort
of creep up in specs to some of those
higher ones over the coming years so you
know that that kind of price point is
not inconceivable for running an
aetherium capable device in the near
future this is a quote that you you know
this is a figure that you see all the
time is so you know gonna be 50 billion
IOT devices by 2020
looks like the consensus on that has
come down to 30 billion which is you
know it's less but it's still gigantic
number of machines so you might be
thinking you know some of this stuff
that you're saying here Bob off I think
I've heard this before so this is Paul
Brody who was previously at IBM leading
project adept and
and here is Henning who I believe is
here later in the week and project depth
was unveiled in January 20 2015 using
Tallahassee
BitTorrent and etherium and there are
follow-on projects which are still going
here which is really looking to to blend
blockchain and IOT and these efforts are
still really ongoing though the projects
are changing this is still what we're
all aiming for and this is a slide from
one of the the project to DEP ones which
is basically showing this this really
long-term progression through from the
50s you know really small number of
mainframes through personal computers
through mobile and on and on and on and
we are going to have a gigantic number
of devices in the near future though who
knows what the actual figures are going
to be so I mean across that you've got a
sliding scale of options really for
aetherium you know the very easy thing
to do on a very constrained device right
now is basically not really to run
anything on it but have it talked to a
trusted server
you know just sign transactions and talk
to a trusted server I think that's kind
of the integration route that you can
see on a lot of of mobile devices but
like client is a big big step up to it
you know from that which is really you
know it's it's it's really then running
as a standalone node that is you know
not assuming trust and then up through
full node and archival but as we as
we've heard if they're my client really
really close now for myself you know the
question of why C++ for resource
constrained devices you know why why am
I even bothering doing this why am I
even looking at this rather than just
you know the Geth implementation and and
really the reason is that if you if you
look at the the gains that were getting
from Moore's Law they are slowing down
you know there's only so small you can
get and we're kind of getting towards
the end of the line on that Amdahl's law
is something which a lot of people are
not aware of but it's gonna become very
very important in the coming years and
what what Amdahl's law is is is saying
is that you know not everything that
there is can be parallelized you know to
an infinite degree programs do have you
know critical path pieces which are
serial by nature and depending on the
parallel proportion that you have
available
you are basically capped on how much
speed you can get by by adding more
cores and and it's and it's a fact
really that for the majority of
general-purpose programs that constant
it's probably really quite quite low you
know you see on on PCs there's very few
apps that can take advantage of you know
four eight sixteen cause you just end up
with multiple apps running in parallel
so I mean what that means is is raw
performance does ultimately matter you
know you see now also compiler settings
optimizing for power usage that where
you're running from batteries actually
the you know the power drain it does
matter also modern C++ doesn't suck any
more most C++ is not modern C++ but you
can write C++ apps that look fairly
similar to other ones but most
importantly is maximum portability is C
and C++ you know they are the language
which pretty much all OSS and systems
programming is done in so really when
you when you're looking at these very
constrained devices having the raw power
of of C++ does actually matter
so cross cpp aetherium is is what i've
been working on for the last year in a
bit and it's dhaka files and bash
scripts to cross build cpp aetherium to
to arm linux and you know we have the
first successful cross built binary is
in november of last year it's been
largely stalled since then and
especially since february when i joined
the foundation and then i've been just
working for the foundation on foundation
things not on my own project here but
very soon I will be starting on my
client implementation for C++ I did
receive a grant for that which I'm very
grateful and I hope to actually do some
work on that soon so number of devices
have had success for this already
Yolo phone running sailfish OS also a
bun two phone a goodly variety of single
board computers and I'm targeting
further SBC's and Tizen and Android and
iOS very low demand really for for x86
for Intel arm is where it's at
looking beyond my work peter has had go
aetherium cross builds working for a
goodly amount of time there on on arm
arm 64 and more recently on mips as well
interestingly
the light client work so Zolt
we'll be presenting on his progress on
light client as well and the stats here
are from John Garrett's on what he is
seeing of that le s branch running on a
Raspberry Pi 3 so so the binary 25 mag
the chain data only coming in at 50/50
mag only using 12 percent of CPU and the
high high watermark on the RAM of 162 so
I mean these figures are very much very
very doable on a lot of these devices
nine nine minutes therefore ahead of
sync the the smallest device that I'm
aware of that we've got etherium running
on so far as a Raspberry Pi a which is a
very very weedy device and that was full
clients as well that was prior to any of
this le s work so it's quite conceivable
that we can that we can have etherium
running on something even we do than or
asbury pi a and getting down to some
really really very minimal devices and
whisper you know so whisper development
has restarted quite recently that's also
something which is going to be very
applicable for these kind of devices and
also Raiden I haven't got on slides here
I'd kind of forgotten but Raiden is
gonna be very very applicable to these
kind of devices so you know what are the
ultimate constraints on on running
aetherium on on limited hardware so yeah
I mean the specs there on the Raspberry
Pi model a you know it's a single core
only 256 mega memory 700 megahertz that
device can run full client the problem
is that the you know the full sync on
that it can barely keep pace that no
longer a problem though if you're
running like client so I mean you know
what are the ultimate constraints well
the CPU is got to be able to
execute the the VM fast enough you know
this kind of collaborative device can do
that you've got to have enough memory
I'd imagine that's gonna stay around the
same even with like client even through
Casper as well and you need to have
enough storage for blocks though the
storage bottleneck there really goes
away quite a lot with with like client
when you're running a full node and
you're having to sync from from the
start the you know the performance can
really matter you know having an SSD
makes a huge difference
but that's only really relevant if
you're doing a load of work and the aim
is not to do a load of work anymore and
the network connections got to be good
enough so yeah we're gonna see aetherium
on a lot of devices and they are going
to be very very weak devices and they'll
be able to cope just fine there are
multiple threats of work going on to
reduce the resource needs so you know we
we can cope now and the demands are
gonna get a lot lower so it's only gonna
get better thank you so much Bob and
there we go yeah we'll be a delight with
blockchain