In his presentation at Ecomm 2008, Adrian Cockcroft of Netflix describes his 'millicomputer' concept. A millicomputer is any device that uses less than a watt of power, or to put it another way, a computer that fits in your pocket, but won't burn your leg! As Adrian reveals, today's millicomputers are already impressively powerful. But as millicomputers look set to eclipse even notebook computers in the next few years, their capabilities will become even more impressive.
He looks at what makes today's millicomputers, including the iPhone, so impressive as well as some of the surprising capabilities that lie within your Zune player. The consumer space for mobile computing can only get hotter, as the iPhone competes with Android in the OS market, and Intel and Arm battle it out for supremacy in the production of mobile hardware.
Looking further into the future, Adrian offers a glimpse of some of the amazing possibilities that await us, as mobile computing becomes ever more powerful. Web servers that fit into your pocket, real-time 3d sound projection and more will revolutionize the way we work and play. Adrian also talks about how the open-source prototyping activities of the Home Brew Mobile Club are helping today to make these things a reality by pushing at the boundaries of what is possible with conventional mobile technology.
Adrian Cockcroft is Director of Web Engineering at Netflix, where he manages a team that researches and implements personalization algorithms. He also publishes iPhone apps and is researching into highly efficient compute platforms by defining a new ultra-low-power concept called Millicomputing.
Prior to Neflix, Adrian was a founding member of eBay Research Labs in 2005. Where he directed research into projects related to Skype and mobile phone applications amongst other things. Before Ebay, he worked with Sun Microsystems Inc. for 16 years, where he authored two editions of the definitive textbook "Sun Performance and Tuning: Java and the Internet" in 1995 and 1998, and co-authored Sun Blueprint books on "Resource Management" and "Capacity Planning for Internet Services". He ended up as Chief Architect for Sun's High Performance Technical Computing group.
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