Buffer, Buffer, Where is the Buffer?

By Lynne Greer Jolitz

October 4, 2004

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Last year, I attended a Silicon Valley emerging technology talk which used some of my earlier work in ballistic protocol processing to produce reliable wireless TV-quality streaming video—you know, so you can watch "Shrek" at Starbucks on the fly and it actually is smooth and enjoyable—not jittery and abrupt (if you're lucky). Anyone who's struggled with snagging a simple web page off the Internet knows how annoyingly seductive it is to get media on-demand, especially when you're sipping your coffee, life is good, and you really want to see the latest news. Then, just when it seems you'll get that story, some item just doesn't make it through, and it just keeps hammering and hammering. That's the annoying. But you've got most of it, and know it's almost all there waiting for you. That's the seductive.

Now, "emerging tech" in Silicon Valley isn't some ten years out academic concept—they're really talking more like two years out. These days it takes about nine months end-to-end to develop, build, test, and qualify an 802.11 wireless product. Most value adds (like, believe it or not, making it TV-quality) are supposed to require only three months of additional work (most of it is done in parallel—this is how we optimists plan products these days). Of course, everyone slips schedule, and specs get changed and markets take left turns, so add in a year. In other words, emerging tech is now a product in two years. No wonder the "R" in R&D doesn't seem to get on schedule anymore.

The talk was well received, and the questions very cogent. That alone impressed me—it is very difficult to get a handle on all the aspects of video transmission, coupled with Internet transmission issues, and then include wireless transmission issues. The bushel of standards, acronyms, and terms of art alone filled the room. It demonstrated that Silicon Valley is still the place to be for inventors and entrepreneurs.

The next day, though, an enthusiastic engineer who keeps everything in his head informed me proudly that he had cogitated on the matter and decided that reliable wireless video streaming was achievable with buffering alone—and since buffering is already done, there is no problem.

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