Everything old is new again
A really frightening amount of stuff is going on at 10stripe, and I wanted to share a little bit of information here.
Firstly, the Map of Semiconductor Fabs is in the shop for an update, with more fabs. That will be this Tuesday's update if all goes as intended.
In the spirit of the recent wireless technologies comparison, we have a few more visually-oriented updates coming up. More on that later.
But what really drove me to write this post was The Big Processor Guide, which as I've mentioned previously is going through a massive expansion. I also mentioned previously that there was a surprise in store related to that Guide; I'm afraid that will remain a surprise (but not for too much longer, I promise). I have a slightly smaller announcement to make first.
Currently, the Big Processor Guide exists as a series of flat HTML files (with a little PHP thrown in). But as it has grown, and continues to grow, it has become evident that this arrangement needs to change. To that end, we are currently working to transition the Guide to running from a database backend. This will help accomodate its burgeoning size better, and also help the Big Surprise work out better. But you might be more interested in what it will mean in the short term. One of the nice side-effects of a database back-end is that we will be able to provide new tools to help you drill down to just the things you are interested in, and more easily compare different chips. If you've ever used Newegg's Advanced Search and Power Search (try them here if you're not familiar), you'll have a good idea of what we intend to provide.
For the curious, the database system will be powered by the CakePHP framework. After looking at several possible frameworks (because developing everything from the ground up would have been far too much work), we settled on CakePHP because it is a surprisingly easy framework to get started with. In fact, what sealed the deal was an example of creating a simple bookmark manager with CakePHP scaffolding that took about a minute to follow. Nifty stuff.
I want to emphasize again that this is not the Big Surprise, just a small announcement to keep you up to speed on what we are working on.