WorldWide Drilling Resource

15 WorldWide Drilling Resource ® SEPTEMBER 2013 Those Who Fail to Learn from History are Doomed to Repeat it by Britt Storkson Owner, P2FlowLLC The above title is a quote credited to Winston Churchill. While it is true in politics, it is also true in product devel- opment and other areas. Thomas Edison once said, “I haven’t failed...I’ve just dis- covered 10,000 ways that don’t work.” The point is, one must learn from the past to improve the future. If some- thing doesn’t work, then go away from it and concentrate on something that shows promise. Stay with it until it proves unworkable or something else appears to be the better choice. Even computers can learn from the past and use the information to guide future decisions. Car computers are one example. Computers on newer cars can “learn” driving patterns and adjust the car’s performance to match. Does the driver often accelerate quickly from a stop? Then the computer can adjust the engine management software to make the car accelerate quickly. The down- side is increased fuel consumption, but it’s a choice made by the driver who is buying the fuel. This computer “learning” is accom- plished, in large part, with memory. One can “store” information in computer mem- ory so it “remembers” whatever you want it to. It’s actually very simple, but very powerful. The basis of all memory is the “bit”. It’s either a 1 or a 0. It’s kind of like a post office box where you “store” mail. Also like the post office box, the bits are numbered so you can find them. Then bits are organized, in most cases, into “bytes”. A “byte” is 8 bits in a row. The bits are numbered from right to left with the right-most bit being bit 0 and the left-most bit being bit 7. It’s just like we write numbers. We start at zero then go to 9. Then, for the 10s column, we move one space to the left and write a 1 and then the numbers 0-9. Then for hundreds we move one more space to the left and continue. Like the bits, the bytes are num- bered, again so we can find it. Where the byte is, gives it meaning. In other words, where the byte is tel ls you what it is or what information the byte contains. I’m 58 years old, so if I choose to store my age (58) in byte 100, then I know byte #100 contains my age at this time. There are also different types of memo r y. St a t i c RAM ( R a n d om Access Memory) is cheap and fast and can be changed o v e r a n d o v e r again thousands of t imes a second without degrada- tion, but it’s also volat i le. Volat i le means when the power goes off, what you had stored in that memory disap- pears. The 1s and 0s don’t just go away, it’s just when the power goes back on you cannot count on what you put there still being there. For times when you need memory that doesn’t go away when the power goes off, there’s nonvolatile memory. Like most everything, nonvolatile memory has been improved so it’s almost as good as Static RAM and the data doesn’t go away when the power goes off. However, it is more expensive and slower, so non- volatile memory is almost always used to store only data which must be re- tained after the power goes off. For the water pump controls we build, we store the pressure level set- tings (among other things) in nonvolatile memory. You don’t want to set your pump to turn on at 40 psi and discover, after the power has turned off and back on again, the turn-on pressure is 80 psi... or anything you didn’t put there for that matter. So this is why we use nonvolatile memory for the application. There are also different “grades” of nonvolatile memory, like most everything else. In almost every case, you get what you pay for. Nonvolatile memory is rated for “endurance” which means how many times you can change it without it “wear- ing out” and becoming unreliable. It is also rated for “data retention” which means how long it will correctly retain what you put in there, especially during temperature extremes. We use the best available nonvolatile memory with an endurance of 14 trillion change cycles...far more than the expect- ed life of the device it is installed in. It’s also rated for -40ºF (-40ºC) to 257ºF (+125ºC). If it gets that hot or that cold, most likely other things on the control unit will break down long before the mem- ory does. And it’s important because the correct information is important. Computer memory is your “history” and this history can be very helpful. Like I quoted at the beginning of this article, those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. 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