In preparation for the second assigned essay, we have worked
with evaluation and review in terms of establishing a specific category, defining
criteria, and associating the positive or negative relationship between
category and criteria. We have practiced
through in class exercises, evaluating the pilot episode of Lost as well as one
another’s blogs. We have also read
several professional level reviews of The Walking Dead and Nirvana’s album Nevermind.
There were some important points I took away from both of these evaluations. For one,
audience consideration in review is tremendously important. The audience may need to be met more than halfway. In the case of the Walking Dead review, without
ever seeing the show, I was still able to follow the review reasonably
well. A good review may also require
informational components to bring the audience up to speed. Another aspect, more particular to the Nevermind "review," was the connection the author attempted to build with the reader. More than a quarter of the material was on a
personal note, highlighting some of the author’s history and his personal
connection to the music. This helped in
establishing a sort of credibility for the author, especially considering his
review was not solely of the album, but on how it fits into the larger picture
of changing industry, times, and tastes.
My review is to be a bit more technical in nature. I am aiming to evaluate the Kaveri
architecture used in a recent mid-range iteration of microprocessors by Advanced
Micro Devices (AMD). I have chosen this
for my evaluation as it is closely tied to my discipline, my personal interests,
and my potential dream to work with designing and fabricating microprocessor
technologies. I understand it is a
highly technical and interest-specific review, and I hope to use it to hone my
skills in simplifying the technical for a larger audience, which I see as an
incredibly important skill for a computer engineer. This being the case, I hope it will be
understood and accepted that my review may be a bit more consumer focused.
It is obvious that my review may need quite a bit of
informational content. After some
initial thought, I would say that my specific category could be considered a
budget workstation-enthusiast mid-range quad core desktop microprocessor. It is a mouthful, but quite specific, which I
suppose is the aim. As discussed in our
Lost evaluation, it is important that I focus on relevant criteria for the
specific category, not necessarily for this particular chip. The primary criteria at first consideration
would be performance benchmarks, power dissipation, and cost. Considering the diversity in this market, it
will be difficult to establish direct competitive cost and performance
relations. In order to adequately
ascertain competitiveness, I will need to research competing chips at similar
benchmarks and prices and compare at two different levels, which should be
interesting. I hope to include some
detailed analysis and comparison between Intel and AMD technologies in-depth,
but I partially feel that such detail may be less relevant for this
audience. There is a time and a place to
geek out, but this may not be it.