In this blog post, we will look at the reality and challenges of software competitiveness that South Korea must have in order to become a true IT powerhouse.
“iPod → iPhone → iPad IT Korea gets caught in the i-trap.“ ‘LGT, finally eliminated in the smartphone competition.’ ‘Korean mobile phones are struggling.’ ‘Secure smartphone software developers.’ ‘The future of ’Mobile Phone Korea’ is uncertain. Exports have declined for three months.” These are some of the headlines that you often see in newspapers these days. A long time ago, the iPhone, which was created by Apple, a computer company, and not a mobile phone company, was launched in Korea, causing a huge shock to the Korean society, which boasted itself as an IT powerhouse. If you search for “Korea’s No. 1 item” on the Internet, you will find 127 world-leading items, including memory semiconductors, TFT-LCDs, CDMA mobile phones, and network-based intelligent robots, but it is difficult to find software-related fields. This is the reality of South Korea, which calls itself an “IT powerhouse.”
The iPhone incident made many people realize that it is essential for South Korea to maintain and advance its current position by becoming more competitive in software technology. The importance of software technology in this regard can be cultivated through studies such as electrical engineering, and the computer field of electrical engineering in particular provides practical education that can contribute to the development of IT technology.
First, we will look at the curriculum in the computer field of the Department of Electrical Engineering and learn about the “free decoding” technique as an example of software performance optimization.
The Department of Electrical Engineering is broadly divided into the fields of electrical energy, communications, control, semiconductors, electronic physics, computers, and VLSI. Among these, the main subjects taught in the computer field include computer fundamentals, programming methodology, data structures and algorithms, operating systems, computer architecture, embedded system design, and compilers. In computer fundamentals and programming methodology, students learn basic languages such as C and C++, and these concepts are also used in various modern simulation tools. For this reason, even electrical engineering students who do not choose computer science often take this course to learn essential programming concepts.
In the “Data Structures and Algorithms” course, students learn about data structures such as stacks, trees, queues, lists, and hash tables, as well as various algorithms for problem solving. This course is a basic course for writing full-fledged programs, and students will study efficient problem-solving methods. In the operating system course, students learn the basic principles of how computers and smart devices run programs, memory management, and CPU resource distribution. Through this process, students will acquire the skills to make the program run more efficiently.
In the computer structure course, students will learn how computer hardware processes instructions, and will learn about pipeline and memory structures, and parallel processing programming for multi-core. As such, the computer courses in the Department of Electrical Engineering cover both hardware and software, and will help students develop the mindset and application skills to solve complex problems.
One application example in the computer field is program optimization. Recently, electronic touch functions have increasingly replaced mechanical buttons in electronic devices, but the initial response to the touch function was “rather inconvenient.” This was because it took time to process the touch signal, and the machine could not respond in real time. However, after Apple released the full touch MP3, the touch function was able to escape from the perception that it was an inconvenient technology. The main reason for the difference in performance despite using similar hardware was whether the software was optimized to handle the touch function. This highlighted the importance of program optimization, and technologies such as pre-decoding began to attract attention.
Let’s take the graduation project as an example to take a closer look at the concept of pre-decoding. The topic is “Improving the Just-In-Time Compiler to Improve Android Performance,” and the goal is to optimize Android’s image processing code to improve program performance. Android is an operating system for mobile phones and mobile devices that Google released as open source in November 2007, and it is the representative operating system for smartphones that many people use today.
On a computer, images are stored as data consisting of numerous bits. Images stored in formats such as JPEG, PNG, and GIF are transferred to memory before being used in a program, which is called decoding. Low-quality, small files can be decoded in real time, but decoding alone takes a considerable amount of time for high-definition HD-class files. Therefore, a pre-decoding method is required that performs decoding in advance at the program installation stage or in the standby state, stores it in memory, and immediately calls it when needed. Using pre-decoding has the effect of reducing the overall execution time of the program, which can greatly improve the performance of operating systems for multimedia devices such as DTV as well as Android.
In addition to pre-decoding, there are various methods for optimizing programs. For example, there are methods for efficiently utilizing multi-core processors and memory management techniques that minimize unnecessary data access. These optimization techniques directly contribute to improving execution speed, which in turn plays an important role in improving the quality of the user experience and maximizing the performance and efficiency of the device.
The driving force behind South Korea’s rise as an IT powerhouse over the past 20 years has been its semiconductor technology. However, as semiconductors approach their physical limits, they can no longer be the sole means of technological growth. Software is a field that can create high added value with just a creative idea and has infinite possibilities to overcome physical limitations. Accordingly, in order for Korea to overcome the current crisis and move towards a better future, it is necessary to pay attention to and intensively foster the software industry.
In modern society, where all electronic devices, including smart devices, are operated by software, software competitiveness will be an important factor that determines not only the quality of life of individuals but also the future competitiveness of the country.
