Re: RC Transmission Lines (Wafer-Scale)

Joel Koltner wrote:

"Robert Baer" <robertbaer@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:13ho8e9efcfo4c7@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Forgive me for a rather nasty question.
What is this phoney push for more junk on a piece of silicon to support what used to be relatively simple applications?


It's not a phoney push; there are plenty of applications where there will simple never be enough CPU horsepower available to solve them... at least not using technology that resembles anything like what we have today.

Ever for "simple" problems such as PCs running word processors, web browsers, etc., CPU horsepower helps a great deal: The average person today can walk up to pretty much any modern PC and get it to do "useful" things, whereas 20 years ago even if you were a skilled, e.g., IBM PC user you couldn't just walk to an Apple II or Commodore 64 and do "useful" things without a fair amount of instruction.


In a personal computer, one does not need 2^10 core CPUs, or even dual core; any CPU speed over 1Ghz is wasted, and for 99+% uses Win98Se is more than good enough.


That may be for you, but not everyone feels the same. 20 years ago I'm sure I could have found someone saying that any CPU speed over 10MHz was wasted, no needed more than 640KB (hmm... there's an infamous quote!), and for 99+% uses DOS worked fine.


On a cell phone guess what - its purpose is to send and receive calls, period.


The signal processing in a modern cell phone is quite impressive -- hundreds of MIPS go into it.

---Joel


A long time ago, the PC/XT came out and not too long afterwards, there were database programs, spread*** programs, and word processor programs.
I know that at least one of those spread*** programs was used by an accountant to set up and run a company with 4 or five seperate divisions.
He started not knowing anything about computers and with no seperate help, in two months had a complete system, with reports, running flawlessly.
Word processing?
One WP simulated the Wang that was an "industry standard", so a user needed no re-training moving between the two systems.
Others were also built on previous WP practices.
So, in many cases, a "fair amount of instruction" was not needed.
.

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