Re: a dozen cpu's on a chip

On Fri, 16 May 2008 09:12:12 +0100, Martin Brown
<|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 15 May 2008 09:08:00 +0100, Martin Brown
<|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:


And this is what we have.
Of course this is what we have. But what will we have 10 or 20 years
out?

In this particular case for desktop PCs we have reached a point where
the available hardware is more than adequate for most peoples needs.

Famous quotes from Bill Gates:

Nobody needs more than 640K

That was clearly false even when he said it, although at the time memory
came in small chunks and populating all 640k was *very* expensive.

Lets turn the question around for a moment. What is a home user going to
do on a PC that cannot be done on a system already capable of decoding
HDTV broadcasts and rendering a virtual world at TV frame rates?

Home entertainment systems and PCs will likely converge as digital media
become increasingly dominant.

The Internet isn't going anywhere

Did Bill Gates *actually* say this and in what context?
Reference please.

In most places where this exact statement occurs the meaning was "The
Internet is here to stay". I think he did said something silly about the
Internet in the pre WWW era but I don't think those are his words.

OTOH he did get $1 license fee off IBM for every IBM PC sold (IBM failed
to anticipate the size of the market) and the rest is history.

Famous quote from Ken Olsen:

Nobody needs a computer at home.

I don't think things will stay the same, but I don't think your idea of
a processor for every task is even remotely where things are headed.

So, speculate.

I already have and in this thread too but you were too busy cut &
pasting adverts for newly launched multi-core research chips to notice.

You are begining to take on the air of a netkook harping on how a CPU
per thread will solve all problems and bring sweetness and light to the
world.


It actually doesn't matter much to me. I just find it amusing, in a
lot of different situations, how status-quo most engineers are, how
unwilling they are to speculate or brainstorm, how wedded they tend to
be to how things are now, and how they are predisposed to slap down
ideas, rather than play with them.

Where I work, we brainstorm constantly, toss good and silly ideas in
all directions, argue them over hill and dale, and wind up with
products we can sell for 10 times cost, because nobody has tried it
before. It takes a peculiar kind of arrogance to do that, an
unwillingness to be intimidated by "authorities" who slap down ideas
on contact. SED is on average a pretty effective idea killer.

It's interesting that some of the best engineering has been done by
non-engineers and some of the best programming has been done by
non-programmers. Sort of like music.

John

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: a dozen cpus on a chip
    ... Home entertainment systems and PCs will likely converge as digital media become increasingly dominant. ... I think he did said something silly about the Internet in the pre WWW era but I don't think those are his words. ... OTOH he did get $1 license fee off IBM for every IBM PC sold and the rest is history. ... Nobody needs a computer at home. ...
    (sci.electronics.design)
  • Re: My Migrations
    ... they had a product IBM would do a me-too announcement just to get the ... customers to wait to see rather than buy the one that was available. ... entitled to use any _released_ version of Windows. ... The first edition of 'The Road Ahead' made no mention of the internet. ...
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  • Re: New computer time
    ... Internet connections and thus I can't add new technology such as a ... blu-ray DVD reader/writer or access new network programs. ... -- too bad IBM didn't, ... to the Internet has a life to infection of about 4 minutes. ...
    (soc.retirement)
  • Re: New computer time
    ... Internet connections and thus I can't add new technology such as a ... blu-ray DVD reader/writer or access new network programs. ... -- too bad IBM didn't, ... to the Internet has a life to infection of about 4 minutes. ...
    (soc.retirement)