Moore's Law Discussion

[daniel_owen_uk]

Ok been having one of them contemplating mornings so bear with me.

At work our main user base use a terminal emulator to access our sales sytem, word, excel, access, internet and email. Of course we have some users with slightly higher spec needs but our main user base is quite simple.

Every 3 years or so we update the PCs to something quicker, this update was 2.6 celerons and 2.8 P4s for the higher spec (moi).

Now a 2.8 P4 will trounce word excel etc without breaking sweat really, photoshop and things like that can take some time (batch processes), but the majority of functions of our base users are completed as fast as they can keep up.

Now if the computers are faster than the user can keep up with, then surely the life of the PC is determined by the life of the hardware? I know that software development and support will come into play along with warranty, and we can discuss this, but basically, why replace if you don't need to.

Maybe there will be extra functionality added to the next os that will require an update, but eventually we will get to the state where the life of a PC is much longer than it is at the moment.

When we get to this stage how will that affect retailers and thus manufacturers and thus developers. Once the profits of these companies drops, will they be able to keep up with doubling speed every 18 months?

Discuss

P.S sorry about the long thread.

[G4Z]

Well, I think that as long as hardware keeps developing we will see software that uses it. For office use you have to bear in mind that databases get bigger, pipes get fatter ,files get bigger the amount of applications get bigger, you will allways need to re-fresh.

I reckon anyway.

[Pete]

errr just because word and excel are like they are now doesnt mean theyll be like that all the time,
1940s-typewriter
1960s-probably updated typewriter or something
1980s-slow computers and fax machines
2000s-1 ghz processors? and windows 98?
2004-what you have now
2050-3d interactive word processing, kinda like the one the women has on the dixons advert

so the companys will require faster and faster cpu upgrades, so the employees aer kept happy (who wants to have a really slow pc, compared with the one you might have at home or a mate might have, it would problaby make the employees depressed after a while and therefore take down profit) and also to make the company look bigger and better
think i may have lost the plot a little but thanks for listening

[Zak33]

With CPU's I thnik you are right (and without making this a tech based debate, the average work PC simply needs more RAM, not more processing power)#

BUT we have a problem. Hard Disk Drives

they move...a lot....they spin fast. And sadly therefore they fail. On the whole, by the time a 3year old PC dies cos the HDD is grinding to a halt and getting bad sectors pop up, not booting properly etc, you need a new PC. Not cos the rest is junk. But cos to buy a new HDD, and reinstall an OS which has probably been replaced by a new one anyway, is a false economy normally.

[[GSV]Trig]

He need more RAM due to sloppy program and bloatware..

Look at the minimum install for Win98
Look at the minimum install for WinXP..

[daniel_owen_uk]

With CPU's I thnik you are right (and without making this a tech based debate, the average work PC simply needs more RAM, not more processing power)#

BUT we have a problem. Hard Disk Drives

they move...a lot....they spin fast. And sadly therefore they fail. On the whole, by the time a 3year old PC dies cos the HDD is grinding to a halt and getting bad sectors pop up, not booting properly etc, you need a new PC. Not cos the rest is junk. But cos to buy a new HDD, and reinstall an OS which has probably been replaced by a new one anyway, is a false economy normally.

Funnily enough the discussion I was having elsewhere brought that up, personally I don't see a long life in motor driven rotational magnetic disks, solid state will eventually take over (imo).

I think that software will continue to increase, but over the past 2 decades hardware development has been quicker than software, I think that it will even out (hardware will slow down).

Personally in a simple office environment I think that the only thing that will require additional computer power will be if the interface changes dramatically.

[Swafe]

this could form a discussion thread on its own

but heres my rant - its late, im tired, so ill keep it short (ish)



moores law - whats that ? well its when some old man from intel? who decided that every 18 months a CPU speed should approximatly double.....so to my point?

are computer manufacturers holding back ? i mean, look at intel they say, and they claim CPU speed will reach its peak soon, only SO much performance can be got from silicon, well can it ? or are they giving us some BS?

you get super computers, that can do so many gigamotherterafloppydrives a second which are so much greater than standard desktop CPUs.....so there is faster tech out there, so why dont we all own a supercomputer?

i mean, look at intel and AMD, thruout how many years theyve been competing? god i cant even remember, one has the edge, then the other does, but relatvily the CPU speeds keep in check, they dont leave each other behind by more than 5% , are they holding back ?

surely faster processors could be released right now ? thats right, surely INTEL could sell me a 10Ghz CPU if they really wanted? well they could (i think) but they wouldnt, if they stick to moores law, they get away with ramping CPU speed by only so many mhz a time, when surely they could do it by Ghz ? there will be and end point eventually silicon could reach its limit - so why cant we all have the fastest CPU ever? i really think there holding back, just to keep a constant stream of cash coming to them

i mean an ever lasing lightbulb....it can be done, surely ? it never will be tho and sold commecially.....the lighting companies would be shooting themselves in the foot, they just rinse us for all the cash they can, same goes for hydrgon powered cars, why is there little research into it ? ill tell you why......tax on petrol

[RVF500]

Basically it's good business to build weaknesses into a manufacturers product. Cynical, but good business. The motor industry does it, for example. How many models of car do you know of that certain things always seem to go wrong? We could all be driving formula 1 cars if they fitted lights and indicators to them (input invited from zak here).

The same thinking goes into PC manufacture. Why give away your state of the art product when there is mileage in what you have on the shelf?

Now this is where I risk getting into hot water, not that that has ever stopped me. But I don't actually see a real problem with this when one takes a wider view. Ok, we'd all love a never ending lightbulb or a car that doesn't break down. We'd also love a 10 GHz CPU and a graphics card that give us true life graphics. But if we jump the queue what are the wider ramifications? Whole industries have sprung up to support and maintain all our breakable bits. From the motor mechanic to the spotty herbert behind the counter at PC World. Which creates employment, which creates wealth. Take these out of the equation by making everything perfect and we have a negative effect on the economy. Potentially a very significant one.

The advent of the computer has already had enormous impacts on staffing levels in large companies with large admin staffs, for example. However as we didn't get the supercomputer from day one the impact was spread over time and these changes were absorbed by the economy and people retrained and moved around. The computer has created huge industries in itself. I work in one of these industries and I'm sure many of you do too. I like breakable things. I get paid to fix them. Changes continue, and will continue, to impact the workplace but these are similarly paced.

So while we continue to be frustrated because tomorrows toys are already here, we just can't get them. The industries stay alive and and continue to spawn spinoff industries to cope with the fact that we can't cope. Which means we have jobs and can afford the toys that we can get our hands on.

Look on the bright side, we should have 6GHz CPUs in 18 months

[Kumagoro]

Surely if intel could they would up the freqs to stop AMD slowly chipping away at it.

If only they made them out of GaAs then we could have some nice speedy chips.

Lets hope they work out how to make diamond ingots in the near future

[Barakka]

i mean an ever lasing lightbulb....it can be done, surely ?

I once went on a tour of Thomas Eddison's summer house, where him and his pal Firestone did a lot of their inventing. While on the tour, they informed us that almost all of the light bulbs in the house and it's grounds were made and put in personally by Eddison. They've never blown or worn out, even with being switched on and off repeatably every day as part of the tours.

So could they make ever lasting lightbulbs - just about... but if they did everyone would buy one, and no longer need to buy them, so the factories would close, millions? of people worldwide would be unemployed. And the price of lightbulbs would rocket enormously as hardly any would be made so the cost of manufacture would be huge.

Same goes for cars, they have the technology to make cars with sealed engines that just need fluid drains/refills periodically. However, car dealerships make something like 30% of their money from aftersales/service - except Ford which apparently is more like 50%.

As for Moore's Law - yes Gordon Moore was a co-founder of Intel and stated that the number of transistors which can be fitted on a single silicone die will double every year. In reality it's been more like every 18 months during the past few years.

The problem with Moore's law is that he gave no thought to costs, the technology may be there to increase the no. of transistors (supercomputers etc.) but the cost of manufacturing these en masse is too high. This is (suposedly) why they only up the speed slowly - i.e. when the competition starts to catch up. The other problem is that the more transistors you cram in the more heat you generate, this is quite considerable - look at the difference in size of a heatsink and fan for a 486 DX33 when compared to one for a P4 3GHz. Estimates for the longevity of Moore's law is anywhere from 10-20 years before we hit the maximum, but quite probable that some serious active cooling on the chip will be needed well before then.

Chip manufacturers have also been increasing the die size recently so as to get more transitors on without increasing the density, however the down side to this is large increases in power comsumption - everything's a trade off.

IMO the future is distributed computing, 4GHz processors in everything. So when you load a program on your PC or apply a jazzy effect to that 2048x4096 bitmap in photoshop your laptop, PDA, TV, Fridge, Cooker, Doorbell all chip in to give you 20GHz while you need it - providing they're not already busy of course

[Swafe]

i doubt it, they both stick to moores law, sure AMD has the edge, but intel are making more cash, even if AMD are faster, intel are making more cash so it shouldnt bother them too much, unless AMD make signifcant progress infront of them, then they will fight back

but with 2 companies pretty much dominating it, they get to choose where it goes, its in both their interests to make as much cash, and to last as long as possible, so they will ramp their CPUs similar speeds, so they both get a big piece of the pie - for a long time

same with ATi and Nvidia - slower ramping = more time at the top of their market nieche = more cash over the long term

they will always design a card to do the job - and keep a design that will be better - i mean take take the Radeon 9800 pro....the Radeon 9800 XT was exactly the same, off the same production line wasnt it ? but it wasnt realised for a few months after, so they could get a wedge of cash out of the 9800 Pro before the XT, when esentially the Pro could could do what the XT could, just not enabled due to a BIOS that limited it to slower clock speeds

just a thought