Technological Progress Slowing Down?
DiscoZombie
Join Date: 2003-08-05 Member: 18951Members
in Off-Topic
<div class="IPBDescription">PC upgrades</div> I haven't researched this at all but I feel like PC power used to double about every two years, and now it's kinda stagnating... ~3ghz cpus with 1 gig ram have been the high-end standard for a couple years now, haven't they? video cards have been improving at the normal rate though, it seems. and storage capacity seems to be improving steadily too, but who needs more HD space? <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo-->
anyway, is this just my perception because I'm getting older and don't pay as much attention anymore, or is it the truth?
anyway, is this just my perception because I'm getting older and don't pay as much attention anymore, or is it the truth?
Comments
EDIT: If numbers do matter, go searching for overclocking. The 6GHz barrier was broken. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile-fix.gif' /><!--endemo-->
anyway, I don't want to derail my own topic but how long before these 64 bit processors become useful?
Seems we are reaching some kind of limit with the clock frequencies of current chip design (mostly due to power and cooling requirements). But the industry will find new ways of improving the 'speed' of computers, such as multiple cores, larger memory caches etc. So don't worry, you'll still have to shell out £££ for new hardware every few years <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/html//emoticons/biggrin-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin-fix.gif' /><!--endemo--> .
Edit: Crap, I was beated!
...sorry...just had to be said.
...sorry...just had to be said. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Nanites.....
Not at all, only AMD has been doing this(on die memory controller is a huge performance inprovement), pentium 3's had much better IPC(Instructions Per Clock) than p4's. Intel is at a situation where they are going to silently retire the p4 architecture(it's going to be here for a while, they're going to make a dual core version but Tejas has been scrapped(the new architecture based on p4's netburst)). The pentium m is a tweaked successor to the p3 which tries to get the highest performance out of the lowest power usage(it's a mobile processor), it's looking very well and this processor _might_ be used as a basis for a desktop processor from intel in the future.
Intel and AMD are now both looking towards dual core on the desktop.
And we're at +3.6 Ghz currently, on Intel's side <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/biggrin-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin-fix.gif' /><!--endemo-->
thats just to go in a straight line, not making any complicated transistor gates at all...
math=
299,792,458(m/s) * 100cm/m / 1,000,000,000(hz/ghz) * 0.80(80 percent of) / 2^1/2(distance corner to corner) / 2(both ways)
closest you're gonna get:
<a href='http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=42655&page=1&pp=25' target='_blank'>http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showth...55&page=1&pp=25</a>
...sorry...just had to be said. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
No... No it really didn't.
It's a good thing, it gives video cards a chance to catch up. A few PCIe cards down the line and we will be CPU bottlenecked again and no longer vidcard bottlenecked.
64 bit architexture isn't as revolutionary as one might think, but it is extreamly useful for many things, and will be able to make some cool things happen on the game front. Expecially with phyiscs and model advancements.