Years ago, you couldn’t pick up a computer magazine (remember magazines?) or mainstream newspapers or magazines with an article about computers that didn’t predict what computing would be like in the future. You don’t see too much of that anymore. Here’s an article my brother ran across from eight years ago about where we’d be this year related to processors.
LUCKY PUNTERS WILL BE ABLE TO BUY 15GHZ INTEL CHIPS, containing a billion transistors, by the end of the decade, said Pat Gelsinger, Intel veep and CTO in his keynote at the Intel Developer Forum in Tokyo today. Gelsinger also predicted that PDAs will hit 5GHz in the same timeframe. It’s unlikely the chips will use the existing Pentium 4 architecture which is reckoned to only be good up to around 10GHz.
“You would look at a major micro-architecture like the Pentium 4 and it is typically five to eight years that you would operate on that same micro-architecture until you would introduce a major new one,” Gelsinger told PC Advisor. “So while I expect that timeline to be fairly similar, we have not laid out a specific new major micro-architecture step that we will be taking.
“Desktops today are 75 to 100 watts, and when you go to handheld devices you are typically operating at less than 1 watt,” he added. “Obviously, you are optimising the design for different criteria. So today, if I was going to look at a StrongArm or XScale core, could I create a 2GHz or 3GHz XScale today? Absolutely. Could I do so and deliver the best trade-off of power and performance inside a 1-watt envelope? No. You tend to design the chips differently to live inside different devices.”
Found by Brother Uncle Don
Cute montage for the picture.
Reminds me of the kind of Monty Python-esque nightmare that Terry Gillian came up with for the movie “Brazil.”
I would have used an Underwood upright manual keyboard, a fresnel lens on a nine inch black and white monitor and a mouse skelleton as a pointing device mounted on a pantograph.
The speakers in the ear horns are a wonderful touch though. I also love the pipe organ desk.
You could have done a whole lot more with it by keeping the organ keyboard…
Like make the organ stops functional to select the operating software and to switch the functions of the program.
I’d be willing to bet that the photo above isn’t a montage but a real computer system that someone has made to look like that.
That system was steam punked. Here are some more examples.
Also, search “Steam Punk” on ebay, becoming very popular.
I think I’ve been more accurate than many of the computer pundits — but my predictions aren’t in print to come back and burn me when I was wrong!
Mostly, though, I’ve been wrong on the timing of things rather than totally wrong.
Back in the days of the Tandy 102 I thought portable computers would be instant-on and diskless.
That might still happen and I hope it does. Handheld computing certainly is going that way.
I also thought Internet “push” was a trend that would last. With eBook readers it might come back.
The Pentium 4 at 15Ghertz. Boy did that prediction ever flame out.
Well, I think the Smartphone’s ability to browse the Web is a major feat. Nobody saw that coming, did they?
i think tech is still booming. its just being horded by the military. i do not think THEY want US to be able to crack codes like them
Can I put in my wish list here? The hardware does what I want. But I want the software that’s been promised since I was a kid reading Heinlein. I want a robot in my computer that would wake me up in the morning (with a nice feminine voice), remind me to put my pants on before I leave, turn on the coffee maker, crack a joke now and then, etc. Seems like voice recognition ought to have gotten to the point by now where I could talk to the computer instead of myself.
That 15GHz Pentium could have generated enough steam to actually play that calliope.
Can I suggest that MOST of the problem Isnt the hardware..
AND who can get away with blaming MS for most of its OWN FAULTS?
Hardware wise, installing a small bit of RAM on printers and network cards would be a wonderful thing.
Video cards are STUPID, and thats partly MS problem as they didnt REQUEST the video companies to INSTALL a OS ON CARD.
We’ve been largely road blocked on speed but they advance by using more cores.You can get an off the shelf 12 core computer. Apple among others will be happy to sell you one.
The issue that is coming up is that even a single core is fast enough for most users. Most software won’t do jack with more than one or two cores though so why blow the budget?
Since most of the software used by schools is in the cloud and the work stations required to use it can still be an old single core XP that tends to impact where I see things going in the future. Most people are happy with Google docs or the similar product from MS. MS Office, Open Office, Google docs will run very well on single core machines. Face book? No problem.
I just got through sticking Open Office and Firefox on an old windows 2,000 machine and installed a networked driver so it can print on the computer lab printer for Dr. Lee who comes by to work with the gifted students one day a week. It runs a little slow but it runs.
The demand for better video is increasing faster than the need for simple computing power.
I have to agree with deowll, original system a packard bell 122mghz 1 gig hard drive and if I recall correctly 128 mb RAM. Now I have three systems a cutting edge (flipping bleeding as we speak) for gaming, every single bell and whistle I could buy. Overkill yes but I have bragging rights for a while. A 1.8 Ghz self built, one of many I have built, running Linux and working as a server, and an ACER low end lap top three years old that I use daily. If it wasn’t for the gaming that old PB did every thing I needed, MSword, web surf, email, excel. Filled up that had drive pretty quickly as I recall. Although I still want my star trek talk to me baby, as long as it has Majel Barretts voice. My computer at work was supposed to have voice recognition, really quite hit or miss. Oh by the way just noticed that Duke Nukem forever is not dead (yay!) and may actually be released. So some vaporware may be real after all.
More like P4 @ 150watts than 150Ghz. Most of current PC speed is consumed by C++ and the requirement for expedient development of App. Maybe gamers and other graphic intense users still benefit from speed increases. The rest of us are using about 10% for the Usual Apps (browser, Office, etc.), 50% for malware and anti malware Apps, and 30% SIP (system idle process). The popular PC chip market direction these days seem to favor maximizing MPS per Watt. I’m OK with this outcome.
Whats funny…
is Multi CPU was designed under WIN NT (not created by MS) and was BOUGHT by MS.
It was used under Win2000/XT..but the programmers at MS dont know HOW to program MULTI CPU/CORES.. They recently HIRED a few programmers that KNOW HOW..
ALL MS had to do was TELL, the Video/audio/hardware makers to do was USE A PROGRAMMABLE OS CHIP on their hardware. Include DRIVERS and CONTROLLERS ON THE CHIP, that would take the PROCESSING OFF the main CPU.
So that Windows just THROWS data at the card and the CARD does the work, instead of DIRECTX and your main CPU.
Installing Video drivers ONCARD like DIVX/WMV/PNG/…would be Wonderful.
Whatever happened to… “Inside Track”? Forgive me for going off-topic a bit, but it’s been over a year now. Is it dead? I can’t find the answer anywhere.
I wonder who the figurines are?
Yeah, Matt, I’ve been wondering that for a year or more — and searching and searching . . . Sigh! Although I like almost all of JD’s writing, I always liked Inside Track best.