Where Will It All End?

[syd barrett]

When I got my first PC it was 300 MHz and 28 RAM and I connected to the internet on a 56K dial up.

In the last two years, I have seen a big slow down on computer speed, for example people are still buying 2.4 and 2.8 MHz P.C.'s I should have thought that 4.0MHz would be the norm by now....what's gone wrong?

My present PC has a 256 Memory and is approaching 3 years old, still they are selling 256 RAM machines....why isn't 512/1024 the absolute norm now?

Internet Speeds have remained at 56K for dial up, yet 4 times that is sold as broadband, yet I see an English newspaper offering 8 Gig now...how fast can internet go? And does it still slow down?

Finally memory sticks (flash memory) they are great, so useful, probably the best thing i bought recently is a 512 stick. Worth its weight in gold...I have seen a 1 Gig stick....but again...how big can they go....eventually?

[Firefoxx]

My first PC was an 8086. A whopping 4.47megahertz CPU. Ram was an astounding 640k. Harddisk? 10 megabytes! No way you could fill that up. And the monochrome graphics looked great in green. I thought I could do practically anything with it. Modem? 1200bps!!! Wow! (actually didn't have one until several years later)

Present PC? 3.2 Ghz P4. 1GB ram. 1 terabyte (1000gigabytes) of harddisk space. Dual-head graphics. And yet, I'm not quite satisfied.

So, we've come quite a long way, and we'll keep on going. I remember a saying, "The biggest room in the world is room for improvement". Things will get smaller and do more, it's just the way of progress.

Addressing specific points:

Processors have reached a plateau in raw speed (Ghz-wise), but are branching out in other directions, such as adding 64-bit capability, dual-cores, pipelining, and more efficient architectures.

256MB is the absolute minimum, and with price wars as they are, it's best to keep costs down. High-end models come with more as standard.

The word "broadband" technically refers to the opposite of "baseband", that is "baseband" is one medium, one signal, while "broadband" is one medium, many signals. It is widely accepted, in internet-speak, that anything less than 512k is not "broadband internet". Of course, this is Thailand, so... The "slowing down" of the internet only happens if the infrastructure is not up to the task (or your ISP). There is plenty of bandwidth left, it's just that Thai ISPs aren't willing to pay to use it (mainly because of CAT, which gets the lions share).

Used to be that 8megabyte sticks were the norm, so... there are flash memory cards (compact flash) that go up to 8GB now. So...

Progress, my friend.

[joka]

i read samsung is testing 16gb flash drives now, they are like 2.5 inches across. i really think flash is the future, can't wait, postage stamp sized mega giga bytes.this with projectable keyboards and rollup screens and you'll have a portable computer the size of a magic marker.

[waldwolf]

When I got my first PC it was 300 MHz and 28 RAM and I connected to the internet on a 56K dial up.....

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

My first personal computer was a Z80 running at approx 2MHz with 8k ram, before operating system (DOS) was loaded. Storage was a standard 30 minute cassette tape recorder. Cost about $2,000 (US). First modem had a lightening speed of 300 baud and dialup connections were yet to be invented. Paid over $100 (US) to upgrade ram to 16k. Ah yes.......the good old days.

In the last two years, I have seen a big slow down on computer speed, for example people are still buying 2.4 and 2.8 MHz P.C.'s I should have thought that 4.0MHz would be the norm by now....what's gone wrong?

Basically nothing has gone wrong. If you have a lot of cash, you can buy a personal computer with a 5GHz (overclocked) processor, but the problem is HEAT. Processor manufacturers are banging their heads against the brick wall of speed vs. heat vs. power consumption. The future appears not to be speed of the processor, but the ultimate end product of "through-put". How much data can be pocessed within any given period of time. The future will, at least for now, be new "dual-core" and "cell" 64 bit processors, containing multi-internal processors, like Intel's new Pentium D, AMD's Opteron and the IBM/Sony/Toshiba's "Cell" with its 6-16 processors.

..how fast can internet go?..

With fiber optics, the visable light theoretical maximum data rate is 5120 Tbps (5,120,000,000 Mbps), however using infrared or ultra violet light that rises to 160,000 Tbps (160,000,000,000 Mbps). Just keep in mind this is all theory. Practical speed is another story.

Finally memory sticks (flash memory) they are great, so useful, probably the best thing i bought recently is a 512 stick. Worth its weight in gold...I have seen a 1 Gig stick....but again...how big can they go....eventually?

Recently heard Samsung (worlds largest memory manufacturer) will have a 100 gig "hard-drive type" flash drive on the market in about 1 year. Price????? How big can they go?...................(as big as your pocketbook can afford).

cheers

[syd barrett]

Wow! Thanks, some great posts there. I had no idea flash memory sticks had reached 8 Gig.

I am still confused though why 256 RAM is sold today, that is over two years after I bought my PC.

I understand that clock speed is stuck at 3.00-4.00 but apart from heat why...and why heat?

Also.....if I doubled my RAM would I notice....and if I did notice....how?

[waldwolf]

Wow!  Thanks, some great posts there. I had no idea flash memory sticks had reached 8 Gig.

I am still confused though why 256 RAM is sold today, that is over two years after I bought my PC.

I understand that clock speed is stuck at 3.00-4.00 but apart from heat why...and why heat?

Also.....if I doubled my RAM would I notice....and if I did notice....how?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

syd - 128 and 256MB RAM sticks are still sold, so people can upgrade their systems for (hopefully) better performance. As memory costs money, original equipment manufacturers (OEM's) use less memory to be more price competative. Same with the size of hard drives and computer monitors, or in the case of laptops, screen size & types.

Electricity (electrons) flowing through a conductor (ie: wire) are slowed due to impurities in the conductor. This is call resistance. When resistance occurs, heat is generated. The more electrons you force through a given conductor, the more heat you generate. Picture yourself pushing a wheelbarrel around the yard. The more dirt you put in the wheelbarrel, the harder it is to push, and the more heat your body generates. You begin to perspire. That perspiration evaporates and in so doing, cools your body. The heatsink and fan in your computer act in a similar mannor, by circulating cooler air over the CPU and other internal parts, reducing overall temperature. (Sorry, a short-bad explanation for a very complicated subject.)

In general, the least expensive way to improve performance in your computer is to increase RAM. In your particular case, an increase from 256 to 512mb, should increase performance quite noticeably. In many cases programs will run faster as it will not be necessary for your OS to use the hard drive as a "virtual memory device", which it does as available RAM memory becomes less and less. Remember RAM is much faster than writing/reading-to/from a hard drive. Another hardware performance improvement to consider might be a new hard drive, running at 7200rpm, with an 8mb buffer. They are relatively inexpensive today. (I would guess your 2+ year old hard drive is probably a 4200rpm of about 20-40gb.)

cheers

[penzman]

I was thinking that maybe Moore's Law was coming to an end soon.

Gordon Moore observed in 1965 that the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits had doubled on a yearly basis since the integrated circuit was invented. He predicted that this trend would continue for a few decades. This pace has slowed down a bit, but data density has doubled approximately every 18 months. Most experts, and Moore himself, are expecting Moore's Law to hold for another two decades, at least.

[monty]

I have had in my hands a working 250gb flashdrive(usb thumbdrive form) already. This was a prototype from sandisk, and will go into production in around 3 years from now....

Its not a big secret, its just not economical yet to produce them.With current machinery and raw materials available the thing would roughly cost 10000 us$

The race is not really in how big they can make them, but how cheap they can make them!!!

[The Coder]

My first PC was an 8086.  A whopping 4.47megahertz CPU.  Ram was an astounding 640k.  Harddisk?  10 megabytes!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The original IBM PC was an 8088 (even slower than the 8086 because it has just an 8-bit wide bus intead of 16-bit), 4.77 MHz but who is counting, and in the beginning could be had with as little as 16K that booted casette basic (no floppy or HD) and there were 300 baud modems you placed your regular telephone handset into for dialing into teletype bulletin boards. Wasn't long before tuning was big and we were tuning memory refresh, hard drive interleave, and squeezing in all those neat TSR's and device drivers. If you ignore BIOS POST, the most amazing thing is those original PC's could boot Dos off a *floppy* quicker than today's latest and greatest processors and lightning fast hard drives boots Windows!!! It seems the gains in hardware performance are falling behind more and more the software requirements.

There is a holy grail in terms of graphics power coming. Everyone now is talking about photo realistic gaming. Let's face it, games are always getting better but it sure isn't as real as a picture. Photo realism essentially means HDTV movie quality gaming. The xbox 360 will have the technology built in to allow photo realism. Today's latest PC graphics card's aren't there yet.

Hard drive wise, I think capacity will be really stressed as people record TV and put 20gb hdtv movies on their PC. You'll need terabytes for a basic home PC.

The limiting factor today is people's internet connection. The trend is everything is going online and you just can't do a lot with even a 1mbit connection. There doesn't seem to be an answer on the horizon for a quantum leap to get faster internet connection everywhere. So while a 1mbit connection is ok for web pages and mail, that is aging and it is really holding back many uses of PC's.

[cobra]

It's the nature of all things to evolve ...

[dr_strangelove]

My first PC was 386 with 1MB ram and 512 MB or something HDD running Dos... Later upgraded to 2MB ram... Then I upgraded to 486 with 4 MB ram to run C++ ... Then I got a celeron after a year with 333Mhz and 32 MB ram & 4GB HDD running Windows 95 (Still I love 95 bcoz I could reinstall OS in less that 5 mts... ) Then after another 2 years I upgraded to 850Mhz with 384MB RAM and a 40GB HDD.. Then I understood that there is no point in going for an upgrade all the time to browse and play music... So Now I will do my next upgrade when 64 bit 4.0 or 5.0 Ghz gets launched in market... When I spend most of the time at office in front of Dual Xeons and G5's with 4BG+ RAM, why should I worry much about my home PC???

There is a max limit of processing speed which can be used by any normal human being.. and a 3Ghz will be more than enough for that purpose until we use our PC for some specific purpose... So there is no point in getting 4.0 Ghz until Ms releases Windows F###Me which needs 1Gb ram to run OS and another 2 Gb ram for running applications... Internet Net speed... You need more only if u have a habit of downloading every piece of crap available online ... else you can live with 2Mbps connection without much trouble for another 3 years

Edited June 29, 2005 by dr_strangelove

[syd barrett]

There is a max limit of processing speed which can be used by any normal human being.. and a 3Ghz will be more than enough for that purpose until we use our PC for some specific purpose... So there is no point in getting 4.0 Ghz until Ms releases Windows F###Me which needs 1Gb ram to run OS and another 2 Gb ram for running applications... Internet Net speed... You need more only if u have  a habit of downloading every piece of crap available online ... else you can live with 2Mbps connection without much trouble for another 3 years

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

So, the difference between a 2.8 and a 4.0 GHz is of no real use to me, so it is more RAM needed for a quicker response when opening a programme, say MS Word, which opens slowly?

Is it possible to have too much RAM in relation to the processer speed?

Surely flash memory is better for future PC's because no moving parts....is that a fair comment?

[Thetyim]

Well I don't know about yours but my computer looks nothing like this.

I wonder what the big wheel was for ?

The first computer I ever used was an IBM 360/40 in 1969 just 15 years after that photo was taken.

Edited June 29, 2005 by Thetyim

[expatinasia]

"Surely flash memory is better for future PC's because no moving parts....is that a fair comment?"

The comment "no moving parts" is accurate, the rest not. High-capacity, solid state memory will always be more expensive than hard drives. A 100GB laptop HDA, purchased in quantities of 100,000-1,000,000 pieces only costs $200-250. The same flash memory would be a house down payment.

The slow down in CPU speed escalation is due, as another posted, heat. With relatively low speeds, it was simple to cool the devices: a fan, and a cast aluminum heat sink. As the speed increased, the thermal management systems have become more sophisticated. Heat sinks have been replaced by liquid-filled heat tubes topped with sinks with the appearance of car radiators. Thermal grease has been replaced by expensive phase change materials. Blowers have replaced fans. Too, to decrease costs, internal heat and increase chip complexity, chip manufactuerers have decreased trace width and have lowered the specified operating temperature. So, rather than a robust 115C for old processors, the newest processors are spec'd at a relatively cool 65C (die temp).

[h90]

For playing racing games

Well I don't know about yours but my computer looks nothing like this.

I wonder what the big wheel was for ?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

[IvanLaw]

Electricity (electrons) flowing through a conductor (ie: wire) are slowed due to impurities in the conductor. This is call resistance. When resistance occurs, heat is generated. The more electrons you force through a given conductor, the more heat you generate. Picture yourself pushing a wheelbarrel around the yard. The more dirt you put in the wheelbarrel, the harder it is to push, and the more heat your body generates. You begin to perspire. That perspiration evaporates and in so doing, cools your body. The heatsink and fan in your computer act in a similar mannor, by circulating cooler air over the CPU and other internal parts, reducing overall temperature. (Sorry, a short-bad explanation for a very complicated subject.)

In general, the least expensive way to improve performance in your computer is to increase RAM. In your particular case, an increase from 256 to 512mb, should increase performance quite noticeably. In many cases programs will run faster as it will not be necessary for your OS to use the hard drive as a "virtual memory device", which it does as available RAM memory becomes less and less. Remember RAM is much faster than writing/reading-to/from a hard drive. Another hardware performance improvement to consider might be a new hard drive, running at 7200rpm, with an 8mb buffer. They are relatively inexpensive today. (I would guess your 2+ year old hard drive is probably a 4200rpm of about 20-40gb.)

cheers

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

What a brilliant analogy.

PC’s etc I DO NOT UNDERSTAND

But the above made something clear to me

I have tried the “Dummies” books but I am still in the dark

Regards

Ivan

[Firefoxx]

The thing is that computers are capable of doing more and more. My first computer could do spreadsheets, documents, rudimentary databases, and some programming. 4Mhz was plenty fast then. My current computer can do... quite a lot more. Things we normally don't use the computer for end up being commonplace. Digital imaging, video editing, watching DVDs, burning CDs... these things were just dreams for home PCs just a few years ago, but are commonplace now.

So although 3Ghz is probably good and dandy *right now*, what about the future? With HDTV streams, HD-DVD writing and authoring, intensive 3D manipulation, ultra-realism, holograms, etc? Photo pros who never used a computer before now have it as an essential part of their workflow. With the current manipulation of 10 megapixel images, even 3Ghz is not fast enough. Not to mention games, which constantly push the capabilities of computers to their limits.

So, for the average user, 4Mhz then, 3Ghz now, and later...?