Future of computer processors.

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bazzer Smith
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Bazzer Smith

Seems that processor speed has hit the 'thermal barrier' hence the move
to 'duel core' etc...
Is that the future, several computers on one board, with their own memory
and drives etc? With some 'master computer' taking charge of the
out put?
 
Bazzer Smith said:
Seems that processor speed has hit the 'thermal barrier' hence the move
to 'duel core' etc...
Is that the future, several computers on one board, with their own memory
and drives etc? With some 'master computer' taking charge of the
out put?
Click to expand...

I read an article a few years back about multi-core cpu's.
As more computational power is needed...even if the actual CPU speed may not
keep increasing much...
more cores could be added.

As long as the OS and applications can make use of multi-cores...
CPU "power" can continue to increase even if the speed does not keep going
up.

The article I read was theorizing a machine with a numerous 5-core CPU's on
one motherboard.
Essentially a "super-computer" in a desktop!

No reason it can't happen.

Can you imagine what a great game of Hearts you will be able to play with
25 CPU cores "under the hood" , 20 gigs of RAM and a 1000 GB harddrive!
 
Bazzer Smith said:
Seems that processor speed has hit the 'thermal barrier' hence the move
to 'duel core' etc...
Is that the future, several computers on one board, with their own memory
and drives etc? With some 'master computer' taking charge of the
out put?
Click to expand...

It's not the future... Computers have been offlloading their workload for a
while...

Take the Commodore PET for example. It's floppy drives were computers in
themselves. To format, the PET would just send the command to the drive and
the drive would do all the work.

For years, computers have had hardware BLITters doing much of the video
work, moving blocks of memory around, taking the load off of the CPU. DMA
based hard drive access as well.

Current PC's have controllers on the hard drives, using DMA access to
relieve the CPU of the burden of data transfer. Video cards to an amazing
amount of work. You can even buy a "physics processor" card to offload more
work from the CPU. Decent modems and soundcards handle their own tasks -
although many folks use their CPU to drive WinModems and onboard sound.

There aren't a lot of tasks done by CPU's these days that could efficiently
be handed of to another processor.

Most computers these days have just been "waiting faster", spending most of
their time simply waiting for the user, or other devices, to make the next
request.
 
Seems that processor speed has hit the 'thermal barrier' hence the move
to 'duel core' etc...
Click to expand...

No, this is always what happens. Intel or AMD have a design
and ramp it up till the core can't go any higher then have
to redesign. With any of them, if they could've just kept
it cooler it would've gone higher... as overclockers knew,
but such extremes were expensive and the motherboards
themselves weren't designed to accomodate such current.

Similarly today motherboards and PSU are also becoming
limits, that today's and yesteryear's budgetized designs are
reaching (prudent) thermal density limits. They could be
made with more exotic parts but the cost would skyrocket.

Is that the future, several computers on one board, with their own memory
and drives etc? With some 'master computer' taking charge of the
out put?
Click to expand...


Depends on what the system purpose is. The future would
seem to suggest users are on client systems that are smaller
and the central server (term used loosely) is for storage
and distribution. Special functions that require high
levels of processing will likely have specialized chips, but
just adding evermore processors will have limits, as it all
still has to fit within the budget for the target market.
 
Special functions that require high
levels of processing will likely have specialized chips, but
just adding evermore processors will have limits, as it all
still has to fit within the budget for the target market.
Click to expand...

I can't say I agree as the processor costs fall over time.
Once you have covered the design costs the only
other cost are the raw materials (sand?) and a bit
of energy.
I have a set top box (digital TV decoder) with a processor
in it as powerful as my old Cryix Processor.
 
I can't say I agree as the processor costs fall over time.
Once you have covered the design costs the only
other cost are the raw materials (sand?) and a bit
of energy.
Click to expand...

If it were true, then why haven't any others fallen in price
so dramatically?

The product lifecycle is far too short for that to happen,
instead the processors have technological depreciation and
end of product life.

I have a set top box (digital TV decoder) with a processor
in it as powerful as my old Cryix Processor.
Click to expand...


Ok, but would you rather have 3 of those and a board for it
for $400, or an Athlon 64 and board for $200, with the
latter combo being 5X faster at any common tasks?
 
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