6.0GHz in 2004 for the Masses

[draggoon01]

link

and i'm always left wondering, why do the masses need that speed. what new function will be allowed with that speed which can't be accomplished with current speeds. games, video encoding, and professional apps seem the only things to benefit.

but the pentium 4 scales like no other

 

[mithrandir2001]

All those visual doodads in XP eat up clocks. Several gigahertz worth? No, but M$ will find some way to use them. For instance, the .NET Framework is slow and could use a performance boost.

 

[draggoon01]

or maybe something that might start happening is gaming that goes back to software mode. i remember during 3dfx time, a developer was describing his vision of future and said hardware would be temporary until cpu catch up, then all would go back to software mode because that would be a lot easier to program for instead of compatability issues with various drivers/cards.

 

[dullard]

Draggoon01, you do have a point. Tons of people bought ~700 MHz computers in late 1999 since they were worried about the y2k problem. Now look, there is a computer sales slump. Those two things are connected - since quite a few people are still happy with these computers still. 700 MHz is plenty for Word, email, internet, and even most games. We need a really revolutionary new use to make people want faster computers (and I mean the whole general population and not just a few extreme computer users). So a new game won't convince my grandparents to upgrade their 600 MHz computer. We need something more useful to everyone. I see two things on the horizon.
#1) As was mentioned above - video editing. As soon as DVD writers have prices that drop to under $100 they will become almost a standard in new computers. About that same time the ~700 MHz computers will be roughly 5 years old and starting to struggle. So even my grandparents might want to take a movie of their great-grandchildren, plop it into their computer, and have a DVD made. Good video editing requires a fast CPU.
#2) Voice recognition. To have a computer begin to fully recognize speech requires a minimum of a 3.5 GHz CPU (with 4 GHz performing much better). Sure some voice recognition software exists now, but often it requires you to speek in a special voice, and it has limited vocabulary. I can see the general population wanting to say their email instead of typing it. I think this will be another major reason to upgrade to 4+ GHz.

 

[teddymines]

Until other bottlenecks in the system, like disk and memory access, are resolved, I see little value besides bragging rights.

 

[ElFenix]

need much faster ram, but ram will always be a bottleneck

 

[MaxDSP]

Originally posted by: ElFenix
need much faster ram, but ram will always be a bottleneck

wouldnt the hard drive be the biggest bottleneck?

 

[Tab]

Why would Harddrives be a bottleneck? With Serial-ATA around the corner and new Hard Drives with 8MB Cache's finding a good harddrive will be the least of our worries. IMHO most consumers dont need 60Gigs or higher. Unless they have Cable/DSL with a horney teenage son Right now I belive RAM is somewhat of a problem. JEDEC still hasn't made any certifications for DDR400 or DDR433 which is starting to be sold. Not to mention your only able to run 1 DIMM or be forced to run it at 333mhz. Some of the chipsets for AMD's boards are utter junk. AGP 8x has been more of a marketing scheme for consumers. I think this christmas season will bring more buyers. Using a 700mhz on the internet, is still somewhat slow, which is what I have even on Cable. I really hope to see a decrease in the use of 1.44MB floppys and a increase of USB Removable Drives, the keychains. Some of them are less than 3.5" long and can hold up to 512MBs of data! I also hope High Speed Internet becomes a standerd, alot of people still have AOL and have it set in their minds that 'AOL is the best'. I hope we can see improvements in these area's in the near feature.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

Why would Harddrives be a bottleneck? With Serial-ATA around the corner and new Hard Drives with 8MB Cache's finding a good harddrive will be the least of our worries.

You can find a good one sure, but it will still be the slowest part of any computer. Hence, bottleneck.

 

[MrGrim]

Are you asking whether we need more speed or not? How can you possibly be asking such a question? With A power you do something in 6 seconds, with 2xA power you do the same thing in 3 seconds. Do I want to do it in 3 instead of 6? I'd love to have a choise!

Now if you asked, wtf are hard drives still so slow then I'd agree with you.

 

[Eug]

#1) As was mentioned above - video editing. As soon as DVD writers have prices that drop to under $100 they will become almost a standard in new computers. About that same time the ~700 MHz computers will be roughly 5 years old and starting to struggle. So even my grandparents might want to take a movie of their great-grandchildren, plop it into their computer, and have a DVD made. Good video editing requires a fast CPU.

Yeah, until an MPEG-2 encode takes less than 10 seconds, CPUs will always be too slow. Some people seem to think all we do is work in Word and surf the net. One can set up a simple DVD in minutes (assuming all the video content is already there), but the encoding can take just about forever. Given that MiniDV camcorders are now the norm, it's VERY necessary for the masses to have faster CPUs.

And also, by the time DVD recorders are the norm and 6 GHz computers are the norm too, they'll still be too slow. Already, I wish I could make high definition videos. 720x480 on a DVD is fairly limiting, and my TV is more than capable of showing much higher resolutions.

Why would Harddrives be a bottleneck? With Serial-ATA around the corner and new Hard Drives with 8MB Cache's finding a good harddrive will be the least of our worries. IMHO most consumers dont need 60Gigs or higher.

Huh? Whachoo been smokin? Hard drives are excruitiatingly slow, when compared to the rest of the system as a whole. Serial ATA means nothing if a high end IDE drive can't even break ATA66 speeds. The whole reason Microsoft recommends 512 MB or more of memory for XP is so that then we don't have to swap out to disk so much when multitasking.

Most consumers may not need 60 GBs (for now) of hard drive space, but a lot do, again esp. the MiniDV owners. A couple of hours of baby videos takes up a hell of a lot of space.

Back in the old days, a single CD-ROM was considered a HUGE amount of information. Now it's passe. And my first computer had a total of 48 KB. All my software for that computer probably is less than 20 MB. Now I have over 200 GB of storage for my home computer.

One can never have too much speed or too much storage. Progress is a wonderful thing.

 

[AMDfreak]

Why would Harddrives be a bottleneck?

In today's technology, the hard drive is the utter definition of "bottleneck". Serial ATA only provides a burst rate of 150MB/s, and likely sustained transfer rates will not likely reach above 50MB/s, even with an 8MB cache. The next slowest item is the RAM, which even if you're using old EDO SIMMS will transfer data faster than a hard drive.

 

[dullard]

For most people it is entirely possible to put everything in memory - thus they won't use a harddrive at all. As long as you never reboot, you'll never use the HD. Thus it is very possible to have a computer without a harddrive bottleneck. You cannot say the same thing for the CPU, or video card, or anything else. The vast majority of people load a program - waiting maybe 5 seconds - Then they don't use the hard drive again until they save their document or get to the next level of the game. 5 seconds out of 1 hour of computer use isn't a bottleneck. Plus there are solid state drives already available which will just come down in price. For all these reasons a hard drive should never be a bottleneck in the majority of uses.

Yes there are rare cases that require intense hard drive use - but these are few and far between. I have never ever been doing anything where time is critical and I had to wait for the hard drive instead of the CPU or video card. Of course I just buy plenty of memory so I don't run into that case.

 

[teddymines]

I'd like to see HD throughput speeds increase like CPU speeds have in the past 10 years. Sure, they keep getting smaller and the capacity keeps increasing, but there haven't been many recent advances in throughput. Of course SCSI is faster and EIDE, but that pales in comparison to CPU speed gains.

 

[Nelmster]

dullard, you've got it right. Voice recognition will be the next thing that forces upgrades.

 

[BD231]

Jesus......, just saying 6ghz leaves me dumbfounded and asking myself, "WTF would I do with a 6 gigahert computer?". I think the ghz thing is getting a bit outlandish. When are these guy's going to start working on more efficient processing???? I'd like a processor that can do everything from gaming to the simple stuff with passive cooling, or at least an inaudible fan. I'd like a fast computer that dosen't generate as much heat as a microwave when at full load. I've given up on such hopes, it's obvious these company's are just milkin the ghz for cash.

 

[Goosemaster]

WHat is the point if the CPU can only decode consecutively instead of SIMULTANEOUSLY

Hyperthreading is only the beginning baby...


Imagine a 5 Ghz cput that could do 100 instuctions at the same time...

...from the same process....


..sort of like a router and its NAT clients where the instructions are labled and sent off to get processed and then are organized later...


now THAT would be cool


More gigahertz my ass

 

[Goosemaster]

oh yeah...its called parallel....

I guess you would need a netgear or SMC router to get my setup......wireless CPU bridges of course

EDIT: that IS parallel isn't it?


All I know is that the CPU field could use a few of the techniques from the IT world...

 

[Mavrick]

Originally posted by: BD231
Jesus......, just saying 6ghz leaves me dumbfounded and asking myself, "WTF would I do with a 6 gigahert computer?". I think the ghz thing is getting a bit outlandish. When are these guy's going to start working on more efficient processing???? I'd like a processor that can do everything from gaming to the simple stuff with passive cooling, or at least an inaudible fan. I'd like a fast computer that dosen't generate as much heat as a microwave when at full load. I've given up on such hopes, it's obvious these company's are just milkin the ghz for cash.

A lot of processing power requires a lot of power. The more prefetching you have, the faster the FSB is, the more pipelines you have and the bigger the buffers int the CPU are, the more power you need. Unfortunalely, a blazing fast processor with a low power dissipation is only a dream... If you want a really cool CPU, just buy a 512KB cache Pentium 3 with a low multiplier and underclock it to FSB 100 MHz. You can even try to lower core voltage. THAT should run pretty cool, but you'll definitely be slower than with a comparable Athlon/P4...

 

[grant2]

#2) Voice recognition. To have a computer begin to fully recognize speech requires a minimum of a 3.5 GHz CPU (with 4 GHz performing much better). Sure some voice recognition software exists now, but often it requires you to speek in a special voice, and it has limited vocabulary. I can see the general population wanting to say their email instead of typing it. I think this will be another major reason to upgrade to 4+ GHz.

Dragon Dictate has been around since 486 days. A reviewer once recommended using a pentium 133 or else it would slow the rest of your system. This software didn't require any "special voice" and it did not have a limited vocabulary. It just required the user to read a script to train it.

Where did you get this "requires 3.5 ghz" figure from? That claim sure contradicts history from 6 years ago...

 

[Rectalfier]

I'll need a 6Ghz for Doom3.

 

[Lvis]

Originally posted by: Rectalfier
I'll need a 6Ghz for Doom3.

True.. might need it for Duke Nuken Forever, too.

Hey a guy can dream, can't he?

 

[grant2]

Originally posted by: dullard
For most people it is entirely possible to put everything in memory - thus they won't use a harddrive at all. [/quote]

How many "most people" do you know who only use 64 -> 128 -> 256 megabytes of their hard drive?

Personally, i use 20-30 gigs.... show me a home computer with 20-30 gigs of memory.

As long as you never reboot, you'll never use the HD.

Ever heard of opening new applications? Installing applications? Loading config files? Saving your work? Downloading files? Accessing databases?

5 seconds out of 1 hour of computer use isn't a bottleneck.

Try looking at the definition of "bottleneck": "a point of traffic congestion" ... 5 seconds, or 5 days, it's still a bottleneck for that period of time.

Plus there are solid state drives already available which will just come down in price.

Ya, talk to us when 80 gig solid-state drives are $150.

 

[grant2]

Originally posted by: BD231
Jesus......, just saying 6ghz leaves me dumbfounded and asking myself, "WTF would I do with a 6 gigahert computer?". I think the ghz thing is getting a bit outlandish. When are these guy's going to start working on more efficient processing????

"a bit outlandish" ?? Does it offend your religion or something to know that high-frequency processors exist?

"these guy's" are making processors that perform more complex programs, faster. Are you unhappy at the complexity, or the speed? Maybe you'd like to go back to dos 4.0 on a 286-12?

 

[ed21x]

Originally posted by: grant2
#2) Voice recognition. To have a computer begin to fully recognize speech requires a minimum of a 3.5 GHz CPU (with 4 GHz performing much better). Sure some voice recognition software exists now, but often it requires you to speek in a special voice, and it has limited vocabulary. I can see the general population wanting to say their email instead of typing it. I think this will be another major reason to upgrade to 4+ GHz.

Dragon Dictate has been around since 486 days. A reviewer once recommended using a pentium 133 or else it would slow the rest of your system. This software didn't require any "special voice" and it did not have a limited vocabulary. It just required the user to read a script to train it.

Where did you get this "requires 3.5 ghz" figure from? That claim sure contradicts history from 6 years ago...

Dragon Naturally speaking is about as accurate as all the other voice recognition programs out there- which is not very at all. The newer, more sophisticated packages by L&H, Dragon, and IBM all require at least a fast pentium 3 in order to get marginally better accuracy. And even with that, the delay between what you say, and seeing it on screen is HUGE (like 1 second) and requires you to pause occasionally for the computer to catch up. Oh, and did I forget to mention that they're really inaccurate?