Your Choice?

[Phelk]

If you had the chance to advance any technology one step overnight which would it be?

CPU from 0.18u to 0.13u (Northwood or T-Bred)

Memory from PC800-PC1066 or DDR-QDR

FSB from 133Mhz to 150Mhz

Disks from 10k rpm to 15k

GeForce3 to Geforce4, Radeon to Radeon 2

Any others? Which technology needs to catch up?

Your call...


Kiwi in the UK

 

[beans]

Phelk -

For what application(s)?


beans

 

[Spdy_Gonzales]

How about a bug free operating system from M$.

<b> "Shyt" HAPPENS </b>

 

[Phelk]

Any Applications, your preference.

Kiwi in the UK

 

[beans]

OK, I get it now.

I work with databases a lot, so I'm usually disk-bound...and gagged, etc. Give me faster mass storage so I can move on to the next bottleneck.


beans

 

[rbertino]

I would definitely say the faster (10k to 15k) hard drives. Processors and memory are so quick now that they are no longer the bottleneck. Even slow memory accesses at like 7 nanoseconds, compared to the 9 millesecond access time of hard drives. You could have an Athlon 1.3 GHz running with 512 MB of the fastest DDR-SDRAM and it still wouldn't make a computer start up that much faster, because it still has to read the hard drive.
If we could get hard drives to start accessing a lot faster, the whole system would speed up noticeably. This is why research is starting to focus on Magnetic RAM and the like. Because then you would have a hard drive that accesses as fast as your memory does. Imagine the speed improvement there...

 

[ejsmith2]

How about a bug free operating system from M$.

Me too!

 

[Guest]

I think it's irrelivant to talk about single, isolated steps like that. The industry and technology 'evolves' over time, much as an animal or plant species.

New software and games sometimes demand new hardware, while sometimes new hardware begs for some serious applications (we're in the second situation right now!).

Seriously, I think the most beneficial increase would be to cut all prices in half. More availability equals more demand, which is bound to accelerate the development of other new products.

~ The First Formally Rehabilitated AMD Lemming ~

 

[TheAntipop]

In reply to:
How about a bug free operating system from M$.

Me too!

i third that. add just combine reliability with compatibility. hell, just come up with a more compatible version of Windows 2000 Pro and ill be happy.

<A HREF="http://static.stileproject.com/pika.swf" target="_new">Hyakugojyuuichi!!</A>

 

[Phelk]

I thought this was Tom's 'Hardware' Guide, not Tom's 'I want a stable OS' Guide!

Kiwi in the UK

 

[Phelk]

~ I think it's irrelivant to talk about single, isolated steps like that. The industry and technology 'evolves' over time, much as an animal or plant species. ~

I agree technology evolves, but evolution is not consistent. I am interested in THG readers views of what component they see as the evolutionary slow coach



<font color=blue> The Revolution starts here... as soon as I finish my coffee </font color=blue>

 

[Spdy_Gonzales]

Do you know of any hardware (other than power supply) that works without the OS?

<b> "Shyt" HAPPENS </b>

 

[Phelk]

~ Do you know of any hardware (other than power supply) that works without the OS? ~

An Abacus!

<font color=blue> The Revolution starts here... as soon as I finish my coffee </font color=blue>

 

[rd382]

LOL 4000 years out of date does that show you guys how much technoligy has evolved?

<b><font color=red><^></font color=red></b>

 

[Guest]

I would agree with others in this thread. Hard drives are the main bottleneck in computer systems right now. It is the last piece of required hardware that is still based on mechanical technology & not digital. I keep hearing talk about this and that which all claim to soon replace the aging hard disk, but none ever seem to materialize into an actual working product. Any how I think that whoever actually comes up with a real alternative to hard drives will be billionaires over night.


(A)bort, (R)etry, (G)et a beer?

 

[dhlucke]

Obviosly the i/o is the bottleneck of today. We need faster hard drives and faster cd-rom/dvd-rom drives. It's also time to get rid of the damn disk drive. For the love of god, that thing is soooo slow!

Can I have a second request though? I wish they would manufacture larger flatscreen monitors and 24" crt's cheaper so that we could get our hands on those without selling our organs...

<font color=red>Did you ever wonder WHY aliens only abduct idiots?</font color=red>

 

[Guest]

oh yeah..now your talkin. I want a 25" LCD this 18.1 is too small.


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[peteb]

I would like to see really fast large flash or equivalent storage.

I want 100GB flash drives with SDRAM access speeds and no moving parts. It is getting much bigger and much faster, just not fast or big enough.

The times of magnetic storage are getting old. 10-15 is not much faster for burst, just better overall average access rates. Let's really get silicon working for us an create more solid state drives.

I have 4 x 64Mb smartmedia cards and I remember when 20Mb used to be a really BIG hard drive.

-* This Space For Rent *-
email for application details

 

[Phelk]

Hmmmm... 25" LCD screen that sounds nice.

I use an 18.1"LCD at work and a 19"CRT at home. I really don't think I could fit anything larger than a 21"CRT at home as they are to deep but a 25"LCD would fit just right.


<font color=blue> The Revolution starts here... as soon as I finish my coffee </font color=blue>

 

[jollygrinch]

"you talk it types" --> "you think it types (and shows pictures you dirty man you)"

At the core of every system: "I'm sorry dave, i'm afraid i can't do that."

 

[stonerboy]

I remember reading an article a couple of months ago about a hard drive being developed by IBM. They had the thing spinning at 250,000 RPM's. It was using some sort of super strong metal. One night during testing the thing broke apart and sent fragments flying everywhere. Apparently they found fragments embedded 6 inches into a conrete wall. Imagine having something like that on your desktop happen.

 

[HolyGrenade]

Hard drives are the main bottleneck in computer systems right now. It is the last piece of required hardware that is still based on mechanical technology & not digital

You mean you want an <b>electronic</b> replacement for the hard disk. Cos, it already uses a digital format. ;-)

Any way, within current technological limits this is what I would want:


- fixed storage system based on non volatile high speed electronic memory modules. (Expensive but available.)

- Optical Removable Disks capable of storing 100-250 GB.

- QDR Memory.

- Highspeed bridge between the Graphics Subsystem and the Central Processor.

- Perhaps an SMT capable single CPU or maybe multiple CPUs (depending on the requirements)

- Multiple High resolution large screen displays. (May be plasma based. The pixels in TFT LCDs keep getting stuck at high framerates)

- Better Human Computer Interface (HCI). Perhaps a combination of Vocal Communication (Voice Recognition Input + Audio Output), Visual Communication Like the Elsa Display that changes the angle of view as you move around, Some sort of Two handed cursor system will make everything feel more natural, Light Pen etc.

No matter what anywone else says, The HCI is the biggest bottleneck in the current systems.


<font color=red>"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and dispair!"</font color=red>

 

[Crashman]

Now that RAM is cheap, it would be nice to see hard drives with, say, a 128MB buffer, or solid state storage, become the norm. Hey, a box full of ram and a small battery would make a great hard drive!

Cast not thine pearls before the swine

 

[Guest]

Well some SCSI hard drives come with 16mb PC100 sdram Buffers. Hope the buffers get highier.

I only steal the princess cause she is hot ;*)

 

[Guest]

You mean you want an electronic replacement for the hard disk. Cos, it already uses a digital format. ;-)

While were at it.. hard disks already uses electronics too.

Actually what I was trying to say is lets get rid of actuators, gears and bearings and leave all that mechanical stuff to cars and lawn mowers. They don’t belong in our state-of-the-art puters.



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