Computer Specs

PullMyFinger!

Does anyone else think that the companies are holding back on us when it comes to processors etc so we'll have to upgrade every couple of years? Ive a funny feeling they could give us a 5Gz proccesor now if they wanted to but choose to hold back.

Any thoughts?

wes

PullMyFinger! wrote:

Does anyone else think that the companies are holding back on us when it comes to processors etc so we'll have to upgrade every couple of years? Ive a funny feeling they could give us a 5Gz proccesor now if they wanted to but choose to hold back.

Any thoughts?

Um No......

They have these processors, but they tend to be used in high servers and what not.

Beer is Life

And too expensive (At the moment) for the average Joe!

Laguna

The tiny sales wouldn't justify their production. Holding back?, I doubt it, they're corporations after all, they want to make $$$$...

Kernel

They want to make money, which is why they do hold back technology. They will sell higher priced CPUs in the server market because there is greater competition and more money to be made in it. They drip feed technology to home PC users to make more money. Graphics chipset manufacturers are the worst offenders here, but look at the chip technology being released for XBOX 360 and PS3 and you will see that the technology is already there but hasn't been released to us PC users yet.

miju

i'd concur with most of whats of being said above but just to add a further obvious point.

most home users (im excluding PC gamers from this equation because they'll know where to source high spec parts) dont need 5Ghz processors and the like becuase software has to catch up with the technology first.

for example, my laptop has a 2.9ghz processor and 1gb of ram, i run graphic software and film editing software among other things and it's not troubled in the least by using them.

most home users just use word and internet explorer which can run fairly well on a barebones system so why would they go out and spend a wad of cash so that their interent / word documents open slightly faster?

Gurgle

PullMyFinger! wrote:

Does anyone else think that the companies are holding back on us when it comes to processors etc so we'll have to upgrade every couple of years? Ive a funny feeling they could give us a 5Gz proccesor now if they wanted to but choose to hold back.

Any thoughts?

Yes, they could.
But its not as simple as just giving us a 5GHz processor now.

Look at it this way - When Intel were selling pentium 2s, they were preparing to manufacture pentium 3s and designing pentium 4s.

Could they have skipped the p3 and moved straight to releasing the P4 2 years earlier ?

Yes, but it would have screwed up their entire business model.
They have to trade off between best technology and higher volume manufacturing.

fatherdougalmag

Not entirely the same but I have a feeling that we are being drip-fed technology in the home entertainment front. For example, why hasn't anyone come out with a TV with built in LAN connectivity and some form of embedded computer? Even if the Internet video on demand services are few and far between, there would be enormous scope for something like this in the context of a home media server environment. This is something that could have come into existence a long time ago but I get the feeling they are holding out.

Gurgle

fatherdougalmag wrote:

For example, why hasn't anyone come out with a TV with built in LAN connectivity and some form of embedded computer?

Probably got squashed at a planning meeting on the basis that anyone with a home network would already have video and sound connections to the TV or a DVD writer (or both).

Also been made redundant by DVD players with build in card readers.
Good idea otherwise.

miju

fatherdougalmag wrote:

Not entirely the same but I have a feeling that we are being drip-fed technology in the home entertainment front. For example, why hasn't anyone come out with a TV with built in LAN connectivity and some form of embedded computer? Even if the Internet video on demand services are few and far between, there would be enormous scope for something like this in the context of a home media server environment. This is something that could have come into existence a long time ago but I get the feeling they are holding out.

this technology already exists en mass, it is mainly used in hotels and the like, if i remember correctly they did have internet ready TV's during the dot.com boom and they weren'y overly expensive, but there wasnt a massive uptake on them and they were fairly decent ones too

fatherdougalmag

Gurgle wrote:

Probably got squashed at a planning meeting on the basis that anyone with a home network would already have video and sound connections to the TV or a DVD writer (or both).

Yeah, that would appear to be holding things up. They'd need to package it initially with some kind of video on demand service to sell it (Xtravision are you readin?). Then a de-centralised HDD recorder etc. Or push button, embedded devices to convert a read-once DVD to Divx or whatever until such time as you can download/stream a movie. Maybe even one day it'll be real-time TV over a network like this. Combined with the means employed by current online gaming the interactivity potential for TV would be pretty cool.

The thing is, this could be done now and I'm wondering why they don't at least have demo units to convince the media people that it's a goer. With the XBox Media Centre there is a thing called Quicktime Browser. This streams movie trailers off the Quicktime website. The quality is fantastic. You'd wonder why they don't stream video content like this right now. Especially if it's to some kind of embedded (integrated set top box) within your TV. The Sky STB hasn't been cracked yet in all the years its been out so the encryption/compression capabilities are there for broadcasting. I just hope it all arrives before I expire.

fatherdougalmag

_raptor_ wrote:

this technology already exists en mass, it is mainly used in hotels and the like, if i remember correctly they did have internet ready TV's during the dot.com boom and they weren'y overly expensive, but there wasnt a massive uptake on them and they were fairly decent ones too

You're dead right raptor. I've never thought of it but some hotel entertainment systems are pretty impressive. I guess they just need to be enlarged so that they have a wider source of media. The fact that it wasn't taken up probably meant a failed campaign. You can bet that if somebody came up with a system for providing a decent video-on-demand service with up-to-date releases it'd be a winner. But then, as things stand now, it'd probably be like trying to sell a TV before electricity came along. The service needs to be there before the customer premises equipment/CPE can be sold on. And the services would need to adopt some kind of standard so that a customer can subscribe to any service without having to buy new kit. But then a firmware upgrade of their TV's embedded streaming controller would be all that's needed

egan007

PullMyFinger! wrote:

Does anyone else think that the companies are holding back on us when it comes to processors etc so we'll have to upgrade every couple of years? Ive a funny feeling they could give us a 5Gz proccesor now if they wanted to but choose to hold back.

Any thoughts?

You are just not looking past the obvious.....how about a rack of servers on one chip?

http://www.sun.com/processors/UltraSPARC-T1/index.xml

murphaph

Kernel wrote:

They want to make money, which is why they do hold back technology. They will sell higher priced CPUs in the server market because there is greater competition and more money to be made in it. They drip feed technology to home PC users to make more money. Graphics chipset manufacturers are the worst offenders here, but look at the chip technology being released for XBOX 360 and PS3 and you will see that the technology is already there but hasn't been released to us PC users yet.

Kernel, that's pretty insightful stuff. Are you employed in the industry or something?

Kernel

murphaph wrote:

Kernel, that's pretty insightful stuff. Are you employed in the industry or something?

I'm loosely affiliated with the industry, like yourself!

bohsman

Mobile phones seem to be the same and a lot of electrical equipment - walkmans etc seem to break shortly after the guarantee is up

stevenmu

The reason for the current stall in processor speeds isn't down to any great conspiracy. The power and thermal requirements for CPUs have become so great that it's very impractical to release anything much faster for the general public. Pentium 4s have been puched to beyond 7ghz (I think someone even got past 8ghz) but the power and in particular the cooling solutions needed make it totally unworkable for the general public. This is why the focus has been switched to value added features, such as dual core, security and virtualisation. There is work being done to reduce power and cooling requirements, such as reducing die size, but again there's no conspiracy holding back the release of this. Intel is currently losing huge amounts of market share to AMD, while Intel focused on racing to higher clockspeeds, AMD focused more on delivering more performance at lower speeds (and higher performance per watt) so they have a bit more leg room to play around with and are beating pretty much everything Intel can offer in terms of price and performance. If Intel had better technology they would release it now.

Kernel

stevenmu wrote:

The reason for the current stall in processor speeds isn't down to any great conspiracy. The power and thermal requirements for CPUs have become so great that it's very impractical to release anything much faster for the general public. Pentium 4s have been puched to beyond 7ghz (I think someone even got past 8ghz) but the power and in particular the cooling solutions needed make it totally unworkable for the general public. This is why the focus has been switched to value added features, such as dual core, security and virtualisation. There is work being done to reduce power and cooling requirements, such as reducing die size, but again there's no conspiracy holding back the release of this. Intel is currently losing huge amounts of market share to AMD, while Intel focused on racing to higher clockspeeds, AMD focused more on delivering more performance at lower speeds (and higher performance per watt) so they have a bit more leg room to play around with and are beating pretty much everything Intel can offer in terms of price and performance. If Intel had better technology they would release it now.

There's an element of truth in the statement that operating processors at higher clock speeds is unstable at the moment, however, as you've mentioned, there are other much more powerful processor technologies available for some time now.

These technologies are only being considered for home computing nowadays because (ironically) the industry has squeezed as high a clock speed as it can out of the outdated architecture. They have been around for years, and their production cost is in no way any greater than the old designs, the simple fact/conspiracy is that the industry has a business model, sell overpriced higher performance chips to the server market, and drip feed the 'bang-for-buck' performance chips to the home market at a rate to remain competitive but to also ensure future growth to sustain themselves during development of newer technologies.

AMD and Intel could go to a serious war with each other, if they desired, but the truth is both chip manufacturers have an uneasy and unofficial relationship with each other in terms of what they both release and how they price it to retain investor confidence.

Wait for XBOX360 and PS3 technology to hit your PC soon, and you'll see why there's been a lull with processor innovation! Bear in mind that production was assigned to these two cash cows, requiring a clearing of the schedule for any new PC chips.

steviec

Kernel wrote:

There's an element of truth in the statement that operating processors at higher clock speeds is unstable at the moment, however, as you've mentioned, there are other much more powerful processor technologies available for some time now.

These technologies are only being considered for home computing nowadays because (ironically) the industry has squeezed as high a clock speed as it can out of the outdated architecture. They have been around for years, and their production cost is in no way any greater than the old designs, the simple fact/conspiracy is that the industry has a business model, sell overpriced higher performance chips to the server market, and drip feed the 'bang-for-buck' performance chips to the home market at a rate to remain competitive but to also ensure future growth to sustain themselves during development of newer technologies.

AMD and Intel could go to a serious war with each other, if they desired, but the truth is both chip manufacturers have an uneasy and unofficial relationship with each other in terms of what they both release and how they price it to retain investor confidence.

Wait for XBOX360 and PS3 technology to hit your PC soon, and you'll see why there's been a lull with processor innovation! Bear in mind that production was assigned to these two cash cows, requiring a clearing of the schedule for any new PC chips.

PC Processors are more inefficient than other processors because they need to be backwards compatible. New chips (eg. Itanium) haven't caught on in the home PC because the advantages of being more powerful are outweighed by the disadvantages of having no software.

And a version of the processor being used by the XBox 360 is already in use in Macs, and was long before the 360 was using it.

OptimusMime

murphaph wrote:

Kernel, that's pretty insightful stuff. Are you employed in the industry or something?

Dunno if Kernel is in th eindustry or not, but what he described is stndard manufacturing practice, regardless of industry. No matter what you buy off a large corp, it is a compromised product designed soley for maximum profit

/is a realist not a commie... LOL

_raptor_ wrote:

most home users just use word and internet explorer which can run fairly well on a barebones system so why would they go out and spend a wad of cash so that their interent / word documents open slightly faster?

KABLAMMO! That is the REAL computer specs conspiracy! Why the feck are we(the general web/email/dvd user that is) being sold Ferraris when a Ford will do? All the average user needs is a 1GHz P3, and if they were mass produced using tdays heatsink tech, you could have sub-macmini size PC's which would be cool'n'quiet and basically perfect for the demographic I describe.

It is a real shame imo, that we haven't got sub $100 email/web machines.

Don't get me wrong I love mesing with PC's and love new toys, but I am also a realist and know full well that most couldn't give a crap about any of that stuff as long as they can check their emails, websites, watch a movie, burn a cd etc...

dlofnep

stevenmu wrote:

The reason for the current stall in processor speeds isn't down to any great conspiracy. The power and thermal requirements for CPUs have become so great that it's very impractical to release anything much faster for the general public. Pentium 4s have been puched to beyond 7ghz (I think someone even got past 8ghz) but the power and in particular the cooling solutions needed make it totally unworkable for the general public. This is why the focus has been switched to value added features, such as dual core, security and virtualisation. There is work being done to reduce power and cooling requirements, such as reducing die size, but again there's no conspiracy holding back the release of this. Intel is currently losing huge amounts of market share to AMD, while Intel focused on racing to higher clockspeeds, AMD focused more on delivering more performance at lower speeds (and higher performance per watt) so they have a bit more leg room to play around with and are beating pretty much everything Intel can offer in terms of price and performance. If Intel had better technology they would release it now.

Correct. It is due to cooling requirements as stated. However this has not been the case in the past and companies did hold back on major processor increments to make that proverbial buck!

stevenmu

Only spotted the updates to this thread now, for some reason they they never showed up in my subbed list (conspiracy ? who knows :v: )

Kernel wrote:

Wait for XBOX360 and PS3 technology to hit your PC soon, and you'll see why there's been a lull with processor innovation! Bear in mind that production was assigned to these two cash cows, requiring a clearing of the schedule for any new PC chips.

There is economies of scale to bear in mind. Ignoring the 360 for now (because I know more about the PS3/cell cpu and I don't want to turn this into a fanboi argument), the cell (PS3) cpu is a huge step forward in cpu technology. I have to admit that it's not really revolutionary and based on the ideas behind it, it could have been brought out years ago, but the cost of maufacturing, and therefore the recommended sale price would have been huge. While manufacturing the powerpc core in tandem with the 8 additional processing units has been posible for donkeys years, the complications and therefore the costs os doing so have only become practical in recent times. In fact many analysts say that it's still not practical and that Sony will make a huge loss on the whole thing (everyone already knows that the console will be sold at a loss with mone being made on the licensing rights, but what these analysts mean is an overall loss).

The same goes for AMD vs Intel. They both are in possesion of technology far in advance of what we have on our desktops today but the cost of manufacturing it would make the end product so expensive that very few of us would be willing to buy it. So few of us that no one will develop the software requiring it because there wouldn't be a big enough market. I'll admit that in the days of an the Intel monopoly there probably was some amount of holding tech back to make more profit on it later, but these days it wouldn't make any sense. Both AMD and Intel are now fighting hard for market share, with Intel holding the lead but AMD gaining fast, and both are desperate to do whatever they can to have the competitive advantage. Their shareholders (and that's what it all comes down to these days) would settle for nothing less.