The Future of Computing, According to Intel

Massively multicore processors will enable smarter computers that can infer our activities.

http://www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/19432/?a=f

 

Sounds great!
What about the price? It's gonna be nice if they increase the speed but not too high price.

 

I'm waiting for nano-technology, artificial intelligence, artificial intuition, auto-backup, auto-recovery, auto-repair, auto-cleaning, organic chips, ...

 

Hey Erik, i recommend reading the article. It's not just multi cores.. It's what that implies.
Also note that this is published by MIT. This site is about implications for the future in emerging technologies etc.

 

As long these computers have a switch OFF button, I don't care what they can.

 

You don't even have to buy it, i don't see what's that got to do with anything.
Everything you mentioned is related or implied here. AI, auto-whateveryouwant, nano tech.

 

I don't need that kind of help from a machine.

Just like an activation that tells me, you can't install your paid software, because your counter reached the limit.

What about UAC ? Users turn it OFF to get rid of its irritating behavior.

And remember any good thing in the world, can also be used as a bad thing and knowing people from history, this will also happen.

 

I respect you and your old-geezer style, but dude... you complain a little much.
You may not need that kind of machine to filter your call, but you might just need it to help keep you or your loved ones alive. Try to be a little optimistic in the face of great scientific discoveries .

 

I hope they don't wait too much longer.

Remember? Back around the 1970's we were supposed to be wheeling about by the year 2000 in airborne motocars above ground.

Since man landed on the Moon in 1969, all we do now is orbit the earth in an endless cycle via a rocket-plane; by now we should have colonized the planet MARS no less. What ever happen to the idea for electro-magnetic plasma propulsion?

All these latest greatest inventions are taking us is in a grounded non-stop loop. You can do that just by standing still while the earth goes round every day & night.

It's little wonder that the best speed that mankind can achieve is limited to a fractionally sized integrated electronic chip. But as long as it can pick up the pace on my PC, those like myself will probably spring the greenbacks for one

 

Exciting indeed, but nothing compared to what 'Quantum computers' will be able to do in terms of power:

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/quantum-computer.htm

"If functional quantum computers can be built, they will be valuable in factoring large numbers, and therefore extremely useful for decoding and encoding secret information. If one were to be built today, no information on the Internet would be safe. Our current methods of encryption are simple compared to the complicated methods possible in quantum computers. Quantum computers could also be used to search large databases in a fraction of the time that it would take a conventional computer. Other applications could include using quantum computers to study quantum mechanics, or even to design other quantum computers."

 

Yeah right, wait until all these great scientific discoveries are abused by powerfull people against you.
Nuclear energy was also such a great invention until they used it to kill people.
I'm not an old-geezer, I just think a little further ... and I know how people are.

 

Its always a tendency with people who are absorbed in technical issues to lose view on the greater scope of life,myself included.There is so many more to enjoy then just computers said my wife always and she is completely right.

 

I thought the future of computing was those blue guys...

http://download.intel.com/pressroom/images/bmg/unicopter.jpg

 

I´ve already said this, but computers will not become much faster unless something is done to drastically improve the HDD, I mean, I´m sure that CPU and RAM will become faster, but what about the HDD? From what I´ve read SSD´s (Solid State Disks) are hardly an improvement, at least not in terms of speed, so I do hope that scientists/engineers will soon come up with something revolutionary, perhaps something like this:

http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/article.php?id=1217

 

Speed is not the main concern of a storage device, capacity is.

Plus you have to consider if you spend extra on buying a faster hdd VS buying more ram AND/OR faster cpu, will general peformance increase ?

With a Modern OS that multi-tasks, has caching and other performance features, you will probably find the HDD is not a big bottleneck in general usage (that is pretty much random access), only when you get onto video editting and scientific systems where massive amounts of data need to be continously read and written. If you need the performance, you can alway go the RAID route and create a huge drive array (Seagate cheetah does 135mbs, imagine 4 of those in a raid zero config ...).

 

Thanks for the insight nickr, seems logical.

 

@ nickr

For me, my dream machine is a PC that boots up (almost) instantly, and where all apps start instantly too. Same goes for moving/copying data. Without super fast HDD´S this will never become a reality, no matter how fast the CPU is, and no matter how much RAM you have. The funny thing is that the only time when my PC freezes is when my HDD is too busy, not when my CPU is using 100%!

 

AFAIK, instant-on is only possible with embedded OSes (see this Asus mobo) or proper hibernation.

RAID may give you better STR (sustained trasfer rate) which is important at moving large files.

If you're experiencing disk thrashing, you should investigate the causes. Fragmentation, failing drive, bad driver, disk in PIO mode, etc, may cause disk thrashing. The best thing to have smooth disk access is concurrent reads and writes alongside smart partitioning and little fragmentation.