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Breakthrough in semiconductor technology

Nobody going to argue with me?
Great - I just won a JREF argument :)
 
hodgy said:
What a spreadsheet can do is hardly the point. That's a bit like a car engine designer saying that there is a utility ceiling on engine power due to there being a practical limitation on roadspeed and failing to consider the power requirements of ocean liners.
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Hans allowed for this when he said there are special applications that can never have enough power. In the world of engines, ocean liners are a special application of engine.

I've stated in other forums that I think 64-bit processors are unnecessary for home use (except for 64-bit memory addressing) because there aren't that many things you do at home that require a 64-bit number set to represent it. 32-bit numbers are working just fine. I think this is why the switch to 64-bit is going much slower than the change to from 16 bits to 32.
 
kevin said:
I've stated in other forums that I think 64-bit processors are unnecessary for home use (except for 64-bit memory addressing) because there aren't that many things you do at home that require a 64-bit number set to represent it. 32-bit numbers are working just fine. I think this is why the switch to 64-bit is going much slower than the change to from 16 bits to 32.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem
 
drkitten said:
Games and badly written (e.g. Micro$haft) code.

Games have been driving computer development and sales for a long time; the "holy grail" is a machine that's fast enough to handle real-time photorealistic animation. Until we have that, game desigers will always be pushing the hardware envelope for the immersive RPG and FPS-style games.

Also, when cycles are cheap enough, you stop worrying about them. Why bother to use a fast sorting algorithm when you can code up bubble sort and still have the program give "acceptable" responsiveness? Overall code efficiency, in both space and time, has dropped dramatically over the past twenty years precisely because there's little incentive to make code fast or compact any more.
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One of my old professors adressed this way back in my undergraduate years. This is roughly what he presented:

Assume three algorithms of complexity O(n), O(n log n), and O(n^2) and three processors that can perform 1000, 10,000, and 100,000 operations per second. (I'll be using log base 10 for ease of calculation... I haven't had my coffee)

Cases:

Processor----Algorithm--------n-----Operations-----Time to complete
1000 o/s------O(n^2)------10,000 ---10^8----------100,000s ~= 28h
10,000 o/s----O(n^2)------10,000----10^8-----------10,000s ~= 3h
100,000 o/s---O(n^2)------10,000----10^8------------1,000s ~= 17min
1000 o/s------O(n log n)----10,000---40,000--------------40s
10,000 o/s----O(n log n)----10,000---40,000---------------4s
100,000 o/s---O(n log n)----10,000---40,000---------------0.4s
1000 o/s------O(n)---------10,000---10,000--------------10s
10,000 o/s----O(n)---------10,000---10,000---------------1s
100,000 o/s---O(n)---------10,000---10,000---------------0.1s

And this is why it remains important to use efficient algorithms. =)
 
Speaking of O notation...

...realtime high resolution raytracing, here we come!

Raster-based rendering (standard polygon tossing) scales with the complexity of the scene as O(triangles)

Ray-based rendering scales with the resolution of the screen, O(pixels) .. all the minor stuff such as ray-triangle intersections can be performed in O(n log n) time so scene complexity only has a minor impact in the grand scheme.

Intel has estimated that the point where raytracing will finally be faster than rasterization is at around 1 million visible triangles which we are rapidly approaching anyways. Given a big jump in processor speed (with a big jump in memory speeds as well) it will mean the demise of raster-based solutions in gaming.

Of course, it could take a decade for everyone to make the switch. Then again, it could be rather fast if the visual output is that much better.
 
kevin said:
Hans allowed for this when he said there are special applications that can never have enough power. In the world of engines, ocean liners are a special application of engine.
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I do not consider business machines and the applications that run on them to be 'special' (or at least - no more special than any other category of system). I don't see why we should limit our imaginations to what is possible in home computing in this dicsussion - that's a completely arbitrary boundary in any case.

I've stated in other forums that I think 64-bit processors are unnecessary for home use (except for 64-bit memory addressing) because there aren't that many things you do at home that require a 64-bit number set to represent it. 32-bit numbers are working just fine. I think this is why the switch to 64-bit is going much slower than the change to from 16 bits to 32.
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You may be right but this thread wasn't about the suitability of 64 bit numbers on home systems.
 
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