«

They will be releasing a lot of faster chips once Vista comes out. Basically
Microsoft appears to have slowed it down, by not releasing a new version of
windows for many years.


"news.xtra.co.nz" <> wrote in message
news:qWnMf.154638$...
>
> "Shane" <> wrote in message
> news:dtrqrd$1it$...
>> http://www.newscientist.com/article....nfo-tech_rss20
>>
>
> but, has moores law held true for the last 3 years?
>
> 3 years ago (early 2003), I bought a pc with a 3ghz intel processor.
> Looking around today, I should be able to find a pc with the equivalent
> power of a 12ghz processor.
>
> I bet there aren't any pc's that could encode video 3 times faster than my
> machine.
>
> Multi core technology doesn't count either. It should be the output from a
> single processor that counts, (to compare apples with apples)
>

Rob wrote:
> "news.xtra.co.nz" <> wrote in message
> news:qWnMf.154638$...
>>
>> "Shane" <> wrote in message
>> news:dtrqrd$1it$...
>>> http://www.newscientist.com/article....nfo-tech_rss20
>>>
>>
>> but, has moores law held true for the last 3 years?
>>
>> 3 years ago (early 2003), I bought a pc with a 3ghz intel processor.
>> Looking around today, I should be able to find a pc with the
>> equivalent power of a 12ghz processor.
>>
>> I bet there aren't any pc's that could encode video 3 times faster
>> than my machine.
>>
>> Multi core technology doesn't count either. It should be the output
>> from a single processor that counts, (to compare apples with apples)
>
> They will be releasing a lot of faster chips once Vista comes out.
> Basically Microsoft appears to have slowed it down, by not releasing
> a new version of windows for many years.

That makes very little sense.

> Moore's law relates to the density of transistors located on an
> intergrated circut.

..... and

clock speed (~= performance for a particular architecture)
and heat dissipation
and power consumption (== heat)
and ? forget.


"Moore's Law" isn't a law by any means at all to start off with **. It is
more an observation that it is possible to achieve the "doubling" of
"performance" over a time interval as a means to an end: and that end is
the ability of the chip industry to make marketable chips with a self
perpetuation sales cycle.

Improving on any of the key factors above is adherence with the "law".
Halving the chip size and preserving performance, or halving heat
dissipation and preserving size and performance, or doubling performance and
preserving heat dissipation levels all individually qualify (read the
original article).

Going dual core is dubious just as doubling cache size is dubious since the
change has to translate into usable benefit. Adding 8MB cache onto a single
core chip that previously had 1 MB probably represents a very substantial
increase in logic gates (towards 9 times as many if ignoring the gates in
the CPU core), but how much benefit is there? While increasing cache size,
the chip size is also increasing negating the benefit - if the chip size
were preserved then there is benefit.

I have always regarded Moore's "Law" in a light similar to Moore himself in
that
1. he did not coin the term,
2. he did not claim that it was perpetual
3. he merely published (extremely well) a set of observations that should
have put a big smile on the faces of investors, engineers, and consumers
that said basically "we are in for a very interesting time". It was only
recently that Moore (forget his first name) even gave the word "Law" any
credence & it was a bit odd that he did.

The "Law" has not held true for Intel (no comment for AMD - they have
reduced heat dissipation and added x64 as major achievements) for some
time - following the principals o the "Law" we should have either 30+ GHZ
single core systems or systems with 3GHz grunt using less than 1 watt or
power or 3GHz systems in absolutely tiny chips, or all flavours of variants
across the board from 3 to 30GHz and about 1 (or less) to 100 watts for the
highest spec low cost chips. This has not happened because Intel stuffed up
and has chosen to concentrate on heat dissipation.

Intel could have stuck with it (Moore's "Law") if they had wished and not
stuffed up. They stuffed up and tried to produce high clock P4 family chips
when there were heat dissipation issues clearly acting as a limiting factor.
Instead of addressing this factor they have copped out and taken the easy
way out and gone multi core. There is no guarantee at all that there will
ever be sufficient uptake in the consumer market of multithreaded
applications or multiple concurrent app usage to ever benefit the consumer
to become a worthwhile upgrade - do not be surprised to see the GHz race
come back at a later date when someone redesigns the chips to do more per
clock cycle, drop the clock cycles down substantially (Itanium's are under
2GHz still and apparently have stunning performance) and the start producing
a new product family with 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 GHZ cores that leave current systems
in the dust.

x64 has been another distraction on this front. In a way it is just another
architecture and only that even though it is only an extension of the
existing architecture. Most users won't see great performance benefits to ma
it worth while by its self. How fast can you type or click?

So, I describe Moore's "Law" as a marketing plan (not a Law) - a business
driver which if a CPU manufacturer sticks to (with eyes open) results in a
set a rules that tells the company what to do to produce a set of products
that will sell themselves as they will be 100% faster and / or leaner or
cooler or lower in power consumption every 18 months to 2 years.

Frankly I have been astonished that Intel has give away such a large chunk
of its business to AMD so quickly. But then it could be part of their
business plans - desk top machines are on the way out. Mobile is the hot
thing, that still needs fast cool, low power consumption chips IE centrino /
Pentium M - Intel's only success in recent years and other architectures.

Thankfully at the end of the day we now have a new variant of Moore's "Law".
rather than having the disgusting high heat dissipation P4 Prescott chips
with howling coolers we will benefit from quiet easier to build and maintain
systems with vastly lower heat dissipation / power consumption - this is
getting back to Moore's "Law" as a halving of heat dissipation is a very
sellable thing by its self.

** if it were a law then how could you possibly stuff it up? How fast were
the processors cave men used?

Doubt it.

So no one wants a faster sytem just cos there are no new OS?

One of the really big new things is Media Centre type apps. I would like to
be able to biff the 4GB files arounf a *lot* faster than I can currently - I
am sure everyone else working with VOB's and DIVx and whatever else would
like to too. Thats only 1 application, but its a biggy and growing quickly.

One can spend days sorting out video files due to current performance limits
and not evn have much o a video library.





"Rob" <> wrote in message
news:1141097307.167219@ftpsrv1...
> They will be releasing a lot of faster chips once Vista comes out.
> Basically Microsoft appears to have slowed it down, by not releasing a new
> version of windows for many years.
>
>
> "news.xtra.co.nz" <> wrote in message
> news:qWnMf.154638$...
>>
>> "Shane" <> wrote in message
>> news:dtrqrd$1it$...
>>> http://www.newscientist.com/article....nfo-tech_rss20
>>>
>>
>> but, has moores law held true for the last 3 years?
>>
>> 3 years ago (early 2003), I bought a pc with a 3ghz intel processor.
>> Looking around today, I should be able to find a pc with the equivalent
>> power of a 12ghz processor.
>>
>> I bet there aren't any pc's that could encode video 3 times faster than
>> my machine.
>>
>> Multi core technology doesn't count either. It should be the output from
>> a single processor that counts, (to compare apples with apples)
>>
>
>

"Mercury" <> wrote in message
news:du2t6p$lh4$...
> Doubt it.
>
> So no one wants a faster sytem just cos there are no new OS?
>
> One of the really big new things is Media Centre type apps. I would like
> to be able to biff the 4GB files arounf a *lot* faster than I can
> currently - I am sure everyone else working with VOB's and DIVx and
> whatever else would like to too. Thats only 1 application, but its a biggy
> and growing quickly.
>
> One can spend days sorting out video files due to current performance
> limits and not evn have much o a video library.
>
>
>
>
>
> "Rob" <> wrote in message
> news:1141097307.167219@ftpsrv1...
>> They will be releasing a lot of faster chips once Vista comes out.
>> Basically Microsoft appears to have slowed it down, by not releasing a
>> new version of windows for many years.
>>
>>
>> "news.xtra.co.nz" <> wrote in message
>> news:qWnMf.154638$...
>>>
>>> "Shane" <> wrote in message
>>> news:dtrqrd$1it$...
>>>> http://www.newscientist.com/article....nfo-tech_rss20
>>>>
>>>
>>> but, has moores law held true for the last 3 years?
>>>
>>> 3 years ago (early 2003), I bought a pc with a 3ghz intel processor.
>>> Looking around today, I should be able to find a pc with the equivalent
>>> power of a 12ghz processor.
>>>
>>> I bet there aren't any pc's that could encode video 3 times faster than
>>> my machine.
>>>
>>> Multi core technology doesn't count either. It should be the output from
>>> a single processor that counts, (to compare apples with apples)
>>>
>>
>>
>
>

This is my personal opinion, and I have also read articles with similar
views. The fact is, with windows xp, most computer buyers (the target market
of businesses and home users) don't need a computer faster than 3 Ghz. There
really hasn't been much of a speed increase in computers for a good couple
of years, which matches the fact that their hasn't been a new release of
windows.
However when Vista is released, people will be wanting to upgrade to it. The
fact is, most people don't buy a standalone operating system (they want
things as easy and simple as possible), so they buy the computer bundled
with the OEM windows license all preinstalled. This is a win win situation
for both microsoft and intel, especially as Vista has such high processor
requirements to run all it's features and eye candy.

On Wed, 01 Mar 2006 14:21:43 +1300, Mercury wrote:

> Frankly I have been astonished that Intel has give away such a large chunk
> of its business to AMD so quickly.

Intel did not "give" that business away. Intel's current products are not
as good as AMD's products, and so the industry quite rightly is going with
the better product - produced by AMD.

Moore's Law has nothing to do with heat or speed. It was an observation
on how transistor density on a single integrated circut had increased over
time, and how it was likely to keep on increasing.


Have A Nice Cup of Tea

--
Jono Bacon: "I deal with companies every day that are moving over to Linux, and
it does all the things that they want."

On Wed, 01 Mar 2006 14:51:54 +1300, Rob wrote:

> However when Vista is released, people will be wanting to upgrade to it.

Only if they're clueless morons who don't know what they'll be letting
themselves in for. (resource hog, Digital Restrictions Managemetn)

In comparison with Longhorn/Vista/<insert-current-name-here> big desktops
like KDE and Gnome will positively fly along at lightning speed and with,
comparitively, a miniscule memory footprint.

Micro$oft Windows Vista is arguably one of the better reasons to start
using a contemporary release of Linux.


Have A Nice Cup of Tea

--
Jono Bacon: "I deal with companies every day that are moving over to Linux, and
it does all the things that they want."

You need to read the original article by Mr Moore.

How else can we interprit Intel's action? "Give away", "Stolen", "Fought
furiously for".... IMO, they made it so easy for AMD that it was a Give
Away. AMD has worked well to maximise the benefit for its self, but if AMD
did not exist, Intel's actions and failures still equate to a huge loss of
sales, so they have given away those sales.

Put it another way, if they had stuck to Moores "Law" and had produced a 6,
10, 16, and 30 GHZ CPU over the last few years then I along with many many
others would have bough some of them, but they do not exist to purchase off
Intel (nor AMD unfortunately) and the only real improvements in technology
has come from AMD so, again, Intel has tossed out sales and given the sales
and advantage to AMD. AMD has earned substantial credit in the process.

Ex. Intel Fan Boy.


Thanks for the tea.




"Have A Nice Cup of Tea" <> wrote in message
news...
> On Wed, 01 Mar 2006 14:21:43 +1300, Mercury wrote:
>
>> Frankly I have been astonished that Intel has give away such a large
>> chunk
>> of its business to AMD so quickly.
>
> Intel did not "give" that business away. Intel's current products are not
> as good as AMD's products, and so the industry quite rightly is going with
> the better product - produced by AMD.
>
> Moore's Law has nothing to do with heat or speed. It was an observation
> on how transistor density on a single integrated circut had increased over
> time, and how it was likely to keep on increasing.
>
>
> Have A Nice Cup of Tea
>
> --
> Jono Bacon: "I deal with companies every day that are moving over to
> Linux, and
> it does all the things that they want."
>

<snip>
>
> This is my personal opinion, and I have also read articles with similar
> views. The fact is, with windows xp, most computer buyers (the target
> market of businesses and home users) don't need a computer faster than 3
> Ghz. There really hasn't been much of a speed increase in computers for a
> good couple of years, which matches the fact that their hasn't been a new
> release of windows.
> However when Vista is released, people will be wanting to upgrade to it.
> The fact is, most people don't buy a standalone operating system (they
> want things as easy and simple as possible), so they buy the computer
> bundled with the OEM windows license all preinstalled. This is a win win
> situation for both microsoft and intel, especially as Vista has such high
> processor requirements to run all it's features and eye candy.

Thats all true.

On Wed, 01 Mar 2006 15:32:24 +1300, Mercury wrote:

> You need to read the original article by Mr Moore.
>
> How else can we interprit Intel's action? "Give away", "Stolen", "Fought
> furiously for".... IMO, they made it so easy for AMD that it was a Give
> Away. AMD has worked well to maximise the benefit for its self, but if AMD
> did not exist, Intel's actions and failures still equate to a huge loss of
> sales, so they have given away those sales.

Moore's law is an observation on how the density of transistors on a
single integrated circut had changed over time. That is all. Nothing to do
with heat or speed. (altho' heat dissipation and clock speed are directly
affected by density and voltage)

Intel did not "give away" anything. It just developed a dud product in the
name of faster clock speeds. AMD just went and produced a CPU that could
do more work.


Have A Nice Cup of Tea

--
Buffer-overflow vulnerabilities are simply programming errors; they occur when
coders fail to deploy proper memory-management techniques.