Computing power

Jaafa

In regards to moores law which states that computing power doubles every 2 years......when will it stop?

Some say as soon as 2015? What do you think?

What will we do then? Improve the architecture of processors? Watch as computers get bigger and bigger as more and more processors are put into them?

What do you say?

Ghost Train

It's more the amount of transistors that can placed on an integrated circuit doubles

I guess it will continue on another while. Technology is still the same its just getting smaller, eventually you physically can't make transistors smaller than atoms. Maybe some other technology will take over or new processes can be used to get the same effect or make the law no longer relevant

Jaafa

Well they are working on quantum computers but at present the best they can do is simple multiplication.

CreepingDeath

A lot of the bottlenecks in computers these days are from storage.
When solid state drives become more mainstream the prices will drop.

Until then, reading and writing to hard disks and usb drives are painfully slow in comparison to the CPU speed.

youcancallmeal

Good old Moore's Law, he has stated himself that he reckons there is only about another 10 to 20 years left in it. Intel and other manufacturers are also getting close to the minimum die size as they cant get lasers reliable to manufacture anything smaller than 29nm. Interesting times ahead though with the likes of quantum and optical computing over the horizon

spider guardian

Moore's 'Law' was always more of a theory anyways. Hence the move into multi-processing. However I think that advances in chip architecture has been held up by the masses simply not requiring any more power than what is currently available. It doesn't take much power to surf the net and write word documents. Adding more RAM can usually speed up a PC better than a faster CPU can. There is a trend now for more energy efficient CPUs, look at the Intel Atom line. Couple that with less power hungry storage devices and there is a whole new roadmap there for netbooks, tablet PCs and smartphones.

As for the cutting edge, the challenge is there for programmers to take full advantage of multi-core CPUs, not an easy task but one that is necessary to fully realise the potential of the new chips

Overheal

well you know, chips keep getting smaller and smaller. Few more years at the very least. We measure circuits by the nanometer at this point, and that trend will continue for quite some time. Its known as Nanolithography, and yes, lithography is that thing you did in art class that one time. Same basic principle.

the smaller the circuit, the less power and space (And heat) required to do the same amount of work. in the 90s and early 00s we were dealing with processors that used micrometers as a measure and in 2003 we saw the 90nm process emerge. Companies are now unveiling the 32nm process. It will probably be years and years before the 1nm process is unveiled and then once thats done expect to see the 90 micron process emerge. And so on. And so forth. Moore's Law seems slated to outlast binary computing...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computer

After that, all bets are off.

Jaafa

So what will this mean for the price of computers? Will they remain around the same price? Increase or decrease?

Will we in the near future have computers powerful enough so that last for 10 years or more for the average person? By that I mean will they be able to run most software and OS for years to come?

Will advances in the hardware outstrip advances in software?

The_B_Man

Crikey, tried reading the wiki article on quantum computing! I didnt last long! Anyone wanna explain it to me??

Jaafa

Beyond me too I'm afraid!