This years Big iron, is next years commodity hardware. This year commodity hardware is 32-bit, dual processor. Next years it will be 64-bit 2 core. The year after that, 64-bit 2 core hyperthreaded (4 cpus). The year after that...

I admit, each of those 'years' is really a Moore's cycle. But basically, commodity hardware has fallen in price (10 to 30%) and doubled in performance at each Moore's cycle for the last few. Speed gains through decreasing die size and uping clock speeds are hitting the limits of silicon, ion beam frequency and mask resolution. For the first time in the PCs history the next cycles increase in performance will come from multi-core, multi-cpu machines.

Intel and AMD are both talking about moving to quad core processors in 2007.

There are already 8-way motherboards available.

Put those together and you get a 32-way cluster in a box. If each of Intel's Quad cores is also hyperthreaded, 64 cpus in a box. What about AMD's Hypertransport and XBAR? A small, 1 Gigabit, switched network on a chip? Or IBMs Cell Architecture. If they are cheap enough to put into games machines, how long before 2 or 4 of them turn up in a PC?

Sure, they will not be commodity priced next year, but what of the year after?

The future is threaded ;)

Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
Lingua non convalesco, consenesco et abolesco. -- Rule 1 has a caveat! -- Who broke the cabal?
"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.

In reply to Re^4: Parrot, threads & fears for the future. by BrowserUk
in thread Parrot, threads & fears for the future. by BrowserUk

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