Samantha Atkins wrote:
>
> A friend of mine has the theory that the rise in desktop machine speed was actually
> driven by bloated stupid languages like C++ used on large projects. The engineers
> needed faster and faster machines to get more than one build or update done a day. :-)
Well, I rather doubt if the market for faster desktop machines has
anything to do with the needs of software developers; they just benefit
from it as a side effect, is all.
The need for speed these days is felt by gamers (as always), and by
the folks who use their computers for multimedia -- sound processing,
image processing (Photoshop), and **especially** nonlinear video
editing (Adobe Premiere, etc.). Software DVD players, too (PC-based
home theater is a world unto itself -- check out, for example, the
AV Science Forum [ http://www.avsforum.com ]), not to mention the
upcoming software HDTV decoders (which may be here already -- I've
been neglecting consumer electronics shamefully for the past few
months ;-> ).
I remember reading an article by John C. Dvorak recently (and I've found
it: http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/stories/opinions/0,7802,2665934,00.html )
about last January's Comdex in which he sings the praises of a German
company called DynaPel, which has developed streaming video software
that uses a whole lot of desktop number-crunching (1.5 GHz worth)
to interpolate smooth 30 frame-per-second video from a network feed of only
4 frames per second. Dvorak thinks this is cool because he pooh-poohs the
prospects for rapid penetration of broadband in the consumer market.
Anyway, that's where the chip speed is getting soaked up, and there
is **no end** in sight of the demand for it.
Jim F.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 10:00:01 MDT