Moore's life test
I am sure that all readers of Habr have heard a lot about Moore's law, and they have long been talking about the fact that he should soon stop working, because almost reached the physical limits of development (the size of the atoms and the speed of light). However, the events of the past year (netbook boom) make us think about a completely different reason for the slowdown in progress.
Intel has released the Atom for cheap and light netbooks. And what happened? For most users, its power, which is about 15% of the top processors, is enough for all tasks (with the exception of games that can be played on specialized consoles): the Internet is problem-free, casual games are easy, high-resolution video is excellent, and netbooks with normal video cards are also hardware accelerated.
It turned out that manufacturers are going to do on the Atom not only cheap netbooks, but also more serious models - with a metal case, a 12-14 'screen, relatively normal video cards (ASUS 10J), desktops (ASUS Eee Box).
You can imagine the shock in Intel and AMD: Intel immediately began to say that "there is no point in putting Atom on laptops with a screen larger than 10 '", went along the beaten track - an increase in the frequency, number of cores, which few people need in this segment. AMD also stated that it "is not interested in netbooks and other dead systems." Well, tell me, who in the netbook needs a dual-core Atom 330 (instead of the weakest Core2Duo)? It is hardly possible to expect that users will also be hacked for an “upgrade” if and now everything works fine.
')
Thus, we have already come to the point when the current technical capabilities are redundant for most users. If now both AMD and Intel start mass-producing a time-tested solution without including R & D costs in the price (since this amount of development is no longer needed as previously), the price of the processor can fall to ~ $ 10.
A very small effort - and a processor for consumer systems with a built-in chipset, video accelerator and one GDDR5 memory channel (I know that this is “only for graphics”) can have only about 100 outputs (compared to the current 500-1000) - that’s all would allow to create much more economical, compact and cheap devices for consumers (both laptops and desktops). Soldered on the motherboard 2GB of RAM will allow to place the chip in 1 cm from the processor, and not in 10 cm, which will greatly reduce the latency (and do smaller cache).
Now it is possible to resolve the issue of upgrading the PC once and for all, but companies are unlikely to want to lose the continuous flow of money, and will try to warm up the corpse of a continuous upgrade as long as possible, and will stimulate the development of software that is even slowing down antiviruses) which it will be difficult to motivate users to upgrade. It remains to hope that the global crisis will kick the industry in the direction of fixing on current positions :-)
And what habrareyd think about the current situation with the development of iron?
Intel has released the Atom for cheap and light netbooks. And what happened? For most users, its power, which is about 15% of the top processors, is enough for all tasks (with the exception of games that can be played on specialized consoles): the Internet is problem-free, casual games are easy, high-resolution video is excellent, and netbooks with normal video cards are also hardware accelerated.It turned out that manufacturers are going to do on the Atom not only cheap netbooks, but also more serious models - with a metal case, a 12-14 'screen, relatively normal video cards (ASUS 10J), desktops (ASUS Eee Box).
You can imagine the shock in Intel and AMD: Intel immediately began to say that "there is no point in putting Atom on laptops with a screen larger than 10 '", went along the beaten track - an increase in the frequency, number of cores, which few people need in this segment. AMD also stated that it "is not interested in netbooks and other dead systems." Well, tell me, who in the netbook needs a dual-core Atom 330 (instead of the weakest Core2Duo)? It is hardly possible to expect that users will also be hacked for an “upgrade” if and now everything works fine.
')
Thus, we have already come to the point when the current technical capabilities are redundant for most users. If now both AMD and Intel start mass-producing a time-tested solution without including R & D costs in the price (since this amount of development is no longer needed as previously), the price of the processor can fall to ~ $ 10.
A very small effort - and a processor for consumer systems with a built-in chipset, video accelerator and one GDDR5 memory channel (I know that this is “only for graphics”) can have only about 100 outputs (compared to the current 500-1000) - that’s all would allow to create much more economical, compact and cheap devices for consumers (both laptops and desktops). Soldered on the motherboard 2GB of RAM will allow to place the chip in 1 cm from the processor, and not in 10 cm, which will greatly reduce the latency (and do smaller cache).
Now it is possible to resolve the issue of upgrading the PC once and for all, but companies are unlikely to want to lose the continuous flow of money, and will try to warm up the corpse of a continuous upgrade as long as possible, and will stimulate the development of software that is even slowing down antiviruses) which it will be difficult to motivate users to upgrade. It remains to hope that the global crisis will kick the industry in the direction of fixing on current positions :-)
And what habrareyd think about the current situation with the development of iron?
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/50568/
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