Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!uceng!dmocsny
From: dmocsny@uceng.UC.EDU (daniel mocsny)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: VLIW Architecture - References, oth
Summary: How much is really enough
Message-ID: <2496@uceng.UC.EDU>
Date: 17 Oct 89 23:21:20 GMT
References: <771301127@8909291517.AA00260@maxwell.ece.c> <130800001@peg> <1989Oct17.192955.29370@world.std.com>
Organization: Univ. of Cincinnati, College of Engg.
Lines: 42

In article <1989Oct17.192955.29370@world.std.com>, bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) writes:
> 1. There exists a percentage of users who, no matter how fast
> computers become in the foreseeable future, will need even more speed.

This I agree with, though I think the percentage is 100.

> 2. There are two factors making the percentage smaller over time, the
> steady and rapid increase in office and other clerical uses of
> computers and the increase in speed we are seeing (that is, some users
> are dropping out of the hunger category simply because they have
> become sated for the time being.)

OK. Let's distinguish clearly between how much computer we "need," and
how much we "can use." The reason office and clerical users are
getting saturated right now is not because computers have solved all
their problems and they are now sitting around twiddling their thumbs.
If anything, these workers still appear to have plenty of remaining
profitable opportunities to apply Information Power. The problem is,
viewing the computer as an ergonomic device, to get the computer to do
X amount of work, the user must sit there and perform f(X) amount of
work (typing in commands, searching for and reading TFM, wondering why
the serial cables don't work, waiting on hold at the user support
number, unjamming the printer, looking for backup copies of trashed
files, etc. etc.). The amount of work the user can perform then limits
the amount of computer power the worker can productively exploit.

Because the overall ergonomic performance of computer systems today
is still rather poor, very few people have the type of scalable, redundant
problems (such as airline ticketing or weather forecasting) that allow
a handful of computer operators to effectively use powerful hardware.

To say that people don't "need" any more computer power is to say that
they have no further aspirations. That is plainly silly.  As soon as
hardware/software reduces f(X) for one task enough to give the user
some spare time, the user will then advance to the next profitable
task. The real problem is that the industry cannot produce
general-purpose computing machines that keep themselves doing useful
things at full tilt without requiring constant attention from highly
skilled users.

Dan Mocsny
dmocsny@uceng.uc.edu