Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!faline!thumper!ulysses!allegra!princeton!udel!gatech!hao!noao!arizona!mike
From: mike@arizona.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: More than 32 bits needed where?
Message-ID: <3815@megaron.arizona.edu>
Date: 11 Feb 88 03:17:43 GMT
References: <9495@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP>
Organization: U of Arizona CS Dept, Tucson
Lines: 21
Posted: Wed Feb 10 22:17:43 1988

From article <9495@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP>, by davidsen@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP (William E. Davidsen Jr):
> There are people who say that there will always be a need for more power
> are only partially correct. There will always be a *use* for more power,
> but as the percentage of problems requiring a given level of power
> decreases, the economic justification for creating such hardware
> decreases. The problems tend to be more abstract and the value of the
> solutions harder to determine.

I think that experience shows that we quickly develop "need" for any
amount of processing power we have available.  I mean "need" in the
sense of "makes economic sense".  When we had 4K of memory we didn't
"need" much except an assembler and front pannel lights.  Now we need
huge editors, compilers, debuggers, window systems, spread sheets, ...
At the moment, I'm not sure what I "need": a shell that lets me
manipulate three dimensional shaded pipes to connect processes?  Voice
input?  More likely, something I haven't even imagined yet.
-- 

Mike Coffin				mike@arizona.edu
Univ. of Ariz. Dept. of Comp. Sci.	{allegra,cmcl2,ihnp4}!arizona!mike
Tucson, AZ  85721			(602)621-4252