Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!faline!thumper!ulysses!ucbvax!unisoft!gethen!farren
From: farren@gethen.UUCP (Michael J. Farren)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: More than 32 bits needed where?
Message-ID: <679@gethen.UUCP>
Date: 11 Feb 88 16:52:16 GMT
References: <235@unicom.UUCP> <28200089@ccvaxa>
Reply-To: farren@gethen.UUCP (Michael J. Farren)
Organization: There's Unix there in Oakland
Lines: 33

davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen) writes:
>
>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.

The flaw in this argument is presuming that we have knowledge of all the
possible applications of such power.  Relevant examples abound - the
statement that 'the whole world will only need a small number of these
machines' applied to the early computers is a particularly good one,
as it points out that our vision is necessarily limited by our current
knowledge.  It's not what you can do with a powerful machine now that
is intriguing, but what you might be able to do with one if they were
commonly available, and that you cannot foresee.

The widespread acceptance of a bit-mapped graphical interface among
personal computer users is a fine counter-example.  It's only been
ten years since such an interface was a laboratory exercise, and
infeasible for general use.  It's really only now, with the advent
of the 68020 and 80386, that such a concept can begin to move from
the lab into common usage, with basically good results.  I don't
know what the equivalent use is for a gigabyte/gigaflop machine -
if I did, I'd probably be making a lot more money than I am now -
but I'd be willing to bet that it will be unexpected and useful.

-- 
Michael J. Farren             | "INVESTIGATE your point of view, don't just 
{ucbvax, uunet, hoptoad}!     | dogmatize it!  Reflect on it and re-evaluate
        unisoft!gethen!farren | it.  You may want to change your mind someday."
gethen!farren@lll-winken.llnl.gov ----- Tom Reingold, from alt.flame