Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!lll-tis!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!grouch.JPL.NASA.GOV!PJS
From: PJS@grouch.JPL.NASA.GOV (Peter Scott)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Re: What to do with all those MIPS
Message-ID: <880419102020.000000D9051@grouch.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Date: 19 Apr 88 18:20:20 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 13

Sorry to burst your bubble, but it takes only a few instructions to
implement a buzzing bumblebee cursor (erase last sprite; increment count
MOD N; display count-th sprite at new coordinates).  Has anyone done this
for the Mac?  Should be easy.

I have read articles on cryptoanalysis, number theory, fluid dynamics,
and ray-tracing graphics that make it plain that there the next few
orders of magnitude of CPU cycles are already spoken for, at least in
those fields.  However, it will be interesting to observe the impact of
two orders of magnitude improvement in performance for personal computers,
and their applications in the home (speech-recognizing vacuum cleaners?
Image-processing toasters?)

Peter Scott (pjs%grouch@jpl-mil.jpl.nasa.gov)