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From: dce@smsc.sony.com (David Elliott)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: R6000 PCs?
Message-ID: <1990Jan8.143215.12284@smsc.sony.com>
Date: 8 Jan 90 14:32:15 GMT
References: <3300092@m.cs.uiuc.edu> <3300093@m.cs.uiuc.edu> <1990Jan8.033050.3360@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us>
Reply-To: dce@Sony.COM (David Elliott)
Organization: Sony Microsystems Corp.
Lines: 37

In article <1990Jan8.033050.3360@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us> johnl@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us (John R. Levine) writes:
>In article <3300093@m.cs.uiuc.edu> nelson@m.cs.uiuc.edu writes:
>>I truly believe that the demand for faster and faster PCs will slow down
>>  quite a bit in the next few years.

>More seriously, it's pretty clear that the PC industry is moving toward
>graphics, networking, and multi-media, each of which individually is a big
>cycle sink, and together which can absorb all of the CPU power likely to be
>available in the foreseeable future.

I can think of two other, or at least more specific, considerations:

	1. Decentralization of personnel and resources.  Some people
	   are predicting an increase in the number of computer users
	   working out of their homes, as it saves time, money, and
	   stress.  This will require that PCs hold redundant data
	   and be able to communicate over networks without users
	   seeing a big degradation.

	2. Improvement of user interfaces.  Today's "average" PC user
	   learned about computers in college as an afterthought, so
	   these people are just learning to replace paper with bits.
	   As more people are introduced to the power of computers,
	   they will make more demands on the interfaces: voice
	   recognition, better handling of user preferences, builtin
	   instruction (i.e., popup or voice help for everything),
	   etc.

I actually feel that the demand for faster PCs will increase as people
begin to understand what computers are really capable of doing, and
as they learn to ask instead of taking what we, the industry, give them.

-- 
David Elliott
dce@smsc.sony.com | ...!{uunet,mips}!sonyusa!dce
(408)944-4073
"But Pee Wee... I don't wanna be the baby!"