Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!umich!samsung!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!convex!eugene!swarren
From: swarren@eugene.uucp (Steve Warren)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: R6000 PCs?
Message-ID: <4470@convex.UUCP>
Date: 9 Jan 90 19:22:44 GMT
References: <3300092@m.cs.uiuc.edu> <3300093@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Sender: news@convex.UUCP
Reply-To: swarren@convex.COM (Steve Warren)
Organization: Convex Computer Corporation, Richardson, Tx.
Lines: 42

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.
>
>Personally, for nearly all PC applications, I think that a 386 system is
>  more than enough and most of the demand comes from people who don't 
                             [...]
Well, without flaming, I'd just like to say that this assumes that
the group of applications that people will want to run on PCs is static.

As more power becomes available the applications that use that power
are going to be written.  Just because we don't know what they will be
doesn't mean they won't exist.  I just think back to when 8K of ram was
a system and paper tape was a user interface.  A CRT, 64K ram, and an 8"
floppy was the elite system, and a hard drive was beyond hoping for.

I remember when the first hard drive came out for a PC and Byte magazine
came out with an article cautioning users that most of them wouldn't
need this kind of power, and it could be so difficult to manage such vast
amounts of information.  And at the time it was true, there weren't many
applications that could take advantage of a hard drive, and the
knowledge about them wasn't readily available.

All this is just to say, we shouldn't presume to think that we know what
the limits are to people's desire for more speed.  I personally think
that CPU speed is sort of like money in the old cliche: "how much is
enough? - just a little bit more..."

What if the graphical user interface of the future is a ray-traced 3-D
world that the user moves around in interactively?  We don't know if
such a thing would be good, because we don't have the horsepower to do it
yet.  This is just one example of an area where available CPU speed
(personally available to individuals) is drastically below the level
needed for good interactive response.  I just say this for a hypothetical
example.  I don't know what the speed would come in handy for, I just feel
that if it becomes available people will find ways to use it.  And then
they will wonder how people ever got by without the new capabilities.

--Steve
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