Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!uceng!dmocsny
From: dmocsny@uceng.UC.EDU (daniel mocsny)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: R6000 PCs?
Message-ID: <3277@uceng.UC.EDU>
Date: 10 Jan 90 05:18:37 GMT
References: <3300092@m.cs.uiuc.edu> <3300093@m.cs.uiuc.edu> <4470@convex.UUCP>
Organization: College of Engg., Univ. of Cincinnati
Lines: 75

In article <4470@convex.UUCP> swarren@convex.COM (Steve Warren) writes:
>In article <3300093@m.cs.uiuc.edu> nelson@m.cs.uiuc.edu writes:
>>
>>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 
>                             [...]
>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.

We will have enough computer power only when all human aspirations
have been satisfied, and all human problems have been solved. For
every problem I can imagine, solution requires (possibly among other
things) at least the ability to process information. We can't yet
apply computer power profitably to all human problems, but that is not
due to any theoretical limit on what computers can do. It is the fault
of our understanding, our software, and our transducers. Oh yes, and
for many problems we have constraints of cost and time, so as
computers improve the range of potentially solvable problems
increases.

The original poster does raise an important point---getting the most
out of high-performance hardware on a widespread basis is very
difficult. Few users have the type of scalable problems of relatively
low Kolmogorov complexity that map readily onto faster hardware. An
overworked businessman can't double his profits by buying a faster
machine and merely halving a grid size! The ill-defined problem of
"how to build better products and/or deliver superior service" could
invariably benefit in principle from massive increases in gross
information processing power. However, very few business-people are
able to conceptualize and utter the extensive incantations necessary
to empower the computer to make headway into the general problem of
doing business. Much less the average problem-beset individual trying
to get through life in general...

As I mentioned in a recent article in comp.society, building new
technology is only half the job. The other half is engineering society
to take advantage of the technology. For example, horses were once the
technology of choice for transporting people and loads across
irregular terrain. Inventors were unable to build mechanical analogs
of the horse. Instead they turned to wheeled vehicles. But as these
were unsuited to the existing world, they decided to re-engineer the
world to facilitate wheeled transport (roads, rails, etc.). Then came
the necessary task of educating/coercing almost everyone to abandon
horses and adopt new technology.

Social engineering for computers mostly revolves around identifying
existing information flows in society, and then engineering the
necessary infrastructure, standards, and educated/coerced consumers to
allow computers to take over. For example, most of our information
still moves on paper and inside physically transported human brains.
Computer/telecom technology will eventually replace these archaic
mass-based flows of information, at least those aimed at turning a
profit, creating now-unimaginable MIPS-sinks.

Consider also the market potential of artificial realities. Most
economic activity in an affluent society beyond the level of meeting
basic needs seems aimed at providing desirable sensory experiences.
Once you have a full belly and some sort of roof over your head,
almost everything else is aimed at satisfying your idea of pleasant
sights, sounds, tastes, textures, and presenting a favorable image to
your peers. In short, it's all entertainment. A computer with display
bandwidth well-matched to human sensory capacity could provide sensory
experiences that would blow away anything available (not to mention
affordable) today in the "Real World". The sky is basically the limit
on how many MIPS---MFLOPS---Mbit/s you could chew up this way.

As long as we live with collosal disparity between what we want
and what we've got, there will be room for more computer power.
However, gearing up to use that power will be an ongoing problem,
one that will bring wrenching changes to society (as every
major existing technology has).

Dan Mocsny
dmocsny@uceng.uc.edu