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  • Why so small? Why no progress?

    Why are CPU's so small? wouldnt it be a lot cheaper to make a cpu the speed of an athlon if they just made it twice as big? heat would be reduced too.

    and why are we still using the same IDE cables we used years ago? Why do we still need floppy disk drives? why are we still using those antique keyboards and not touch screen like things? why are they still manufacturing normal monitors? all those things would get much cheaper very fast if they just started producing them in greater quantities. why doesnt microsoft dump all the os's based on dos? why is there no real competitor for microsoft (like amd is for intel)? why is there no g800.

    sorry, i just felt like writing this

  • #2
    CPUs can be made to be faster by reducing the die size thus reducing the distance of the electrical pathways and yielding lower propagation delays.

    IDE? Don't know ... never used it. Why do they need to change?

    Floppies ... My DOS based Rogue game still needs a 5 1/4" key disk. Another words, legacy support. Floppies are handy when you just need to save or migrate a few small files.

    Monitors ... what do you consider a normal monitor? Unfortunately, display technology is still relatively expensive and slow to improve.

    MSFT/DOS ... again, legacy support. How many shops are still running COBOL or RPG? They said those languages were dead 25 years ago.

    MSFT and competition. Ever heard the expression "800 pound gorilla"? Many industries spawn such a beast. Many companies aren't willing to go to the extents that MSFT did to get where they are today ... for many reasons. Things might be quite different for MSFT in 10 years: Its been a good ride though.

    G800 ... what's that?


    <TABLE BGCOLOR=Red><TR><TD><Font-weight="+1"><font COLOR=Black>The world just changed, Sep. 11, 2001</font></Font-weight></TR></TD></TABLE>

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    • #3
      >why are we still using the same IDE cables we used years ago?

      We aren't. UDMA66 requires new cables.

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      • #4
        There is a new IDE type standard in the works called serial-IDE that should run something like 150 to 200MB/s it has a thin ribbon cable (4 wires I believe). Unfortunately it will still only be 4 devices and will not have an onboard processor like SCSI, but it is still an improvement.

        As for floppies, there are LS-120 drives which increase performance on old floppies sometimes by a factor of 10 as well as their 120MB versions, Zip 250 which surpasses the latter in capacity and speed but is not backwards compatible, as well as CD-RWs and CDrs which can be bootable. For extremely high end performance there are Jaz2GB drives as well as Bernoulli (sp?) and many others.

        As for keyboards and touch screens would you really want your nice crisp display to be smudged by dirt and body oils even from a clean person not to mention constant cleaning to minimize this.

        One problem hardly mentioned with CPUs as they get faster and faster is something we like to call the speed of light. The information can only move so fast. The closer together and smaller components become the shorter the distance traveled is and the less time it takes per cycle.

        Microsoft is starting to dump DOS, but it takes time. Whistler (codename for the next OS) is supposed to do away with DOS although it is supposed to require product activation.


        [This message has been edited by High_Jumbllama (edited 04 February 2001).]

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        • #5
          High_Jumbllama wrote:
          <font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">One problem hardly mentioned with CPUs ...</font>
          ... That's what I was trying to convey by saying "reducing the distance of the electrical pathways and yielding lower propagation delays"

          Regarding keyboard vs. touch screen input: Touch screens can be effective when you're dealing with a graphical interface in low to medium resolutions but that's a very limited application. I still like my clackety Omni Key keyboard that I've had for many years. I looked for a rugged keyboard that gave me the audible and tactile feedback of the original IBM PC keyboards and Omni Key was the only vendor that even came close.

          Regarding floppies: Something to be said for a cheap storage device that doesn't require any drivers when your trying to restore a broken system.

          <TABLE BGCOLOR=Red><TR><TD><Font-weight="+1"><font COLOR=Black>The world just changed, Sep. 11, 2001</font></Font-weight></TR></TD></TABLE>

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          • #6
            CPU's can be made larger, if they're well-engineered. However, yield drops off exponentially. The CPU's I've worked on are about the size of a nickel or so.
            Gigabyte P35-DS3L with a Q6600, 2GB Kingston HyperX (after *3* bad pairs of Crucial Ballistix 1066), Galaxy 8800GT 512MB, SB X-Fi, some drives, and a Dell 2005fpw. Running WinXP.

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            • #7
              Xortam, I'm using a keyboard from an old IBM XT-286, still the best keyboard I've used even though it's about 15 years old!
              When you own your own business you only have to work half a day. You can do anything you want with the other twelve hours.

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              • #8
                Well, I suppose if you can't shrink the processor any more to speed things up, SMP is probably the way to go. We've seen that dual Athlon mobos are on the way and Intel has offered it forever, it's just a matter of getting enough software that can take full advantage of it.

                I've read that not only does the OS have to support it, but the application(s) in use need to be written for that as well (multi-threading, I think it's called).

                Perhaps someday apps can be written without regard for howmany CPUs are in a system; rather, let the OS handle all the traffic.

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                • #9
                  <font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Originally posted by xortam:

                  ... That's what I was trying to convey by saying "reducing the distance of the electrical pathways and yielding lower propagation delays"
                  </font>
                  Sorry, you used big words and confused me.

                  [This message has been edited by High_Jumbllama (edited 05 February 2001).]

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                  • #10
                    <font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Originally posted by JerryH:
                    Well, I suppose if you can't shrink the processor any more to speed things up, SMP is probably the way to go. We've seen that dual Athlon mobos are on the way and Intel has offered it forever, it's just a matter of getting enough software that can take full advantage of it.

                    I've read that not only does the OS have to support it, but the application(s) in use need to be written for that as well (multi-threading, I think it's called).

                    Perhaps someday apps can be written without regard for howmany CPUs are in a system; rather, let the OS handle all the traffic.
                    </font>
                    JerryH:

                    I agree with what you said. Unix had the monopoly with SMP softwares because its SMP compatible since god-knows-when and Unix OS just have the better implimentation of SMP. Intel and now AMD processors and SMP motherboards have become so affordable that small businesses and us gamers can really take advantage of. Its time for all WinOS platform software developers to seriously consider SMP compatible codes. I'll pick my W2K Dual PIII 850 over a single PIII 1.3ghz any time.

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                    • #11
                      High_Jumbllama wrote:
                      <font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Sorry, you used big words and confused me.</font>
                      No worries ... we'll just call you "Caveman Lawyer" (SNL skit).
                      <TABLE BGCOLOR=Red><TR><TD><Font-weight="+1"><font COLOR=Black>The world just changed, Sep. 11, 2001</font></Font-weight></TR></TD></TABLE>

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