Calling all Psychics

[custom90gt]

Well maybe you don't have to be a psychic, just someone who wants to take an educated (or less then educated, I don't mind) guess at what technology holds for the future. More specific, I was thinking earlier today that when I get back from my army training (2 years from now), what kind of computer am I going to build. I think it'll probably be an 8 core cpu, some sort of sweet video card (11800gtx sounds weird, but may be possible), 8gb of ram will probably be the standard for games, and maybe some flash based hard drives.
I'm curious what you guys think I'll be building in a couple of years? Any input on the architecture of tomorrow from intel?
And yes, I am a geek, I'm already excited to build my next pc (laptops are fun but they don't satisfy the desire to upgrade every so often).

[aja]

I am not too clued up with this stuff, but obviously HDD's will increase in size and speed.

Also, I believe that display technology is the one that will increase a lot, and prices should also drop by quite a bit:)

Maybe BR discs will be mainstream by then?

I wonder what heatsinks will look like in a few years time....

[xilix]

I am not too clued up with this stuff, but obviously HDD's will increase in size and speed.

Also, I believe that display technology is the one that will increase a lot, and prices should also drop by quite a bit:)

Maybe BR discs will be mainstream by then?

I wonder what heatsinks will look like in a few years time....

To be honest I'm not sure why heatsink design hasn't changed much over the years. I think there is room for improvement across the board. Heatpipe designs have way more room to use than they're currently using. And I see no reason why they haven't come out with something that has a secondary pipe that can exit the case and then come back in. Sure you'd have to cut holes in the case but just imagine getting to 4.0Ghz with a G0 on "air". I think there is vast room for improvement, but that doesn't mean we'll see it. I'd love to make my idea a reality but I'm afraid I have no idea how to make a heatpiped HSF.

[UnrealAlex]

Well maybe you don't have to be a psychic, just someone who wants to take an educated (or less then educated, I don't mind) guess at what technology holds for the future. More specific, I was thinking earlier today that when I get back from my army training (2 years from now), what kind of computer am I going to build. I think it'll probably be an 8 core cpu, some sort of sweet video card (11800gtx sounds weird, but may be possible), 8gb of ram will probably be the standard for games, and maybe some flash based hard drives.
I'm curious what you guys think I'll be building in a couple of years? Any input on the architecture of tomorrow from intel?
And yes, I am a geek, I'm already excited to build my next pc (laptops are fun but they don't satisfy the desire to upgrade every so often).
I'd say in 2 years 4GB of ram will be the standard; doubt 8 D:
Probably a video card with 2GB of video ram too...

[Rabidpulse]

an eleventy-eight hundred. lol

[Sleepy_Steve]

Well, heat sinks are interesting to me... in the last 4-5 years we've seen more change on the air cooling front than the previous 15. I'd expect that pace to continue to accelerate until air is found to be too in-efficient a medium for heat exchange.

When I think about my old P100 w/ a massive 256mb of ram, and a 850mb HDD.... I think about how that CPU's heat sink was about the size of my Asus P5B's south bridge heat sink. And that it had a nice 40mm fan on the CPU because back then it was thought that the PSU exhaust fan was your only case fan, and there was need for a tad more airflow over the cpu.

[aja]

Well, heat sinks are interesting to me... in the last 4-5 years we've seen more change on the air cooling front than the previous 15. I'd expect that pace to continue to accelerate until air is found to be too in-efficient a medium for heat exchange.

I doubt it - processors will give off less heat as things advance - the point being less power consumption.

As mobile devices become more important, processors will need to be less power hungry, and thus will produce less heat.

This is what pushed the whole Dothan architecture into the works :)

When I think about my old P100 w/ a massive 256mb of ram, and a 850mb HDD.... I think about how that CPU's heat sink was about the size of my Asus P5B's south bridge heat sink. And that it had a nice 40mm fan on the CPU because back then it was thought that the PSU exhaust fan was your only case fan, and there was need for a tad more airflow over the cpu.

The original Pentium 66MHz's could be found running bare.
I had a 100MHz that only had a 10mm tall aluminium sink on it, with no thermal paste whatsoever.
The 166MHz chip typically had a small fan on it like you describe.

But it was up to the OEM who built the PC to decide what it needs...

This thread makes a great topic for an article for the www.overclockers.com front page :D

[WonderingSoul]

PC World did a big article on this in their recent November Issue; here are some things they touched on


Wireless Battery Charging
GPU/CPU Combination chips
Flexable LCD Screens
8 Core CPUs
OCZ's Carbon Nanotube coolers
5TB harddrives
PCI 3.0
IPv6 (a lot faster internet) :p


Just to touch on the cool stuff.

[Immortal_Hero]

Wireless Battery Charging

Heck my tooth brush already does that. And it was $14.99 at Wal Mart. You have to drop it in the base but there are no exposed conductors. The current is sent throught he plastic housing. Kinda neat really.

[Elluzion]

Why would anyone need 5tb's of space? I don't even need 200gb of space. Bigger hard drives benefit some I guess, but I mean cmon..

[custom90gt]

I'd say in 2 years 4GB of ram will be the standard; doubt 8 D:
Probably a video card with 2GB of video ram too...

Well with how cheap ram is, you never know.


an eleventy-eight hundred. lol

I wondered if someone would get that :beer:

PC World did a big article on this in their recent November Issue; here are some things they touched on


Wireless Battery Charging
GPU/CPU Combination chips
Flexable LCD Screens
8 Core CPUs
OCZ's Carbon Nanotube coolers
5TB harddrives
PCI 3.0
IPv6 (a lot faster internet) :p


Just to touch on the cool stuff.

Thats some cool ideas. I'm not a big fan of gpu/cpu for a desktop, but I think that would be awesome in a laptop. Flexable lcd screens would be interested as well, maybe you can roll them up to take them to your next lan? I wonder if everything will be wireless (wireless usb rings a bell).

Why would anyone need 5tb's of space? I don't even need 200gb of space. Bigger hard drives benefit some I guess, but I mean cmon..

I think the real question is, who doesn't need 5tb of hard drive space? think of all the crap you could store. Maybe google earth would fit on that hard drive?


Keep the ideas coming guys, my intention was to have somewhat of a fun post. I'm still curious would intel (or amd) will have in store for us in two years time. I hope amd gains some market share in that time and creates a bigger competition between the two companies (I can hope can't I).

[aja]

Heck my tooth brush already does that. And it was $14.99 at Wal Mart. You have to drop it in the base but there are no exposed conductors. The current is sent through the plastic housing. Kinda neat really.

No, you have the wrong idea. The charger induces a magnetic field into a coil in the toothbrush. No current flows through the plastic at all

Why would anyone need 5tb's of space? I don't even need 200gb of space. Bigger hard drives benefit some I guess, but I mean cmon..

Because large hard drives make the production of faster, cooler, smaller drives possible!

The more advanced desktop hard drives become, the better for laptop drives and so on.

Pushing the limits means that better platters may be produced. The point is not 5TB, but rather the density achieved on a single platter:D

Thats why amazing drives like the Seagate 250GB 410AS exist - they copy their bigger brothers!

[aja]

Thats some cool ideas. I'm not a big fan of gpu/cpu for a desktop, but I think that would be awesome in a laptop. Flexable lcd screens would be interested as well, maybe you can roll them up to take them to your next lan? I wonder if everything will be wireless (wireless usb rings a bell).


A foldable or roll-up screen would drive me crazy.

I would spend hours trying to make it perfectly straight again when I need to use it!

Wireless USB? Umm, ever heard of bluetooth? hehe

[jivetrky]

an eleventy-eight hundred. lol

haha....eleventy is one of my favorite nonsense words. I use it all the time when talking numbers. :) But then I use nonsense words regularly (am I the only one?)

You can actually get a good idea for CPUs in 2 years as Intel will put up a projected roadmap for a few years ahead. I think within 2 years they expect 8 core CPUs and even as much as 32core.

As for GPU, I'm not sure if they map that far ahead or not. And I wouldn't know where to find an official roadmap if they did. I'd imagine that we could expect something probably at least 2x the performance of what we have now. 2 years ago this time I think the 7800GTX was top dog, and the 8800GTX/2900XT is at least 2x faster.
The highest 7800GTX score I see for 3DMark05 on Futuremark's ORB site is 19581 (http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm05=3346070), the highest 2900XT score is 37929 (http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm05=3598382)

This isn't exactly an apples to apples comparison as they aren't in the same systems. But it still gives you a bit of an idea I guess.

As for HDD, I don't really know for sure, but I think flash will make a bigger appearance by then. At least with hybrid drives and hopefully with full flash based drives that are more affordable.

I'm certainly no expert, these are kind of just slightly educated guesses as to what we'll see. :shrug:

[custom90gt]

A foldable or roll-up screen would drive me crazy.

I would spend hours trying to make it perfectly straight again when I need to use it!

Wireless USB? Umm, ever heard of bluetooth? hehe

You're right, maybe you can just place the screen on the side of your case when you lan?
wireless usb is pretty cool (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_USB) (yes I know wiki is not a great source for detailed info, just the general stuff). I use bluetooth a lot with my laptop, but its not really a high speed thing like wusb plans to be.

haha....eleventy is one of my favorite nonsense words. I use it all the time when talking numbers. :) But then I use nonsense words regularly (am I the only one?)

You can actually get a good idea for CPUs in 2 years as Intel will put up a projected roadmap for a few years ahead. I think within 2 years they expect 8 core CPUs and even as much as 32core.

As for GPU, I'm not sure if they map that far ahead or not. And I wouldn't know where to find an official roadmap if they did. I'd imagine that we could expect something probably at least 2x the performance of what we have now. 2 years ago this time I think the 7800GTX was top dog, and the 8800GTX/2900XT is at least 2x faster.
The highest 7800GTX score I see for 3DMark05 on Futuremark's ORB site is 19581 (http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm05=3346070), the highest 2900XT score is 37929 (http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm05=3598382)

This isn't exactly an apples to apples comparison as they aren't in the same systems. But it still gives you a bit of an idea I guess.

As for HDD, I don't really know for sure, but I think flash will make a bigger appearance by then. At least with hybrid drives and hopefully with full flash based drives that are more affordable.

I'm certainly no expert, these are kind of just slightly educated guesses as to what we'll see. :shrug:

2x the gpu performance seems reasonable, I sure hope its not 2x the heat/power consumption though.
I dunno why you say solid state drives aren't affordable, a 128gb only costs $3799. Thats only around 3.8x the price I paid for my laptop, or $29.68/gb. :bang head I'm hoping that by then they will have ~250gb ssd for cheap.

[th3]

Intel Larrabee for graphics and/or physics processing maybe?

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070604-clearing-up-the-confusion-over-intels-larrabee-part-ii.html
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070917-intel-picks-up-gaming-physics-engine-for-forthcoming-gpu-product.html

[Maverick0984]

I know from my schooling that the transistor size decrease is slowing down. We are nearing a point where if we want CPU's running even smaller then say 30-35nm or so, something drastically different will have to happen. Will this boundary occur in the next 2 years? It is very possible. Will the drastically new tech happen in that time period? Doubtful, but I'll assure you it is being researched/worked on already ;).

[aja]

You're right, maybe you can just place the screen on the side of your case when you lan?
wireless usb is pretty cool (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_USB) (yes I know wiki is not a great source for detailed info, just the general stuff). I use bluetooth a lot with my laptop, but its not really a high speed thing like wusb plans to be. .

Thanks for the info!

[th3]

I know from my schooling that the transistor size decrease is slowing down. We are nearing a point where if we want CPU's running even smaller then say 30-35nm or so, something drastically different will have to happen. Will this boundary occur in the next 2 years? It is very possible. Will the drastically new tech happen in that time period? Doubtful, but I'll assure you it is being researched/worked on already ;).

Mr Moore said during the last IDF that Moores law had another 10-15 years left, that guy has been amazingly right in the past, i think he knows what he is talking about.

I saw an video interview with an engineer at D1D, when asked about 45nm and Moores law he said something like "Moores law is alive and having babies" IIRC :)

[Maverick0984]

Mr Moore said during the last IDF that Moores law had another 10-15 years left, that guy has been amazingly right in the past, i think he knows what he is talking about.

I saw an video interview with an engineer at D1D, when asked about 45nm and Moores law he said something like "Moores law is alive and having babies" IIRC :)

All relative. Obviously it starts to take alot longer to achieve the same goal. The drop from 90->65->45 are big jumps. What I'm saying is, those jumps will begin to get smaller, and much less frequent to a point where something drastically different will have to happen to the process.

The Prof of mine that I'm quoting worked in the industry for 25 years and now teaches at a, top 5 in the world, Engineering University. I dunno, all of it is just talk until something actually happens anyway.

Moore's Law allows for something "drastically different" to happen with the process though, btw ;)

[th3]

I have no doubts they are working on something new already.

Smaller jumps and less frequent, i dont know, i would think that despite the fact that Moore is retired now he still has some very good inside info on the matter. Its also likely that you are right, and smaller and less frequent jumps would not violate Moores law if the die sizes can be increased without significantly increasing the cost, and it was just this week i read somewhere about 450mm wafers in 2010, that should help keeping costs down.