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> And doing all those at the same time only requires a couple processors. A couple of general-purpose CPU cores you mean? How about: at least one CPU in WiFi

> And doing all those at the same time only requires a couple processors. A couple of general-purpose CPU cores you mean? How about: at least one CPU in WiFi subsystem, another in the Gigabit Ethernet card, another as high-speed interface host controller, video subsystem probably several (8K resolution / stereo, decoding + transcoding + (de)watermarking + error concealment + post processing), audio one or more (Dolby Volume, spatial sound), demodulation + demuxing of container formats at high speed at least one more maybe? My point is really -- laptop should be able to do all that great stuff you enumerated, and more yet, all at the same time. As data volumes and our expectations grow, and Moore law comes to end, more cores will be needed, and I say there will be work for more of them than just 4 or 8.

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Dylan16807 10y ago
Wifi might have a core to handle various things, but you could probably already do that on the main CPU. Ethernet adapters don't need processing, they need specialized transceiver circuits attached to ram. Deciding what to display is already done on a GPU that's almost entirely generic processor. Feeding that to the hardware takes special circuitry and doesn't need any real processing. Audio processing is almost always done on the main CPU already. I expect more cores to be used in the future, but all the things you mentioned are either already handled on the main cores, or take utterly trivial amounts of processing. They can all be handled on couple cores. They won't be what pushes growth.
- minipci1321 10y ago
  > Audio processing is almost always done on the main CPU already. For a counter-example, look at: http://www.trinnov.com/products/home-theater/magnitude32/specs-magnitude32/?lang=en_us http://www.trinnov.com/products/home-theater/magnitude32/spe... Home Cinema Audio Processor. Intel i5 Quad Core (audio alone). High End. Today.

deleted 10y ago

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Dylan16807 10y ago

Wifi might have a core to handle various things, but you could probably already do that on the main CPU. Ethernet adapters don't need processing, they need specialized transceiver circuits attached to ram. Deciding what to display is already done on a GPU that's almost entirely generic processor. Feeding that to the hardware takes special circuitry and doesn't need any real processing. Audio processing is almost always done on the main CPU already. I expect more cores to be used in the future, but all the things you mentioned are either already handled on the main cores, or take utterly trivial amounts of processing. They can all be handled on couple cores. They won't be what pushes growth.

minipci1321 10y ago
> Audio processing is almost always done on the main CPU already. For a counter-example, look at: http://www.trinnov.com/products/home-theater/magnitude32/specs-magnitude32/?lang=en_us http://www.trinnov.com/products/home-theater/magnitude32/spe... Home Cinema Audio Processor. Intel i5 Quad Core (audio alone). High End. Today.