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Definitely agree about the quality of Hennessey and Patterson's Computer Architecture book. I think the reason that the 32nm, 22nm and 14nm chips are identical

Definitely agree about the quality of Hennessey and Patterson's Computer Architecture book. I think the reason that the 32nm, 22nm and 14nm chips are identical from a consumer approach is because of two issues. One is marketing - we no longer have convincing benchmarks that are as persuasive as the GHz a chip would support. It was a questionable metric anyway, but it now isn't being pursued (for a whole number of reasons). The second is an application space problem - consumer applications are no longer exploiting CPU improvements in the same manner. That's partially because we now get more parallelism rather than single threaded speed, but it's partial a testament to the success of the previous generation as to the breadth of tasks a current PC will happily perform in a reasonable time frame.

pjmlp 12y ago
Yes, the time to update the computer every three years to keep up with the progress is now gone. Maybe when we finally get to quantum computers a similar cycle will happen, but to the dismay of OEMs the cycle is gone. Even mobiles already reached the same peak and are mostly driven by contract renewals nowadays, not features.
- XorNot 12y ago
  Disagree on the causes. We're limited by mobile energy storage. Desktops are as powerful as anyone needs - largely because you just buy the appropriate size - at least at the consumer level. Laptops, phones? Definitely not. But the push for more isn't being limited by our performance, it's being limited by energy demands. I'm shopping for a new laptop at the moment, and my overriding requirement is to get the most WHr's of battery into a low energy configuration. And even there, to some extent the problem is also not where you'd think - you can take a modern i5 down to something like 1.5W idle consumption. Most of the losses are switching circuits or the screen.
  - pjmlp 12y ago
    The issue, as you correctly state, is power consumption and there we still have quite some room for improvement. Other than that, we also have same hybrid multi-core devices on our pockets that we have on our desks. Coupled with all the hardware sensors one can imagine. So besides the power consumption point you rise, there is hardly anything else to improve at hardware level. Except maybe, for things like better voice recognition experience or holographic displays a la Star Wars.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  > but to the dismay of OEMs the cycle is gone Don't worry, they won't give up without a fight. I bet they'll try to push some artificial reasons for people to keep throwing away perfectly good machines every two years.
  - jarek 12y ago
    Maybe they can put some really fragile components in a computer people carry around? Have them be really shiny and look great to help marketing too.
    - TeMPOraL 12y ago
      And then maybe they could make it impossible to repair the broken part for less than a third of a new device. "Tight integration streamlines the production, makes everything cheaper", they could say.
  - jodrellblank 12y ago
    "Artificial" reasons instead of ... what? "Natural" reasons?
    - TeMPOraL 12y ago
      Yes, more-less. Things people invent to extract more money out of their customers, or keep afloat a business model that is visibly incompatible with reality - like planned obsolescence on lightbulbs and fridges, or DRMs.
  - ANTSANTS 12y ago
    Like rewriting everything as a web app?
darkmighty 12y ago
I think we're at a bridging moment. Most computing tasks we came up on the last decades which were very hard to get done are now trivial with some optimization. Yet the general purpose ("universal") algorithms we dreamed of are still not in reach -- it's easy to think of an evolutionary algo huge neural net to do AI, but in practice universality implies (still) inaccessible search spaces. So hrdware looks as if standing still.

pjmlp 12y ago

Yes, the time to update the computer every three years to keep up with the progress is now gone. Maybe when we finally get to quantum computers a similar cycle will happen, but to the dismay of OEMs the cycle is gone. Even mobiles already reached the same peak and are mostly driven by contract renewals nowadays, not features.

XorNot 12y ago
Disagree on the causes. We're limited by mobile energy storage. Desktops are as powerful as anyone needs - largely because you just buy the appropriate size - at least at the consumer level. Laptops, phones? Definitely not. But the push for more isn't being limited by our performance, it's being limited by energy demands. I'm shopping for a new laptop at the moment, and my overriding requirement is to get the most WHr's of battery into a low energy configuration. And even there, to some extent the problem is also not where you'd think - you can take a modern i5 down to something like 1.5W idle consumption. Most of the losses are switching circuits or the screen.
- pjmlp 12y ago
  The issue, as you correctly state, is power consumption and there we still have quite some room for improvement. Other than that, we also have same hybrid multi-core devices on our pockets that we have on our desks. Coupled with all the hardware sensors one can imagine. So besides the power consumption point you rise, there is hardly anything else to improve at hardware level. Except maybe, for things like better voice recognition experience or holographic displays a la Star Wars.
TeMPOraL 12y ago
> but to the dismay of OEMs the cycle is gone Don't worry, they won't give up without a fight. I bet they'll try to push some artificial reasons for people to keep throwing away perfectly good machines every two years.
- jarek 12y ago
  Maybe they can put some really fragile components in a computer people carry around? Have them be really shiny and look great to help marketing too.
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    And then maybe they could make it impossible to repair the broken part for less than a third of a new device. "Tight integration streamlines the production, makes everything cheaper", they could say.
- jodrellblank 12y ago
  "Artificial" reasons instead of ... what? "Natural" reasons?
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    Yes, more-less. Things people invent to extract more money out of their customers, or keep afloat a business model that is visibly incompatible with reality - like planned obsolescence on lightbulbs and fridges, or DRMs.
- ANTSANTS 12y ago
  Like rewriting everything as a web app?

darkmighty 12y ago

I think we're at a bridging moment. Most computing tasks we came up on the last decades which were very hard to get done are now trivial with some optimization. Yet the general purpose ("universal") algorithms we dreamed of are still not in reach -- it's easy to think of an evolutionary algo huge neural net to do AI, but in practice universality implies (still) inaccessible search spaces. So hrdware looks as if standing still.