Any body fold here?

Systems

bobman1235 wrote: »

I think you overstate it SLIGHTLY here. This is a method that willb e used more in the future, but it's not the future of computing. I work in distributed processing, and there are very few applications for which it's useful. Gene mapping and calculating prime numbers, or in my company's case, interpreting radar data and the like are some examples, and there are a bunch, but for the average home user, the processor is RARELY if ever the bottleneck for their operations. For distributed processing to be worthwhile the time spent processing has to far outweigh the time spent transferring the data between the processes, AND any overhead associated with the distribution. Aside from multi-core PCs, I don't think you're going to see that much of a proliferation of this kind of thing for the average user, it's just not worth it.

I believe you and don’t believe you.

How about wireless technology.

Another piece to this puzzle is grid networking where wireless units eventually tap into each other for mobile bandwidth and extended coverage.

But I also don’t think I’m overstating what’s going to happen. This is computers man and I've been doing this long enough to believe just about anything. If you told me that in 10 years computers will hit warp factor 8, I'll probably believe it.

25 years ago when I bought that first 40 meg hard drive for $400, how many people would have thought I would be putting together a 1000000 meg (1.5 terabyte) raid on my media server today that can hold 400ish movies on it much less 10000 albums of music for the same price. How about those Ultra micro 8 gig SD cards. Things are the size of my pinky finger nail and hold 64 billion dots (1’s and 0’s) of information on them.

I also think the industry (home) will continually be innovative to the point that people will need processing power. You forget that there is 10 million World of Warcraft players who would love to be able to tap into a much larger pool or processing power when Wow 3 comes out

Imagine say a PS3 grid where games have true similated physics. Dotn forget, we are comming to an end to the ability to increase single CPU capacity and something will have to innovate.

Or things such as rendering BR/HD-DVD high Def home video.

bobman1235

Play World of Warcraft some time, and look at your PCs processor usage. 20% at best. Most games spend most of their "processing" in the video card, not that main CPU.

Look, you may be right, but the direction I see the whole HOME computing industry going does not require high processor output. None of us can predict the future, obviously, but the majority of home users browse the web, email and chat, watch videos, and listen to music on their home PC. You can do most of that with a Pentium 2 and not even hit its peak output.

Systems

bobman1235 wrote: »

Play World of Warcraft some time, and look at your PCs processor usage. 20% at best. Most games spend most of their "processing" in the video card, not that main CPU.

Look, you may be right, but the direction I see the whole HOME computing industry going does not require high processor output. None of us can predict the future, obviously, but the majority of home users browse the web, email and chat, watch videos, and listen to music on their home PC. You can do most of that with a Pentium 2 and not even hit its peak output.

I had one of my computer Science professors in a "c++" class tell me that the new Pentium 90mhz processor was all anyone would ever need to use a computer. He also said that there would not be a faster processor because it got hot enough to cook an egg on. This dude was an old school hardened IT guy that was like genius level at programming (50ish years old back then).

That being said, I have no doubt that the things coming out for home use in the next few years will continue its exponential trend of processor needs. When I talk processors, I am also including graphics processing. I got some CAD guys now with the Civil 3D version who already tap the dual quad core Xeon procs (8 cores) they have in their new Dell Precisions.

Consider just the home gamming community of home users, probably 100 million of them out there that want more.. more.. more…


But for my 65 year old mom… you are right, there’s still that huge market for people who don’t do anything but browse and read email who don’t need anything more than XP (aka, to have the latest technology that works with everything) with a Pentium 4 right now.

jflail2

As a random aside, I'm kind of surprised to see proc speeds come grinding to a halt around the 3ghz range. Is there a specific reason for this? Size constraints? Or is this the movement that you guys are referring to where you have dual or quad cores instead of 1 beastly proc. I'd have expected them to be up to 5-6ghz by now...

Systems

jflail2 wrote: »

As a random aside, I'm kind of surprised to see proc speeds come grinding to a halt around the 3ghz range. Is there a specific reason for this? Size constraints? Or is this the movement that you guys are referring to where you have dual or quad cores instead of 1 beastly proc. I'd have expected them to be up to 5-6ghz by now...

From what I read, limitations of Silicon and such. The heat is just too great (aka why the P4 “Prescott” chip at 90nm was such a failure). The main reason why they have gone to multiple cores. Basically they say that "Moores law" is going to come to an end barring a new breakthrough technology (they are working on it with such technologies like the carbon tubes). But they are still struggling with how to get more then 4 cores working well in parallel processing.

With the new 45nm process I've heard that you may see them get back up to 4ghz

Systems

Excellent article on the new Intel 45nm Chips and what they will do for you and how they are getting aorund current limitations on size:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/10/29/intel_penryn_4ghz_with_air_cooling/

40 pages of great stuff.

bobman1235

Keep in mind there's more to processor speeds than the clock speeds. A 2GHz PPC is like a 4GHz Intel.

Every couple of years we hit a point where everyone predicts the end of Moore's law, and then something happens. It's amazing how well it's held up.

Systems

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Systems

Datastorm wrote: »

Hello

I just started my ps3 folding yesterday, so I would also be interested in being part of the team.....

Do I just change the donor name then?

If we have legit interest we would just start up a folding team called "ClubPolk", you wouldn’t have to change your donor name, just join the team. At that point it would start breaking out your user name into 2 sections if you already have points into your previous team or no team.

1) Name - Anon team
2) Name - clubpolk

Music Joe

a downside to the summer electrical grid

ND13

I folded all the clean clothes last night.

Pablo

I never heard of the folding thing, but it sounds cool. I did SETI for years, but stopped when they changed how they processed.

I'd be interested in joining the team if it starts (maybe you should start a new thread if the team gets started).

jwhitakr

I do Folding@Home on my home PC whenever I have it turned on. If a Club Polk team starts up, I'll join it.

Systems

jflail2 wrote: »

As a random aside, I'm kind of surprised to see proc speeds come grinding to a halt around the 3ghz range. Is there a specific reason for this? Size constraints? Or is this the movement that you guys are referring to where you have dual or quad cores instead of 1 beastly proc. I'd have expected them to be up to 5-6ghz by now...

This just came out today, Major new but I ahve read all kinds of "news" like this over the past 20 years and 99% of it never makes it. This might be legit and ground breaking:

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/35171/118/


"Yorktown Heights (NY) - IBM announced today reaching a significant milestone in practical on-chip optical data transmissions. Using a device called a Mach-Zehnder electro-optic modulator (MZEOM), one that's 100 to 1,000 times smaller than similar previous devices, IBM has managed to send 100x more data between processor cores using 10x less power than over copper wires. IBM plans to integrate this technology into their future many-core architectures, eventually bringing our desire for 1000s of processing cores and true supercomputing power, to even our notebooks."

Systems

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