Are Cheap Laptops a Roadblock for Moore's Law?

Timothy Harrington writes "Cnet.co.uk wonders if the $100 laptop could spell the end of Moore's Law: 'Moore's law is great for making tech faster, and for making slower, existing tech cheaper, but when consumers realize their personal lust for faster hardware makes almost zero financial sense, and hurts the environment with greater demands for power, will they start to demand cheaper, more efficient 'third-world' computers that are just as effective?" Will ridiculously cheap laptops wean consumers off ridiculously fast components?"

Comments

I doubt it...

[Nimsoft]

I really don't think this is going to make a huge impact. Companies will always want to sell their latest, greatest hardware, and there will always be plenty of people ready to spend their money on the next best thing, that's how the technology industry works!

Re:I doubt it...

[Nos.]

True, but I think something like the $100 computer will have more of an effect in the laptop market as opposed to the desktop market. Generally (and a lot of /. ers are the exception) laptops are bought more for portability than for raw power. Whereas the desktop market has the more serious gamers as well as software developers that want more power. Granted, there are exceptions on both sides, but I would think the laptop market would be affected more by cheap hardware.

Re:I doubt it...

[steelclash84]

I can see it as possibly a side-computer (internet browsing), but people will never buy a computer for main use that only has 1gb of "hard-drive" space that can only run a custom OS that has no mainstream software available. That's my take on it.

Re:I doubt it...

[Stewie241]

Also consider that SUVs and big expensive cars are a status symbol and give the driver a feeling of power.

There may at one time have been a feeling of power of being able to render the downloaded web page quicker or have a more responsive gui, but there isn't the same benefit with today's highest end models over a lower end model.

I remember drooling over the departments at work when they got new computers and ours hadn't arrived yet. Now, there isn't much that I need to go faster. Top of the line computers are no longer a status symbol because a bigger computer isn't that impressive, and you can't tell what kind of processor a computer has by looking at the outside, and nowadays, even by using it.

Of course it won't halt moore's law

[moderatorrater]

Moore's Law dictates that in 18 months, you should be able to get a significantly more powerful laptop for $100. Even with ridiculously cheap computers out there, there will always be a core that wants power.

Besides, if cost were the biggest issue in computing, than Linux would be the ubiquitous desktop.

Re:Of course it won't halt moore's law

[MoxFulder]

Exactly. What a frickin' retarded argument... since when has the low end of computing actually dragged down the high end?

We may have unprecedented demand for low-power 200 MHz ARM processors these days, but we also have unprecedented demand for quad-core 2 GHz beasts in 1U rack-mount servers, so we can stuff more and more of them into vast underground data centers. Moore's law applies equally to the low end and the high end. Today we can put a powerful computer in a $500 iPhone, maybe tomorrow we can put it in a $50 iWatch. There's absolutely no economic reason for Moore's Law not to continue unabated.

Re:Of course it won't halt moore's law

[Sandbags]

Please quote the law properly: http://foldoc.org/?query=Moore's+Law

It's every 24 months, not 18, and it has nothing to do with power or speed. CPU speed has increased at significantly higher pace than Moore's law. Moore's law views the number of transistor junctions in an IC, nothing more. The size, power consumption, MIPS, and other values have had significantly different curves, most at higher paces than the law, and not in direct comparison to transistor count. CPU power (in watts) over all is relatively the same as where it started in the 80s, and is currently reducing even as Moore's law increases. http://www.eng.tulane.edu/Tef/Slides/Tulane-Moore' s%20Law%20Sept02.ppt

Also, Moore's law clearly states that the number of transistors doubles "as costs remain the same." This means if we can have a $100 laptop today, in 2 years it will still cost $100 (or more accurately the portion of the $100 cost represented by the CPU will be the same), but the CPU will have 2X the number of transistors. It may be faster, maybe not. It may use more or less wattage. This is determined by transistor spacing, impedance layers (SoI, etc), volts, and clock frequency, not Moore's law. The articles premise is simply a logical fallacy.

One more thing: Moore's law does not apply to EVERY processor, only the leading generation vs. the predecessor. There's no reason to believe the notebook will use the current processor generation, and in fact likely it will not. This has no impact at all on the validity of the law as other processors will exist that follow the law. They may simply decide that instead of the build cost for the notebook being $90 to sell at $100, that they'll use previous generation hardware using more modern manufacturing processes, and reduce the build cost to $60-80, and still likely make it faster or better somehow in the process.

Were I a betting man, I'd put money on the $100 laptop not only having a faster chip with more transistors, but that it will use less watts, have a higher resolution display, faster or stronger wireless antenna, more storage, and more ports when we look at it in 2 years. Of course, part of the design of the machine, and it's low cost, is the intent of model line longevity. We don't expect to have a new one of these every 2-4 months like the retail PC industry does. Likely, this will be re-engineered at most once per year.

Re:Of course it won't halt moore's law

[timeOday]

There will always be businesses who need the fastest, highest powered hardware available.

Actually, I think things can change and have changed. From the late 80s to about 2000, the average computer price remained seemed to remain pretty steady at around $2500. Then, about the time computers got "fast enough" (about 400 MHz), the average selling price of computers plummeted. In addition to average price, people are also upgrading less often now. This shows there is not constant perpetual demand for the latest and greatest. How much more advanced would computers be now if it were still common to drop $700 on the CPU alone? There's no way to know, but certainly more advanced than they are today. Of course we still call the best of whatever is available "high end" by definition, but that doesn't mean it's high end compared to what would now be available if money were still flowing like it did.

Re:Of course it won't halt moore's law

[IceCreamGuy]

It was more of a statement pertaining to the cost of transistors, the number of transistors was just one part of the concept. Ars Technica has a great article on it by Jon Stokes: http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/moore.a rs/1

Re:Of course it won't halt moore's law

[suv4x4]

Exactly. What a frickin' retarded argument...

Since this is the norm when discussing Moore's "law", I'd rather see one of those mythical non-retarded arguments regarding it. There are none.

No, They are NOT

[queenb**ch]

They'll just become faster at the same price OR the software people want to use simply won't operate. Look at Vista...can you imagine trying to run that on a PII or PIII CPU? You'd want to slit your wrists out of sheer boredom due to having to wait on everything to load.

2 cents,

QueenB.

Re:No, They are NOT

[Red Flayer]

Look at Vista...can you imagine trying to run that on a PII or PIII CPU? You'd want to slit your wrists out of sheer boredom due to having to wait on everything to load.

I want to slit my wrists when I imagine trying to run Vista regardless of CPU.

Not fast enough yet...

[langelgjm]

Personally, until encoding video is as fast as encoding audio is now, I for one welcome faster machines.

somebody doesn't understand Moore's Law

[rainmayun]

Moore's Law says nothing about speed. It does say something about the density of transistors on an integrated circuit. How your engineers choose to take advantage of that is up to your business drivers.

Here's a thought - maybe those $100 laptops become cheaper, or more capable over time.

Re:somebody doesn't understand Moore's Law

[edittard]

Moore's Law says nothing about speed.

... and even if it did, it isn't what makes it increase as TFS implies.

Re:somebody doesn't understand Moore's Law

[flaming-opus]

These two things are coincident, but not correlated.

multicore is becoming popular because instruction-level-parallelism has approached a practical limit, not capacitance. Basically processor designers are getting all these "free" transistors, and don't know what to do with them except add cores.

Processor speed limits come from heat generated by switching speeds, combined with heat from leakage current. Improved transistor density actually improves the heat generated by switching, but has to be balanced against the increased leakage current from a smaller lithography process.

Re:somebody doesn't understand Moore's Law

[HardCase]

Processor speed limits come from heat generated by switching speeds, combined with heat from leakage current. Improved transistor density actually improves the heat generated by switching, but has to be balanced against the increased leakage current from a smaller lithography process.

Yes, that's true, but do not discount the effects of die capacitance. Each transistor presents a load to the signal, each interconnect presents a time delay and when you put them together, you have to overcome the problem of the edge rate of the signal either slowing down and failing to meet voltage margins or overshooting the voltage margins and damaging the transistors. The compromise must also meet the logic's setup and hold requirements and the interconnect has to be sufficiently short for the signal to transit in less than one bit period.

Heat is easy to deal with. Bigger heat sinks, more air flow. Moving signals from one side of the die to the other...that's hard. Parasitic capacitance, inductance and resistance make it harder.

Now, if you really want to make it hard, try moving those signals from the CPU to the memory controller, then out to the memory modules. If you thought that getting a high speed digital signal across a centimeter of silicon was hard, try moving it across six inches of PCB.

Moore's Law is the *enabler* for cheap laptops

[Eco-Mono]

Now, I'm not so sure that the writer of the article actually knows what Moore's Law is. It doesn't have to do with CPU speed; it has to do with how many transistors we can cram onto a silicon wafer. And as that compression increases, the same amount of CPU power gets smaller and more energy-efficient. In other words, we aren't looking at the "end of Moore's Law"... we're looking at that progression being put to use in the way the market wants - that is, making computers cheaper and smaller, since they're already as fast as we need them to be.

Contradictory Summary?

[R2.0]

The summary states:" 'Moore's law is great for making tech faster, and for making slower, existing tech cheaper,"

And then asks: but when consumers realize their personal lust for faster hardware makes almost zero financial sense, and hurts the environment with greater demands for power, will they start to demand cheaper, more efficient 'third-world' computers that are just as effective?"

So Moore's law is good for going smaller/faster/cheaper, but the demand for s/f/c will spell the end of Moore's law?

No

[An Ominous Coward]

Given that Moore's Law is that the number of transistors on a chip doubles every 18 months, no. Even if the gigahertz / number of cores war stops for laptops, there's lots of components that can be put on chip. But apparently it's too much to ask from a rag like CNet to get their basic definitions correct.

More strength

[mcrbids]

With OLPC, there will be more computers out there than ever before. Many of these laptops will be used to create wealth, some of which will be used to buy "normal" laptops that are faster. This, in turn, will push the upper end of chip development towards faster and cheaper.

Put another way: There are BAZILLIONS of cheap, ARM-based CPUs out there running everything from microwaves to kiddie toys. Have they put an end to Moore's law?

What actually MIGHT put an end to Moore's law is the actual quantum limits to computation. And we *will* hit those limits if we don't blow ourselves up first. But that's a ways off, and we may find some way past those limits as well. (EG: using other, N-dimensional space or something exotic that we can't even imagine yet)

This isn't thermodynamics

[Chairboy]

It's not a LAW-law, it was a prediction. It was an observation coupled with smart insight into the nature of the semi-conductor business, and deviations aren't news, the fact that his prediction has so consistently worked over the past decades is the real story.

Will it hold up forever? Probably not, it could speed up or slow down by an order of magnitude as semi-conductor technology is replaced by The Next Big Thing (Optics? Quantum? Duotronics?), and our measurement criteria might have to change with it.

So again, the real story is that Moore's observation has held up so spectacularly so long. Lulls in performance increases are natural. But how does it plot over time?

Re:This isn't thermodynamics

[Aladrin]

You DO realize that all scientific 'laws' are just observations turned into a hypothesis that have withstood the test of time?

From dictionary.com: "A statement describing a relationship observed to be invariable between or among phenomena for all cases in which the specified conditions are met: the law of gravity."

The law of gravity has never yet been broken, but that doesn't mean it won't be. It's the same for Moore's Law.

While I'm sure it was called a 'law' initially as a jest (ala Murphy's law) it has held up amazingly, and is close to deserving the name.

External pressures

[fantomas]

People may want to buy more ecologically sound, low powered, cheaper machines, but they are subject to external pressures.

Apart from the small percentage of hackers/enthusiasts who play with computers because they like computers, the majority of people use computers to achieve goals - be it to write their work documents, play games, edit photos etc. They will buy the machines that can run the software to do these jobs.

I can't see the big software players reducing the power requirements of their software as it upgrades. Microsoft Office 2015, Photoshop v.27, and World of Warcraft 2015 are going to need more rather than less power and people will be forced to buy more powerful machines.

Cheap laptops

[backslashdot]

Fact is.. people are installing Vista on laptops that really shouldn't be running them..

People use their cheap underpowered laptop, get frustrated ..curse Dell and Microsoft. And then go to a nicely performing (but more expensive) Mac.

If laptop makers didn't tempt consumers with their underpowered crap, maybe they would have a decent reputation. I don't see how Moore's law is affected.

Apple is the only computer manufacturer whose low end PC's actually perform tolerably.

Of course not.

[Timothy Brownawell]

Moore's law is about transistors per area and cost per transistor. Cheap laptops have nothing to do with that.

But for the question that was *meant*, rather than what was asked... still no. There are some applications that can use basically unlimited computing power (and now, unlimited computing power with minimal electrical power), and everyone else benefits from developments geared towards those areas.

Machrone's Law

[michaelmalak]

Moore's Law as it applies to PCs has its own "law": Machrone's Law. It's not as strong a "law" as Moore's as it has had to undergo continual adjustment, but there is a definite phenomenon. Also related is the amusing Wirth's Law, also described in that IEEE Spectrum online blurb.

I doubt it

[_xeno_]

My cellphone is now more powerful than the first computer I used. It supports up to 1GB of removable storage in about the smallest form factor I've ever seen (micro SD). It's built-in camera is as good as the first digital camera that I owned.

In other words, yes, people may start demanding smaller and more powerful devices - but so what? It just means that instead of speed doubling, power use might start decreasing, storage density might increase, who knows what. We're using computers for purposes I never would have dreamed of when ten years ago. I have a computer under my TV that records shows - I never saw that coming until it did.

Computers will continue to evolve. The laptop and desktop might start to fade out, but new devices will take their place.

Re:Gamers will always make Moore's Law Relevant

[trolltalk.com]

And we all need suckers like him to buy the latest overpriced, overhyped hardware, so that we can wait a couple of years and buy the next generation for 1/10 the cost.

The "early adopters" get what they want - which is mostly "I want it now!" , and the rest of us get what we want, which is improved hardware cheaper by waiting a bit.

Look at the people who paid $500 for a 15" LCD screen with crap specs, when you can now buy a 20" for $150.00.

Same thing with video cards - they paid $500 for a card with a quarter-gig of ram - those cards are now under $100.00

Let them keep spending - the benefits trickle down to the rest of us because we're patient.

Jeesh

[I'll Provide The War]

"Moore's Law" has nothing to do with performance.

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/moore.a rs

Gordon Moore: The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year. Certainly over the short term this rate can be expected to continue, if not to increase. Over the longer term, the rate of increase is a bit more uncertain, although there is no reason to believe it will not remain nearly constant for at least 10 years.

Instead of placing twice as many transistors on a cpu you can instead place twice as many cpus(a few less for the sticklers) of the same transistor count on a single wafer. Even if consumers no longer care about FLOPS they will still be swayed by lower cost, longer battery life, smaller dimensions and passive/quieter cooling.

Of course

[wcbarksdale]

In much the same way that Americans have given up their SUVs en masse for tiny European two-seaters.

Moore's Law Expanded

[Anti_Climax]

Several comments are stating that Moore's Law is about transistor density not processor speed. This is correct but I feel I should add something very important.

"The number of transistors on an integrated circuit for minimum component cost doubles every 24 months"

Weather you keep the original 2 years or drop to 18 months, we're specifically referencing low cost components, which would map directly to the hardware they're trying to put in a $100 laptop.

So in short, no, a cheap laptop just helps to confirm Moore's Law, not derail it.

NO! See desktop precident

[dazedNconfuzed]

25 years ago I had a $100 desktop computer: a Sinclair ZX80.
That did not pose a roadblock for Moore's Law re: desktops, so why would it be the same for something comparable a quarter-century later?
All the price does is establish a bare useful^D^D^Dable minimum; Moore's Law just means that 25 years from now you'll be able to do on a $100 laptop then what you really want to do on it today - which still won't be useful then.

I somehow doubt it

[Junior J. Junior III]

Maybe, partially. Cheap hardware won't put an end to Moore's Law; Moore's Law is what's made cheap hardware possible in the first place. If Moore's Law continues unabated, cheap hardware will merely become more capable or even cheaper. If Moore's Law hits a funadamental limit, it will stop of course, unless some workaround can be found. If we ever get to a point where we feel like we have "enough" power, we won't care whether Moore's Law continues, and so R&D budget will probably shift into other areas besides processing speed performance. I think that Moore's Law becomes a lot less important if we can stop software bloat from taking away nearly all the gains that Moore's Law yields.

I wonder how much of a study...

[photomonkey]

I would bet that, outside of the enterprise/gaming groups, tech 'upgrades' only happen because generally speaking with computers, only the latest and greatest are available.

I can't tell you the number of people I know who have purchased entirely new computers because they've become glutted with spyware, viruses, or have experienced a relatively simple hardware failure like an HDD spin-out or a dead RAM stick. Instead of dropping money on a replacement part and possibly installation services, they just buy a new computer.

And that comes with good reason too. Look at places like Dell. A $499 desktop isn't too bad at all. And I can promise that system will do everything that 85% of computer users will use it for. Most people don't play hardcore games. Most people don't use applications more processor intensive than productivity suites. Heck, for most people, the computer will be used only for email, Web, watching streaming video and maybe ripping their own CDs to put them on the iDevice of choice.

But that's the rub. At Best Buy or Dell or any of the retailers, even on their cheapest PCs, you're getting a pretty damn fast machine. You can't get an older/slower/cheaper desktop unless you're willing to buy old parts on Ebay and piece something together yourself.

For the big retailers, they can't even afford to keep the old hardware in stock, as storing it costs more than the retail value of the computer.

It really doesn't cost that much more to get a better computer with the current pricing structure. I wonder what would happen if all-of-a-sudden people could get a $150 laptop capable of Web, word processing, basic networking and email?

Remember how wildly successful Wal Mart was with the $35 DVD player a bunch of years back? It worked because it was so cheap that people either didn't demand top quality, or realized that they didn't need the $1,000 Sony 5-disc DVD changer with DTS surround and optical outputs.

Consumers

[s31523]

The $100 laptop is not geared toward anyone that is reading slashdot. It is for poor countries, or even poor inner city areas, with people that have no access to computers or the internet. Demand for cutting edge speed and technology won't subside at all. Not to mention, even the poor kids in third world countries will outgrow their $100 laptop in a month anyway and will want the coolest gadget out there... FUD. Pure FUD.

On the Misuse of Terms

[keithjr]

As many posters have so commented, it is clear that the use of the term Moore's Law was not appropriate. What the article seems to be attempting to purport was that the drive for low-end, inexpensive hardware is going to have a negative effect on the high-end market, and therefor lead to a decline in innovation and technological progression.

The former clause above may be true, but that is still up for debate. As stated, there still exists a very thriving market in the enterprise, media production, and gaming areas for high-end PCs.

The latter derivation is silly to the point of rediculousness. The technology and computer industries will always innovate. Low-end hardware will inovate along with it as the industry must flex to fit whatever the consumer demands.

In the end, if consumers finally realize that they do not NEED a $1000 system to accomplish day-to-day work with their PC, reasonable hardware at low prices will become more ubiquitous, power consumption will fall, better computers will become available for lower income families, and the market will continue to thrive as it responds to this new demand.

Re:No...

[MontyApollo]

640K...

The 286 processor was called a "supercomputer on the desktop", way too much power than what the average user will ever need.

It's not just the alienware crowd, once your average user gets a taste of what can be done with more power they will jump on the bandwagon too.

As somebody here mentioned in another post, video encoding and editing requires quite a bit of power, and this may become more mainstream with cheaper and cheaper camcorders. The personal computer is constantly expanding beyond the glorified word processor and their will always be new applications that come along that require more power, and it is kind of short sighted to believe that future apps will be nothing more than improved versions of only what exists today.

Re:Gamers will always make Moore's Law Relevant

[anomalous cohort]

I know what you are saying. I (very politely) explored that with him. Here was what he had to say to economically justify his gaming life style.

• a six month old card still has retained much of its resale value
• a two year old card cannot be sold at all
• buying a new card every six months and selling the old one has the same economic impact as buying a new card every two years and just throwing away the old one
• since both options have the same TCO, pick the option with the most features which is to stay current

I have no idea if his analysis is correct or not. I believe that if you factor in your time upgrading and selling hardware, then the TCO picture would not look comparable. However, if you enjoyed upgrading and selling hardware, then it is just a part of your hobby.

I don't wish to criticize early adopters since they underwrite a lot of the R&D costs that make technology better for the rest of us.

Re:Gamers will always make Moore's Law Relevant

[trolltalk.com]

The difference is that if you upgrade your card every 2 years, you still have your old one. If you upgrade all your hardware in the same fashion, you end up with both a new machine AND a backup machine that's 2 years old, and still has a lot of life left in it.

In the case of video cards, think dual (or more) displays as one use for a second, older card. I'm running dual at the office, and triple at home.

Re:Moore's Law Intact

[afidel]

A spreadsheet is only sufficient if you are a company of 2 people, anything bigger and you need some sort of accounting package. Once you get to a certain size you need tools like SAP/JD Edwards/Peoplesoft etc. You also tend to want good communications so you need to run communications servers, and probably some sort of communications software on the clients, etc. Just because a mom and pop can get along with a slow file server and some workstations running 98 and OpenOffice doesn't mean a large organization can run effectively that way.

Re:No...

[Shotgun]

Unfortunately, most people are first and foremost just consumers. They don't want to edit video. They just want to watch it.

Very few people want to actually *DO* anything anymore, other than be entertained.

Re:What a pointless article.

[Fordiman]

Yeah. All the demand for cheaper stuff means is that Moore's law will apply on the per-dollar level as well as the bleeding edge level - which it is implied to do anyway.

It's about the software.

[fyngyrz]

As processors have gotten faster, a certain set of developers have migrated to slower and slower languages to create applications; others are guilty of using less care to optimize for speed for the same reason. Operating systems too; Vista is a good example of an OS that is, frankly, a real pig.

As machines get faster, they can do things like run an application in an interpreted environment and still not seem too sluggish. The press has (correctly) pointed out that the current trend towards multiple cores instead of faster single cores will require a re-thinking of how to make apps take advantage of the power inherent in this type of enhanced CPU than one took towards a CPU that was simply quicker and more efficient on the same old code.

Should a relatively slow machine become widespread and be seen as a viable market for an application, developers may see an incentive to move to faster mechanisms. Perhaps we'll see a bit of refocus on pure C applications. Of course, products that are already small and fast are a natural fit for this type of thing.

Re:It's about the software.

[Ryan Amos]

Or maybe because computers are faster, developers don't HAVE to optimize as much to get acceptable performance and can use slower, interpreted languages that are quick to write and debug. It also means the applications can be more capable and include more features. Some call this bloat, some call it progress. History has consistently shown it to be the latter. Development speed has increased as a result, meaning cool shit gets in our hands faster. How is that a bad thing?

This argument is basically the "my rock works fine, why do I need a hammer?" argument. Vista is a pig, but you know what? MS designed it to be capable for the next 10 years. Of course it's a pig now, but it won't seem too bad in 3 years when XP finally is phased out for real. XP was a pig because it used (oh my god!) 128 MB of RAM in 2002. In 2010 the fact that Vista uses ~800 MB at idle won't be a big deal because your average PC will have 4-8 gigs.

Console development is already much like what you suggest; developers use a specialized set of tools to write highly optimized code for a low-power platform. Embedded machines as well.

Where I see the multiple cores concept going is towards multiple virtual machines. Windows 7 is already headed in this direction (10 years after Apple did it with OS X and Classic? Sorry, had to add that. :) Wouldn't it be ironic if everyone started using their cheap low-power PC as a dumb terminal to connect to their multi-core monster server in the basement?

Re:It's about the software.

[billcopc]

Right... so what does Vista do for YOU, better than XP did five years ago ?

I remember a long long time ago, I was surfing on a puny little 96mb 200mhz Pentium. The World Wide Web may have changed a bit since then, but it's still just a bunch of text with a few pictures mixed in. A quad-core 3.2ghz monster doesn't do it 64 times faster today, instead we throw more garbage at it to "make use" of the extra power.

The problem with Moore's law is simple: computers may evolve quickly, but humans sure don't. We're as dumb as we were ten years ago. Life on earth is pretty much the same as it was before, it just costs more money now. We consume more and more, and produce less and less. Why aren't these "thinking machines" doing our work for us ? Productivity is supposed to have increased, but what have we done with the excess ?

If anything, cheap laptops are a roadblock to progress. We're right on track to becoming telecom slaves, just the way they want us.

Re:It's about the software.

[hedwards]

Or maybe because computers are faster, developers don't HAVE to optimize as much to get acceptable performance and can use slower, interpreted languages that are quick to write and debug. It also means the applications can be more capable and include more features. Some call this bloat, some call it progress. History has consistently shown it to be the latter. Development speed has increased as a result, meaning cool shit gets in our hands faster. How is that a bad thing?, No, history has consistently demonstrated over the last 10 years or so that it is bloat. My three year old computer is pretty sluggish when I am doing anything even the most trivial in XP, vista is a bit better, but right now writing this on FreeBSD and I can actually expect to open all but the most processor intensive applications alongside my browser and things still go smoothly. I could, after stripping things down, run this on a 486sx as well. I wouldn't consider it fast, but I would just not get as much done and would have to deal with a much simpler environment.

Console development is already much like what you suggest; developers use a specialized set of tools to write highly optimized code for a low-power platform. Embedded machines as well. That really isn't true. Ever code anything for GBA? if you have a halfway decent environment, the coding is done in C. Same as operating systems on bigger boxes are. The main difference is that there is far more specificity to the hardware design. To put a pixel on the GBA, one did have write to the register, but it really isn't that much more difficult than making the graphics library do it. And it really isn't optimization, the hardware already knows to do these things, every time I change that register, the pixel changes color. It really isn't that much different than coding an OS on a larger box. Just fewer lines of code and a guarantee that it will run the same way no matter whose GBA it is.

Misunderstanding Moore's Law?

[argent]

Moore's law is not about exponential increases in absolute performance, it's about exponential increases in performance PER UNIT COST. The original formulation was based on the fact that the number of transistors in a chip using the CHEAPEST transistors was doubling every 24 months.

It doesn't matter whether you get twice the performance for the same price, or the same performance for half the price (and half or less the power usage), you're still following Moore's Law.

The really interesting thing is that Moore's Law applies to everything we make. The doubling time depends on the technology, but the best performance-per-unit-price for every technological product from oxcarts and clay tablets to rockets and ebooks can be shown to follow an exponential curve back as far as we have hard enough figures to plot meaningful points.

Re:What a pointless article.

[Anonymous Coward]

And it's not really a 'law' in the scientific sense, it's a prediction. I wish people would:

1. Stop calling it 'Moore's Law'.
2. Stop panicking when a good reason for the 'law' to be invalidated shows up.

Sheesh, who really gives a shit anyway. Moore's Law is not driving the processor industry, there are plenty of other incentives for continual product improvement.

Re:No...

[DanQuixote]

Although you make a good point, that users continually find ways to put ever faster processors to work, there is a larger effect to consider---

The real CPU hog is not the user. It is the software developer. Why, I ask you... WHY must MS Office take 3 minutes to load (OK, I exaggerate, but you get the picture)? And though MS has certainly led the way in software bloat, it's not the only culprit. Gimp and OpenOffice take truly painful amounts of time to load as well. You can watch OpenOffice working when it refreshes a page on a slower machine... not impressive.

If you look at the call stack while debugging windows apps, you will see a shocking number of levels pushed on there. It's amazing that the system is ever responsive. Seeing that is the best way to understand how a CPU which can do 1 billion operations per second, still takes ForEver to present a tool tip.

Need I go into the PCI bus or memory bus designs? Never mind the hard drive channels.

The truth is, there is amazing computing power in a $1 Motorola CPU. All the email, word processing, and text web browsing you could dream up wouldn't be any problem. You can even do modest imaging with that tiny giant... but only if you design carefully to maximize the resource!

Yes, audio and video will require more CPU, but it has become so common to package co-processors that we really have to ask why the main CPU is being taxed so.

Sure, the users will forever want more, more, more... but that's just being human. The real culprits are the sloppy designers who insist on ignoring the cost of feature creep.

Re:Moore's Law in Dynamic Equilibrium?

[shmlco]

The whole argument is stupid. Really cheap computers are powered by chips that would have been top-of-the-line four or five years ago. It's the advancement of the power curve that made the chips powering those systems cheap--and possible--in the first place.

Re:Moore's Law in Dynamic Equilibrium?

[cliffski]

people are already slowing down their lust for faster, higher spec devices. Hardly anyone I know has any plans to upgrade their PC at any point in the forseeable future, and having just bought a new battery for this laptop, I'll happily keep using it another 3 or 4 years. The final push which would make me get a new one would be a less weight, longer battery life, or lower power drain. Or maybe a solid state drive or something with no fans. As far as computing power goes, my laptop surfs the web, sends email and plays a few low-sys req games, 99% of its features are unused, especially the CD burner.
Quieter, lighter, and low-power are the new fast.

theoretical vs practical

[perlchild]

And here I thought Moore's Law applied to the top of the line chip designs, from manufacturers, not units sold...

Not that they automatically are incompatible, but Moore's law seemed to pace "research" a lot better than market, ever since I first heard of it...

The low-cost laptop units are among the first units I've seen to approach what customers really want, as opposed to what manufacturers want... Meaning the olpc won't be "necessarily" obsolescent in a year... And even if it was, people would(wisely, I might add) refuse to pay another 100$ next year...
Which isn't to say bundling a low-cost laptop, with say, internet service(as I've heard bandied about) might not work...

Clueless Wankers and CNet.UK

[tyme]

"when consumers realize their personal lust for faster hardware makes almost zero financial sense, and hurts the environment with greater demands for power, will they start to demand cheaper, more efficient 'third-world' computers that are just as effective?" Will ridiculously cheap laptops wean consumers off ridiculously fast components?"

Maybe these same consumers will also realize that Moore's law also means that in 18 months you will be able to do the same computational work at roughly half the power cost (modulo leakage current, of course), a fact that appears to escape the razor wits at CNet.UK!

Moore's law is the only reason that we now have $5.00 calculators running off of solar cells generating a few miliwatts from ambient light, or $10.00 quartz wrist watches that run for years off a single button cell. If anything, the $100 laptop will accellerate Moore's law by increasing the volume of products produced and resultant economies of scale.

The folks at CNet.UK are a bunch of clueless wankers.

Re:Moore's Law in Dynamic Equilibrium?

[geekboy642]

Techniques used to increase the density of transistors on a chip can also be used to more cheaply or easily make a low-powered chip for your ultra-portable laptop. It also improves the life of whatever battery technology is embedded in your electronic thing.

Moore's law doesn't only mean good things for megahertz-obsessed gamers.

No.

[chrome]

Real news a bit slow today?