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Post-post PC: Materials and Technologies That Could Revive Enthusiast Computing

Posted by timothy on from the more-conflict-minerals-mean-more-fun dept.

Dputiger writes "Given the recent emphasis on mobile computing and the difficulty of scaling large cores, it's easy to think that enthusiast computing is dead. Easy — but not necessarily true. There are multiple ways to attack the problem of continued scaling, including new semiconductor materials, specialized co-processor units that implement software applications in silicon, and enhanced cooling techniques to reduce on-die hot spots."

6 of 128 comments (clear)

  1. Arsenide is a material? by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 4, Informative

    Of all the next-generation technologies that we’ve discussed at ET, including carbon nanotubes and graphene, III-V semiconductors that use materials like indium, gallium, and arsenide are by far the most likely to make an a mass market appearance within the next ten years.

    [Emphasis mine]

    Yeah, that article really seems to know what it's talking about.

    1. Re:Arsenide is a material? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Arsenides are indeed a class of materials containing the element arsenic that includes In-Ga-As semiconductors. But let me try to fix the original sentence, it's not as bad as you imply, though definitely incorrect.

      Of all the next-generation technologies that we’ve discussed at ET, including carbon nanotubes and graphene, III-V semiconductors that use elements like indium, gallium, and arsenic are by far the most likely to make an a mass market appearance within the next ten years.

      Changes in bold. Indium and gallium are the group III elements and arsenic the group V element that make up III-V semiconductors. Poorly edited yes, but not enough to disqualify the whole article, at least in my humble anonymous opinion...

    2. Re:Arsenide is a material? by wjcofkc · · Score: 3, Informative

      Take a second look. I made a post in their Disqus comments pointing out this error. The author of the article replied in less then ten minutes acknowledging the error with a promise to fix it. The error was fixed by the time I hit refresh. Instead of being all high and mighty, perhaps next time you should help out. I did, and it worked. Consequently your entire post is now moot.

      --
      Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
  2. No by The+Cat · · Score: 5, Informative

    There is no such thing as post-PC for the same reason there is no such thing as "post-doorknob" or "post-handle."

    The PC is the correct form factor for getting work done by humans. Mobile devices are not. This will only change if human physiology changes, which is unlikely in any time frame measured in intervals shorter than 100,000 years.

    The "post-PC era" is a marketing slogan designed to make you buy things. It is designed to get you back on the upgrade treadmill starting from the beginning again. It is not technologically accurate.

    PCs are here to stay for a very VERY long time. Get used to them.

  3. Lack of a use case by Animats · · Score: 3, Informative

    From the article:

    Programs like "Mail" or "Messages" could be implemented in reprogrammable silicon.

    You need how much compute power to read mail?

    Most users just don't need that much power. Once everybody could play streaming HDTV, the couch potato market was covered. Rendering in gaming could still improve, and NPC behavior could get smarter, but really, GTA V pretty much has that nailed and it runs on last-generation consoles.

    There are people who need more power, but they're running fluid dynamics simulations or rendering movies or simulating new ICs or something like that. I've run Autodesk Inventor on 24-CPU workstations. That's one of the few interactive programs that can usefully use a 24-CPU workstation. It's not a mass market product.

    The applications that need vast amounts of additional compute power are there, but they're not high-volume applications. Nor are they "enthusiast" applications. There's not enough volume there to justify heavy investment in faster CPUs.

    This may change as we have better robots or something like that. But speeding up existing desktop apps, no. (Program load times are still ridiculous long, but mostly because of stupidity like phoning home for updates, waiting for the license server, fetching ads, or using virtual memory in a world where memory is cheap.)

  4. Re:Nope by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

    Good luck making a good PC with ARM and other non-power-hungry devices. In practice we still depend on Intel and AMD willingness to make something better. Yes you can make an ARM cluster, but clusters are only useful sor some usecases.