When are people going to realize that the clock speed of a processor means absolutely nothing?
I'm a hardware engineer, working on a 1GHz sparc processor, and (if you really want it) I can build you a 2 GHz (or even a 3 or 4 GHz) processor right now... today.
But...
This doesn't mean that it will outperform a 500MHz machine at all.
Intel can blow as much "GHz" smoke it wants out of it's ass, but it doesn't mean that the processor will be a top performer.
But... the average dolt on the street thinks more Hz means higher performance, and the processor companies know this. So... they start dropping back the number of operations completed per clock cycle in order to run their clock frequency through the roof.
The consumers think, "Oooooohh.... that's cool," and start buying cruddy processors with horrible architecture, simply because there is that friggin GHz tag stuck on it.
Think about it for a second....
If you have a 1GHz machine that does "X" operations per clock cycle, a 500MHz chip that performs "2X" operations per cycle will perform just as well , and probably cost 1/10th as much.
It's the drooling, GHz-horny consumer that encourages these companies to unload crap into the market.
You do know that with today's technology, you can burn a whole 640MB CDR in less than 8 minutes, don't you?
Go put on your shoes and check your hair again, and your CD will be ready to go... with 10 times more music that the little Rio can hold.
As if you're talking about fast and convenient... don't you have to keep purging the memory and uploading new music to the Rio over and over and over and over each time you want to listen to something new? Seems to me like switching a CDR takes about 4 seconds, and you're loaded up with another 10 hours of tunes. Plus... you have to keep all of those MP3s on your HDD forever if you plan on listening to them in the future... wither that or spend more time downloading them.
True... MP3s are lower quality that audio CDs, but by how much?
I'll be damned if I can hear any difference between a regular CD and a 160kbps MP3, even though I know the loss of quality is there. I simply can't friggin hear it.
Would you rather carry around 10 CDs in a backpack or something that you have to switch out of the player every hour, or carry the content of all 10 of those CDs on a single disc with a very very small difference in quality?
Well... what I think they meant was the portable MP3-CD players are starting to hit the market.
Component players have been avaiable (as you said) for quite some time now. Hell... there are even quite a number of DVD players that will also play MP3 CDRs/CDRWs. And some of these DVD players are cheap.
In fact, Apex makes one that only cost about $150 that plays DVDs, VCDs, audio CD/CDR/CDRW, and MP3 CDR/CDRW. I couldn't find a price on the Terratec website, but I'm betting that the little booger isn't as good a deal as the Apex player. (The Apex player also allows you mess with the CSS and region codes for DVDs!)
I've read all the little comments under this thread, and I want to make a statement of my own here. I am a hardware engineer. More specifically, I am a hardware engineer helping to design a Sparc64 clone. Even more specifically, I am designing the logic for the L3 cache on a Sparc64 clone. This includes (as you might imagine) extensive work with SRAMS and ECC. Enough background... I just wanted to point out that I know excatly what I am talking about. ECC RAM really isn't any different than regular RAM. And, to correct the person who said ECC RAM is redundant... you are wrong. ECC RAM is not redundant... it just keeps a 'signature' for each piece of data. Take a regular RAM (SRAM or DRAM... doesn't matter), and add a few more bits of storage space. 8 bits of storage space for each 64 bits of data, to be precise. Now you have room to hold the ECC bits. Add a little logic that implements a slightly complex algorithm (SEC-DED-S4ED Error Correcrion Code), and you have the ECC part of your RAM. The RAM itself is no different, but you've added logic that "filters" the data as it comes out of the storage array, detecting errors in the data and correcting them if possible. If you *really* want to know more about ECC, there are books galore and websites a-plenty with details on how to implement the correction and detection algorithms used for ECC RAMS. As for the person who claimed that it didn't really make any difference if you had ECC RAMS or not.... Try and find a supercomputer or high-end engineering computer that doesn't use ECC. Just try it! I'll bet my dollar against your dime that you can't. If you have a machine that is running mission critical applications or has some ungodly important function (like in a NASA shuttle or satellite) you can NOT afford to have a seg fault due to the processor fetching an instruction from memory that has one of it's bits flipped. ECC is a #1 Must Have for hard core workstations. As for your home PC... it probably doesn't matter. If I get a segfault, I simply spit and cus and restart the application or (god forbib) the whole machine. Unreal Tournament is hardly "mission critical", even when I'm kicking some serious butt, so I don't feel any need to have ECC RAM in my PC. Just my expert point of view on this. later, Sir Poopsalot
Slashdot Mirror
I'm a hardware engineer, working on a 1GHz sparc processor, and (if you really want it) I can build you a 2 GHz (or even a 3 or 4 GHz) processor right now... today.
But...
This doesn't mean that it will outperform a 500MHz machine at all.
Intel can blow as much "GHz" smoke it wants out of it's ass, but it doesn't mean that the processor will be a top performer.
But... the average dolt on the street thinks more Hz means higher performance, and the processor companies know this. So... they start dropping back the number of operations completed per clock cycle in order to run their clock frequency through the roof.
The consumers think, "Oooooohh.... that's cool," and start buying cruddy processors with horrible architecture, simply because there is that friggin GHz tag stuck on it.
Think about it for a second....
If you have a 1GHz machine that does "X" operations per clock cycle, a 500MHz chip that performs "2X" operations per cycle will perform just as well , and probably cost 1/10th as much.
It's the drooling, GHz-horny consumer that encourages these companies to unload crap into the market.
signed,
Sir Poopsalot
Microprocessor Engineer
HAL Computer Systems, Inc.
You do know that with today's technology, you can burn a whole 640MB CDR in less than 8 minutes, don't you?
Go put on your shoes and check your hair again, and your CD will be ready to go... with 10 times more music that the little Rio can hold.
As if you're talking about fast and convenient... don't you have to keep purging the memory and uploading new music to the Rio over and over and over and over each time you want to listen to something new? Seems to me like switching a CDR takes about 4 seconds, and you're loaded up with another 10 hours of tunes. Plus... you have to keep all of those MP3s on your HDD forever if you plan on listening to them in the future... wither that or spend more time downloading them.
Now THAT'S fast and convenient....
Sir Poopsalot
I'll be damned if I can hear any difference between a regular CD and a 160kbps MP3, even though I know the loss of quality is there. I simply can't friggin hear it.
Would you rather carry around 10 CDs in a backpack or something that you have to switch out of the player every hour, or carry the content of all 10 of those CDs on a single disc with a very very small difference in quality?
I prefer option #2. It's less work and cheaper.
Sir Poopsalot
Component players have been avaiable (as you said) for quite some time now. Hell... there are even quite a number of DVD players that will also play MP3 CDRs/CDRWs. And some of these DVD players are cheap.
In fact, Apex makes one that only cost about $150 that plays DVDs, VCDs, audio CD/CDR/CDRW, and MP3 CDR/CDRW. I couldn't find a price on the Terratec website, but I'm betting that the little booger isn't as good a deal as the Apex player. (The Apex player also allows you mess with the CSS and region codes for DVDs!)
Sir Poopsalot
I've read all the little comments under this thread, and I want to make a statement of my own here. I am a hardware engineer. More specifically, I am a hardware engineer helping to design a Sparc64 clone. Even more specifically, I am designing the logic for the L3 cache on a Sparc64 clone. This includes (as you might imagine) extensive work with SRAMS and ECC. Enough background... I just wanted to point out that I know excatly what I am talking about. ECC RAM really isn't any different than regular RAM. And, to correct the person who said ECC RAM is redundant... you are wrong. ECC RAM is not redundant... it just keeps a 'signature' for each piece of data. Take a regular RAM (SRAM or DRAM... doesn't matter), and add a few more bits of storage space. 8 bits of storage space for each 64 bits of data, to be precise. Now you have room to hold the ECC bits. Add a little logic that implements a slightly complex algorithm (SEC-DED-S4ED Error Correcrion Code), and you have the ECC part of your RAM. The RAM itself is no different, but you've added logic that "filters" the data as it comes out of the storage array, detecting errors in the data and correcting them if possible. If you *really* want to know more about ECC, there are books galore and websites a-plenty with details on how to implement the correction and detection algorithms used for ECC RAMS. As for the person who claimed that it didn't really make any difference if you had ECC RAMS or not.... Try and find a supercomputer or high-end engineering computer that doesn't use ECC. Just try it! I'll bet my dollar against your dime that you can't. If you have a machine that is running mission critical applications or has some ungodly important function (like in a NASA shuttle or satellite) you can NOT afford to have a seg fault due to the processor fetching an instruction from memory that has one of it's bits flipped. ECC is a #1 Must Have for hard core workstations. As for your home PC... it probably doesn't matter. If I get a segfault, I simply spit and cus and restart the application or (god forbib) the whole machine. Unreal Tournament is hardly "mission critical", even when I'm kicking some serious butt, so I don't feel any need to have ECC RAM in my PC. Just my expert point of view on this. later, Sir Poopsalot