if the volumee is up, the price of CPU will go down. Especially if we are talking about double, triple, or even exponential growth.
Of Course, this won't happend overnight. Many don't see the reason as well. From the control industry's stand point, however, many PC's basic features is here to stay:
There are only a few companies designing industrial strength softwares and many of them are building their foundation on MS's architecture. Reason? Simple, customer wants it. Why does customer want it? Simple, it is easy to maintain (or at least people with less expertise can do some part of the maintainence). It is easier to find some different venders for the WinTel combo and negotiate prices than anything else out there.
Now that you have many pieces out there, why re-invent the wheels when you can get a reasonable price licensing other's software?
So why bring PPC in? PPC right now can be more expansive, but I believe it is a much better architecture. It also runs cooler, compare to the 3+GHZ Intel chips. Power consumption is key since not only do you have to pay for electricity, but you also have to pay for backing up those power usage in control environment. The few PC based control system I've seen try to use mobile cpu to achieve the balance of speed, faster development, and power usage. Howver, I believe with adequate R&D PPC can reap more benefit balancing all three aspects. x86 is not designed to conservatively use power in principle. It is designed to save some power(yeah right!) only because it has to. Why does company want a 550W power supply for each PC in the future? This simply don't make any sense to me. My Desktop uses more power than a halogen lamp and it is still allowed by the city ordanance? give me a break. I want my lamp!
Intel seems to see this and decide to walk away from higher GHz for now. But afterall I think PPC has a good chance to prove people it works well for them.
Silly idea it seems. But it CAN have significant impact. You just never know.....
Honestly, I think that the only thing that as far as cost and performance ratios go, AMD has the upper hand. People who keep up with the industry are (I assume) fairly well aware of this fact.
From what I can tell, intel's only remaining advantages are in niche markets (not consumer desktops), and the fact that most people buying consumer-level desktops haven't even heard of AMD. I doubt that AMD will be able to overthrow intel's brand-recognition supremacy, but intel will be facing some tough decisions if they do...
It's a blessing in disguise right now not having the same market share as Intel does.
Now before you mod me down on saying that, just let me point one thing out to you. There are only one AMD owned facility that is producing the Athlon 64 and FX chips. What about Intel? Last time I check they have more than a couple. I don't think AMD has the same amount of production capacity and cash as Intel does. Should they required to produce the same number of chips as Intel does, their customer (corporate, not us comsumers) will cry foul pretty quickly.
It is better for them to slowing gaining market share as they can gradually increase their production capacity. That's better for the company. In case they have another yield challenge they have time to overcome it.
I have seen some small cases with the modified heat sink transfering the heat from the top of the processor to the back of the case. That seems to be a pretty good idea. I think at one point Intel's Xeon processor was (or plan on) using this kind of technology. Since I never work with one (besides what Intel's manager's presentation) I don't know if it is actually used by Intel.
That plus some re-engineerin of the processor should get us to a no fan design. Hopefully someone other thank Apple thought of this.
In my line of work one of our main servers has dual processors. It is having a real hard time publishing the data coming from remote locations fast enough. Processors are on a slightly lower spec. we're constantly having one processor running at 100% and locks up the I/Os of the computer.
It is simply not true anymore that "any" coding work and database processing work can be done on just "any" computer. That is a myth that peole has been spreading. They are not claiming without some truth to it: Many tasks' minimum processing requirement has been met long time ago. I have an old Athlon 800 MHZ desktop sitting at home next to a P4 system and it runs just fine if all people does is using Word and surfing the net. What I don't agree with is the misconception that the processor world can rest on their laural and not improve the processor's processing power (not necessarily the clock speed, enought heat already!)
on an off-topic notem, anyone remembers the day when a passive heat sink does the job without the fan on your CPU?
You are full of crap. The Windows XP professional don't cost that much per copy, even at full retail price.
Plus if you have enough user base you can go for a site license for MS's plan. While it is not as cheap as its worth, it is not what you bloated out to be (unless you've been duped.
As one post before me suggest, there can have a PGP trail to each vote that was casted. I whole heartedly agree to that suggestion.
The underlying issues is not technology along. It is the fact that the technology makes it so cut-and dry. Never will there be any guess as who gets the vote from a ballot (or whether the vote is a legitimate vote). We will also never see again a vote with multiple selection of one position should the voter only choose one candidate.
This leaves no more discussion room. No more chad issue, no more "who is this guy trying to vote for", and for sure, less (if not none) "idiot" votes in which voters check every single box available.
Translation: Integrity of the vote now gets all the attention other problem gets. There are always challenges to the integrity of votes prior to the CIvil War!
I think people should measure the success of an electronic vote by how many percentage of votes are going to be of "high integrity", which means only the qualified voters of the certain location can vote for certain people at certain places. In addition the statistics should be measured against non-defective vote with other mechanisms as well as other error factors that can be "elimenated" by going to electronic votes. Afterall, we're trying to make the election process more efficient as well as more accurate.
I do not believe electronic voting will solve all the election problems, nor will it not having its own unique challenges. However, as people well trained of technology and the analitical skills, we should understand the gives and takes and go from there. I'm sure if we do all we can do we will come up fine, although never be perfect
Intel cannot kill AMD without being anti-competitive. I'm sure they watch MS and learn from the lesson. They do have the resource to squeez AMD out,but it'll prob take quite a bit of Intel's effort to do so as well.
Apple was practically dying before MS step in with their investment. This is different from AMD's case.
I don't usually post here but base on the experience the cooling fans do fail from time to time. The probability of failure increase greatly by the life of a particular machine.
While I'm sure the chance of the CUP cooling fan (motor) failure is rare, it does happened. It happened to once of my older computer (PII machine, kinda old, I know). My sister's P4 just had one of the cooling fan failed NOT b/c of the fan is bad but the motherboard is not supplying any power (through the existing pins). I had to use a power adaptor for the workaround.
I myself is using an Athlon and the motherboard does have the setup to detect the temperatures of the computer at serveral point (including the CPU temp.)
In general in a safety related design there are more than one check point. For example, if the CPU fan failed and the CPU temp. failed to pickup the uncontrolled temp. increase, the m-board temp. indicator will also shows an increase. Also you can tell from the electricity usage to determine the abnormal computer conditions. The power controller should pick up the unusually serge in power usage if any circuits are shorted inside the computer (possibly a melt down on insolation material external of the chips).
The worst case scenario that I can think of on my computer is if there IS a small fire ( not very likely since the processor should have been self-destruct even before that point). The m-board and the power supply shold catch it and shut the power off meediately. The Processor may be hot the the amount of energy is not enough to even harm my harddrive. I may hae some problem w/ my data integrity if my harddrive is running when the power is cut, but the physical damage is limited to the processor and the m-board, at most the RAM near the processor and possible damage to one side of the video card. The IDE cable is far enough not too pose a significant issue.
But above all else, given the redundent level of protection (however small), I don't think I will be worry about my house being burned down by my computer an more than other appliances. To be real, a short circuit in compressor of the fridge has more power to short out your electricity (i.e. causing problems) than the comptuer. If that is not a problem, why should my computer be?
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Of Course, this won't happend overnight. Many don't see the reason as well. From the control industry's stand point, however, many PC's basic features is here to stay:
There are only a few companies designing industrial strength softwares and many of them are building their foundation on MS's architecture. Reason? Simple, customer wants it. Why does customer want it? Simple, it is easy to maintain (or at least people with less expertise can do some part of the maintainence). It is easier to find some different venders for the WinTel combo and negotiate prices than anything else out there. Now that you have many pieces out there, why re-invent the wheels when you can get a reasonable price licensing other's software?
So why bring PPC in? PPC right now can be more expansive, but I believe it is a much better architecture. It also runs cooler, compare to the 3+GHZ Intel chips. Power consumption is key since not only do you have to pay for electricity, but you also have to pay for backing up those power usage in control environment. The few PC based control system I've seen try to use mobile cpu to achieve the balance of speed, faster development, and power usage. Howver, I believe with adequate R&D PPC can reap more benefit balancing all three aspects. x86 is not designed to conservatively use power in principle. It is designed to save some power(yeah right!) only because it has to. Why does company want a 550W power supply for each PC in the future? This simply don't make any sense to me. My Desktop uses more power than a halogen lamp and it is still allowed by the city ordanance? give me a break. I want my lamp!
Intel seems to see this and decide to walk away from higher GHz for now. But afterall I think PPC has a good chance to prove people it works well for them.
Silly idea it seems. But it CAN have significant impact. You just never know.....
Already posted here a few weeks ago. Where were you dude?
Now before you mod me down on saying that, just let me point one thing out to you. There are only one AMD owned facility that is producing the Athlon 64 and FX chips. What about Intel? Last time I check they have more than a couple. I don't think AMD has the same amount of production capacity and cash as Intel does. Should they required to produce the same number of chips as Intel does, their customer (corporate, not us comsumers) will cry foul pretty quickly.
It is better for them to slowing gaining market share as they can gradually increase their production capacity. That's better for the company. In case they have another yield challenge they have time to overcome it.
I have seen some small cases with the modified heat sink transfering the heat from the top of the processor to the back of the case. That seems to be a pretty good idea. I think at one point Intel's Xeon processor was (or plan on) using this kind of technology. Since I never work with one (besides what Intel's manager's presentation) I don't know if it is actually used by Intel.
That plus some re-engineerin of the processor should get us to a no fan design. Hopefully someone other thank Apple thought of this.
It is simply not true anymore that "any" coding work and database processing work can be done on just "any" computer. That is a myth that peole has been spreading. They are not claiming without some truth to it: Many tasks' minimum processing requirement has been met long time ago. I have an old Athlon 800 MHZ desktop sitting at home next to a P4 system and it runs just fine if all people does is using Word and surfing the net. What I don't agree with is the misconception that the processor world can rest on their laural and not improve the processor's processing power (not necessarily the clock speed, enought heat already!)
on an off-topic notem, anyone remembers the day when a passive heat sink does the job without the fan on your CPU?
Plus if you have enough user base you can go for a site license for MS's plan. While it is not as cheap as its worth, it is not what you bloated out to be (unless you've been duped.
Check on the whois listing of the
jackito-pda.com.
Maybe the in French has different computational standard than the US.
As one post before me suggest, there can have a PGP trail to each vote that was casted. I whole heartedly agree to that suggestion. The underlying issues is not technology along. It is the fact that the technology makes it so cut-and dry. Never will there be any guess as who gets the vote from a ballot (or whether the vote is a legitimate vote). We will also never see again a vote with multiple selection of one position should the voter only choose one candidate. This leaves no more discussion room. No more chad issue, no more "who is this guy trying to vote for", and for sure, less (if not none) "idiot" votes in which voters check every single box available. Translation: Integrity of the vote now gets all the attention other problem gets. There are always challenges to the integrity of votes prior to the CIvil War! I think people should measure the success of an electronic vote by how many percentage of votes are going to be of "high integrity", which means only the qualified voters of the certain location can vote for certain people at certain places. In addition the statistics should be measured against non-defective vote with other mechanisms as well as other error factors that can be "elimenated" by going to electronic votes. Afterall, we're trying to make the election process more efficient as well as more accurate. I do not believe electronic voting will solve all the election problems, nor will it not having its own unique challenges. However, as people well trained of technology and the analitical skills, we should understand the gives and takes and go from there. I'm sure if we do all we can do we will come up fine, although never be perfect
Intel cannot kill AMD without being anti-competitive. I'm sure they watch MS and learn from the lesson. They do have the resource to squeez AMD out,but it'll prob take quite a bit of Intel's effort to do so as well.
Apple was practically dying before MS step in with their investment. This is different from AMD's case.
I don't usually post here but base on the experience the cooling fans do fail from time to time. The probability of failure increase greatly by the life of a particular machine.
While I'm sure the chance of the CUP cooling fan (motor) failure is rare, it does happened. It happened to once of my older computer (PII machine, kinda old, I know). My sister's P4 just had one of the cooling fan failed NOT b/c of the fan is bad but the motherboard is not supplying any power (through the existing pins). I had to use a power adaptor for the workaround.
I myself is using an Athlon and the motherboard does have the setup to detect the temperatures of the computer at serveral point (including the CPU temp.)
In general in a safety related design there are more than one check point. For example, if the CPU fan failed and the CPU temp. failed to pickup the uncontrolled temp. increase, the m-board temp. indicator will also shows an increase. Also you can tell from the electricity usage to determine the abnormal computer conditions. The power controller should pick up the unusually serge in power usage if any circuits are shorted inside the computer (possibly a melt down on insolation material external of the chips).
The worst case scenario that I can think of on my computer is if there IS a small fire ( not very likely since the processor should have been self-destruct even before that point). The m-board and the power supply shold catch it and shut the power off meediately. The Processor may be hot the the amount of energy is not enough to even harm my harddrive. I may hae some problem w/ my data integrity if my harddrive is running when the power is cut, but the physical damage is limited to the processor and the m-board, at most the RAM near the processor and possible damage to one side of the video card. The IDE cable is far enough not too pose a significant issue.
But above all else, given the redundent level of protection (however small), I don't think I will be worry about my house being burned down by my computer an more than other appliances. To be real, a short circuit in compressor of the fridge has more power to short out your electricity (i.e. causing problems) than the comptuer. If that is not a problem, why should my computer be?