Dual cores are in my mind not the 'way forward' as Intel and AMD are pushing them but they will certainly fill the gap as they strive to design the next generation of cores that will push the raw Ghz barrier back even further.
I see this as a way to make it look as if the technology is progressing when in fact it is not. We all know that Intel have been finding it very difficult to keep on ramping up the core frequency of the P4, and I guess we will see AMD start to struggle more and more to ramp up their new x86-64 cores
Hey if they crack the dual core idea and the take up is good perhaps these new cores will also dual core, which can't be bad can it ?
Plus with advanced applications like voice recognition hopefully coming into their own in the next few years a seperate CPU to handle all the 'behind the scenes' stuff will be a boom.
Its a simple case of keeping your important data off the array. For me the important data is my (*coughs* backup) archive of mp3's, and my documents (which includes a lot of coding,images,emails,MAX files,etc..)
Now you say if they are off the array then where is the speed increase!? The answer is that those kind of files are not going to be the ones that require the performance of RAID in the first place. For me anyhow!
My ideal setup would go a little like this: 2x 70Gb Raptors exclusively for windows and all installed apps.
Couple of 300Gb WD Caviars (or equivalent) for data.
Windows will be faster, programs will execute faster, etc...
Fine data access will still be "slow" but so what? (I still mean for ME) If I am playing with a 250mb Photoshop file then fine i'll have to wait a "long" time for it to open, but once it is the system will fly (scratch/swapfile on the RAID - in cahoots with my 1Gb Ram)
If the array goes down then tough - I lose Windows, who cares - nothing on there is "needed" data, I just have the inconvenience of a re-install which would be needed if the windows drive died anyways...
I suppose I do lose the advantages of things like quick mp3 backups and such but to be honest that kind of thing would be a long enough job (~30Gb mp3) for me not to want to sit around watching it anyway.
I would go for RAID - just be aware that if one of the drives go bye bye then all the data goes with it...
The durability will be overcome, I remember when labs were first playing around with the idea of OLEDs and they only had green colours and lasted for only 100hrs. Now the red and green last well into 20000 hrs it is just the blue that is failing to get up to spec. Last I heard they were just about to achieve 10000 on the blue - almost getting up to a useful standard.
Currently the fullcolour screens are a lot thicker and power hungry than they will be eventually since atm three layers for each colour are used with a mask - even so these screens are a -lot- thinner than comparable LCD panels. Hit google image search for "OLED screens" and such (i'm in work atm and they filter google image search) you will find a lot of prototype screens in profile *awes at the thickness (should I say thinness)*
They will be the screen technology of the future. No doubt about it - especially when a flexible polymer can be used as the substrate (currently glass) and we can all have relatively cheap, huge and flexible screens. They are so efficient and bright they are being considered as a new lighting system for airport runways - embedded OLEDs would mark the be the current 'white lines'.
They will phase out LCDs starting with phones, I am sure it is in nokia's roadmap to start replacing LCD with OLED by 2005/2006 (cant find the source again though)
Slashdot Mirror
Dual cores are in my mind not the 'way forward' as Intel and AMD are pushing them but they will certainly fill the gap as they strive to design the next generation of cores that will push the raw Ghz barrier back even further.
I see this as a way to make it look as if the technology is progressing when in fact it is not. We all know that Intel have been finding it very difficult to keep on ramping up the core frequency of the P4, and I guess we will see AMD start to struggle more and more to ramp up their new x86-64 cores
Hey if they crack the dual core idea and the take up is good perhaps these new cores will also dual core, which can't be bad can it ?
Plus with advanced applications like voice recognition hopefully coming into their own in the next few years a seperate CPU to handle all the 'behind the scenes' stuff will be a boom.
- Leigh
For me this question has an easy answer...
;)
Speed wins.
No, im not mad as a hatter either
Its a simple case of keeping your important data off the array. For me the important data is my (*coughs* backup) archive of mp3's, and my documents (which includes a lot of coding,images,emails,MAX files,etc..)
Now you say if they are off the array then where is the speed increase!? The answer is that those kind of files are not going to be the ones that require the performance of RAID in the first place. For me anyhow!
My ideal setup would go a little like this:
2x 70Gb Raptors exclusively for windows and all installed apps.
Couple of 300Gb WD Caviars (or equivalent) for data.
Windows will be faster, programs will execute faster, etc...
Fine data access will still be "slow" but so what? (I still mean for ME) If I am playing with a 250mb Photoshop file then fine i'll have to wait a "long" time for it to open, but once it is the system will fly (scratch/swapfile on the RAID - in cahoots with my 1Gb Ram)
If the array goes down then tough - I lose Windows, who cares - nothing on there is "needed" data, I just have the inconvenience of a re-install which would be needed if the windows drive died anyways...
I suppose I do lose the advantages of things like quick mp3 backups and such but to be honest that kind of thing would be a long enough job (~30Gb mp3) for me not to want to sit around watching it anyway.
I would go for RAID - just be aware that if one of the drives go bye bye then all the data goes with it...
Just my take on the whole thing.
OLEDs are getting pretty big right now though I admit they are only prototypes - http://www.eetimes.com/sys/news/showArticle.jhtml? articleID=20600073
The durability will be overcome, I remember when labs were first playing around with the idea of OLEDs and they only had green colours and lasted for only 100hrs. Now the red and green last well into 20000 hrs it is just the blue that is failing to get up to spec. Last I heard they were just about to achieve 10000 on the blue - almost getting up to a useful standard.
Currently the fullcolour screens are a lot thicker and power hungry than they will be eventually since atm three layers for each colour are used with a mask - even so these screens are a -lot- thinner than comparable LCD panels. Hit google image search for "OLED screens" and such (i'm in work atm and they filter google image search) you will find a lot of prototype screens in profile *awes at the thickness (should I say thinness)*
They will be the screen technology of the future. No doubt about it - especially when a flexible polymer can be used as the substrate (currently glass) and we can all have relatively cheap, huge and flexible screens. They are so efficient and bright they are being considered as a new lighting system for airport runways - embedded OLEDs would mark the be the current 'white lines'.
They will phase out LCDs starting with phones, I am sure it is in nokia's roadmap to start replacing LCD with OLED by 2005/2006 (cant find the source again though)
Anyway OLEDs are great!
*ramble ramble*