The future of computers

[OWNAGE TIME]

I think this will be interesting topic. What do you think future computers are going to be like. By future I'm not talking about 1000 years from now. I'm talking about like 4 years from now.

Here is what I think:

Processors: The heart of the system. These will keep getting bigger and some may start having triple-cores, and get there speeds up to the 5ghz range.

Graphics Cards: A nessesity for any gamer. The future of these cards will probably get away from 256mg and into 512mg and even 1024mg. Clock speeds will go into the 2000's and memory clocks will go into the 5000's. These cards will create massive ammounts of heat.

Hard Drive: The future of these will be very simple. Huge ammounts of space and fast cache. If I had to guess in the future personal hard drives for your computer will store as much as 3 terabytes. Caches will go up into the 256mg range as well.

Power Supple Units: The future of these will be most notible. Future machines will require massive ammounts of power. Future Power Supply Units will rise in both wattage and amps on all rails. Wattage of powersupplys will go into the 4000 wat range and they will pump out 500 amps on a 12 volt rail. The power will also be very clean.

Cooling Devices: Fans are something of the past. Everyone will be using advanced water cooling systems. Allowing the parts of there computer to stay cool.

Cases: Will have to be bigger and better. Move efficent in allowing heat to dispurse, and they will look cooler.

Keyboard and Mice: Examples of future keyboards will be similar to the optimus keyboard, excpet wireless and a huge ammount of batery life. With no interference. Mice will be the same, as the keyboards, wireless, no interference, and long battey life. Possibly mice will be able to mold perfectly to your hand for a personal fit. Maybe even have a LCD screen on them.

RAM: The future of RAM is larger memory per stick and faster caches. In the future one stick of RAM could be as large as 10 gigabytes.

Motherboards: Not much to say. These will have more ports and be able to hold all the other parts of your system. Also future motherboards will have systems similar to SLI.

Sound Cards: These will be able to make sound perfectly clear. They will be able to support the 15 speakers around your room for perfect suround sound.


Well those are my thoughts about the future of computers. Very interested in yours.

~Ownage

[noobman]

Processors: The heart of the system. These will keep getting bigger and some may start having triple-cores, and get there speeds up to the 5ghz range.
I disagree. Processors will keep getting SMALLER as the industry moves towards the 65, and eventually 45 nanometre processors. Speeds will go up, but there will be a greater emphasis on multiple threads and cores to increase the amount of work done per cycle. 5ghz is still pretty distant IMO.


Graphics Cards: A nessesity for any gamer. The future of these cards will probably get away from 256mg and into 512mg and even 1024mg. Clock speeds will go into the 2000's and memory clocks will go into the 5000's. These cards will create massive ammounts of heat.
In the short term, yes, graphics card will expand to 512mb, and POSSIBLY even 1024mb. As BUS speeds and bandwidth increase, and acutal system RAM starts to get faster, graphics cards will come with 128mb or less of on-bard memory, and just share the computer's acutal system memory. That way, you can upgrade your graphics card by ugprading your system memory, AND graphics cards will cost a heck of a lot less. The main reason behind the insane cost of graphics cards nowadays is the large amount of high-quality RAM they have to put on them. That means affordability, allowing more people to experience top of the line gaming.

Power Supple Units: The future of these will be most notible. Future machines will require massive ammounts of power. Future Power Supply Units will rise in both wattage and amps on all rails. Wattage of powersupplys will go into the 4000 wat range and they will pump out 500 amps on a 12 volt rail. The power will also be very clean.
We're moving forward, not backwards. Smaller processors require less power. The industry is moving towards processors that are smaller in size, and thus will consume less power. GPU's will be doing the same thing. Power requirements will hit the roof eventually, and then begin to drop down.

Cooling Devices: Fans are something of the past. Everyone will be using advanced water cooling systems. Allowing the parts of there computer to stay cool.
Not unless there's major breakthrough's in water-cooling technology. I could see the industry moving towards heat-pipe dissipation, as heat production decreases from the use of smaller parts. Before that, they'll try to make smaller, quieter fans. As far as water cooling goes...if they can decrease water block and radiator sizes, and improve the technology to reduce weight, noise, portability, leakage, AND cost... then there's a chance.

Keyboard and Mice: Examples of future keyboards will be similar to the optimus keyboard, excpet wireless and a huge ammount of batery life. With no interference. Mice will be the same, as the keyboards, wireless, no interference, and long battey life. Possibly mice will be able to mold perfectly to your hand for a personal fit. Maybe even have a LCD screen on them.Yeah, probably.

RAM: The future of RAM is larger memory per stick and faster caches. In the future one stick of RAM could be as large as 10 gigabytes.
Yeah, probably. They'll probably change the slot type, since the DIMM slots might not provide enough bandwidth for large sticks of memory.

Motherboards: Not much to say. These will have more ports and be able to hold all the other parts of your system. Also future motherboards will have systems similar to SLI.
SLI is kind of a fad. I'd expect a breakthrough in motherboard chipsets sometime soon. They'll probably increase their power significantly, to accomodate data transfer from high-performance storage devices, and processors with multiple threads and cores. Not to mention GPU's trying to directly communicate with system RAM (see video cards).

Sound Cards: These will be able to make sound perfectly clear. They will be able to support the 15 speakers around your room for perfect suround sound.
Sound cards are finally coming with useful processors. Eventually, they'll be able to upconvert any audio to near-studio quality with ease. Dolby Digital 2's specifications include 13.1 surround sound (THIRTEEN SPEAKERS plus a subwoofer). Games will sound nothing short of amazing. Movies... wow.


Yeah... so smaller, and more efficient. That's the wave of the future. Will they kill of desktop PC's entirely, in favor of laptops? Probably not anytime soon.

[OWNAGE TIME]

I disagree. Processors will keep getting SMALLER as the industry moves towards the 65, and eventually 45 nanometre processors. Speeds will go up, but there will be a greater emphasis on multiple threads and cores to increase the amount of work done per cycle. 5ghz is still pretty distant IMO.


In the short term, yes, graphics card will expand to 512mb, and POSSIBLY even 1024mb. As BUS speeds and bandwidth increase, and acutal system RAM starts to get faster, graphics cards will come with 128mb or less of on-bard memory, and just share the computer's acutal system memory. That way, you can upgrade your graphics card by ugprading your system memory, AND graphics cards will cost a heck of a lot less. The main reason behind the insane cost of graphics cards nowadays is the large amount of high-quality RAM they have to put on them. That means affordability, allowing more people to experience top of the line gaming.


We're moving forward, not backwards. Smaller processors require less power. The industry is moving towards processors that are smaller in size, and thus will consume less power. GPU's will be doing the same thing. Power requirements will hit the roof eventually, and then begin to drop down.


Not unless there's major breakthrough's in water-cooling technology. I could see the industry moving towards heat-pipe dissipation, as heat production decreases from the use of smaller parts. Before that, they'll try to make smaller, quieter fans. As far as water cooling goes...if they can decrease water block and radiator sizes, and improve the technology to reduce weight, noise, portability, leakage, AND cost... then there's a chance.

Yeah, probably.


Yeah, probably. They'll probably change the slot type, since the DIMM slots might not provide enough bandwidth for large sticks of memory.


SLI is kind of a fad. I'd expect a breakthrough in motherboard chipsets sometime soon. They'll probably increase their power significantly, to accomodate data transfer from high-performance storage devices, and processors with multiple threads and cores. Not to mention GPU's trying to directly communicate with system RAM (see video cards).


Sound cards are finally coming with useful processors. Eventually, they'll be able to upconvert any audio to near-studio quality with ease. Dolby Digital 2's specifications include 13.1 surround sound (THIRTEEN SPEAKERS plus a subwoofer). Games will sound nothing short of amazing. Movies... wow.


Yeah... so smaller, and more efficient. That's the wave of the future. Will they kill of desktop PC's entirely, in favor of laptops? Probably not anytime soon.

Yeah your probably right with the size and stuff, didn't really think about that. Well one things fore sure, can't wait for the future

~Ownage

[Jordan101]

I'm of the opinion that either A: Cooling by water will become more accesible, easy to instal, and less money.
B If water cooling doesn't go down we are going to need to put liquid nitrogen on those things, cause fans arn't going to handle 80+ Farenheight(spelling?)

[noobman]

I'm of the opinion that either A: Cooling by water will become more accesible, easy to instal, and less money.
B If water cooling doesn't go down we are going to need to put liquid nitrogen on those things, cause fans arn't going to handle 80+ Farenheight(spelling?)
Smaller parts = less heat. As long as clock frequencies don't get enormously high, things will be fine. Intel has been struggling with 4ghz as of late.

[OWNAGE TIME]

Smaller parts = less heat. As long as clock frequencies don't get enormously high, things will be fine. Intel has been struggling with 4ghz as of late.

Clock speeds confuse me, my AMD Athalon 3500+ at 2.3 ghz out preforms many 3.4 ghz intel prescotts.

~Ownage

[Jordan101]

I don't know why, but AMD cpus generally run faster at a lower clock speed. I guess thats why thier cheaper too(guess).

[dooganking]

to start i am by no means educated in these matters BUT... i thought i've heard clock speeds essentially topping out eventually as the only thing we can do to make them faster is to make the chips themselves smaller (i believe what was said was that the actual architecture of the chips couldn't get much better...)... but again that might have just been heresay from a friend who knows very little...

[noobman]

Clock speeds confuse me, my AMD Athalon 3500+ at 2.3 ghz out preforms many 3.4 ghz intel prescotts.

~Ownage
The speed is simply the amount of times it can send data back and forth per second.

That doens't measure how much data it can send back n forth per second....
...to explain it, I usually use my patented wheelbarrow analogy.


Ok, so you've got man 1 and man 2. Man 1 is a Pentium 4, and Man 2 is an AMD Althon 64.
Both of these guys have to carry a big pile of rocks from their house to the worksite.

Man 1 (P4) has a very small wheelbarrow. He can move from the worksite and back really quicky, but he can't carry a whole lot of rocks each time.
Man 2 (A64) has a bigger wheelbarrow. He can carry more bricks back and forth each time, but because his wheelbarrow is heavier, he can't go back and forth as many times a minute as the guy with the small wheelbarrow.

So, who gets the job done faster? Well, it depends on the task.

With content creation (encoding videos, creating MP3's). The P4 will be faster, since video encoding is a lot of small bits of data. The faster they go back n forth the better.

Games need a balance. Games are more demanding than pretty much anything else you're gonna do with your computer. Think of it as a pile of rocks the size of the Eifel tower! To finish the task faster, you gotta have lots of speed, and you have to be able to carry a lot of rocks back n forth at a time.

Now, the Althon 64 is faster, because it strikes a better balance than Intel does. Intel is pure clock speed (although recently they've started naming their processors Intel P4 540 or Intel P4 780 or whatever as they move towards increasing cache sizes, and the "amount of rocks they can carry per minute" (second, cycles per second in processor talk)). The AMD Althon 64's rating number is designed so that they can compete with Intel.

So an AMD Althon 64 2800+ is comparable to a 2.8ghz P4.

When Intel sold you the concept of mhz and ghz as a performance rating.... they lied =P

[John Clabo]

One thing none of you have mentioned is the upcoming physic cards (I bellieve thats the correct name.)

[Sam Raven]

In the short term, yes, graphics card will expand to 512mb, and POSSIBLY even 1024mb. As BUS speeds and bandwidth increase, and acutal system RAM starts to get faster, graphics cards will come with 128mb or less of on-bard memory, and just share the computer's acutal system memory. That way, you can upgrade your graphics card by ugprading your system memory, AND graphics cards will cost a heck of a lot less. The main reason behind the insane cost of graphics cards nowadays is the large amount of high-quality RAM they have to put on them. That means affordability, allowing more people to experience top of the line gaming. I hope you are right. Cost is a big factor why I still haven't bought a new video card to replace my Radeon x300.

I can't say much what will happen in 4 years. I can say that technology has a mind of its own when it comes to progressing. I mean at one point we thought we might go to the moon or as far as Jupiter by the turn of the millenium during the 60's when great strides in space exploration were being made.
Recently we have been through a major IT revolution. There might be a chance for some unforeseen reason it will start declining, as much as there is a remote chance it will take off again.

[Celeron Gamer]

I disagree. Processors will keep getting SMALLER as the industry moves towards the 65, and eventually 45 nanometre processors. Speeds will go up, but there will be a greater emphasis on multiple threads and cores to increase the amount of work done per cycle. 5ghz is still pretty distant IMO.

In a way, yes the proc gets smaller, but they're going to be cramming in more cache, and cores. Intel, and AMD are throwing 2008 "predictions" everywhere, and claims 8 cores would be available by them.


In the short term, yes, graphics card will expand to 512mb, and POSSIBLY even 1024mb. As BUS speeds and bandwidth increase, and acutal system RAM starts to get faster, graphics cards will come with 128mb or less of on-bard memory, and just share the computer's acutal system memory. That way, you can upgrade your graphics card by ugprading your system memory, AND graphics cards will cost a heck of a lot less. The main reason behind the insane cost of graphics cards nowadays is the large amount of high-quality RAM they have to put on them. That means affordability, allowing more people to experience top of the line gaming.

No matter what, they'll continue to increase onboard memory size. The amount of process to pass-through ram is too high a latency for video performance. Also, the graphics memory has 256-bit (soon 512-bit) bus. Current DDR2 ram is 64-bit, DDR3(in 18 months) would still be 64-bit from what I heard. Unless they can pull 256-512bit chips on ram by 2008, there would be no way in hell, they'll integrated it to mid-highend range.


We're moving forward, not backwards. Smaller processors require less power. The industry is moving towards processors that are smaller in size, and thus will consume less power. GPU's will be doing the same thing. Power requirements will hit the roof eventually, and then begin to drop down.

It would not consume less power, but at most, hold onto the current consumption rate of a PentiumD processor probably. If you look at CPUs from the past to current gen chips, you'd see that our chips consume more and more power, no matter how it shrinks. A look at a 486, they don't even need heatsinks. But the amount of power going through the transistors heats it up so much more, watercooling is a common sight.

Not unless there's major breakthrough's in water-cooling technology. I could see the industry moving towards heat-pipe dissipation, as heat production decreases from the use of smaller parts. Before that, they'll try to make smaller, quieter fans. As far as water cooling goes...if they can decrease water block and radiator sizes, and improve the technology to reduce weight, noise, portability, leakage, AND cost... then there's a chance.

Yeah, probably.

I agree with the heatpipe method, especially if it could lead to the vents of cases. Watercooling couldn't be a retail stock, or standard in anyway. As requires too much maintenance, risks, to outweigh the effectiveness of it. A small pump, waterblock, 80MM radiator cools about the same as a TT BigTyphoon, whereas, the BT is cheaper, and easier to maintain.


Yeah, probably. They'll probably change the slot type, since the DIMM slots might not provide enough bandwidth for large sticks of memory.

We would probably need new slots for DDR3, but not scrapping the DIMMs yet, probably not for awhile.

SLI is kind of a fad. I'd expect a breakthrough in motherboard chipsets sometime soon. They'll probably increase their power significantly, to accomodate data transfer from high-performance storage devices, and processors with multiple threads and cores. Not to mention GPU's trying to directly communicate with system RAM (see video cards).

SLi would likely be kept, as it both competitors are both utilizing that concept. And rich kids would buy into them, as long as they have the best. I don't know about power increase, as Intel, and AMD chipsets are still going through their traditional methods.

Sound cards are finally coming with useful processors. Eventually, they'll be able to upconvert any audio to near-studio quality with ease. Dolby Digital 2's specifications include 13.1 surround sound (THIRTEEN SPEAKERS plus a subwoofer). Games will sound nothing short of amazing. Movies... wow.

Not sure about speakers, but I'd say 512+ streams are very likely to happen.

Yeah... so smaller, and more efficient. That's the wave of the future. Will they kill of desktop PC's entirely, in favor of laptops? Probably not anytime soon.

Anything goes, as long as mainstream buys them. If consumer suddenly have a craze for 80086's, they'll probably manufacture them again lol.

[OWNAGE TIME]

The speed is simply the amount of times it can send data back and forth per second.

That doens't measure how much data it can send back n forth per second....
...to explain it, I usually use my patented wheelbarrow analogy.


Ok, so you've got man 1 and man 2. Man 1 is a Pentium 4, and Man 2 is an AMD Althon 64.
Both of these guys have to carry a big pile of rocks from their house to the worksite.

Man 1 (P4) has a very small wheelbarrow. He can move from the worksite and back really quicky, but he can't carry a whole lot of rocks each time.
Man 2 (A64) has a bigger wheelbarrow. He can carry more bricks back and forth each time, but because his wheelbarrow is heavier, he can't go back and forth as many times a minute as the guy with the small wheelbarrow.

So, who gets the job done faster? Well, it depends on the task.

With content creation (encoding videos, creating MP3's). The P4 will be faster, since video encoding is a lot of small bits of data. The faster they go back n forth the better.

Games need a balance. Games are more demanding than pretty much anything else you're gonna do with your computer. Think of it as a pile of rocks the size of the Eifel tower! To finish the task faster, you gotta have lots of speed, and you have to be able to carry a lot of rocks back n forth at a time.

Now, the Althon 64 is faster, because it strikes a better balance than Intel does. Intel is pure clock speed (although recently they've started naming their processors Intel P4 540 or Intel P4 780 or whatever as they move towards increasing cache sizes, and the "amount of rocks they can carry per minute" (second, cycles per second in processor talk)). The AMD Althon 64's rating number is designed so that they can compete with Intel.

So an AMD Althon 64 2800+ is comparable to a 2.8ghz P4.

When Intel sold you the concept of mhz and ghz as a performance rating.... they lied =P

Thanks a lot noobman. This really has cleared things up for me. One other question I have for you is...What are some good things I should be looking for when I buy a new computer. Since clock speeds aren't that helpful (However they should be high) should I look for cache speeds of what.

Thanks a lot for your help,

~Ownage

[TheSneak^]

One thing none of you have mentioned is the upcoming physic cards (I bellieve thats the correct name.)

They will be come obsolete fast considering they could shove it on the video card. Its also just eye candy and those hardcore gamers out there couldn't give nothin about eye candy... Physics cards will be a flop....

[OWNAGE TIME]

They will be come obsolete fast considering they could shove it on the video card. Its also just eye candy and those hardcore gamers out there couldn't give nothin about eye candy... Physics cards will be a flop....

Very lazy right now, what is a physics card?

~Ownage

[Natoksane]

One thing none of you have mentioned is the upcoming physic cards (I bellieve thats the correct name.)

It is actually called 'Phys-X' or 'PhysX' I do believe.

Eh, they're pretty cool, I was talking to one the developer dudes who was showing it off at Quakecon. He took me through a little demo on his laptop and showed me all the stuff it could do. Then I got to play around on this level from some game. I'd tell you the name of the game, but it doesn't come out 'till 2006 and at the time it didn't have a final name.

That physics processor was cool and all, but from what I've heard, gpu's are soon going to be able to calculate physics, too.

[eletido]

Something that my friends and I have talked about in our late night tech chats has been the always increasing broadband for decreasing costs. In the next few years, online video and audion will continue to grow. You see IPTV shows like systm, Digital Life TV among others that offer high quality tech content over the night. As broadband speeds continue to increase, I think we will see HD quality media over our high speed connections, either streaming or downloadable. CNN is also offering their channels through the internet. Goggle CCN Pipeline for more information.