Computer Technology Overview
We are in the midst of an ongoing computer technology revolution that dwarfs anything else in human experience. Today, you can buy a megabyte of RAM (Random Access Memory) for $3.00. Thirty years ago, in 1967, my employers at NASA paid $3,000,000 to buy that same megabyte of RAM for their Univac 1108 computers—a 1,000,000:1 price reduction! If this had happened in the automotive world, it would be as though you could buy a new Mercedes, costing $10,000 in 1967, for 1¢ today! Twenty years ago, in 1977, when Radio Shack and Commodore introduced the world’s first personal computers, Radio Shack had to charge $266 for 8 kilobytes of RAM. Today, 64 megabytes of RAM costs $192 (about a 10,000-to-1 ratio).
It may well be that the computer sitting on my desktop is more powerful than all the world’s computers put together in 1967. Here again, there is a price/performance improvement of the order of 1,000,000:1. But if that doesn’t astonish you, try this. In 1946, ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator), the first electronic digital computer, was able to perform something like 3 decimal calculations a second. Fifty years later, in 1997, Intel delivered a computer that performs one trillion decimal calculations per second—300 billion times faster than ENIAC! A 10-trillion decimal calculation computer is forecast for 2000, rising to 30 trillion in 2001 and 100 trillion in 2005.
The cheapest magnetic disks in 1967 stored one (1) megabyte of data and probably added $10,000 to the price of an IBM 1130 minicomputer. The current price is about $.04 a megabyte (Until recently, magnetic disk prices declined somewhat slower than RAM prices.) Appendix A contains plots and further discussions of these price trends.
For the past 30 years, both speed and storage have improved by a factor of 10 every 5 years—Moore’s Law.
There is reason to believe that this astounding rate of computer technology improvement will continue through at least the year 2012 and perhaps, through the year 2022. The Semiconductor Industry Association’s 15-year Technology Roadmap projects 13,000 MHz clock speeds (compared to 266 MHz today) and 256,000- megabit DRAM memory chips (compared to 256-megabit chips today) by the year 2012. Appendix B discusses the reliability of these forecasts. (I have been publishing computer technology forecasts since 1976. Appendix C contains these prior forecasts.)
What will we do with all this speed and storage capacity?
There is enormous room for improvement in computer capacity over the next fifteen years, just as there was 15 years ago. Computer games have begun to use multiple CD ROM disks. They could easily and very profitably utilize tens of gigabytes of DVD storage if it were available. By the year 2012, I predict that game developers will find it easy to fill up terabytes of DVD storage (giving us photo-realistic virtual worlds to explore!)
The same enormous need for improvement exists with respect to RAM and hard disk capacities, and to computer speeds. Artificial intelligence, speech recognition, natural language understanding, computer vision, improved data compression, graphic/virtual reality/laser holographic displays, MPEG2 and MPEG4 encoding, and computer games and simulations can all profit mightily from orders-of-magnitude improvements in computer speeds. Right now, games like "Riven" have to jump from snapshot to snapshot rather than allowing virtual-reality type movement. Also, when "Riven" runs a "video clip", the resolution has to be reduced to blurry pixel blocks so that the computer can alter the image in real time. It could easily use a factor-of-ten improvement in computer speeds just to handle its video clips. A speed-improvement factor of 1,000 may not be enough to support photo-realistic virtual reality.
In 1982, we were playing Pac-Man on our IBM and Commodore 64 computers. We might have wondered then how in the world we could use a 1,000-fold improvement in computer speeds and storage capacities. Now we know, and it has been wonderful. The next 15 years will be equally wonderful.
Jesse Burst, the editor of the ZD Anchor-Desk has suggested that we may look back upon the year 2000 as the year in which computer age began for the consumer.
We are in the midst of an ongoing computer technology revolution that dwarfs anything else in human experience. Today, you can buy a megabyte of RAM (Random Access Memory) for $3.00. Thirty years ago, in 1967, my employers at NASA paid $3,000,000 to buy that same megabyte of RAM for their Univac 1108 computers—a 1,000,000:1 price reduction! If this had happened in the automotive world, it would be as though you could buy a new Mercedes, costing $10,000 in 1967, for 1¢ today! Twenty years ago, in 1977, when Radio Shack and Commodore introduced the world’s first personal computers, Radio Shack had to charge $266 for 8 kilobytes of RAM. Today, 64 megabytes of RAM costs $192 (about a 10,000-to-1 ratio).
It may well be that the computer sitting on my desktop is more powerful than all the world’s computers put together in 1967. Here again, there is a price/performance improvement of the order of 1,000,000:1. But if that doesn’t astonish you, try this. In 1946, ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator), the first electronic digital computer, was able to perform something like 3 decimal calculations a second. Fifty years later, in 1997, Intel delivered a computer that performs one trillion decimal calculations per second—300 billion times faster than ENIAC! A 10-trillion decimal calculation computer is forecast for 2000, rising to 30 trillion in 2001 and 100 trillion in 2005.
The cheapest magnetic disks in 1967 stored one (1) megabyte of data and probably added $10,000 to the price of an IBM 1130 minicomputer. The current price is about $.04 a megabyte (Until recently, magnetic disk prices declined somewhat slower than RAM prices.) Appendix A contains plots and further discussions of these price trends.
For the past 30 years, both speed and storage have improved by a factor of 10 every 5 years—Moore’s Law.
There is reason to believe that this astounding rate of computer technology improvement will continue through at least the year 2012 and perhaps, through the year 2022. The Semiconductor Industry Association’s 15-year Technology Roadmap projects 13,000 MHz clock speeds (compared to 266 MHz today) and 256,000- megabit DRAM memory chips (compared to 256-megabit chips today) by the year 2012. Appendix B discusses the reliability of these forecasts. (I have been publishing computer technology forecasts since 1976. Appendix C contains these prior forecasts.)
What will we do with all this speed and storage capacity?
There is enormous room for improvement in computer capacity over the next fifteen years, just as there was 15 years ago. Computer games have begun to use multiple CD ROM disks. They could easily and very profitably utilize tens of gigabytes of DVD storage if it were available. By the year 2012, I predict that game developers will find it easy to fill up terabytes of DVD storage (giving us photo-realistic virtual worlds to explore!)
The same enormous need for improvement exists with respect to RAM and hard disk capacities, and to computer speeds. Artificial intelligence, speech recognition, natural language understanding, computer vision, improved data compression, graphic/virtual reality/laser holographic displays, MPEG2 and MPEG4 encoding, and computer games and simulations can all profit mightily from orders-of-magnitude improvements in computer speeds. Right now, games like "Riven" have to jump from snapshot to snapshot rather than allowing virtual-reality type movement. Also, when "Riven" runs a "video clip", the resolution has to be reduced to blurry pixel blocks so that the computer can alter the image in real time. It could easily use a factor-of-ten improvement in computer speeds just to handle its video clips. A speed-improvement factor of 1,000 may not be enough to support photo-realistic virtual reality.
In 1982, we were playing Pac-Man on our IBM and Commodore 64 computers. We might have wondered then how in the world we could use a 1,000-fold improvement in computer speeds and storage capacities. Now we know, and it has been wonderful. The next 15 years will be equally wonderful.
Jesse Burst, the editor of the ZD Anchor-Desk has suggested that we may look back upon the year 2000 as the year in which computer age began for the consumer.
No comments:
Post a Comment