BoatBanter.com - Here come da Judge...

"Mr. Luddite" wrote:
On 4/1/2014 11:38 AM, wrote:
On Tue, 01 Apr 2014 11:18:39 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

On 4/1/2014 10:09 AM, wrote:
On Tue, 01 Apr 2014 09:07:33 -0400, F*O*A*D wrote:

On 4/1/14, 8:59 AM, wrote:
On Tue, 01 Apr 2014 08:24:15 -0400, F*O*A*D wrote:

I won't comment on the relative speed of an app running under XP versus
Windoze 8. I don't have any machines handy that run either.

Yet you continue to.

I would suggest that until you actually benchmark a few movies, you
are talking out your ass.

The reality is i do not do enough video editing for it to even be a
factor and if the minute or two it takes me dropped to 5 seconds, it
would not change my opinion.
I do know I can encode a typical MP3 cut in about 15 seconds and that
is fast enough for me.

Ahh. The point was not whether what you do with a computer could be done
faster on a more powerful computer with a modern OS. As I stated several
times, I have no idea what you do with a computer beyond running some
weather app and a "jukebox." I mentioned video transcoding because it is
a good test of the OS, the app, and the hardware. There are any number
of other apps that run faster on modern gear.

Apparently what you do doesn't put much stress on your computer setups,
and since you have lots of time to wait, procedures that run faster are
not important to you.

Perhaps you should downgrade to an 8088 system and save electricity.

There you go.
You started out with a very rational response, then you just got
stupid on me.

My hardware is still pretty fast, Moore's law is rapidly hitting the
speed of light wall.
Gregg, I would think by now that you would realize that if Harry wears
size 36x32 pants, then *everyone* should wear size 36x32 size pants.

There are far more systems out there running Windows XP than what meets
the eye from a computer user's standpoint. Debit card machines, gas
pumps, cash registers, etc. have been using Windows XP for years and
continue to do so.

Technology marches on though.

Wafer fabrication and line widths for CPUs are now at the sub-micron
level. Many believe technology is quickly reaching the practical limit
of line widths and power densities. In some applications artificially
created diamond heat sinks are required. (Diamond has the unique
property of being an electrical insulator but an excellent heat
conductor. The company I had built some systems for the creation of
polycrystalline diamond films, generated by disassociating carbon from
gases like methane or butane with a plasma in vacuum).

A future technology that is emerging is the replacement of traditional
PC boards with copper conductors with those that transmit data using
tiny optical emitters and detectors. The big advantage is that signal
paths can cross without affecting each other. I am currently doing
some consulting work with a company involved in this.

You are still hitting the wall.
Regular chips are about tapped out.
We are rapidly approaching the point that we will be super cooling
processors to get quantum effects.
There is only so much you can do to shorten the data path.
They are just making them wider. (multiple processors, wider buses)

Ummm ... I don't claim to be a semiconductor manufacturing expert nor
have a lot of experience in wafer fab but there are companies investing a
lot of research money into the optical replacement of copper tracing of
single, double and multi-level boards. The focus ( no pun intended) is
on reducing size and complexity. Not sure what gains in overall
processing speeds are achieved although claims are made that it will.

These are tiny, pin head sized laser diodes. The cool thing is that the
light paths can intersect others with no interference or "shorts".

11years ago when I retired, we were reaching the limits of Moore's law. We
are using larger wafers for manufacturing efficiency, but the geometry is
pretty close to the limits. Lower voltage, so no arcing, but dendrites
start growing at the lower geometry size. So limit of how many transistors
per square mil of silicon, unless you start vertical stacking. The optical
processor would be an improvement in speed, as the RC time constants are
avoided or minimized in the signals.