Real innovations on CPU

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ehhh....

I was hoping someone would mention about the new optic processors (I think that's what they call them)
oh well... but I still can't wait what the future would bring us
 


whoa... they were too ahead of their time

even better than my tandy 10mhz set on turbo... I wonder where it went...
 
you won't believe this, but that PC had a non working HD. After hitting it hard with my hand, the thing started to spin and now it works... God, hard drives were those in the past.
 
BobWya, you are right. x86 is quite old and has a lot of messes. Funny how it took the major market segment especially when Intel was trying to switch to x64(Itanium) since it proved to be better.

I give AMD an Intel a lot of respect for what they have both donw to modernize the world. A lot of innovations came from the companies pushing them such as Intel pushing SATA. SATA is a much better and faster connection type. SATAII is great and I can't wait for SATAIII.

x86-64 is a great innovation but since Intel was unable to move people to x64, x86-64 will be easier but not as fast. Its great to have but the only benefit is more memory allocation. That is until the software vendors start to take advantage of the extra extentions and instructions.

One thing you forgot though was HK/MG. It will allow companies to shrink the die even more and continue Moores law.

According to the guy I like to call my mentor(a computer god to me) he thinks the next step in computers, other than optic, would be organic. Basically a PC that you water that could reach ungodly speeds. But the chances of that are low. Guess we have to wait and see whats next.
 


This is truly an amazing topic. I had a professor in school back in the late 80's that discussed this topic at length...he was obsessed with the idea. I remember him mentioning that all of the data in the entire world could be stored in 1 cubic inch of living matter...simply amazing!
 


There was a little company called 3DFx that had some very innovative PCI cards you might have forgotten about here?
 
Fumigator, it really makes me happy to hear that the low cost laptop initiatives are seriously helping out. It's one thing to sit in a meeting room and have some guy show you powerpoint slides about what a cheap laptop can do for less fortunate children - but it's quite another to hear from a local thats seen it with his own eyes and tells you it's having an impact. You might say that the Grinch's heart grew three sizes this day. :)

Back to your question at hand my friend, no list should start without the almighty 8080 at the top, since that's what really started it all. The idea of putting a cpu in a socket instead of soldering it to the mobo should be right up there as well.

ISA expansion slots
PCI bus
On-die cache.
MMX / SSE
IA64
X86-64
Polysilicon
Spacers
Strained silicon
HK/MG
Tri-gates.
 


LOL, nice. Similar to what I do, I take a screw driver and hold it by the wrong end and hit the handle of it into the center of the hard drive, it's worked a few times for me!
 


I like to use an 8 pound sledge with a big spike on the end. :pt1cable:
 


I remember the 25Mhz Sun Sparc workstations back at university... Wow the speed the power. Actually they were pretty fast (Unix + X-Windows = MS Windows killer). Logging into a main server with 192Mb of RAM (yes 192Mb!!) to run remote processes on!! Using some rudimentary Ethernet cable with BNC taps on it..!! Ah... the good old days :hello:

Bob
 
@jkflipflop 98:
Thanks for the comment, I'll try to visit a school someday maybe with a camera or something, to really show the thing. I know there are people already making some documentary for TV, maybe I can TV-rip it and post it on youtube. But from the 100k laptops ordered we received 5k so its not as evident and the schools that received the lappys are very far from where I live. Uruguay is small tho...

As for the list you mentioned I find pariculary important the PCI bus. The way it allows to share interrupts, but also the whole PnP thing was quite a big step from the IRQ/DMA jumpering on ISA devices.

@jimmysmitty
I think we will reach a day where there will only be 64 bit computing, but as long as we need backward compatibility, the 32bit x86 has to stay, unless they do emulation layering in the future -as processors become faster and faster.-