The Week In Storage And CPUs: Transistors Hit 1nm, PCs Continue To Plummet, IBM Takes Cap Off CAPI

[Guest]

It's that time again. Let's see what's shakin' this week.

The Week In Storage And CPUs: Transistors Hit 1nm, PCs Continue To Plummet, IBM Takes Cap Off CAPI : Read more

 

[Scrotus]

I'd be more than happy to help the slumping PC market if only Intel would hurry up and ship some Kaby Lake desktop CPU's. I've got all the new parts except for a motherboard, CPU and memory and I don't want to forge ahead with a skylark setup with the new Kaby Lake and series 200 chipsets coming. Why is Intel dragging its feet and keeping the ship date a secret? I may consider jumping ship to AMD.

 

[CRamseyer]

It is because AMD hasn't shipped an enthusiast product Intel is not shipping Kaby Lake. Just my .02.

 

[wifiburger]

i think the pc market will continue it's downfall and I think it's thanks to Microsoft monopoly hold on the OS,
once Microsoft garbage software die the market will recover,
apple, google is doing fine and those don't care about Microsoft garbage software

 

[Larry Litmanen]

The smaller the PC market gets they less investment goes into it.

Here's the problem, PC experience is amazing on the high end, with SSD PC boots in seconds and on a 34 inch 1440P monitor everything is amazing. But MOST people are not in that area, most people buy PCs for $300-$400 and suffer with them and abandon the market.

Here's how i would resuscitate the PC market, if i am Intel i would have every new chip on the market support nothing but 1080P displays at a minimum as to get rid of everything below it. I would only support storage that boots in under 15 seconds. I would discontinue all support for any output that is older than HDMI. I would discontinue support for monitors that are smaller than 20 inches.

People would upgrade if they had issues accessing Facebook or Internet browser, maybe these tech companies can work with those to make browsers more feature rich to encourage people to buy more powerful hardware.

 

[sykozis]

The smaller the PC market gets they less investment goes into it.

Here's the problem, PC experience is amazing on the high end, with SSD PC boots in seconds and on a 34 inch 1440P monitor everything is amazing. But MOST people are not in that area, most people buy PCs for $300-$400 and suffer with them and abandon the market.

Here's how i would resuscitate the PC market, if i am Intel i would have every new chip on the market support nothing but 1080P displays at a minimum as to get rid of everything below it. I would only support storage that boots in under 15 seconds. I would discontinue all support for any output that is older than HDMI. I would discontinue support for monitors that are smaller than 20 inches.

People would upgrade if they had issues accessing Facebook or Internet browser, maybe these tech companies can work with those to make browsers more feature rich to encourage people to buy more powerful hardware.

Doing something so utterly stupid would almost completely kill the PC market.

If you drop support for monitors smaller than 20 inches, the laptop market dies.

People can access Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc from their smartphone. This is why the PC market has been in a decline.

Your plan would do considerably more harm to the industry than good.

 

[Martell1977]

The PC market is slumping, in my opinion, because of both hardware ad software, but not so much the OS. We all know that Intel has either gotten complacent or they are having a lot of trouble tweaking their architecture for substantial performance gains. My primary machine still rocks a i7-950, yet there is no good reason for me to upgrade it. My secondary PC runs C2Q Q9550 OC'd to 3.6ghz and can run many of my programs rather well, though at some reduced settings.

On the software side, there is really a slump in new IP. All the FPS games are pretty much the same but with different skins and slightly different graphics quality. The RTS market is basically Blizzard and a few small companies. But then there are a multitude of games for smartphones and tablets. I think at this point there is much more variety outside the PC market. Back in the '90s there was a wide variety of games and they were a blast to play, my personal favorite was "The 7th Guest", but there is nothing on the market even close to it today.
New graphics upgrades are great, but there needs to be some variety, rehashing the same thing over and over gets old. AMD is probably banking on VR to revitalize the market.

 

[mrmez]

The smaller the PC market gets they less investment goes into it.

Here's the problem, PC experience is amazing on the high end, with SSD PC boots in seconds and on a 34 inch 1440P monitor everything is amazing. But MOST people are not in that area, most people buy PCs for $300-$400 and suffer with them and abandon the market.

Here's how i would resuscitate the PC market, if i am Intel i would have every new chip on the market support nothing but 1080P displays at a minimum as to get rid of everything below it. I would only support storage that boots in under 15 seconds. I would discontinue all support for any output that is older than HDMI. I would discontinue support for monitors that are smaller than 20 inches.

People would upgrade if they had issues accessing Facebook or Internet browser, maybe these tech companies can work with those to make browsers more feature rich to encourage people to buy more powerful hardware.

That's a great idea, and companies like Apple have gone that route and become highly profitable.
Unfortunately the PC market is driven firstly (ND Maybe solely) by price, and lastly by consumer experience. Suggest buying a Mac, and the first 10,000 comments will be "get a pc with 10x the spec for 1/10th the price".
How can I explain the user experience of a 5K imac to a user who's still debating the cost of 1440. Harder still when I've been using 5K for 2 years now, and 1440... well that's 2009 for me.

Now this is a gaming centric ENTHUSIAST forum, and not representative of the pc market. Don't forget that. We OC and water cool while the 95% of the market think a bus is how some people get to work.

Enthusiast motorists want to do engine and drivetrain swaps in their garages, but look out your window and 99.9% of cars are pre-built. There will always be enthusiasts in every area (thankfully), but computers today are almost utilities, standardised tools. I don't want to buy a drill in bits and assemble it, I just want to choose my model and start using it.

 

[Tom Griffin]

If and when virtual reality really comes to mainstream instead of a bunch of demos I can see a small increase in actual PC sales.

 

[memadmax]

The Gen-Z consortium and the interface will probably be the most important conglomerate that we see in our lifetimes.

Not only does it defeat intel, but also microsoft, as both have teamed up to corral us into a closed system...

 

[wifiburger]

I think the harsh reality of PC market decline is tied to the vast unpopularity of Microsoft OS,
nobody wants to invest in a PC and get stuck with Windows, prob Apple, Google Chromebook will steal another chuck soon enough

 

[LB23]

"Worldwide PC shipments weighed in at 68.9 million units in 3Q16" Who buys premade systems anymore? unless its a large company wanting bulk orders everyone builds there own custom computers. These stats do not look at custom built or even when people upgrade to a better cpu. Last time I got a prebuilt was 1998 and made my own since. Just a useless statistic that when you don't think can sound scary and make a juicy article but in the real world don't mean jack. People build there own computers now end of story. If you want to get some real idea of how many computers are out there look at cpu sales.

 

[JonnyDough]

The PC market is hurting because current systems are more secure, last longer, and are powerful enough to do everything we need to do. As my aunt said a few years back "we can't give it away" in reference to her old PC. Why? Because everyone has a PC (at least in America) that does what they need it to do. For the most part, people need to research the web, type a resume, and check email. Any system from the last 12 years can do that.

 

[Paul Alcorn]

"Worldwide PC shipments weighed in at 68.9 million units in 3Q16" Who buys premade systems anymore? unless its a large company wanting bulk orders everyone builds there own custom computers. These stats do not look at custom built or even when people upgrade to a better cpu. Last time I got a prebuilt was 1998 and made my own since. Just a useless statistic that when you don't think can sound scary and make a juicy article but in the real world don't mean jack. People build there own computers now end of story. If you want to get some real idea of how many computers are out there look at cpu sales.

You make a good point that pre-built systems aren't the entire market, which is why I mentioned that Intel is on the upswing and has raised its quarterly projections. This indicates that the chip market itself is doing, well, at least...better. However, Intel doesn't release per-chip sales figures, so we have to go with the data that we have access to.

Also, and most importantly, the pre-built market is what provides the semiconductor vendors with scale. The economies of scale are what provide us with the low-cost (if you call a $1,649 i7-9650X low-cost) procs. If Intel and AMD aren't punching out chips for the exponentially larger pre-built market then the prices would rise very quickly. Remember, though the enthusiast market (which encompasses all of us guys who haven't brought pre-built computers in decades) is lucrative, we are but a sliver of the overall market. Thus, the pre-built market is extremely important to us.

 

[Guest]

I'd also be more than happy to help the slumping PC market if everything weren't a complete and total rip off. SSDs have been out for over a decade now, but are still not standard in laptops. Their resolutions are also behind the times. "What the market will bare" is often the answer I receive when questioning why devices are so over-priced/dated. I guess manufacturers are reaping what they've sowed.

 

[hdmark]

One thing i read on this forum was something like people dont need new computers because the old computers can still run everything they need.
the majority of people arent running fancy games or programs that need anything past the processing power of a cell phone. desktop processors really dont need to advance that quickly for the majority of computer users

and with laptops and cell phones gaining performance, most people do not even need a desktop. 99% of the people i know will never buy a desktop again, or even need one. they are fine to do EVERYTHING they need with a laptop/tablet/cell phone.

also , i would like to see the statistics, becuase my guess would be the enthusiast market is much smaller than the mainstream market who do just purchase dell or HP prebuilts for their homes

 

[bit_user]

Thanks for the shout-out, Paul.

I usually don't read these week-in-review articles, but I fell prey to the siren song of 1 nm transistors.

Patriot's Hellfire M.2 NVMe SSDs have a great name that evokes images of missiles, bombs, and fire. These are always the first things on my mind when I'm looking to upgrade my computing experience

: )

there is no suitable way to forge a 1nm gate using standard lithography techniques

Not a minor point, BTW. I'm imagining nano-chips will be have to be constructed by a factory of nanomachines. Roughly analogous to the way that cells contain the machinery for building and repairing their own structures.

My understanding (from your article) is that the nanotube-based NRAM cells use a pile of loose nanotube particles, so it's really not comparable to building circuits out of them.

Accelerators wield FPGAs and ASICs, and even flash storage, to great effect; but the nefarious PCIe bus stands in the way of unlocking the true potential of the speedy add-ons.

Um, in no way would I characterize PCIe as nefarious. Aging and increasingly limiting? Yes.

provides up to 50% more performance (25Gbits per second) than a typical PCIe 4.0 slot (16Gbits per second).

Rather than slot, I think you mean lane.