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Subject:RE: Is IT growth slowing? From:david -dot- locke -at- amd -dot- com To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 3 May 2001 15:07:36 -0500
Bruce Byfield said:
>I'm sure that graphical and audio designers are far more productive with
>modern computers than with those of 12 years ago. <snip> Yet, during that
time, the average
>computer user has probably upgraded 4-6 times, largely out of fear of being
left behind.
The animations that are displayed when you drag and drop a file into another
folder are used to task faster cpus. They are doing this, instead of
multi-threading the applications, because the effort to redesign
applications to use up the cpu are too difficult.
Software is always pushing cpu replacement even as it lags in its use of
current cpus. Windows AT for example didn't use the Intel architecture that
existed at the time.
One of the arguments in favor of RISC architectures was that compiler and os
programmers did not use the longer processor specific instructions. They
used a generic set, so they could keep pace with the releases of new cpus.
And, the thinking was to eliminate the instructions they were never going to
use, so RISC instruction sets looked better than CISC instruction sets. CISC
instruction sets had execution penalties when seen relative to RISC
instruction sets. Now days, RISC/CISC doesn't matter. What matters now is
cache size and organization.
The real revolution is the move towards computing rather than computers.
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