Are Cheap Laptops a Roadblock for Moore's Law? 335
Timothy Harrington writes "Cnet.co.uk wonders if the $100 laptop could spell the end of Moore's Law: 'Moore's law is great for making tech faster, and for making slower, existing tech cheaper, but when consumers realize their personal lust for faster hardware makes almost zero financial sense, and hurts the environment with greater demands for power, will they start to demand cheaper, more efficient 'third-world' computers that are just as effective?" Will ridiculously cheap laptops wean consumers off ridiculously fast components?"
Re:I doubt it... (Score:2, Interesting)
I doubt it (Score:5, Interesting)
My cellphone is now more powerful than the first computer I used. It supports up to 1GB of removable storage in about the smallest form factor I've ever seen (micro SD). It's built-in camera is as good as the first digital camera that I owned.
In other words, yes, people may start demanding smaller and more powerful devices - but so what? It just means that instead of speed doubling, power use might start decreasing, storage density might increase, who knows what. We're using computers for purposes I never would have dreamed of when ten years ago. I have a computer under my TV that records shows - I never saw that coming until it did.
Computers will continue to evolve. The laptop and desktop might start to fade out, but new devices will take their place.
I somehow doubt it (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder how much of a study... (Score:3, Interesting)
I would bet that, outside of the enterprise/gaming groups, tech 'upgrades' only happen because generally speaking with computers, only the latest and greatest are available.
I can't tell you the number of people I know who have purchased entirely new computers because they've become glutted with spyware, viruses, or have experienced a relatively simple hardware failure like an HDD spin-out or a dead RAM stick. Instead of dropping money on a replacement part and possibly installation services, they just buy a new computer.
And that comes with good reason too. Look at places like Dell. A $499 desktop isn't too bad at all. And I can promise that system will do everything that 85% of computer users will use it for. Most people don't play hardcore games. Most people don't use applications more processor intensive than productivity suites. Heck, for most people, the computer will be used only for email, Web, watching streaming video and maybe ripping their own CDs to put them on the iDevice of choice.
But that's the rub. At Best Buy or Dell or any of the retailers, even on their cheapest PCs, you're getting a pretty damn fast machine. You can't get an older/slower/cheaper desktop unless you're willing to buy old parts on Ebay and piece something together yourself.
For the big retailers, they can't even afford to keep the old hardware in stock, as storing it costs more than the retail value of the computer.
It really doesn't cost that much more to get a better computer with the current pricing structure. I wonder what would happen if all-of-a-sudden people could get a $150 laptop capable of Web, word processing, basic networking and email?
Remember how wildly successful Wal Mart was with the $35 DVD player a bunch of years back? It worked because it was so cheap that people either didn't demand top quality, or realized that they didn't need the $1,000 Sony 5-disc DVD changer with DTS surround and optical outputs.
Re:I doubt it... (Score:4, Interesting)
There may at one time have been a feeling of power of being able to render the downloaded web page quicker or have a more responsive gui, but there isn't the same benefit with today's highest end models over a lower end model.
I remember drooling over the departments at work when they got new computers and ours hadn't arrived yet. Now, there isn't much that I need to go faster. Top of the line computers are no longer a status symbol because a bigger computer isn't that impressive, and you can't tell what kind of processor a computer has by looking at the outside, and nowadays, even by using it.
Re:Gamers will always make Moore's Law Relevant (Score:3, Interesting)
I know what you are saying. I (very politely) explored that with him. Here was what he had to say to economically justify his gaming life style.
- a six month old card still has retained much of its resale value
- a two year old card cannot be sold at all
- buying a new card every six months and selling the old one has the same economic impact as buying a new card every two years and just throwing away the old one
- since both options have the same TCO, pick the option with the most features which is to stay current
I have no idea if his analysis is correct or not. I believe that if you factor in your time upgrading and selling hardware, then the TCO picture would not look comparable. However, if you enjoyed upgrading and selling hardware, then it is just a part of your hobby.I don't wish to criticize early adopters since they underwrite a lot of the R&D costs that make technology better for the rest of us.
Thre is a threat here... (Score:1, Interesting)
Currently, only the price demanded by high-end processors, RAM, etc. can justify that kind of expenditure.
When you go down to the store and spend $400 on RAM, $100 on a high-end keychain drive, or $350 on a processor, you are funding the R&D.
There just is not as much of a business case for building newer fabs to produce $10 processors with intergrated everything for $100 laptops.
So, will the $100 laptop craze kill off the next generation of fabs? Answer: Only if it kills off the desire to buy newer & faster PCs. With SSDs becoming standard, I see a market for flash memory for quite a while. With people throwing around claims of double-digit numbers of cores, it doesn't seem like anyone is going to stop producing new processors any time soon.
Andy Out!
Re:No... (Score:2, Interesting)
Although you make a good point, that users continually find ways to put ever faster processors to work, there is a larger effect to consider---
The real CPU hog is not the user. It is the software developer. Why, I ask you... WHY must MS Office take 3 minutes to load (OK, I exaggerate, but you get the picture)? And though MS has certainly led the way in software bloat, it's not the only culprit. Gimp and OpenOffice take truly painful amounts of time to load as well. You can watch OpenOffice working when it refreshes a page on a slower machine... not impressive.
If you look at the call stack while debugging windows apps, you will see a shocking number of levels pushed on there. It's amazing that the system is ever responsive. Seeing that is the best way to understand how a CPU which can do 1 billion operations per second, still takes ForEver to present a tool tip.
Need I go into the PCI bus or memory bus designs? Never mind the hard drive channels.
The truth is, there is amazing computing power in a $1 Motorola CPU. All the email, word processing, and text web browsing you could dream up wouldn't be any problem. You can even do modest imaging with that tiny giant... but only if you design carefully to maximize the resource!
Yes, audio and video will require more CPU, but it has become so common to package co-processors that we really have to ask why the main CPU is being taxed so.
Sure, the users will forever want more, more, more... but that's just being human. The real culprits are the sloppy designers who insist on ignoring the cost of feature creep.
Clueless Wankers and CNet.UK (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe these same consumers will also realize that Moore's law also means that in 18 months you will be able to do the same computational work at roughly half the power cost (modulo leakage current, of course), a fact that appears to escape the razor wits at CNet.UK!
Moore's law is the only reason that we now have $5.00 calculators running off of solar cells generating a few miliwatts from ambient light, or $10.00 quartz wrist watches that run for years off a single button cell. If anything, the $100 laptop will accellerate Moore's law by increasing the volume of products produced and resultant economies of scale.
The folks at CNet.UK are a bunch of clueless wankers.
Re:It's about the software. (Score:3, Interesting)
This argument is basically the "my rock works fine, why do I need a hammer?" argument. Vista is a pig, but you know what? MS designed it to be capable for the next 10 years. Of course it's a pig now, but it won't seem too bad in 3 years when XP finally is phased out for real. XP was a pig because it used (oh my god!) 128 MB of RAM in 2002. In 2010 the fact that Vista uses ~800 MB at idle won't be a big deal because your average PC will have 4-8 gigs.
Console development is already much like what you suggest; developers use a specialized set of tools to write highly optimized code for a low-power platform. Embedded machines as well.
Where I see the multiple cores concept going is towards multiple virtual machines. Windows 7 is already headed in this direction (10 years after Apple did it with OS X and Classic? Sorry, had to add that.
Re:It's about the software. (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember a long long time ago, I was surfing on a puny little 96mb 200mhz Pentium. The World Wide Web may have changed a bit since then, but it's still just a bunch of text with a few pictures mixed in. A quad-core 3.2ghz monster doesn't do it 64 times faster today, instead we throw more garbage at it to "make use" of the extra power.
The problem with Moore's law is simple: computers may evolve quickly, but humans sure don't. We're as dumb as we were ten years ago. Life on earth is pretty much the same as it was before, it just costs more money now. We consume more and more, and produce less and less. Why aren't these "thinking machines" doing our work for us ? Productivity is supposed to have increased, but what have we done with the excess ?
If anything, cheap laptops are a roadblock to progress. We're right on track to becoming telecom slaves, just the way they want us.
Re:It's about the software. (Score:3, Interesting)