The Downsides To Moore's Law?
from the yes-and-no dept
ExtremeTech is running an interesting look at the "downsides" to Moore's Law, basically noting that while Moore's Law has continued to provide more computing power (effectively) that isn't always a good thing. It's pushed this need for a near-constant upgrade path, costing consumers plenty of money. Of course, that leaves out the flipside of that equation, which is that these more powerful computers allow the buyers to do a lot more with them. You would hope that, on the aggregate, the benefit of that greater power outweighs the costs of the upgrades. While there is plenty of waste and certainly plenty of people who don't need such power, that doesn't mean having it is necessarily a bad thing. Also, the article notes that you could probably make 8086-type PCs these days for about 10 cents (an exaggeration if they're really talking about the full PC) but that since you can't make a business out of selling 10 cent computers, no one does it. This is a bizarre statement. You absolutely could make a business out of selling 10 cent computers, and in many ways, plenty of companies do. All of the embedded computing power that shows up in various devices, phones, cars, mp3 players, etc. proves exactly that. What the analysis seems to be ignoring is that those 10 cent "PCs" have become embedded in lots of other things, allowing for tremendously powerful new uses that simply weren't available before. It's hard to see how that's really a downside. People can get a orders of magnitude more power in their PCs for the same price (and often cheaper) than in the past while all around them devices and systems are becoming more computerized and powerful thanks to the fact that the "old" stuff is so cheap. That seems like a pretty good deal.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Basically I'm thinking people might need more time to think and let the applications sink in. It's not really like the ever-new, over-powered computers are a problem, more like they're wastful, because people aren't very adpet at utilizing them yet. It also tends to lead to sloppy programming.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Glut
Basically we have all sorts of power, but the average user spends far more resources rendering UI than they do creating useful information.
Even when I was in school 2 years ago and was runnign Matlab and Maple (math software) the system would handle decently sized matrix math until it had to display things as a graph and then it maxed out my graphics abilties. In other words, unless you're doing massive mathematical computations the extreme growth in processing power isn't really useful.
In other words we have lots of powerful processors, but there is no particular need for the extreme amount of power.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
10 Cents
The problem with forced upgrades isn't Moore's law's fault, it's Microsoft. That 10 year old computer can really only run Windows 98. Vista would kill it. But of course 98 isn't supported anymore, with Windows 2000 and XP soon to follow. New software won't run on it, and bugs and security holes don't get fixed. MS is in business to sell operating systems, and obsoleting old systems is the only was for them to sell new ones.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: 10 Cents
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Upside is better
I think customer demand for a "low power" machine that doesn't have a resource hogging UI will be the impetus to create such a beast. If we don't ask for it we won't get it.
And I agree with the statement that the 10-cent PC is in my MP3 player, GPS, etc. The fact is that a PC will always be a PC, but we will get more and more specialized devices to do particular tasks. The PC is nothing more than a fancy interface around a microprocessor, all these specialized devices also contain a microprocessor. It's just that the interface is more specialized to the task, and hopefully, it's cheaper!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
but..but..
Also, wasn't there a post a while back about how computers are built to fail because now they have more resources than people can use-- so there would be no reason to upgrade if the computer didn't break?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Yup
I agree that we need to lower the computing power which we currently abuse. I cannot stand lazy code. Today, marketing painfully infects the software development line. It's all about finishing the project by an overzealous deadline rather than making the program smooth and clean.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Yup
No one is forced to use windows. if you want to be able to use more of your resources, there are ways. oh yes.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
NOT a law
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Wow, that was stupid.
Blaming anything on 'Moore's Law' is just ridiculous. Moore's Law is simply an observation of a trend that has continued far beyond the expectations of Moore himself. Moore's Law doesn't drive anything. Competition and demand drive innovation.
Today tons of people do digital photo editing, video capture/editing, audio editing/ripping/mastering, 3D modeling, gaming. These things drive the need for more powerful computers.
Then there's is the hogwash about 10 cent PC's. Even if were not talking about 10 cent PC's but rather 10 cent processors (which is what it sounds like he means given the talk about transistors and wafers) it assumes that the cost in making a processor is directly related to the speed at which the processor runs (or the number of transistors it has). I'm not saying 10 cent processors aren't possible (I think there are some embedded processors you can get for around that price in bulk) but this guys acts like it's jut a matter of cutting the wafer into smaller pieces and we could all have super cheap home computers.
I worry that I may have lost a couple of brain cells by reading that article.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Resource-Light Linux
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
More resources doesn't mean they are used wisely
Even though it is hard to see the downside of the faster/better, as many others pointed out, the growing speed of the computers allowed much of the software to grow without control. As much as modern software can accomplish, I have a sneaking suspicion that if the computer processing power was lower, this same software would accomplish the same tasks much more efficiently.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Fine, fine
But the Forced upgrade obsoletes perfectly usable machines that could goto schools or third world countries.
We need a basic standard that future OS's and machines adhere to or enhance. Not a new wagon wheel every 6 years and we have to toss the old wagons into the landfill.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
More Computers, More Bugs
One downside to putting computers into everything is that you also put software bugs into everything.
For instance, I managed to trigger an interesting bug in my 15-year-old Panasonic automatic washing machine, where if I lifted the lid before it had finished sounding its six beeps at the end of a complete cycle, then I tried to put in a new load and start another cycle, it would get confused over which part of the cycle it was supposed to be in.
Also my Pioneer DVR-520H DVD hard-drive recorder has a couple of minor bugs in its editing and copying functions.
Do vendors provide software/firmware updates to fix these bugs? No. Is it worth their while to do so? Almost certainly not.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
"...Moore's Law is Evil"
Social consciousness is a 'terminal' disease. lol
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
What it touches
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Old Computers
I'm currently writing this on Xubuntu 7.04 - this is the first time I've tried it. You just stick the cd in and it does it's thing. Click firfox and read techdirt. If you want really low resource linux systems they exist. I expect most readers have a friend who can work it out if they can't for themselves...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Downsides to Moore' Law
One downside is that the glitz afforded by the new machines has helped to divert managers from using the machines to collect and process the really vital economic and social information.
For example, a court registry system on a PDP11 I helped set up was abandoned for word processors with coloured text on the screens. The managers threw out the relational database for the coloured text.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]