The future of computer technology

[PP Mguire]

In 20 years hardware will be probably around 100x faster than it is today if we keep our steady pace. The real question is, will software ever catch up?

 

[Peter.Cort]

That's a pretty cool article. thanks for sharing ^_^

Cloud computing would be great because it's the cost of storage would be a fraction of what it is now and I can see how for most people it would make sense to instead of paying for a hard drive and electricity needed to run said hard drive, you just hit a button and access your files from the cloud. sure the savings would be minimal but you don't have to worry about backing it up, losing your data, you've got it all in one place managed by someone else for an extremely small amount of money.

I agree tho (as I stated already) that I wouldn't really use it much in my personal life because I have the ability to manage all my files and data just fine

Article about cloud computing future.
http://cloudcomputing.sys-con.com/node/771947

 

[PP Mguire]

I don't trust people with my files and I'd rather not have a monthly fee for said files.

 

[Trotter]

I don't trust people with my files and I'd rather not have a monthly fee for said files.

Ditto. I will keep my stuff on my own storage and not "out there" for anyone to access (no matter what they say we all know that if it exists it can be hacked).

I look for RAM to be phased out, but I am not sure of what will replace it. I have read of many interesting theories ranging from holographic storage to hydrogen to molecular memory.

I look for processors to get smaller and add more cores, but the added cores will be dedicated to specific purposes. This will make the processor much more versatile and able to handle more functions without any slow down.

I also expect to see holographic displays and input from both gestures and thoughts (all are currently in development and being tested/used).

As for the far future... "computers" will disappear as far as a separate appliance goes. Smart items will replace it.

 

[PP Mguire]

I would like to see GPUs take over CPUs because they have so much more processing power. I would also like to see 32bit and below get phased out and 64bit + actually get used on a regular basis.

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

One thing you guys keep forgetting, all internet providers are putting caps in place, most of them are in the several hundred GB per month, I am on one that is limited to 5GB, imagine accessing all your data if you have several terabytes of data...

All because TELECOMS don't feel the need to update networks, or expand in the states, I am sorry, but I dont see much improvement online for a long time when a neighbor a few hundred foot from me has 15mbps down and 5 up, while I have to sit on satelite.

And yes, the online world needs to catch up before anything in my honest opinion, otherwise, cloud computing might die out.

 

[PP Mguire]

One thing you guys keep forgetting, all internet providers are putting caps in place, most of them are in the several hundred GB per month, I am on one that is limited to 5GB, imagine accessing all your data if you have several terabytes of data...

All because TELECOMS don't feel the need to update networks, or expand in the states, I am sorry, but I dont see much improvement online for a long time when a neighbor a few hundred foot from me has 15mbps down and 5 up, while I have to sit on satelite.

And yes, the online world needs to catch up before anything in my honest opinion, otherwise, cloud computing might die out.

I honestly hope it dies.

 

[KSoD]

There is no way to predict anything like this. We cant even begin to guess. No one would have thought that back when PC's first started out back in the mid-80's that not even 20 years later we could possibly have Quad Core CPU's, RAM measured in GB, internet that is reaching 10Gb/s and so on. Back then they were shocked when we hit MB marks on RAM. I still remember 9600BPS modems. I could have never guessed i would have internet this fast.

Any guess we make will be so wrong that it is worthless to try. We cant imagine where the future will be when it comes to this stuff. Cause we couldnt imagine we would be where we are today back when we started.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

I would like to see GPUs take over CPUs because they have so much more processing power. I would also like to see 32bit and below get phased out and 64bit + actually get used on a regular basis.

GPU's are faster in situations that can take advantage of extensive parallelism however most software can't. For the sake of argument I'll ignore gpus other shortcomings and just focus on the limits of performance improvement through parallelism.

Amdahl's law - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As you can see the performance improvement that can be gained through parallelism is directly limited by the fraction of the program that has to be executed sequentially. That isn't a problem for graphics since the way they are rendered is inherently parallel, likewise stuff like encoding and Folding tends to work well also. The problem is when you get into more mainstream applications the percentage that has to executed sequentially is considerably higher so gpu's won't have much if any advantage in those cases. When you factor in that CUDA and OpenCL are a nightmare to develop for compared to normal languages there really isn't a good reason to completely dump cpu's in favor for gpu's

What is much more likely to happen is discrete gpu's will die out for everything but the most specialized systems and APU's with a mix of cpu and gpu cores will take over, something that's already staring with Sandy Bridge and Bobcat.

 

[Peter.Cort]

One thing you guys keep forgetting, all internet providers are putting caps in place, most of them are in the several hundred GB per month, I am on one that is limited to 5GB, imagine accessing all your data if you have several terabytes of data...

All because TELECOMS don't feel the need to update networks, or expand in the states, I am sorry, but I dont see much improvement online for a long time when a neighbor a few hundred foot from me has 15mbps down and 5 up, while I have to sit on satelite.

And yes, the online world needs to catch up before anything in my honest opinion, otherwise, cloud computing might die out.

telecoms need to put caps on data transfer because people are using up more bandwidth than ever, and it doesn't make sense to have unlimited plans when they are starting to lose money. Installation of Fiber is extremely expensive, maintenence on the networks is extremely expensive, as everything advances and expands it gets more expensive to run. Sure there could be a high priced unlimited plan, but it makes sense that there are caps. You realize how much area there is to the US with minimal population? Telecom is also a business, so they're not going to invest in places that they won't see a return. If you want faster internet move somewhere that has it, or write to your closest ISP with the speed internet you want and tell them that you'll pay for them to expand the network to your house, and you'll pay their monthly rate for the internet. Otherwise they won't do it.