Incredible Computers

[PLATO]

Originally posted by Q Cubed
well, i have to admit your new girl is faster than mine. mine's still got more ram and hd space.

Funny thing is that when my wife ordered this for me, the 2.66GHz was the fastest one they were offering. Checked today and now its 2.8GHz! I just can't believe the explosion in processor speeds that just the last couple of years have shown.

(BTW...Momma always said to go for strong girls as opposed to fast ones! )

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Cruddy
Gallium Arsenide. Yup, spot on with the chemical formula Urban.

It is actually used in some components - just not in processors.

They are getting some interesting stuff coming out from III-V compounds. GaN looks good too.

[Q Classic]

plato, i have to admit, yours is a nice svelte laptop. mine's an elegant desktop, but not quite slim.

[PLATO]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
They are getting some interesting stuff coming out from III-V compounds. GaN looks good too.

What's a III-V compound. Is that from the Periodic chart? What is the relationship that makes these so suitable for making chips?

[Q Classic]

they're semiconductors. for some reason, those impurities make them run faster, cooler, and better.

[Odin]

When I got my PC 3 years ago I thought it's 700MHz CPU was very fast. now it is slower than heck with these newer games (Huge maps in Civ3 with 16 civs is torturously slow).

[PLATO]

Originally posted by Odin
When I got my PC 3 years ago I thought it's 700MHz CPU was very fast. now it is slower than heck with these newer games (Huge maps in Civ3 with 16 civs is torturously slow).

Civ was the reason I upgraded my 233Mhz MMX and got a 1.6Ghz desktop. It was the fastest thing going...for about a week. Now my laptop is "obsolete" before it even got here in the mail! Where is the upper limit on these processor speed explosions?

[Cruddy]

Originally posted by PLATO1003

... Where is the upper limit on these processor speed explosions?

If you mean basic clock rate and you DON'T have very expensive cryo cooling - I reckon you'd be lucky to hit much about 10Gigs with any sort of semiconductor and electrons. Might not get even that fast. BUT...

There's faster tech than semiconductors and electrons... like photonic and nuclear reasonance...

So... probably not in our lifetimes.

[Odin]

Originally posted by PLATO1003


It was the fastest thing going...for about a week.

So was mine until the 1giger came out.

[Odin]

I am waiting for quantum computers. A quantum computer is like a transistor based computer with MILLIONS of CPUs in it, it can prerform millions of operations at once. it can complete a task in 3 minutes what would take 10 BILLION YEARS for a transistor based computer to complete.

[Q Classic]

to paraphrase: "i think there is a market for maybe six quantum computers."

[monolith94]

Sounds like Marvin - brain the size of a planet, and they want him to open doors!!!

[PLATO]

Originally posted by Q Cubed
to paraphrase: "i think there is a market for maybe six quantum computers."

Yeah, Like the guy who could imagine the day that every city would have a telephone.

[Kassiopeia]

Right now I'm using a comp with a 350 MHz processor and 64 megabytes of 100 MHz RAM.

If all goes well, in a few months I'll have a machine with a 2 GHz processor and 512 megabytes of 333 MHz RAM.

I can only imagine what the change in speed will feel like. I mean, when this computer was bought (late '98), the average processor frequency was the same as the FSB frequency of processors today... No more waiting three minutes for the hard disk to stop churning when the computer has to both walk and chew bubble gum.

What's more interesting is, that I doubt in the next few years there'll even be that many programs that could benefit from such vast amounts of processing power. Only the newest games will put a serious strain on hardware, and even then usually just on graphics cards.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by PLATO1003
What's a III-V compound. Is that from the Periodic chart?

Yup. III is the third group, or elements with three outermost electrons. They include boron, aluminium, and gallium. V group are elements such as nitrogen, phosphrous, and arsenic.

Originally posted by PLATO1003
What is the relationship that makes these so suitable for making chips?

I think that has to do with the electron configuration of these compounds. The faster the free electrons move, the better these materials are.