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smaller. better.
Although my oldest brother Joe will understand these things in much greater detail than I — he has a double degree in Computer and Electrical Engineering from Purdue — I am always amazed by how much smaller, quieter, and more energy efficient items we use can be made. Which isn’t to say that all of them are made that way, of course.
There was an interview that I stumbled across today between these two microprocessor designers, Dan and Dave — from the article: Dan Dobberpuhl is responsible for the design of many high-performance microprocessors, including the PDP-11, uVax, Alpha, and StrongARM… [Dave] Ditzel is vice chairman and chief technology officer of Transmeta Corporation, which he cofounded in 1995 to develop a new kind of computer — one that would learn how to improve its performance and save power as it ran, by using software embedded in the processor itself. The intersting part to me is how much more efficient purpose-focused microprocessors can be:
From A Conversation with Dan Dobberpuhl via queue
DITZEL So I guess — given the operating system you have today and maybe the PC you have today — if you’re happy with the performance, the real problem for business is you’re not buying a new PC or a new operating system.
In some sense one can say that the people who design operating systems and new processors are looking for ways that you won’t have sufficient performance with the machine you have today, so that you’ll need to buy something new. Is there any way out of this vicious cycle?
DOBBERPUHL I don’t know. From an engineering point of view, we’ll continue to try to improve the performance-per-watt ratio. It’s interesting that a low-power processor can deliver on the order of 1,000 MIPS per watt. And maybe 2,000 for a really good one. It depends upon the absolute performance level.
And the high-performance processors are about an order of magnitude worse than that. They’re on the order of 100 MIPS per watt. So there’s a huge spread, and that’s mostly a function of the same things we were talking about earlier with the Alpha and StrongARM.
It’s where you choose the design point — whether you go with 100 million transistors or 20 million transistors and whether you choose two gigahertz or one gigahertz. These things are all parameters the designer chooses, but then he has to live with the consequences.
It isn’t a huge issue to a lot of people, but computers today use a lot of electricity. Yet, average MSWindows computers (and several of the Macintosh models) have 1 to 7 fans on them just to get rid of excess heat — wasted electricity. Not to mention the noise polution from the fans. That’s why I am so pleased with an appliance like a PDA. It does email and web, even solitaire with no fan, no electrical cord — heck, no moving parts — and can go on a single charge for days or weeks.
On the other end of the spectrum, a normal PC in most homes can be loud, hot, power-hungry, and yet will not be used for much more than what I just said the PDA will do. The personal asthetics of such things are quickly coming into question — at least for me.
written by Kevin in web stuff