> No, the range of Linux things is wider than web-servers
> or computing farms (or workstations). I myself would not
> put 1GHz processor on machine which would then be sitting
> idle for 99.5% of its time -- or more importantly, if 64-bit
> 1GHz processor eats 30 Watts of power, while a 32-bit one at
> 100MHz eats 1 Watts, my energy constrained applications would
> definitely go for the 1 Watt approach.
The major error in your reasoning is assuming that chips in the future will
use as much power as chips do today. This is just like all the people who 10
years ago said that the '486 was so powerful it would never be on the
desktop -- forever relegated to high-power servers.
I think it's almost obvious that in about 20 years, Linux on 32-bit
machines will be as interesting as Linux on 16-bit machines is now. By 2038,
Linux on 32-bit machines will be as popular as Linux on 8-bit machines is
now.
OS development always faces tradeoffs between supporting leading-edge
technology properly and maintaining compatability with low-end hardware.
Yes, a balance has to be struck, but ultimately, you have to move on.
DS
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jan 07 2000 - 21:00:05 EST