> Santos Halpar <sjhalpar@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > In my ideal (theoretical) world, there wouldn't be
> > hardware modems, 3D accelerators, etc.
>
> This might not be that far off. Read
> http://www.sciam.com/1999/0899issue/0899agarwal.html
>
> To quote the final conclusion by Anant Agarwal:
>
> We can say, with perhaps a bit of overstatement, that within
> a couple of decades there will be only three kinds of chips
> in the world: Raw chips, memory chips and, of course, potato
> chips.
There isn't much new about that. It's just a way of approaching and using
the technology inside field programmable gate arrays (FPGA's).
Whatever generic-use chips will be made, there will always be an advantage
to special purpose chips: power and speed. The more specialized a chip
becomes, the better it will perform for the task it has been specialized
for, using lower power and achieving higher speeds. There will always be
big variations in the applications for computational power. You just don't
care much about a 40Watt CPU inside a desktop PC, but you do inside your
mobile phone.
Jelle.
> - --
> Regards
> Joerg
> GMD-IPSI, Dolivostr. 15, Zimmer 120, D-64293 Darmstadt
> +49-6151-869-786 (Phone), -818 (FAX)
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