Why Moore's Law, not mobility, is killing the PC

Why Moore's Law, not mobility, is killing the PC

Brad Chacos @BradChacos
Mar 5, 2013 3:00 AM

While rumors of the PC's demise are greatly exaggerated—an industry that moved more than 350 million units in 2012 is not "dead"—computers undoubtedly aren't selling as quickly as they once did. Analysts forecast PC sales to far exceed tablet sales for the foreseeable future, but the growth rate for PC sales has utterly and completely flatlined.

The big question, of course, is why?

A couple of theories inform conventional wisdom. Most pundits blame stagnant PC sales on the likewise stagnant economy, or point toward the ascension of smartphones and tablets. Others argue (fairly persuasively) that the flattening of growth is attributable to the idiosyncrasies of PC sales in developing countries, where computers are a rarely replaced luxury item. A second wave, analysts say, has yet to come after an initial surge in sales in those nations.

Like most economic sectors, the PC market is influenced by myriad factors, and some truth lies in all three of those explanations. After watching my mother-in-law happily troll Facebook and sling emails on her nearly ten-year-old Pentium 4 computer, however, an even more insidious possibility slipped into my head.

Did CPU performance reach a "good enough" level for mainstream users some years back? Are older computers still potent enough to complete an average Joe's everyday tasks, reducing the incentive to upgrade?

"It used to be you had to replace your PC every few years or you were way behind. If you didn't, you couldn't even run the latest software," says Linley Gwennap, the principal analyst at the Linley Group, a research firm that focuses on semiconductors and processors. "Now you can hold onto your PC five, six, seven years with no problem. Yeah, it might be a little slow, but not enough to really show up [in everyday use]."

Old processors are still OK for everyday use

This may come as a shock to performance-pushing PC enthusiasts but the average Joe almost never encodes videos, nor will you catch him fragging fools in Crysis 3. Instead, Average Joe spends most of his time on mundane, often Web-centric tasks: Buying stuff online, sending emails, engaging friends and family on social media, maybe watching the occasional YouTube video—on default resolutions, natch, not high-definition—or playing a few hands of Solitaire.

In other words, hardly the kind of activity that begs for an overclocked, water-cooled, hyper-threaded Core i7 processor. Or even a modern-day Ivy Bridge Core i3 processor, if we're being honest.

see full report

 

[whs]

Hmm, I am glad my two Intels never did that to me.

 

[labeeman]

Hmm, I am glad my two Intels never did that to me.

Here is the story on that bug (it is 8MB not 2MB)

Intel 320-Series SSDs Affected by Firmware Bug That Causes Data Loss - Softpedia

 

[chrisa]

Or maybe smaller and cheaper and reliable SSDs should be in the works...

SSDs are very reliable. I never had a problem with any of my 7 SSDs - and the 2 oldest are from 2008.

Reliability tended to be dependent on manufacturer, and SSDs have always tended to have their issues. Its only in the last 2-3 years that its become rock solid across the board.

What would be interesting is if they designed an SSD for a 3.5" or 5.25" form factor and see how much they could pack into a single drive on a PC. 5.25" Solid State would own for servers.

Haha.. somebody did! That owns!

Addonics creates CF SSD in 5.25-inch form factor | Electronista

And also for the 3.5" variety...

OWC is readying a 2TB, 3.5-inch form-factor workstation SSD for 2013 | Ars Technica

 

[whs]

I don't know which makes are/were unreliable. My 2008 models are Intel and OCZ. Then later I got 2 more OCZs and 1 more Intel, 1 Crucial M4 and 1 Mushkin. All of these work fine. The latest I got is an OCZ Vector. But that is still sitting on my desk for my desktop in Germany.

 

[Night Hawk]

I think you may want to review the article on this SF thread as well as follow the discussion where someone else was reporting as much as OS corruption with any power outage or sleep issue on a laptop. How SSD power faults scramble your data - Windows 7 Help Forums

The problem is that while SSDs are far from being totally new in only recent years but have been around in some form since the 50s! is that the development of new chipsets and other things always seem to work well with mechanical drives due to the PATA and SATA standards applied.

[h=3]Early SSDs using RAM and similar technology[/h] SSDs had origins in the 1950s with two similar technologies: magnetic core memory and card capacitor read-only store (CCROS).[SUP][9][/SUP][SUP][10][/SUP] These auxiliary memory units (as contemporaries called them) emerged during the era of vacuum-tube computers. But with the introduction of cheaper drum storage units their use ceased.[SUP][11][/SUP]
Later, in the 1970s and 1980s, SSDs were implemented in semiconductor memory for early supercomputers of IBM, Amdahl and Cray;[SUP][12][/SUP] however, the prohibitively high price of the built-to-order SSDs made them quite seldom used. In the late 1970s, General Instruments produced an electrically alterable ROM (EAROM) which operated somewhat like the later NAND flash memory. Unfortunately, a ten-year life was not achievable and many companies abandoned the technology.[SUP][13][/SUP] In 1976 Dataram started selling a product called Bulk Core, which provided up to 2 MB of solid state storage compatible with Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and Data General (DG) computers.[SUP][14][/SUP] In 1978, Texas Memory Systems introduced a 16 kilobyte RAM solid-state drive to be used by oil companies for seismic data acquisition.[SUP][15][/SUP] The following year, StorageTek developed the first RAM solid-state drive.[SUP][16][/SUP]
The Sharp PC-5000, introduced in 1983, used 128 kilobyte solid-state storage-cartridges containing bubble memory.[SUP][17][/SUP] In 1984 Tallgrass Technologies Corporation had a tape back up unit of 40 MB with a solid state 20 MB unit built in. The 20 MB unit could be used instead of a hard drive.[SUP][citation needed][/SUP] In September 1986, Santa Clara Systems introduced BatRam, a 4 megabyte mass storage system expandable to 20 MB using 4 MB memory modules. The package included a rechargeable battery to preserve the memory chip contents when the array was not powered.[SUP][18][/SUP] 1987 saw the entry of EMC Corporation (EMC) into the SSD market, with drives introduced for the mini-computer market. However, by 1993 EMC had exited the SSD market.[SUP][19][/SUP][SUP][20][/SUP]
Software-based RAM Disks are still used as of 2009 because they are an order of magnitude faster than the fastest SSD, though they consume CPU resources and cost much more on a per-GB basis.[SUP][21]
[/SUP]

Reference: Solid State Drive

Mechanical drives have been there since the first seen with the IBM 350 Disk File back in 1956. Of course you wouldn't have seen any form of an ATA or other standard back then while the introduction of long time storage saw it's initial stage. And presently we see the two big name drive manufacturers trying to break the 4tb hold up and expand capacities for drives to come in leaps and bounds into the near 100tb range while still working from the ATA point of view.

As one would normally suspect PATA and certainly far more SATA developments will eventually reach at point of no further since each hardware platform will eventually reach the point of "can go no further" while efforts may continue while things are profitable for companies to invest in. This also becomes another typical barrier to only seeing some things taken so far when companies simply opt out of keeping something going.

For the longest time you wouldn't have heard anything about SSDs but theories until companies started realizing the limitations keep coming up for mechanical drives and decided in recent times to start marketing the slow coming alternative since it can offer faster speeds. But those also come with some risk factors at times as the article in the SF threads points out. How SSD power faults scramble your data | ZDNet