[Herefordshire] Re: Bigger and bigger graphics cards?

[EdwardFW at aol.com]

I think:

Hiving off chunks of workload (notably re sound and vision) to other 
processors means that the CPU can do its job faster and I’m all for it

But:

The financial boys (small medium and large) can afford the processing power 
they need (medium large and very large). The cost of their staff (and premises 
I expect) dwarf this

There is enough money in the developed countries for people to want fairly 
up-market PC’s, and these are improving in cost-performance anyway

The more GPU’s try to be CPU’s for high performance all-singing all-dancing 
PC’s the more they will have to resemble those CPU’s. But the established CPU’
s have all their software and instruction sets and compilers etc. 
established. The GPU sellers have the cost of getting into this and the problem of 
getting people to accept their different product. E.g. AMD can still find that 
people ask for Intel. Others who tried hard to do what AMD have done failed. 

And the GPU’s will run into cooling problems if they keep doing more and 
getting faster

And if they can do things (in hardware / cooling terms) that CPU’s can’t the 
CPU’s will start to copy them.

To the extent there is a market for simple cheap PC’s Intel and AMD and lots 
of others can soon flood it with cheap CPU’s or single chips that have much of 
the chipset as well.     

E.g. there are various hand-held’s with a range of processors. The size form 
and shape of these can adapt. And mobile phone companies’ want their products 
to be one’s key portable device. Sony would be happy for their Playstation to 
do our email etc. as well. And I think it is Via who do a computer on a board 
or something, cheaply. 

Further, as broadband spreads, to the extent that people want a simple device 
with minimum fuss, especially commercially, there is the thin client model 
with the server end handled for you. 

Software configuration, and security are bigger issues than hardware cost. 
And, especially commercially, training is a much bigger cost. 

But:  SOMETIMES  I'M  WRONG!

Cheers, Edward
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