Looking back to 2000, Intel and AMD were warring each other to reach the 1GHz mark, which at the time seemed to be the pinnacle of performance. When processors were still in the hundreds of MHz (yes, it’s amazing to think we’re talking about 1.8GHz, 3.6GHz processors today when 500MHz processors were common back then) and 1000MHz seemed like a lot of computing power.
Fast forward six years, we are talking about dual core processors; a processor containing, in essence, two processors. Then in September, Intel announced a prototype 80-core processor, which may be an indication of the trend for the evolution of microprocessors in the next few years. This speculation can be backed up by the efforts by both AMD and Intel to bring quad core processors to the market.
This continual push for more computing power brings up an interesting point. It seems like we may start to actually get to a point where we may be having excess computing power to the point that software which would have been deemed “inefficient” or “wasteful” could become practical. While this may sound odd, it has some serious implications for future software design.
Part 2 will discuss running software on virtual machines to enhance security and portability.