It is interesting to see what is going on in the industry with regard to the development of CPUs. In particular, the first dual core smartphones are being released right now and there are even quad core CPUs expected later this year. The latter is quite interesting because it appears it can already beat a 2GHz desktop processor of only a couple of years ago. In addition NVidia is predicting a 75 fold increase in smartphone compute power within only a couple of years.
The demoes are quite impressive. At least they show typical single-core applications such as web browsers utilizing all cores and actually accelerating the experience. Of course, not all processor cores run at their maximum frequency all the time, but that is not that important since what counts is the end user experience. Also, this raises other interesting issues. For instance, will these mobile phone processors surpass desktop processors in performance? And if so, will mobile OSes such as Android and iOS be competing directly with current desktop and laptop systems with windows and linux?
How about Intel, will they be able to catch up with their smartphone atom processor? I would expect so of course given the large number of smart people they employ and their research budget (nothing can compete with that). And, how about the technology of these smartphone processors entering in the regular desktop and server domain?
Wait! This happened before when Core 2 Duo replaced Pentium D using the architecture from Pentium M processors. So there, mobile technology (laptops) entered the desktop domain. Will the same happen again with smartphone processors? I sure hope so because that will lead to more low power (quiet) servers and will be good for the planet as such. So let’s hope that history will repeat itself.
“All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again.” — Peter Pan — Battlestar Galactica
We are intrigued and also enthusiastic about what you’re covering below.