Comment by unclebucknasty | Hacker News Reader

Comment by unclebucknasty | Hacker News Reader

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>As a developer and a bit of a designer, I couldn't picture myself coding on a tablet nor designing on one

That pretty much describes me and the thing is that even though I still need a PC for the same reasons as you, I haven't felt the desire to upgrade as before. The reason? Pretty much exactly what the article states.

I used to upgrade every couple of years, and maybe slightly more frequently. And, I would see significant performance/productivity gains per upgrade.

But, unlike before, I don't feel any performance "pain" with my current desktop or mobile workstation. They are both 3-4 years old, Windows 7 64-bit machines, and pack plenty of power/memory for my (heavy) use. So, I no longer feel a need for better performance.

Seems there was a time when software (including the OS) pushed the hardware, such that users were ever hungrier for more power. But, now it seems that hardware has gotten out in front permanently for all intents and purposes. A slightly above average consumer rig with sufficient memory can now handle just about any task most folks will throw at it and with relatively no latency.

Part of the reason that software isn't pushing up against hardware limitations as hard anymore are the relatively old and underpowered current generation consoles. Games were traditionally on the front of the hardware curve, but over the last few years only a small proportion of the game market has had fundamentally high hardware requirements.

It'll be interesting to see what upcoming console releases will do for the the hardware market.

There's that, and also the fact that cpus aren't getting faster as much as they used to. I imagine if my cpu was still doubling in single-core power every couple years that there would be dev tools that could make use of that power and I would want to upgrade.

And games would definitely be doing much more as well.

But it's not practical to make software that will take twice as long to run if cpus only speed up 10% every two years.

True. But, I think that's the other side of the coin. That is, I'm not so sure we need faster CPUs as we once did.

Save for extreme gamers and other more esoteric applications (e.g. CAD, video transcoding, etc.), most folks (i.e. the majority of the PC market) wouldn't benefit much from a CPU that's much faster than those now commonly fitted to the slightly-above-average consumer rig.

So, in general, I don't think software makers are holding back from making software that pushes the hardware. I just think it's more difficult to push today's more powerful hardware with typical software applications.

Significant NLP for UI purposes could push hardware.

Agreed. There are a host of other potential applications that could push hardware as well.

And, I do believe that if one were to have mass market appeal (i.e. broad utility and demand), then we may see increased PC demand again (provided the PC is the appropriate platform).

But, do you think that there are a significant number of such applications waiting in the wings for PC hardware advances, or do you believe that perhaps no such applications are ready for prime-time as of now?

Eventually yes. However in the near-term I see almost all NLP advances being implemented on the cloud.

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