The furious pace of computer and software development
finally seems to be slowing down. At one point in time computer speed seemed to
double every year. Since 2001 however this has not been the case. At that time
the fastest chip available was 2.0 Gigahertz. The fastest chip now available is
only 3.8 Gigahertz. Although other processing advances have been made, basic
CPU chip speed has only increased 90 % in four years.
Advanced servers and high-end computers now often
utilize banks of these chips to subdivide processing tasks as apposed to
developing a faster master CPU chip. Supercomputers still have much faster
processors but these are much larger and more expensive than is reasonable to
incorporate in a basic personal computer. Parallel processing is being used
here as well.
Since computer speed no longer seems to be increasing
quite as dramatically as before, software developers have been forced to work
at keeping their programs operating more efficiently. Many newer programs were
dreadfully slow on older computers, but that is less and less the case as older
computers are slowly being phased out in favour of faster Pentium IV, Celeron
or Athlon CPU models.
In recent times it is the options included with a
computer that have changed as well as the pricing. A basic comparison between years:
2001 Computer 2005 Computer
P4 – 1.6 Gigahertz P4
– 3.0 Gigahertz
128 Mb Ram 512
Mb Ram
20 Gigabyte Drive 160
Gigabyte Drive
CD Rom Drive DVD
Rom Drive
DVD-Rom Drive DVD
Writer Drive
17” CRT Monitor 17”
LCD Flat Panel
$2000.00 $1000.00
or Less
A new version of Windows to ultimately replace Windows XP
is expected sometime in 2006. Very little information is yet available about
this new version. Even Microsoft that was bringing out new versions about every
three years lately, (1995, 1998 & 2001 for Windows XP) has realized that
the general public does not want to change systems that frequently. For large
companies, changing everyone’s Windows version to the latest and greatest is a
major task. In fact, many companies are still employing mixtures of Windows 95,
Windows 98 and Windows 2000 computers and upgrading only as older computers
fail and need to be replaced.
From Microsoft’s standpoint, they make just as much
money selling copies of Windows XP as they will selling the next Windows
version. So to bring a version to market before it is completely and thoroughly
tested would prove counterproductive. As Windows becomes more and more
complicated it also takes even more man-years to develop a new hopefully even
better version. A thousand man-years of development time is probably a fair
estimate of the time spent on this next version.
Similarly, Windows Server versions are likely to stretch
out over time. Server 2000 was replaced with Server 2003 and the next major
version may hit the market in 2007 or 2008. In either case, rightly or wrongly,
Microsoft has won the Operating System and File Server battles and it is
unlikely that this will change unless they release an incredibly bad version at
some time. This sort of monopoly negates the necessity to release new versions
on shorter time frames. Hopefully, it allows them to focus on the shortcomings
of their existing versions and improve them without the need of silly marketing
features and glitz. What most of the world wants is something that is fast and
reliable. Hopefully that is the direction Intel and Microsoft continue to take.