http://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/computing/software/computers-its-time-to-start-over
Interesting interview of Dr. Robert Watson of Cambridge ( and on the board of the FreeBSD Foundation) about the rearchitecting of computer hardware. To a chip designer, Dr. Watson's prognostications seem like small steps in the right direction. The way things are headed, vast swaths of software is being replaced with special purpose hardware. As the relative cost of a logic gate plummets compared to the time and energy cost of an instruction fetch, it is far more cost effective to add graphics and radio and network-layer hardware to chips, even if most of that hardware isn't ever used in a particular user device. For example, Intel's latest "single chip processor" for mobile devices has 6 radios on it, even though a particular device may use only one or two. On-chip radios are far cheaper than the wires and board-space and power needed to connect to optimized separate-chip radios. Will they become obsolete? You betcha. But you will buy a new device for its new features sooner. The main thing you should demand is the ability to securely and freely transfer your data and capabilities to each new device without hassle. Open platforms, open standards! In time, I expect software will balkanize into a lot of little modules, running in separate hardware sandboxes, with interprocess communication completely managed by hardware. Software kernels as we know them may vanish. Bugs will remain in the design process, corrected over time, and exploits will only endure until next year's hardware release. Keith -- Keith Lofstrom kei...@keithl.com Voice (503)-520-1993 _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list PLUG@lists.pdxlinux.org http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
