how powerful do you think computers will be in the year 2020?
Probably to the point that your vehicle becomes just like the Kitt car in the TV series Knight Rider.
Which reminds me, I use to have a old Chrysler LeBaron that would repeatedly tell me with a voice activation, after a loud Ping, that my door was ajar. That drove me up the wall after a while (no pun intended), as you can imagine, so I disconnected a few wires. It didn't say much after that, but a strange thing started happening. Somehow it got my E-Mail address and in the first E-Mail it said: Nice try owner, btw, your door is ajar.
And I still get E-Mails to this very day from the freakin' thing, telling me about the damn door being ajar and I don't even own it anymore. I think it's stalking me.
I, for one, approve of the Ewoks. They're a fine representation of the primitive natives doing better in their own environment than the invading white man.
Take that, Avatar.
"Welcome to The American Political System, where everything's made up and the votes don't matter!"
America: Where you have the freedom to express your opinions, and I have the freedom to hate you for it.
*dons stetson and putters away on the motor scooter of patriotism*
I guess it depends. The reason we now have multi-core processors is because a single core can't work on a frequency significantly higher than 3GHz. It's a technological limitation, which is why we're now basically increasing the number of cores instead of the frequency itself.
So the answer to your question depends on how far technology advances by 2020. If we discover a way to surpass the current 3GHz frequency limit and combine that with multi-core technology, well, who knows - we might even end up uploading to The Matrix by the end of the century.
If not, well, even the number of cores we can stick into a single processor has a limit and eventually we'll hit that one too. I do believe our desktop computers will reduce in size as we'll be able to put more stuff into less space, evident even now with Intel's i-series processors that come with a built-in GPU core as well. You can't run the latest games on it alone at this point, but eventually who knows?
I think GLaDOS will eventually be created and captures subjects to test the Portal Gun on or Optimus Prime and Megatron fighting in the middle of the street.
But, seriously: I don't think that technology will be significantly different than now. I'd be pretty sure though that Apple will get a world record in developing more versions of the iPhone/iPod/iWhatever. And eventually smart phones and those little things will be as fast and good as a desktop PC. Then you can put the tiny things in the real PC and you get more performance on them. But we're far away from any real Artificial Intelligence like K.I.T.T from Knight Rider. That'll be Fiction for a long time.
In a nutshell: I think technology will focus on Smart Phones for a while. I mean the moment the first one came out, every company wanted to build one.
Last edited by Fastmaniac; 07-14-2011 at 08:25 PM.
@D333: "I will not do this." "NO!"
--James Earl Jones
@OP: Well, my old Sony Vaio PCG-FRV35 from 2003 had a 2.66Ghz processor, a plain un-numbered ATI graphics chip and it was at the very twilight of the MB era for ram chipsets: 2 chips of 256 MB upgradeable to 512 MB. I don't consider 512MB to 1GB to be twilight but rather transitional and the "sunrise" of the new GB era.
By today's standards, the only thing about it that would even meet average standards is the processor. So 8 years...now try to imagine similar exponential leaps that will have occurred 8 years from todays technology and you'll probably be just behind the mark for 2020.
I predict 1-8 TB hard drives will be standard, ram chipsets roughly equivalent to todays high end flashdrives 32-64 GB will be normal to high average. Processors of 3.16 Ghz will probably be average, and we'll have safely implemented 4.5Ghz+ on higher end systems...oh and by then we'll have a new OS for PCs and everyone will be rushing to get rid of their old Windows 7.
Who knows, maybe XBOX brand label games may be directly compatible with PC. I can even see Microsoft getting in on small authoring licenses for mods--I mean you aren't going to stop modders from doing what they do. Why not make money off of it and make it easy to incorporate for console and PC.
Again these are my speculative predictions, and by extension my opinions. I wish my prediction capabilities were as honed as that of Nikola Tesla--over 100 years ago he basically predicted everything we have today, both technology wise and in a socio-economical sense. However, they are not that honed. I have my suspicions how he made such accurate predictions, but nothing definitive.
Love me, I win.
Hate me, I win.
Ignore me, I've got exactly what I wanted.
Love me or hate me, you're still thinking of me either way.
I pretty much default on agreement when it comes to answering questions about technological evolution and the implications for society. My struggle is surpassing and transcending the paranoid interpersonal level of connection to technology in its adaptive state.
I forsee modded laptops in my future. Possible multiple system emulators if I can find something to accommodate that. The way I see it, PC's don't have much of a future in terms of game/school balance which is where I'm at also in regards to a laptop. The more versatile one's portable computer is, the more convenience and efficiency you maintain.
I hope that one day, I'll finally be able to pirate everything.
I, for one, approve of the Ewoks. They're a fine representation of the primitive natives doing better in their own environment than the invading white man.
Take that, Avatar.
"Welcome to The American Political System, where everything's made up and the votes don't matter!"
America: Where you have the freedom to express your opinions, and I have the freedom to hate you for it.
*dons stetson and putters away on the motor scooter of patriotism*
I bet they'll have 2 player solitaire and minesweeper!
"Everyone that posts here is aware of the game, thanks though." ET
Chad Dumeer, Deus Ex: "When government surveillance and intimidation is called "freedom from terrorism" or "liberation from crime", freedom and liberty have become words without meanings."
"Es lebe die Freiheit!"(Freedom lives)
Hans Scholl
"It is Lucasarts"~ LordJhredmo
Well, most likely in the next few years, they will become much faster with large "flash" drives, such as the like the usb ones or in smartphones (with much more storge space, when prices come down). Compters will be able to boot up in, say, 30 seconds instead of a few minutes. browsing the the computer's files will be much quicker too, because its digital instead of a hard disk.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HockeyGoalie35
I wish I had some Combustable Lemons.
Quote:
Originally Posted by =purifier
Granted, but you accidently get blown up with that lemony smell and the
Pine-Sol woman appears out of nowhere and says: "That's the power of Pine-Sol, baby. "
Eh? How so? If you mean improved that's kind of obvious already. I suspect you mean different some other way.
Currently solid state drives degrade the more times data is written and rewritten onto them. That's why they're only really used on laptops and netbooks, expendable/replaceable portable devices and as OS drives for high-end PC's.
After awhile they tend to slow down and the amount of space is effectively reduced because sectors that are written on most often can't be written on any more... it is getting better but that's the price you pay for the speed we all crave.
I have a solid state drive as my OS drive on my PC but every time data is being written to it (which is constantly) it degrades. That's why I have multiple drives, 1 ssd, 4 hdd's (1 for games, 2 on a raid-1 setup and one for downloads and stuff that'll usually cause some major fragmentation on the other drives).
Anyway, it'll have to be replaced after 3-4 years probably but the hard disk drives will last for much longer than that since I have three 1TB drives and a 500GB so I'm future proofed enough.
Soooooooo... in the future solid state drives hopefully won't have these limitations and will be a billion times better than they are now.
I think it's stalking me. 
That car is alive, I tell you! ALIVE!
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