Interesting Performance Comparison

[Mercutio]

I saw this on Slashdot and thought it was interesting: Phoronix Compares Socket 478 Netburst devices to modern Intel and ARM CPUs.. I've been telling people for a while that the CPU in my cell phone is probably faster than their XP-era Pentium 4 and it turns out that it's almost certainly true, but it's also surprising how narrow the margin of victory is for the low-power new stuff sometimes.

 

[jtr1962]

While on this subject, embedded microcontrollers of the type you might find in a microwave or refrigerator or washing machine these days offer more computing power than something like a 486 did c. 1990 while having a power draw measured in at most tens of mW. That's a huge leap forward.

The real limitations on size soon will be just the need for a human-compatible interface. Desktop computers are still useful for that reason although we're fast approaching the time when the CPU/RAM/storage can easily fit in either a keyboard or monitor. When we finally figure out how to interface directly with a person's mind I've little doubt the physical size or power of CPUs will be a limiting factor.

It's a fun fact thinking most modern desktop systems have the computing power a room-sized supercomputer did back when I was in college in the early 1980s.