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kbrickley
Supreme [H]ardness
- Joined
- May 13, 2012
- Messages
- 7,514
I don't think that the next tipping point will be strictly OS driven, although OS will likely play a factor in it. If you look at the previous tipping points (and this is my own arbitrary classification of them) they line up kind of like this:
- Speed (early generation tipping points in the 386 days and beyond were driven by speed increases of exponential proportions); with lower speeds it was easier to double and triple your speeds from one generation to the next
- GPU (the switch to the added GPU cards drove lots of upgrades for years as they went through their exponential jumps in performance)
- Multicore (the switch to multi core is still going since not everything is optimized for multicore but since it is becoming more ubiquitous now the ongoing benefits are smaller)
- RAM/64 bit (this is still kind of developing and I think is dependent on some sort of paradigm shift in the other forms of storage)
Now the benefits of those items above are all incremental even for power users (and almost invisible to non-power users). I think we need something else to totally shake things up and force the next upgrade cycle (and I don't think it will be touch exclusively). If I had to guess I would think the next paradigm that will push the upgrade cycle is "Cloud". The ability to seemlessly integrate all your connected devices through the cloud might force the next upgrade cycle (if it can't be fully accomplished with the current hardware). You would have RAM based home/enterprise terminals/servers that shuttle your media between the cloud and your mobile devices. You would have smartphones, tablets, and laptops that seemlessly shift between applications in each form factor. There could be voice or other capabilities that are tied to this seemless convergence of all your devices through some central virtual hub that keeps everything working seemlessly. That is probably still years away though (longer if too many internet restrictions are imposed by ISPs). Just my opinion.
- Speed (early generation tipping points in the 386 days and beyond were driven by speed increases of exponential proportions); with lower speeds it was easier to double and triple your speeds from one generation to the next
- GPU (the switch to the added GPU cards drove lots of upgrades for years as they went through their exponential jumps in performance)
- Multicore (the switch to multi core is still going since not everything is optimized for multicore but since it is becoming more ubiquitous now the ongoing benefits are smaller)
- RAM/64 bit (this is still kind of developing and I think is dependent on some sort of paradigm shift in the other forms of storage)
Now the benefits of those items above are all incremental even for power users (and almost invisible to non-power users). I think we need something else to totally shake things up and force the next upgrade cycle (and I don't think it will be touch exclusively). If I had to guess I would think the next paradigm that will push the upgrade cycle is "Cloud". The ability to seemlessly integrate all your connected devices through the cloud might force the next upgrade cycle (if it can't be fully accomplished with the current hardware). You would have RAM based home/enterprise terminals/servers that shuttle your media between the cloud and your mobile devices. You would have smartphones, tablets, and laptops that seemlessly shift between applications in each form factor. There could be voice or other capabilities that are tied to this seemless convergence of all your devices through some central virtual hub that keeps everything working seemlessly. That is probably still years away though (longer if too many internet restrictions are imposed by ISPs). Just my opinion.
