Something Wicked, This Way Comes
Wicked in the sense of wicked-good for computer DJs that is! The stage of computer technology is set to change drastically before our eyes in just the next ten years. What does that mean for those of us already using a Computerized Performance System or a laptop now? For lack of a better term, I’ll call it a major shift in paradigm from fragile components and trying to squeeze more speed out of CPUs to totally integrated solid-state memory and storage to absurd numbers of cores on a single chip as well as integrated CPU/GPU functionality.
The first item that is going to drastically change the face of computing is that of memristors. A memristor essentially can remember how much current has passed across it even when there is no power. This means that the age of the binary computer is quickly coming to an end and faster, much more flexible computers are just over the horizon. In other words, with throwing out the simplistic ones and zeros of binary (on and and off states if you really want to get technical) and ushering in a near era of base 10 or even higher means that computers will be tremendously faster and quite capable of storing hundreds of times more data in the same amount of space!
For example, take your average crackberry (blackberry for all you nonbelievers), a computer of comparable size ten years from now will rival anything sitting on our desks or mounted in our gig-rigs having just as much memory and storage capacity or even more. Think several hundred GB… in the palm of your hand.
Next up on the chopping block – and coming to a computer near you in the next year or two – will be computers sporting CPUs with even more cores. Today dual and even quad core CPUs are fairly common. In just the next two years you will see eight core and sixteen core CPUs become the norm as Intel – followed closely by AMD – shifts to an even smaller scale for IC chips. But that’s not all, both companies are also working on integrating the GPU functions on the same die as the CPU too. For instance, imagine a sixteen core CPU chip that has four of those cores dedicated to just processing video! With the memristor making analog computing a reality in the near future, these sixteen and yes, even thirty-two core CPUs with integrated GPUs of the future will finally have me shutting up about the lack of power to provide high-end video on everyone’s sucky little laptop! Laptops will no longer suck!!!
Have you heard about USB 3.0? Well you will likely be hearing much more about it by 2010 when it will be available and the gear manufacturers start really pushing it. While it is going to use a slightly different connector than USB/USB 2.0, it is supposed to be backwards compatible and vice versa. Burst bus speeds are going to be faster by a factor of ten – 480Mbps up to 4.8Gbps. But of course the sustained data throughput is going to be much lower than that, so don’t think about getting rid of those SATA II drives just yet, they will still be much faster in large data transfers lasting more than a few seconds. Firewire will be coming out with a new spec in the near future too – 3.2Gbps – and while it’s not as fast on paper, in reality it will offer much more in the department of stability and data throughput over even the new USB spec. Also of note is the fact that up to one amp in power will be available through USB 3.0, up from just 0.1 amps available now.
Next on this parade of futuristic gizmos is that of improved Operating Systems (OS). Both Microsoft and Apple are working on new releases of their OS. Mac OS X is a fully integrated 64-bit OS where Windows has been lingering between the venerable 32-bit and newer 64-bit environments. Even so, with every Windows-based computer manufactured now having a 64-bit CPU, sooner or later the software developers will have to follow suit with a true 64-bit OS – much like Windows 3.1 spelled the end of the 16-bit OS. Windows 7 is slated for an initial release in 2010, but Microsoft will still be offering 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the OS, however this will crate difficulties for anyone wanting their CPS to utilize anything more than 3GB of RAM. In other words, when memristors replace RAM and HDDs, 32-bit versions of Windows will not do you any good if you have more than 3GB.
Another great innovation coming our way is gesture recognition. I wrote about this technology coming to the fore over two years ago when I was writing my newest book – Introduction to Computer DJing & CPS. As the name implies, say goodbye to your mouse and possibly even your keyboard as computers are being programmed to recognize certain hand gestures. Think along the lines of the movie Minority Report where the police officer was manipulating images and data with simple arm and hand gestures, this is what is coming our way in just another year or two, only it will be without the holograms. In fact, the first incarnations of this technology is already here; touch screens followed by Microsoft’s cute toy called Surface and even the Apple iPhone to name a few. Asus jumped in early too with their Eee PC 900 as did Dell with their Latitude tablet PC.
Anyway, the past ten years of Computer DJing has seen drastic changes in CPU speeds, RAM and storage capacity, high-end video and audio have become a reality, as well as the software becoming much more powerful and flexible. The next ten years looks like there will be incredible advances which will literally change the face of how we manipulate audio, karaoke and video files!
Tags: amd, apple, cpu, dual core, firewire 3.2Gb, gpu, intel, iphone, mac, memristor, microsoft, quad core, solid state memory, usb 3.0, windows
