MooPig's Tech Coroner :: "The End of the x86 Era"

by Pat Darnell | Jan 8, 2012 | Bryan TX

[Vectra VL420 server type Pentium 4]


The End of the x86 Era | John C. Dvorak | PCMag.com: "All this was due to the x86 juggernaut and established mind share."

The Article says the usual gang of suspects are to blame for demise of the x86 structure. Suspects like fussiness, marketing, public relations, appliance envy, general laziness, and computers as toys, are killing the past work-horse PC architecture. But mainly "the x86 era is over because the public stopped caring about it when Apple introduced the first poke-and-shove GUI on the original iPhone in 2007. (Dvorak, John C. Jan 8, 2012)"

The general group of suspects includes the consumer who really "doesn't care how anything works." It was the dream of the ambiguous consumer that " ... Computers would be so simple that anyone could use them with little fuss ... "

Arguments divide "x86 architecture" into "speed freakism," and "brainiacism."

" ... It marked the victory of those who felt that extra performance was best achieved not by constantly upping the processor's clock speed, but by going for ever more parallel systems with much finer control of performance versus power consumption. (Rupert Goodwins, ZDNet.co.uk, 28 July, 2006 LINK)"

During the lifespan of x86, other architectures were tried by companies like Intel; they experimented with "Ada" and then with a "neural network processor" only to see them not make it into the public consciousness.

Chances are that we never fully use our x86 type Core 2 Duo type processors with our everyday work-play of Apps and software. If you are not mapping the floor of the ocean, or modeling the earth's crust with seismic readouts, you are probably using only a small part of your x86.

Therefore, the whole push for x86 over the decades has been to fine tune with macro-fusion, and micro-fusion, by recognizing instruction parallels. Intel then established ways to speed up the flow in the pipeline structure of the cores. This was done by recognizing at least one in ten instructions can be combined with another instruction, such as a mathematics comparison. Then, Intel limited the power usage for their cores by shutting down areas that were not being used. Intel got its parameters from studying all kinds of softwares.

For instance, what has powered the blog MooPig? Until this December 2010, it was a Vectra VL420 server type Pentium 4. It is a great machine ... for ten years ago. It was all I needed to post and blog and repeat. It quit working, so I replaced it with this Intel CORE i5 Vostro by Dell. The only difference is that I can do three times the posting, blogging and repeating as before.

That is why I feel sort of goofy when I read about all the power spinning in this new PC. What would happen if I ever tapped that resource? What more could I do?

What does the future hold? If you ask an American author, scientist, inventor and futurist -- Kurzweil, -- the future of computing is that all this you see surrounding you now, will be gone. The aspect of information gathering\processing will be part of our human bodies; some sort of nano-tech cells in our neural network. The future is body enhancement; tatt's and inserts. His inventions include optical character recognition... so that tells you a lot.

Kurzweil is more saint than doomsday prophet as his main industry has been to make the blind see, deaf hear and mute speak. Like a hearing aid, which by the way is very delicately hand made, a person wearing one doesn't care how it works -- he just cares that he can hear. That is the future of x86 architecture, does it work?

We cannot be lulled to sleep with ludicrous predictions doled out by research companies. We cannot be subdued by "battery life so we can sit, giggle, poke, and shove icons on a screen," as John Dvorak says.  Rather keep an open mind, and a fervent agenda, so that when the "Singularity happens, it will be ‘very obvious’(LINK)..." But it will not come without demise of the x86's.

'via Blog this'

[Intel CORE i5 Vostro by Dell]
________________Reference
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2398301,00.asp?kc=PCRSS03079TX1K0000585
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/lpv06569/lpv06569.pdf
http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/d845gvsr/sb/cs-008824.htm
http://www.kurzweilai.net/

Attrition Begins with Use of language and neologisms

“I consider myself an inventor, entrepreneur, and author.” Ray Kurzweil

MooPig introduces the level of playing fields called "Futurist." But of course this cannot be any fun unless someone steps up and suggests a "standard body of knowledge" from which to grow this game. Games must have some sort of rules book, no?

That is where our Music Editor afield suggested Raymond Kurzweil. In first inspection this is a perfect choice. However, Raymond Kurzweil has 12 honorary doctorate degrees in 12 different areas of Science, Literature, Music and Engineering.

Therefore, the body of knowledge, BOK, that rules Kurzwiel's thinking far exceeds most everyone who would play the "Futurist." That is why I suggest we concentrate on the subject of "Attrition."

In the game of Attrition, man and machines both suffer being put aside for progression of the "exponentially growing organism." Whether geared or reared, the organism is defined by how it replaces a function, fixes a problem, mitigates disaster.

Yes, no, and maybe so, are the relevant answers to all attrition's drives.

For Starters, here lies the early developments of 2000 to 2010, according to the BOK of Ray:

The time table of Raymond Kurzweil places most emphasis on intelligent machines emergence during the 21st century.
Early 2000s
Translating telephones allow people to speak to each other in different languages.
Machines designed to transcribe speech into computer text allow deaf people to understand spoken words.
Exoskeleton, robotic leg prostheses allow the paraplegic to walk.
Telephone calls are routinely screened by intelligent answering machines that ask questions to determine the calls nature and priority.
"Cybernetic chauffeurs" can drive cars for humans and can be retrofitted into existing cars. They work by communicating with other vehicles and with sensors embedded along the roads.

[edit] Early 21st century
The classroom is dominated by computers. Intelligent course ware that can tailor itself to each student by recognizing their strengths and weaknesses. Media technology allows students to manipulate and interact with virtual depictions of the systems and personalities they are studying.
A small number of highly skilled people dominates the entire production sector. Tailoring of products for individuals is common.
Drugs are designed and tested in simulations that mimic the human body.
Blind people navigate and read text using machines that can visually recognize features of their environment.
Note: Since the "Early 2000s" and "Early 21st century" predictions are both listed before the "2010" predictions in the technology Chronology, it can be assumed that the time frame for the first two is 2000-2010.

I see the immediate difference between the older and the younger to be the dissolve of "metaphysics, transcendence, and language limits." Bucky Fuller had much to do with opening up the engineering world from its burdensome archaic language. Due to no small influence by Fuller-isms, in his century, all areas of engineering expanded exponentially and exploded in the last fifty years of the 20th century.

"My ideas have undergone a process of emergence by emergency. When they are needed badly enough, they are accepted," said R. Buckminster Fuller probably helped Ray Kurzweil build "bridges" to his function as futurist.

Kurzweil is described as.. "[he had come] to realize that his success as an inventor depended largely on proper timing.. [for example] ..His new inventions had to be released onto the market only [when] many other supporting technologies [were available to make it all reasonable.

A device issued too early and without proper refinement would lack some key element of functionality, and a device put out too late would find the market already flooded with a different product, or consumers demanding something better.

Therefore and so, in the larger scheme of "Futurist: Game of Attrition" There is previous body of knowledge predating Raymond Kurzweil. In another era I suppose these two fellows would have been Rasputins to the societies they lived in. However they have humbled their far-reaching intellects to include their life achievements in timetables that behoove us and the next futurists:

Buckminster Fuller spoke and wrote in a unique style and thought it crucial to describe the world as accurately as possible.[21] Fuller often created long run-on sentences and used unusual compound words (omniwell-informed, intertransformative, omni-interaccommodative, omniself-regenerative) as well as terms he himself coined.[22] Fuller used the word 'Universe' without the definite or indefinite articles (a or the) and always capitalized the word. Universe to Fuller meant the sum of all experience.[23]

The words 'down' and 'up,' according to Fuller, are awkward in that they refer to a planar concept of direction inconsistent with human experience. The words 'in' and 'out' should be used instead, he argued, because they better describe an object's relation to a gravitational center, the Earth.

'World-around' is a term coined by Fuller to replace worldwide. The general belief in a flat Earth died out in the Middle Ages, so using wide is an anachronism when referring to the surface of the Earth — a spheroidal surface has area and encloses a volume, but has no width.

Fuller held that unthinking use of obsolete scientific ideas detracts from and misleads intuition. The terms sunsight and sunclipse are other neologisms, according to Allegra Fuller Snyder, collectively coined by the Fuller family, replacing sunrise and sunset in order to overturn the geocentric bias of most pre-Copernican celestial mechanics. Fuller also coined the phrase Spaceship Earth, and coined the term (but did not invent) tensegrity.

It has also been claimed that Fuller coined the phrase debunk in 1927, but many credit William Woodward for the term in 1923.

References
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Raymond_Kurzweil&action=edit&section=15
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller