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Aydan <hes### [at] hendrik-sachse net> wrote:
> The engineers didn't know how to either.
> They had to spend decades to perfect the processes.
To be fair, they could build a 64TB USB drive. It's just that nobody
would buy it because it would probably cost more than your year's salary.
Hence it makes no sense to make one until the technology becomes
significantly cheaper.
--
- Warp
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On 08/03/2012 01:08 PM, Warp wrote:
> To be fair, they could build a 64TB USB drive. It's just that nobody
> would buy it because it would probably cost more than your year's salary.
> Hence it makes no sense to make one until the technology becomes
> significantly cheaper.
Right. /That/ at least makes some sense. Nobody would buy such a
product, so there's no point trying to make it.
If there was a 64TB HD, I'm fairly certain that somebody would want to
buy it. The only reason it wouldn't sell is if it was too expensive.
Obviously everything starts off expensive - there are design costs to
recoup. But would it be prohibitively expensive?
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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> Aydan <hes### [at] hendrik-sachsenet> wrote:
> > The engineers didn't know how to either.
> > They had to spend decades to perfect the processes.
>
> To be fair, they could build a 64TB USB drive. It's just that nobody
> would buy it because it would probably cost more than your year's salary.
> Hence it makes no sense to make one until the technology becomes
> significantly cheaper.
>
> --
> - Warp
A 64GigaByte (Note: You wrote TeraByte) flash drive 12 years ago (wikipedia
claims the first ones were sold in 2000) would not only have been extremely
expensive but extremely bulky as well. I'd say it would have been as big as a
whole computer case. As I said, storage density was low in those times. And I'd
suspect they wouldn't have had a controller capable of adressing that much
memory either.
And terabytes have only become possible since the advent of 64bit addressing I
think.
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Aydan <hes### [at] hendrik-sachsenet> wrote:
> And terabytes have only become possible since the advent of 64bit addressing I
> think.
64-bit CPUs were first developed in the early 90's.
--
- Warp
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On 03/08/2012 08:13 AM, Invisible wrote:
> On 08/03/2012 01:08 PM, Warp wrote:
>
>> To be fair, they could build a 64TB USB drive. It's just that nobody
>> would buy it because it would probably cost more than your year's salary.
>> Hence it makes no sense to make one until the technology becomes
>> significantly cheaper.
>
> Right. /That/ at least makes some sense. Nobody would buy such a
> product, so there's no point trying to make it.
>
> If there was a 64TB HD, I'm fairly certain that somebody would want to
> buy it. The only reason it wouldn't sell is if it was too expensive.
> Obviously everything starts off expensive - there are design costs to
> recoup. But would it be prohibitively expensive?
I wouldn't be able to cite and articles on the subject, but it seems to
me that the mechanical HD is headed the way for the dodo bird
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On 03/08/2012 08:35 AM, James Holsenback wrote:
> On 03/08/2012 08:13 AM, Invisible wrote:
>> On 08/03/2012 01:08 PM, Warp wrote:
>>
>>> To be fair, they could build a 64TB USB drive. It's just that nobody
>>> would buy it because it would probably cost more than your year's
>>> salary.
>>> Hence it makes no sense to make one until the technology becomes
>>> significantly cheaper.
>>
>> Right. /That/ at least makes some sense. Nobody would buy such a
>> product, so there's no point trying to make it.
>>
>> If there was a 64TB HD, I'm fairly certain that somebody would want to
>> buy it. The only reason it wouldn't sell is if it was too expensive.
>> Obviously everything starts off expensive - there are design costs to
>> recoup. But would it be prohibitively expensive?
>
> I wouldn't be able to cite and articles on the subject, but it seems to
> me that the mechanical HD is headed the way for the dodo bird
LOL ... finger don't fail me now ... of the dodo bird
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Am 08.03.2012 10:31, schrieb Invisible:
> So... why didn't they just make the 4GB drives to start with? Why did
> they have to start by making 64MB drives, and then starting to make
> 128MB drives, and then moving on to 256MB drives, and so forth? Why
> couldn't they just go directly to 4GB? What enables them to make those
> today but prevented them from making them back then?
>
> Why do you have to design, test, manufacture and sell a 64MB drive
> before you can attempt to make a 128MB one? How does the former help you
> do the latter? Why can't you just jump straight to 4GB? (Or perhaps even
> more than that?)
>
> I can't think of any /technical/ reason. (Besides "that's how it's
> done".) The only rational reason I can think of is that if you keep
> putting out slightly better devices year after year, people are going to
> keep upgrading their stuff, and that gives you income. If you just went
> straight out and sold the best possible device, then once everyone has
> got one, you'd have nothing new to sell to them, and you'd have no money.
Oh, Andy... *Sigh*
How about... sheer device size? You know, last time I heard, you need
transistors for flash memory cells, and you need silicon real estate for
transistors. I guess you /did/ hear about Moore's Law some time?
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On 08/03/2012 01:35 PM, James Holsenback wrote:
> I wouldn't be able to cite and articles on the subject, but it seems to
> me that the mechanical HD is headed the way for the dodo bird
What, forced to extinction by loss of habitat and alien predator
species? ;-)
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On 03/08/2012 08:56 AM, Invisible wrote:
> On 08/03/2012 01:35 PM, James Holsenback wrote:
>
>> I wouldn't be able to cite and articles on the subject, but it seems to
>> me that the mechanical HD is headed the way for the dodo bird
>
> What, forced to extinction by loss of habitat and alien predator
> species? ;-)
>
It was just a metaphor ... I supposed the alien predator would be the
solid state drive, and now that I think of it the loss of habitat would
be the new ultra-books ... oh and the MacBook Air
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>>> I wouldn't be able to cite and articles on the subject, but it seems to
>>> me that the mechanical HD is headed the way for the dodo bird
>>
>> What, forced to extinction by loss of habitat and alien predator
>> species? ;-)
>>
>
> It was just a metaphor ... I supposed the alien predator would be the
> solid state drive, and now that I think of it the loss of habitat would
> be the new ultra-books ... oh and the MacBook Air
So... oddly apt then? ;-)
I don't know, man. SSD is still too expensive for anyone except
performance freaks. More bafflingly, even though the performance of SSD
should be orders of magnitude superior to HD, apparently some of the
best HDs can actually surpass SSD. That shouldn't be possible, but
somehow it is. I find that utterly bizarre, but those are apparently the
numbers.
Whether SSD will /become/ cheap enough remains to be seen. It's now
available in capacities large enough to actually be useful, so now we
just need the prices to come down far enough.
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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> I don't know, man. SSD is still too expensive for anyone except
> performance freaks. More bafflingly, even though the performance of SSD
> should be orders of magnitude superior to HD, apparently some of the
> best HDs can actually surpass SSD. That shouldn't be possible, but
> somehow it is. I find that utterly bizarre, but those are apparently the
> numbers.
Well I have two SSDs and I'm not a performace freak.
> More bafflingly, even though the performance of SSD
> should be orders of magnitude superior to HD, apparently some of the
> best HDs can actually surpass SSD. That shouldn't be possible, but
> somehow it is. I find that utterly bizarre, but those are apparently the
> numbers.
Depends on what key parameters youre looking at. In sheer bulk transfer rate and
especially write speed, it's possible for a mechanical drive to outperform an
SSD.
But for random access you'll be hard pressed to find a mechanical drive
outperforming an SSD.
And that's the main reason I have my SSDs. For the random access speed.
My SSDs have a random access speed in the low megabyte range, but thats still 10
times faster than my mechanical ones (late model 1 & 2 TB Western Digital SATA2
drives).
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On 08/03/2012 12:42 PM, Invisible wrote:
>>>> You could just as well ask why don't they make 64TB drives right now.
>>
>>> Yep, I'd be interested to hear the answer to that one too.
>>
>> Did you know that technology has to first be developed before it can
>> be used?
>
> OK. So why spend time and money developing a 32TB drive when you could
> just go develop a 64TB drive instead?
Several years ago I used to work for Motorola in one of their
semiconductor factories. I seem to remember that there was covered
switch that when thrown would change the factory output from DIL CMOS
chips to microprocessors without having to go through the process of
designing the new chips or retooling the factory. It also connected the
new suppliers. </leg_pull>
--
Regards
Stephen
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Am 08.03.2012 12:44, schrieb Invisible:
> I can understand how something /complicated/ - like, say, a processor -
> would take time. Inventing a new feature takes a lot of R&D. But just
> making the transistors smaller? I don't really see why they have to
> shrink in tiny little baby steps. Why not just go the whole hog straight
> away?
Because maybe - just maybe - they have to /find out/ how to make that
next "tiny little baby step"? After all, they're creating structure
sizes nowadays where naive classic photolitpgraphy with ~400 nm UV light
would fail utterly. Remember that old rule that you can't etch
structures smaller than the wavelength of the light you're using?
Some of the "baby steps" involved:
- Replacing the ~400 nm Hg vapor lamps with ~250 nm KrF excimer lasers.
Obviously you need to figure out how to build an excimer laser for this
feat. You may also need to develop new optical materials (in case the
old ones absorb the new wavelength) and/or new photoresists (in case the
old ones are insensitive to the new wavelength).
- Replacing the ~250 nm KrF excimer lasers with ~200 nm ArF excimer
lasers. Obviously you need to extrapolate your excimer laser design to
use ArF, and again you may need new optical materials and/or photoresists.
- Replacing the liquid etching agent with plasma, to reduce undercutting
of the photoresist. Obviously you need to figure out that plasma etching
will have these benefits in the first place, and then find ways to
handle the plasma in the fab.
- Exposing the photoresist in liquid rather than in air or vacuum, to
reduce wavelength accordingly. Obviously you need to find a suitable
liquid with high purity, and figure out how to handle it in the fab.
- Designing masks in such a way that they no longer directly correspond
to the desired structures, but rather cause interference patterns of the
desired shape. Obviously you need to develop suitable algorithms to
generate the masks from the desired structures, and you probably need
quite some computing power to pull this off.
Other steps may involve improvements of photoresists and application
techniques (you want a thin yet uniform coating, which adheres well to
the wafer) plus suitable developer, etching and resist stripping agents;
improvements in wafer cleaning processes; reduction of mechanical
tolerances; and other some such. Much of this goes into overcoming
problems that hadn't been anticipated before.
Last not least, there's also the question of cost: Using cutting-edge
technology for memory ICs would result in prohibitively high per-bit
costs; such production lines are therefore almost exclusively used for
high-margin products such as high-performance CPUs or GPUs, until the
next generation of cutting-edge fab technology becomes available. The
older production lines might then be used for another generation to
manufacture low-cost CPUs and GPUs, and finally for stuff where
per-transistor costs are more important than die size, such as memory ICs.
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On 08/03/2012 02:50 PM, Aydan wrote:
> Invisible<voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> I don't know, man. SSD is still too expensive for anyone except
>> performance freaks. More bafflingly, even though the performance of SSD
>> should be orders of magnitude superior to HD, apparently some of the
>> best HDs can actually surpass SSD. That shouldn't be possible, but
>> somehow it is. I find that utterly bizarre, but those are apparently the
>> numbers.
>
> Well I have two SSDs and I'm not a performace freak.
You clearly have a hell of a lot more money than I'll ever have.
Or rather, you /had/ a lot of money... ;-)
>> More bafflingly, even though the performance of SSD
>> should be orders of magnitude superior to HD, apparently some of the
>> best HDs can actually surpass SSD. That shouldn't be possible, but
>> somehow it is. I find that utterly bizarre, but those are apparently the
>> numbers.
>
> Depends on what key parameters youre looking at. In sheer bulk transfer rate and
> especially write speed, it's possible for a mechanical drive to outperform an
> SSD.
> But for random access you'll be hard pressed to find a mechanical drive
> outperforming an SSD.
> And that's the main reason I have my SSDs. For the random access speed.
You would expect an SSD to blitz a HD for random access. But even just
for read access, you would have expected a purely electronic device to
be many billion times faster than a mechanical HD. And they aren't, for
some reason...
Write performance is another matter. Apparently you have to bulk-erase
cells before you can write them again. So I can understand that being
slower. Even so, you'd think some kind of parallel processing
arrangement could hide some of that...
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On 08/03/2012 03:23 PM, clipka wrote:
> Last not least, there's also the question of cost: Using cutting-edge
> technology for memory ICs would result in prohibitively high per-bit
> costs; such production lines are therefore almost exclusively used for
> high-margin products such as high-performance CPUs or GPUs, until the
> next generation of cutting-edge fab technology becomes available. The
> older production lines might then be used for another generation to
> manufacture low-cost CPUs and GPUs, and finally for stuff where
> per-transistor costs are more important than die size, such as memory ICs.
Right. So that's why, even though 40nm technology already exists, they
don't use it just to build (say) USB flash drives. (?)
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On 08/03/2012 3:53 PM, Invisible wrote:
> to be many billion times faster
Do you really mean "billion"? :-P
--
Regards
Stephen
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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> On 08/03/2012 02:50 PM, Aydan wrote:
> > Well I have two SSDs and I'm not a performace freak.
>
> You clearly have a hell of a lot more money than I'll ever have.
>
> Or rather, you /had/ a lot of money... ;-)
>
I spent all of 200€ for both. Not a lot of money for me. I mean I bought am
Gaming rig for about 1000€ a few years back.
> You would expect an SSD to blitz a HD for random access. But even just
> for read access, you would have expected a purely electronic device to
> be many billion times faster than a mechanical HD. And they aren't, for
> some reason...
>
> Write performance is another matter. Apparently you have to bulk-erase
> cells before you can write them again. So I can understand that being
> slower. Even so, you'd think some kind of parallel processing
> arrangement could hide some of that...
TRIM is the keyword. Pages are erased during idle time of the disk.
The transfer speeds come from the Addressing delays and acrual write and read
timing constraints. Yes, silicon memory does have a finite bandwidth.
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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> On 08/03/2012 03:23 PM, clipka wrote:
>
> > Last not least, there's also the question of cost: Using cutting-edge
> > technology for memory ICs would result in prohibitively high per-bit
> > costs; such production lines are therefore almost exclusively used for
> > high-margin products such as high-performance CPUs or GPUs, until the
> > next generation of cutting-edge fab technology becomes available. The
> > older production lines might then be used for another generation to
> > manufacture low-cost CPUs and GPUs, and finally for stuff where
> > per-transistor costs are more important than die size, such as memory ICs.
>
> Right. So that's why, even though 40nm technology already exists, they
> don't use it just to build (say) USB flash drives. (?)
They use 25nm chips for SSDs nowadays.
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"Aydan" <hes### [at] hendrik-sachsenet> wrote:
> Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> > On 08/03/2012 02:50 PM, Aydan wrote:
> > > Well I have two SSDs and I'm not a performace freak.
> >
> > You clearly have a hell of a lot more money than I'll ever have.
> >
> > Or rather, you /had/ a lot of money... ;-)
> >
>
> I spent all of 200€ for both.
Just to clarify: Both together cost 200€
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On 3/8/2012 1:31, Invisible wrote:
> Today's cars have
> performance within a few percent of cars made 40 years ago.
Uh, what? 40 years ago, 12MPG was a decent mileage, and you changed the oil
every 3000 miles or so, and added oil in between. 40 years ago, cars didn't
even have six digits on the odometer, because almost none of them lasted
100,000 miles. Electric windows and stereo radios were luxuries.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
People tell me I am the counter-example.
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On 3/8/2012 7:23, clipka wrote:
> "tiny little baby step"? After all, they're creating structure sizes
> nowadays where naive classic photolitpgraphy with ~400 nm UV light would
> fail utterly.
Somewhat relevant: http://htwins.net/scale2/
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
People tell me I am the counter-example.
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On 3/8/2012 7:56, Invisible wrote:
> Right. So that's why, even though 40nm technology already exists, they don't
> use it just to build (say) USB flash drives. (?)
Because the factories are very expensive to build (like, there's at most a
handful in the world), and they're busy building other things that give
bigger profits.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
People tell me I am the counter-example.
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On 3/8/2012 5:13, Invisible wrote:
> would it be prohibitively expensive?
Would it be more expensive than 4 16TB drives? Most likely.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
People tell me I am the counter-example.
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> Somewhat relevant: http://htwins.net/scale2/
An alpha helix is of comparable size to a carbon atom?
Really?
Even though an alpha helix is composed of dozens of amino acids which
are built out of dozens of carbon atoms?
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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> An alpha helix is of comparable size to a carbon atom?
> Really?
> Even though an alpha helix is composed of dozens of amino acids which
> are built out of dozens of carbon atoms?
You are being confused by the logarithmic nature of the scale. The
alpha helix and the carbon atom are not at the same zoom level, even
though they are close.
--
- Warp
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>> Assuming the supported resolution is changing proportionately, this
is actually quadratic growth in terms of number of pixels.
>
> The standard measurement for screen size is the length of the
diagonal.
I think my statement is still true.
On 3/8/2012 1:10 AM, Warp wrote:
> Slime<pov### [at] slimelandcom> wrote:
>> > Monitor screen sizes do not seem to follow this trend, however, and
>> > seem to grow a lot more linearly.
>
>> Assuming the supported resolution is changing proportionately, this is
>> actually quadratic growth in terms of number of pixels.
>
> The standard measurement for screen size is the length of the diagonal.
>
>> This is probably limited by graphics hardware in some way (although I'm
>> not sure how fast that grows in "power"). It's also limited by the fact
>> that popular OSs such as Windows still use pixels as a unit of
>> measurement, so there's limited benefit to higher resolutions as it
>> shrinks the size of important objects on screen.
>
> Resolution has little to do with screen size.
>
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On 07/03/2012 19:36, Warp wrote:
> It's a common phenomenon that things like hard drive sizes, RAM sizes
> and processor speeds tend to grow at a superlinear rate over time in
> home computers. (I won't say "exponential" because someone recently
> complained about that, and I don't have hard data to back up that claim.)
> Very typically, for example, each new hard drive one buys tends to be
> larger than the combined sizes of all hard drives that person has bought
> in the past. (I'm of course talking about the average computer user rather
> than those who buy hard drives like candy, eg. because they need them for
> multimedia projects or something.)
>
> Monitor screen sizes do not seem to follow this trend, however, and
> seem to grow a lot more linearly.
I wouldn't have expected the physical diagonal size to increase
exponentially for obvious reasons, but you might have expected
resolution to do so (if you assume "pixel rate" or something could
double every 18 months, then the "dpi" should double every 3 years).
The main problem is that Windows doesn't work nicely with higher
resolutions. I had about 140ppi on my old laptop and even then the
standard windows GUI was getting too small to read. I experimented with
the higher dpi settings but lots of software didn't play nicely (missing
icons etc.) so in the end I just turned the screen resolution down.
Once a new version of Windows (and 3rd party software) is available with
proper support for higher resolutions, then I believe you will see the
drive for higher resolutions start for windows machines (not just
monitors, but graphics cards, display interfaces etc). Then a 22"
300ppi (5760x3240) display will be quite standard, and children will
laugh when told about the days when you could actually see the
individual pixels on a screen and the text was all a bit blocky or
blurry depending what setting you used.
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> I wouldn't have expected the physical diagonal size to increase
> exponentially for obvious reasons, but you might have expected
> resolution to do so (if you assume "pixel rate" or something could
> double every 18 months, then the "dpi" should double every 3 years).
>
> The main problem is that Windows doesn't work nicely with higher
> resolutions.
/Windows/ doesn't support it? Or just that every 3rd-party crock of junk
ported from Windows 3.1 or only tested on one PC assumes that everybody
has exactly the same DPI?
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> Why do you have to design, test, manufacture and sell a 64MB drive
> before you can attempt to make a 128MB one? How does the former help you
> do the latter? Why can't you just jump straight to 4GB? (Or perhaps even
> more than that?)
You need to learn how to make 4GB ones, or more correctly, how to build
a factory to mass produce 4GB ones. And you're not going to do that
overnight in the lab if you are currently only making 64MB ones. It
simply won't happen, you'll go bankrupt (because your competitors
figured out how to make 256MB ones and you didn't) before you figure it out.
The only way to do it is to stretch your existing process to make 128MB
or 256MB ones, trying to fix the odd few problems that will no doubt
come up. That is called research and development.
Once you have a stable process for 256MB ones, you can again try and
push to make 512MB or 1GB ones, you will no doubt come up against
different problems than you had last time, you might need some fairly
big steps in technology development, but it's possible.
> Then again, cars don't improve in performance at all. Today's cars have
> performance within a few percent of cars made 40 years ago. And yet,
> people still buy cars.
Compare pretty much any criteria and cars have vastly improved. MPG,
power, safety rating, braking distance, amount of rust, noise level,
pollution level, ride quality. It is quite an achievement given that
many of those factors are trade-offs against each other (eg better
safety means higher weight which means lower MPG, yet MPG has increased
significantly).
> On the other hand, pens and pencils don't improve in performance either,
> and they still sell plenty of those.
That's just because you don't work with designing pens :-) I'm pretty
sure they are continually using the latest materials and inks available,
you just don't notice that your pen doesn't snap as easily or
clog-up/stop working as often as it used to.
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On 10/04/2012 16:01, Invisible wrote:
>> I wouldn't have expected the physical diagonal size to increase
>> exponentially for obvious reasons, but you might have expected
>> resolution to do so (if you assume "pixel rate" or something could
>> double every 18 months, then the "dpi" should double every 3 years).
>>
>> The main problem is that Windows doesn't work nicely with higher
>> resolutions.
>
> /Windows/ doesn't support it? Or just that every 3rd-party crock of junk
> ported from Windows 3.1 or only tested on one PC assumes that everybody
> has exactly the same DPI?
Maybe it's just so clunky for devlopers to support it they don't bother?
I certainly have no idea how any of my programs would look. MS need
to make it easier/mandatory in the APIs and development tools to cater
for higher DPI environments (maybe they did that already for Windows 8,
haven't checked the latest versions).
Android is an example of a better way to do it (but probably not the
best way).
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>> /Windows/ doesn't support it? Or just that every 3rd-party
>
> Maybe it's just so clunky for devlopers to support it they don't bother?
I don't know. I haven't looked into this sort of thing. I thought there
was a "change DPI" setting somewhere in the control panel, but I've got
no idea how various programs would react to that.
> Android is an example of a better way to do it (but probably not the
> best way).
I know nothing about Andriod.
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> You need to learn how to make 4GB ones, or more correctly, how to build
> a factory to mass produce 4GB ones. And you're not going to do that
> overnight in the lab if you are currently only making 64MB ones. It
> simply won't happen, you'll go bankrupt (because your competitors
> figured out how to make 256MB ones and you didn't) before you figure it
> out.
>
> The only way to do it is to stretch your existing process to make 128MB
> or 256MB ones, trying to fix the odd few problems that will no doubt
> come up. That is called research and development.
>
> Once you have a stable process for 256MB ones, you can again try and
> push to make 512MB or 1GB ones, you will no doubt come up against
> different problems than you had last time, you might need some fairly
> big steps in technology development, but it's possible.
Perhaps it's because I don't work in that sort of industry. All this
sounds kind of abstract to me. I don't see how going to 10x is "harder"
than going to 2x. I'm not saying it isn't, I'm saying I don't understand
why.
>> Then again, cars don't improve in performance at all. Today's cars have
>> performance within a few percent of cars made 40 years ago. And yet,
>> people still buy cars.
>
> Compare pretty much any criteria and cars have vastly improved.
How about, uh, speed?
30 years ago, cars could do 70 MPH. Today, cars can do 70 MPH. As far as
I know, there's little to no improvement in acceleration either.
Expensive cars were always faster than cheap cars, but other than that,
not much change in three decades. Braking is the only thing I can think
of which might have improved; we have ABS now.
Cars do seem to have more "gadgets" now than they used to. Once upon a
time, if you wanted electric windows, you'd have to buy a luxury sports
car. Today it's hard to find a car /without/ electric windows. I'm not
sure how or why that happened, BTH.
>> On the other hand, pens and pencils don't improve in performance either,
>> and they still sell plenty of those.
>
> That's just because you don't work with designing pens :-) I'm pretty
> sure they are continually using the latest materials and inks available,
> you just don't notice that your pen doesn't snap as easily or
> clog-up/stop working as often as it used to.
To some extent, it's the sort of device that you only notice when it
/stops/ working. That said, there's been no /noticeable/ improvement.
And my point, of course, was that even if pens never did improve ever
again, people would /still/ buy them. Because they're a consumable item.
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>> Compare pretty much any criteria and cars have vastly improved.
>
> How about, uh, speed?
>
> 30 years ago, cars could do 70 MPH. Today, cars can do 70 MPH. As far as
> I know, there's little to no improvement in acceleration either.
> Expensive cars were always faster than cheap cars, but other than that,
> not much change in three decades. Braking is the only thing I can think
> of which might have improved; we have ABS now.
This is what happens when you hit [send] too fast. ;-)
I wonder how much computers would have improved if it was illegal for a
computer to perform more than seventy billion instructions per second?
Brings a whole new meaning to the words "Internet Explorer has performed
an illegal operation and must be shut down". ;-)
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> Perhaps it's because I don't work in that sort of industry. All this
> sounds kind of abstract to me. I don't see how going to 10x is "harder"
> than going to 2x. I'm not saying it isn't, I'm saying I don't understand
> why.
Short answer: Go and research how ICs are made.
Long answer: Think of something you could teach yourself to make (eg an
origami bird or something) and imagine making those and selling them.
Now consider how hard it would be to make them 2x smaller, a few folds
might be a bit tricky, but you'd probably manage after a few tests. Now
consider if you had to make them 10x smaller, suddenly some folds might
become impossible unless you use tweezers or something, you might need
to buy different paper, change the design slightly, it is going to take
orders of magnitude longer to teach yourself how to reliably make them
repeatedly, and while you're doing that you're not making the bigger
ones so you're not getting any money.
If you instead started making the 2x smaller version and got happy with
that, you could then go 2x smaller again, maybe having to make 1 design
change. At each step you have far fewer problems, if you try and jump
10x or 20x you're just going to give it up because it won't work and you
won't be able to figure out why.
> 30 years ago, cars could do 70 MPH. Today, cars can do 70 MPH. As far as
> I know, there's little to no improvement in acceleration either.
The problem with speed is that for most people buying a car, price and
economy comes before top speed, and especially in most countries it's
illegal to drive much above 70 or 80mph. So obviously car companies
have concentrated on keeping price low and reducing fuel usage rather
than top speed. But then saying that, if you want to you can easily buy
a cheap family car that will comfortably go well above 100 mph without
shaking itself apart - how many cars could do that 30 years ago?
> Expensive cars were always faster than cheap cars, but other than that,
> not much change in three decades. Braking is the only thing I can think
> of which might have improved; we have ABS now.
All the other things I mentioned too, particularly MPG is the main one
that is top of most manufacturers list of things to improve.
> Cars do seem to have more "gadgets" now than they used to. Once upon a
> time, if you wanted electric windows, you'd have to buy a luxury sports
> car. Today it's hard to find a car /without/ electric windows. I'm not
> sure how or why that happened, BTH.
Same for air-con, electric mirrors, information displays, immobilisers,
CD players, navigation etc. All stuff starts out on the
top-of-the-range models and works it way down to standard on the
cheapest ones.
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On 10/04/2012 16:53, Invisible wrote:
>>> /Windows/ doesn't support it? Or just that every 3rd-party
>>
>> Maybe it's just so clunky for devlopers to support it they don't bother?
>
> I don't know. I haven't looked into this sort of thing. I thought there
> was a "change DPI" setting somewhere in the control panel, but I've got
> no idea how various programs would react to that.
>
>> Android is an example of a better way to do it (but probably not the
>> best way).
>
> I know nothing about Andriod.
This is a good overview, there are no pre-requisites!
http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html
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Le 2012/04/10 11:53, Invisible a écrit :
>>> /Windows/ doesn't support it? Or just that every 3rd-party
>>
>> Maybe it's just so clunky for devlopers to support it they don't bother?
>
> I don't know. I haven't looked into this sort of thing. I thought there
> was a "change DPI" setting somewhere in the control panel, but I've got
> no idea how various programs would react to that.
There is. Display properties, Advance button, general tab.
Defaulted to 72 DPI in win 9x and 2000.
Defaults to 96 in Windows XP and probably Vista. Can be set to a
"standard" 120 DPI or an arbitrary custom value.
The main problem, is that many applications' display will break down if
you increase the DPI setting past 96. Some web page layout will also get
broken if you change your DPI setting. That's why using absolute PIXEL
values is realy bad.
A viable solution is to sellect the apearance tab and increase the point
size of your characters. That won't affect the graphics elements but
will make your text large enough to be read.
Selecting a good high readability font also help.
Alain
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>> I don't know. I haven't looked into this sort of thing. I thought there
>> was a "change DPI" setting somewhere in the control panel, but I've got
>> no idea how various programs would react to that.
>
> There is.
I thought so.
> The main problem, is that many applications' display will break down if
> you increase the DPI setting past 96.
Any specific reason?
> Some web page layout will also get
> broken if you change your DPI setting. That's why using absolute PIXEL
> values is realy bad.
Well, yeah, we all knew that. ;-)
(Though of course if the page is loaded with graphics, all of those are
rendered at fixed pixel sizes, so...)
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On 4/10/2012 8:54, Invisible wrote:
> How about, uh, speed?
Look at cars where speed above 70MPH actually matters. Like, say, race cars.
They've gotten much faster.
Cars certainly go faster than 70MPH. Have you tried the difference in ride
quality at 140MPH between a modern car and a 30-year-old car?
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
"Oh no! We're out of code juice!"
"Don't panic. There's beans and filters
in the cabinet."
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On 4/10/2012 7:55, scott wrote:
> text was all a bit blocky or blurry depending what setting you used.
300DPI is still a bit blocky and blurry on paper.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
"Oh no! We're out of code juice!"
"Don't panic. There's beans and filters
in the cabinet."
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On 4/10/2012 8:47, scott wrote:
> Maybe it's just so clunky for devlopers to support it they don't bother? I
One of my huge regrets in this profession is that we gave up NeWS in favor
of HTML.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
"Oh no! We're out of code juice!"
"Don't panic. There's beans and filters
in the cabinet."
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On 11/04/2012 02:05 AM, Darren New wrote:
> On 4/10/2012 8:54, Invisible wrote:
>> How about, uh, speed?
>
> Look at cars where speed above 70MPH actually matters. Like, say, race
> cars. They've gotten much faster.
Pfft. Every time the engineers find a way to make the cars faster, the
FIA finds a way to make them go slower again. :-P
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On 11/04/2012 02:07 AM, Darren New wrote:
> On 4/10/2012 7:55, scott wrote:
>> text was all a bit blocky or blurry depending what setting you used.
>
> 300DPI is still a bit blocky and blurry on paper.
I still think you're insane. :-P
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>> text was all a bit blocky or blurry depending what setting you used.
>
> 300DPI is still a bit blocky and blurry on paper.
Another important point when discussing resolution is what the source
data is you are trying to display. If it's vector based then you can
decide each pixel value perfectly using a simple algorithm, however if
you're trying to scale a bitmap to display (eg from a webpage or camera
data) it's very hard to make it look as good as the vector based data,
no matter what AA algorithm you use.
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>> Look at cars where speed above 70MPH actually matters. Like, say, race
>> cars. They've gotten much faster.
>
> Pfft. Every time the engineers find a way to make the cars faster, the
> FIA finds a way to make them go slower again. :-P
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fastest_production_cars
The problem with top speed is that it depends on the cube root of power,
so you need huge increases of power to get any significant top speed
improvements.
The bigger improvements have been in cornering speeds and braking
ability (both in racing cars and road cars). If you look at videos of
old F1 races there are many corners where they used to brake and change
gear whereas in today's cars they just run flat out (Eau Rouge at Spa is
the classic one, or 130R at Suzuka). Tyres, suspension and aerodynamics
have improved vastly to make such things possible. Even in your road
car braking distances have vastly reduced due to tyre, suspension and
brake design (not ABS, that only really helps if you want to steer and
brake or it's wet).
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scott <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote:
> The main problem is that Windows doesn't work nicely with higher
> resolutions.
I think a bigger problem is that the amount of data that needs to be
transferred from the computer to the display becomes prohibitively large
as the resolution grows.
There is, after all, a physical limit on how many bits of information
per second can be transferred through circuitry and cables.
--
- Warp
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On 11/04/2012 10:07 AM, Warp wrote:
> scott<sco### [at] scottcom> wrote:
>> The main problem is that Windows doesn't work nicely with higher
>> resolutions.
>
> I think a bigger problem is that the amount of data that needs to be
> transferred from the computer to the display becomes prohibitively large
> as the resolution grows.
>
> There is, after all, a physical limit on how many bits of information
> per second can be transferred through circuitry and cables.
I think the bigger problem is Windows. If that could be fixed and
resolutions started climbing, eventually what you're talking about would
become the next problem. But I don't think we're currently near that
limit yet.
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> There is, after all, a physical limit on how many bits of information
> per second can be transferred through circuitry and cables.
DisplayPort already allows up to 3840x2160x30bpp @ 60 Hz, so that should
be enough for a few years before they come up with something else (which
they surely will if there is demand for it).
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Le 2012/04/11 04:55, scott a écrit :
>>> Look at cars where speed above 70MPH actually matters. Like, say, race
>>> cars. They've gotten much faster.
>>
>> Pfft. Every time the engineers find a way to make the cars faster, the
>> FIA finds a way to make them go slower again. :-P
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fastest_production_cars
>
> The problem with top speed is that it depends on the cube root of power,
> so you need huge increases of power to get any significant top speed
> improvements.
>
> The bigger improvements have been in cornering speeds and braking
> ability (both in racing cars and road cars). If you look at videos of
> old F1 races there are many corners where they used to brake and change
> gear whereas in today's cars they just run flat out (Eau Rouge at Spa is
> the classic one, or 130R at Suzuka). Tyres, suspension and aerodynamics
> have improved vastly to make such things possible. Even in your road car
> braking distances have vastly reduced due to tyre, suspension and brake
> design (not ABS, that only really helps if you want to steer and brake
> or it's wet).
ABS is very often bad. Most are all/nothing affairs taking only one
sample per wheel rotation that can jerk you around and make you loose
controll. In some cases, the brake pedal will shake and hit your foot
real hard, even to the point of causing some injuries...
A real good ABS must be progressive, take MANY samples per rotation,
gradualy reduce the breaking power as needed acording to the breaking
related torque and wheel load. In short, find the limit of adherance and
stay around it untill you stop.
Alain
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> A real good ABS must be progressive, take MANY samples per rotation,
> gradualy reduce the breaking power as needed acording to the breaking
> related torque and wheel load. In short, find the limit of adherance and
> stay around it untill you stop.
That won't work, as once you get past the limit of adherence, gradually
reducing the braking power will not stop the wheel locking. The
friction gets less, so you need less brake power to lock the wheel, it
gets slower so friction gets even less etc. it's in a positive feedback
loop condition.
Once you are past the limit, the best thing to do is to instantly reduce
the brake pressure completely, this will move the wheel back into the
region of higher friction as quickly as possible and you can then
reapply the brake pressure. It may not seem intuitive though that
totally releasing the brake pressure will make you stop quicker in the
end, but consider that 99.9% of the time is probably spent below the
limit and only 0.1% above the limit with the brake pressure cut.
Of course the faster your system is the less noticeable the "pulsing" is
and the more you can stay around the limit, but a progressive or gradual
system is not the best way to do it, and would be much more expensive.
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On 13/04/2012 09:01 AM, scott wrote:
> That won't work, as once you get past the limit of adherence, gradually
> reducing the braking power will not stop the wheel locking.
> Of course the faster your system is the less noticeable the "pulsing" is
> and the more you can stay around the limit, but a progressive or gradual
> system is not the best way to do it, and would be much more expensive.
One winter I was driving along. I forget why, but I pulled into a side
street, which turned out to have half an inch of solid ice coating it.
The ABS cut in when I tried to coast to a stop. It sure juddered my foot
around. (But then, it's a cheap car.) The car did stop, however. If only
they could make a way for the steering to also continue working. :-P
The only flaw I noticed was that once the car is moving slowly enough,
the wheels just lock, and won't unlock. (And by "slowly enough", I mean
"slow enough that you could walk up to the car and play curling with it.")
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