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Peter Cochrane's Hard Drive 1996 Memories of bygone days What a contrast today. A top-end word processing package requires at least 5Mb and can demand as much as 20Mb. The same is true of spreadsheet, graphics and animation applications. Moreover, there is an increasing need to have several of these heavyweights running at the same time. My computer now has 2.5 gigabytes (Gb) of hard disk space and 64Mb of RAM. In the same 12-year period the clock speed has gone from a mere six to 120MHz, and curiously the word processor is more sluggish. What have we done? It is interesting to plot the progress of hardware and software operating speeds and our own perception. While computer hardware platforms are increasingly powerful, roughly doubling in capability every 12 to 18 months, the software industry's race to build the world's heaviest aeroplane sees performance actually getting worse. At the present rate we will require a Cray 3 supercomputer to write a simple office memo by the year 2015. Clearly this trend is not sustainable. Not suprisingly we now find it increasingly difficult to operate and exploit applications much beyond a few per cent of their full capability. There are no longer any experts, we are all amateurs, daily discovering new quirks and features. Our difficulties are further compounded by cosmetic changes in subsequent versions. Backward and forward compatibility limitations between releases provide a further veneer of frustration. Suddenly we would then become the masters of our own destiny and the constructors of our own applications in a Lego-like software world What is going to be interesting in the next five years is the emergence of distributed computing with products like Java delivering applets on demand. Given the constraints of the present phone network, this will automatically dictate that we scroll back 15 years to applications of just a few hundred kilobytes when online access is required. If we do not, the delays encountered in pulling these down the line will be enormous and will stifle the creation of a world of distributed computing. It might be that an alternative world will also emerge where the producers of software sell us a basic word processing package and then we choose to purchase those features that we really need rather than buying all of it. Suddenly we would then become the masters of our own destiny and the constructors of our own applications in a Lego-like software world. So, will we still need a large amount of RAM and hard disk storage? Very probably. The reasons: the hardware manufacturers seeking to maintain and/or expand their turnover coupled with falling hardware costs. But probably the key driver will be us and our desire to own and hold on to software. We are also moving in a direction of having at least five applications open simultaneously, so unless someone starts to integrate the applets for word processing, graphics, spreadsheet, e-mail etc, we will remain megabyte-hungry. Peter Cochrane holds the Collier Chair for the Public Understanding of Science & Technology at the University of Bristol. His home page is: |
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