AMD just pushed its Athlon processor to 750-MHz and one Gigahertz chips are around the corner. But do we really need all this processing power?
Take Psion's Revo, for example, a tiny handheld computer for accessing email and the Web. The size of the average glasses case, the machine is a bare-bones alternative to the PC. What kind of hardware does it require? A processor that runs at a ripping 36 MHz.
With the Revo, Palm's handhelds, and even smart cell phones touted as the future of mobile computing, does it make sense anymore to drop thousands of dollars on an expensive machine running a 700 MHz chip – especially when communications bandwidth is probably today's biggest computing bottleneck?
"The problem is, I don't want to agree with that but to some extent I have to," said Keith Diefendorff, a senior analyst and editor in chief of the Microprocessor Report, an influential trade publication. "Clearly a lot of people are asking if they need a 750 MHz processor to access the Web. That's why you're seeing increasing numbers of people buying low-end machines."
Diefendorff said the world of personal computing is currently in a "weird space," where for the first time hardware processing power far outstrips the needs of the software that runs on it.
"People are demanding low-cost processors because all they are doing is accessing the Internet," he said. "But eventually the applications will catch up with us and we will return to a place where we need more processing power. I really believe that, or a lot of companies are going to be in big trouble."
For example, a decent grammar checker could be built into today's word processors, but it requires much more powerful chips to run unobtrusively in the background.
Likewise, a lot of tomorrow's AI applications and next-generation speech interfaces will be processor hogs, Diefendorff said.
Tim Bajarin, president of market research firm Creative Strategies, likewise thought software will catch up with the faster hardware, just as it has expanded to fill bigger hard drives.
"There are two sides to the coin," he said. "In the short term we don't need it, but we will need it for the next-generation applications."
Even Laurie Falconer, a telecoms analyst with TeleChoice, which tracks the broadband industry, thought megahertz matters.
Noting that 10 million homes will have broadband access by 2003, Falconer said, "We'll see a lot more PCs in homes, networked together delivering services like interactive TV, e-commerce, and multiple audio [telephone] lines."
Mike Sullivan, a spokesman for Intel, said he hears similar questions every time processor speeds go up or new chips are introduced.
"People are always asking, 'Why do we need this new generation of microprocessors or a 60 MHz chip or all this RAM on my computer?'" he said. "These are long-standing arguments."
Sullivan said the extra speed will matter more and more as bandwidth increases, pointing to Intel's plan to launch processors running at more than a gigahertz in the second half of next year.
"With broadband coming, that extra megahertz will translate into better frame rates and smoother, less jerky video," he said, "We think it still matters."
Sullivan added that although PC sales have never been better, Intel's new interest in networking is a response to the shift from the desktop computing to the Net.
"We're in the middle of a major PC boom right now," he said. "PC sales are very healthy, despite all this post-PC talk.... But the Internet will become the center of what the computer is about. We've basically expanded out charter."
