ACT represents the interests of software companies, but today we’ve released a new paper trumpeting the virtues of hardware.
We highlight how software developers and computer chip makers increasingly depend on one another for better products. This symbiotic hardware/software relationship is crucial for the sort of exponential innovation we’ve grown accustomed to in the IT industry. And it is something ACT recently highlighted in a letter to the FTC signed by 37 software developers.
The old days of understanding computer processors and its effect on software was easy. Chips increased in clock speed (first in MHz, then in GHz) and this made software run faster. This worked well for years, but then it became apparent that high clock speed processors often ran idle because other system components couldn’t keep up. These processors also ran very hot, consuming lots of power and creating heat problems.
Today’s chips take a different approach. Chips now have processors with multiple cores (or CPUs) to separately but simultaneously handle independent tasks. In a survey of ACT members that we conducted for the paper, 58% of the respondents identified multicore technology as the processor advancement that has most improved their software products. One member said “multicore makes programming harder, but when my apps leverage it, they can do more.”
But how do programmers know what to do so they can better leverage processor designs such as multicore? Every major chip manufacturer worth a grain of sand has established support programs and created tools for the developer community. Sun has its Sun Developer Network, Intel has a Software Partner Program (and just announced a new software development kit (SDK) for its mobile Atom processor), and AMD has the CodeAnalyst Performance Analyzer to analyze software performance and help developers optimize applications.
In some ways it seems like chip manufacturers are sucking up to software developers. We like this attention–after all, without software, silicon is just sand! Chip makers depend on software programmers to maximize new hardware features. For the development of Windows 7, Microsoft and Intel worked together to optimize the OS for multicore. Windows 7 divides tasks like video encoding over multiple cores and threads to run apps more quickly, and kernal changes improve power management. For example, DVD playback on a battery-powered Windows 7 laptop is 16 watts, compared to 20 watts on Windows Vista.
It’s not just the OS that takes advantage of new processors. Software for gaming, HD video and video editing, cloud computing, database apps, mobile apps–it’s enough to make my head spin. Just compare the drastic differences in levels of detail in Pac-man, which was introduced in 1980, with Uncharted 2 (the image to the right), which won the E3 2009 Video Games award for best graphics (it’s cool stuff…see the game trailer here).
But my head is spinning even more with the thought that antitrust regulators are on the prowl. Intel is under the gun in the European Union and here in the U.S. I’m still trying to figure out…why? From 2000 to 2008, processor performance increased 28 times while prices fell by 50%. And according to the Department of Labor statistics, the quality-adjusted price of CPUs has declined more than any of the 1,200 products it has tracked (including software, storage devices, PCs). The real cost of processing power has dropped roughly 40% annually over the past 10 years. 
The reason for increased power and decreased prices? AMD, IBM, Intel, Sun, Texas Instruments (among others) annually invest billions of dollars for R&D. And I’d expect this to be the case for a long time in the future, because competition is becoming fierce and is converging as smartphones become more PC-like and computers become more mobile. So watch out AMD and Intel…here comes ARM, Marvell, Qualcomm, Samsung and TI.
Innovation, R&D spending, increased competitive outlook…the processor market has all the hallmarks of a market working for consumers. Regulatory action is the wildcard here–let’s hope it doesn’t trump the benefits of the current ecosystem.
The advancements of software and computer circuit technology are synergistic, since IC chip design relies on nanoscale software modeling, and software gains dexterity from enhanced computer processing power. The next generation of software should have stronger features in proportion to the refienement of circuits. This may unfold through quantum computing, the control of single atoms in circuits, by new advanced physics research that has developed the atomic topological function for 3D viewing of picoyoctoscale subatomic details of electrons or energy fields. This CRQT imaging system is planned to have a more intensive software series for exact pymscale design and analysis applications.
Recent advancements in quantum science have produced the picoyoctometric, 3D, interactive video atomic model imaging function, in terms of chronons and spacons for exact, quantized, relativistic animation. This format returns clear numerical data for a full spectrum of variables. The atom’s RQT (relative quantum topological) data point imaging function is built by combination of the relativistic Einstein-Lorenz transform functions for time, mass, and energy with the workon quantized electromagnetic wave equations for frequency and wavelength.
The atom labeled psi (Z) pulsates at the frequency {Nhu=e/h} by cycles of {e=m(c^2)} transformation of nuclear surface mass to forcons with joule values, followed by nuclear force absorption. This radiation process is limited only by spacetime boundaries of {Gravity-Time}, where gravity is the force binding space to psi, forming the GT integral atomic wavefunction. The expression is defined as the series expansion differential of nuclear output rates with quantum symmetry numbers assigned along the progression to give topology to the solutions.
Next, the correlation function for the manifold of internal heat capacity energy particle 3D functions is extracted by rearranging the total internal momentum function to the photon gain rule and integrating it for GT limits. This produces a series of 26 topological waveparticle functions of the five classes; {+Positron, Workon, Thermon, -Electromagneton, Magnemedon}, each the 3D data image of a type of energy intermedon of the 5/2 kT J internal energy cloud, accounting for all of them.
Those 26 energy data values intersect the sizes of the fundamental physical constants: h, h-bar, delta, nuclear magneton, beta magneton, k (series). They quantize atomic dynamics by acting as fulcrum particles. The result is the exact picoyoctometric, 3D, interactive video atomic model data point imaging function, responsive to keyboard input of virtual photon gain events by relativistic, quantized shifts of electron, force, and energy field states and positions.
Images of the h-bar magnetic energy waveparticle of ~175 picoyoctometers are available online at http://www.symmecon.com with the complete RQT atomic modeling manual titled The Crystalon Door, copyright TXu1-266-788. TCD conforms to the unopposed motion of disclosure in U.S. District (NM) Court of 04/02/2001 titled The Solution to the Equation of Schrodinger.
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