The many facets of computing

Consider these accomplishments:

• Desktops running at 1.5 GHz. 

• Almost 200 gigabytes of storage in a single paperback book-sized disk drive.

• A global communications network that enables average people to access limitless information, and to publish to the world from their homes and small offices--something that required the resources of a multinational corporation just five years ago. 

• New forms of manufacturing, such as nanotechnology and molecular self-assembly, that promise incredible changes to the things around us.

As fantastic as these things are, they're the reality of today and of our near tomorrows. Yet because of the amazing rate of innovation we've grown used to during the past few years, these things don't impress us--we take them for granted. But it is worth stepping back, occasionally, to realize just how far we've come, so that we can appreciate just how far we yet have to go. 

This week, RCFoC reader Richard Meyer (with some details filled in by Larry Boufford) offers us one awe-inspiring example:


This is a Digital VAX11/780 minicomputer introduced 23 years ago; it's arguably the most popular minicomputer ever built. A basic system was five feet tall, cost around $ 150,000, weighed hundreds of pounds, contained less than one megabyte of memory, consumed six kilowatts of power, and often needed special air conditioning and a raised floor. This yielded a then-impressive one million instructions per second (1

MIPS).

(http://www.openvms.compaq.com/openvms/20th/vmsbook.pdf 

and (http://www.nwfusion.com/columnists/2000/0828edit.html) 


There is this Compaq iPAQ H3600 handheld. It's five-inches tall and costs about $ 500. It weighs about six ounces. Including its battery. It has 32 megabytes of RAM and 16 megabytes of ROM memory. Twenty-three years AV (After-VAX), it delivers 142-times the computing power of that VAX--while being carried down the street in the palm of your hand.

(http://www.compaq.com/products/handhelds/pocketpc/--Specs. are from Pen Computing

Magazine--http://www.pencomputing.com/WinCE/PPC/PocketPC.html and

http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation/Hardware/Machines/DEC/vax/vax700.html#section:vax700).

That amount of change, in twenty-three years. Now, just imagine, what the next twenty-three years of the ever-more rapidly changing face of computing will bring...! 

And how far we yet will go! 

If you have a nice stable cable modem connection, or a DSL connection, you're probably in Internet heaven. Today, either of those connection methods make downloading even large application or multimedia files a trivial exercise; you routinely do things that just weren't feasible over slower modems. (Indeed, when all we had were `slow' modems, we never imagined some of the things that broadband connections have enabled.) 

But remember that today's DSL and cable modem speeds (around 400 kilobits/second to 10 megabits/second) are not an end-game. They're simply today's steps along the bandwidth road, like the 2400 and 9600 and 56,000 bits/second modems before them.

Where might this go? Everest Connections, in St. Louis, plans to bring 40 megabits/second to trial in Kansas City, next year, at contemporary cable modem prices!

Brought to our attention by reader Alan Maltzman, the November 20 NetworkWorldFusion News

(http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2000/1120carrier.html) describes how Advent Networks' `Ultraband' technology runs over hybrid fiber-coax cable systems, providing 40 megabits/second switched Ethernet service (which means non-shared, guaranteed bandwidth between the provider and each customer--that way, no matter how many kids get home at 3 PM and suck at the cable pipe, each user should still have their expected bandwidth--at least until the ISP's pipe to the Internet fills up.)

But wait a moment--do we really need 40 megabits/second? How could we possibly consume such a glut of bandwidth? I mean, really, we don't yet have contemporary broadband to most homes and offices--who needs more? 


Rather than talk about specifics such as very high quality TV-on-demand, remote application hosting, distributing a full CD-ROM worth of software in a few seconds, and the like, remember that exactly those questions have been posed at every step along the bandwidth pike. 

I remember when 9600 bits/second modems first came on the scene--for the first time, my VT100 (text terminal) screen filled with is 1,920 characters in the blink of an eye--far faster than I could read the text. I couldn't imagine needing anything faster. Even if faster modems were possible (improbable), they wouldn't serve any useful purpose! Of course, all it took was the introduction of rich, non-text information, and the rules of the desired-bandwidth game changed. 

(Advent has an interesting Flash demonstration of the relative value of dial-up, traditional (`traditional!?!') cable modems, and UltraBand speeds, at

http://www.adventnetworks.com/1.htm.)

I suggest that the bandwidth rules will change again (and again), whether by Advent's technology or some other! I believe it will be driven by our always figuring out ways to consume all of the bandwidth, processor power, and storage space that we have. If you don't think so, I challenge you to be happy using the technologies of ten, or even five years ago.

Forty megabits/second? Bring it on--while we wonder what will be next!





Jeffrey Harrow


Senior Consulting Engineer


(Technology and Corporate Development Group), Compaq


Note: This is an article from the `Rapidly Changing Face of Computing', a free weekly multimedia technology journal written by Jeffrey Harrow. More discussions around the innovations and trends of contemporary computing and the technologies that drive them are available at

www.compaq.com/rcfoc. The writer's opinions do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Compaq. The RCFoC is copyright 2000, Compaq.