Power of the Colossus

[Les Bell]

(05-31-2015 07:02 PM)Dave Britten Wrote:  I think we've simply invented new data processing "needs" to justify having such an obscene amount of computational power.

Many years ago - 1985 or thereabouts - Bill Gates was keynote speaker at a local conference. I was surprised to hear him say that MS had developed Windows with three goals in mind:

• Graphical interface
• Multitasking
• "to stimulate consumer demand for more sophisticated hardware"
  

I almost fell out of my chair at the last item. Perhaps he was reusing a speech he'd given to a bunch of hardware manufacturers. But it's been an open secret for many years that hardware vendors were happy to bundle Windows because it would bring users back for upgrades before too long.

These days, we've got so much compute power in servers, in particular, that we use virtualization as a way of sharing one physical box across multiple virtual computers. And if you really want to suck up CPU cycles, there's always statistical learning on "Big Data".