Книга: Introduction to Microprocessors and Microcontrollers

The future

Increasing microprocessor speeds and using several to share the processing tasks together with the decreasing size and cost of memory will be the key to the future. The idea of a desktop computer running at 20 GHz and having 128 Gbytes of memory is no longer ridiculous. In fact, it is looking rather modest after looking at Table 10.1 in which the trend over the last 26 years is projected another 26 years into the future.

‘It cannot keep increasing’ – quote of the year 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976…

Table 10.1

A persistent occupant of my crystal ball is real spoken voice communication. A few years ago voice recognition was only a dream and is now a reality and becoming increasingly efficient. Voice synthesis is progressing nicely and is beginning to sound less robotic. When these two technologies mature, simultaneous language translation will not be far away and real dialog with the computer will begin. Another million television programs suddenly become available without sub-titles (you see, all progress comes at a price!). Six million, million instructions per second and 800 GHz clock speed together with total voice control of computer functions will be here in a few years.

‘How about that Mr Spock? ’

‘Fascinating’

That’s my guess.

At least it is something to look back and smile about in the future.

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