Sparks
Make you a deal.
You provide the direct link to the cerebral cortex, I'll whip up the machine to
pipe in the data.
In the real world 🙁 I know deskstation has been speeding up their machines,
using the newer/faster/lower voltage MIPS chips. I don't know what their
latest/greatest is, but I would expect to see improvements out of the
MIPS/deskstation camp closely pacing events in mainstream x86 land (i.e. apx 2x
the power each 18 months).
My previous message was intended to forshadow events unfolding in the next five
years or so, as the current systems hit the limit of improvement in terms of
clock rate/bit width/piplining and radically different approaches are used to
improve speed. From what I hear the P7 project is a drastic departure from
'conventional' processers, while being code compatible. The huge leaps being
made in hard drives this year and next (soon there will be no drive < 1GB or
slower than 4 MB/s) will hit processors in 3 to 5 years. In the meantime a
Raptor is I believe the most cost effective rendering machine ever available to
the general public (or anyone for that matter).