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mobile computers replacing desktopmobile computers replacing desktopPosted Sep 9, 2012 21:41 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252)In reply to: mobile computers replacing desktop by giraffedata Parent article: Improving Ubuntu's application upload process
Just guessing at reasons people might think it makes sense to share parts between the mobile and desktop computer. You are still looking on the whole story from wrong direction. This is not about inventing desktop/mobile hybrids. No. This is about attaching large monitor, keyboard and mouse to handheld or tablet. And then inventing desktop/mobile hybrids. Why would anyone do that? Are they geeks or just eccentric? Neither. Let's start with facts. Sales of PCs in 2011: 364 million units, 3.8% growth comparing to 2010 Sales of smartphones in 2011: 486 million units, 63.2% growth comparing to 2010. What does it mean? Well, one simple thing: money are moving in the direction of smartphones (and to much lesser degree - tablets). And fast. Even today there are a lot of guys who have smartphone and no PC (or they have brand-new smartphone and 5-6 years old PC). Tomorrow most smartphone owners will not own a PC - but they will still want to use large monitor, mouse and keyboard. If the dock station for smartphone will be cheaper and will provide usable experience - they'll pick it over PC. And as smartphones will become more and more powerful this combination will be more and more natural. And just like it happened with workstations at some point people will just stop buying desktops and laptops. It's hard to predict exactly when that'll happen, but when this will happen anyone who'll have no presence on mobile will go bankrupt. It's that simple. Now you see why Microsoft is ready to put quite literally everything to win the mobile market? And why Intel spends billions to somehow shoehorn it's CPUs in mobile phones? The writings are on the wall. In comparing the evolution of the laptop to the evolution of the handheld, I note that the laptop was always just a scaled down desktop. E.g. it ran the same OS and most of the same applications. Every advance was designed to make it more like the former desktop. In contrast, the handhelds have taken off in a separate direction. That should make a difference. Absolutely. Laptops were never an existential threat for the developers of desktop software. Handhelds are such a threat. Exactly because there are continuity between desktop and laptops, but no continuity between laptops and handhelds.
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mobile computers replacing desktop Posted Sep 10, 2012 1:43 UTC (Mon) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
you are comparing a mature market (desktops) with a emerging market (mobile devices). The rate of growth of mobile devices is going to flatten out in a few years
as for the rate of growth, there's a xkcd for that http://xkcd.com/1102/
while some people will stop buying desktops and laptops, claiming that anyone who only produces desktops and laptops will go bankrupt is rather far-fetched.
That's like saying that since since many people have already stopped buying desktops and instead buy laptops that anyone who doesn't have a laptop presence, and all the companies who only make devices and cards that work on desktops are going to go bankrupt. that's far from true, they can continue to make a nice profit selling there devices.
IBM only makes mainframes and servers, the vast majority of people don't buy such systems, and haven't for MANY years. why didn't they go bankrupt decades ago?
mobile computers replacing desktop Posted Sep 10, 2012 1:51 UTC (Mon) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
Because IBM sells stuff to entities that think along the line: "the more expensive the better" and "we're not going to use all these new-fangled x86 CPUs, if PowerPC was good enough for Abraham Lincoln it's good enough for everyone!"
mobile computers replacing desktop Posted Sep 10, 2012 2:23 UTC (Mon) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
There are lots of situations where the Power chips are far better than the x86 chips.
The question is if this added capabilities are worth the money.
If you have an application that is easy to split across multiple systems, the answer is probably no, but for applications that are harder to scale, the dramatic improvement in per-thread performance on a Power chip can be worth a LOT.
x86 didn't win because it was better than it's competition, it won because it was more common. It was more common because it was 'good enough' and cheaper than the competition, and it is what happened to be picked for the PC that got cloned.
In many ways x86 is a far worse architecture than just about anything out there. But AMD and Intel have put HUGE amounts of effort into speeding it up. But even with all this effort, it's not the best performing chip available, and it's not the most power efficient chip available
mobile computers replacing desktop Posted Sep 10, 2012 2:35 UTC (Mon) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
Not really. It's just that IBM is willing to produce CPUs that cost $20000 each (I'm not exaggerating) by brute force (using large dies). That's why they can get to 6GHz clock speed.
That could be easily replicated by x86 using the same methods. But Intel and AMD probably are not interested. It's a niche, after all.
mobile computers replacing desktop Posted Sep 10, 2012 2:48 UTC (Mon) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
I'm not disputing that it's a niche.
However, the x86 architecture is rather poor in many areas (extremely low register count for example)
Sparc, Power, Alpha are all better architectures than x86 (or amd64), but since they can't run the software that can run on x86, and that software is a huge percentage of the industry, they are limited to the server niche.
the highest performing processors always have a large price premium attached to them. IBM makes really good profit margins on the Power line, but they do also include capabilities that are not found on x86 systems. These capabilities are usually not worth their cost, which is why it remains a niche, but if you need them, they are cheap at that price.
But the point was that just because they didn't jump on the latest bandwagon doesn't mean that they went bankrupt.
mobile computers replacing desktop Posted Sep 10, 2012 3:08 UTC (Mon) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
Let me quote the inimitable Linus Torvalds: http://yarchive.net/comp/linux/x86.html
>And the baroque instruction encoding on the x86 is actually a _good_
>The low register count isn't an issue when you code in any high-level
And that's true. ARM folks found out that while ARM is nice and great for low-performance low-power computing, you really need to do all sorts of tricks x86 does once you want to move to high-performance computing. Large register file does not give you much in that case.
mobile computers replacing desktop Posted Sep 10, 2012 5:44 UTC (Mon) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
on the other hand, the x86 design is hard to scale up in speed and efficiently use more transisters. Other designs do scale up better.
mobile computers replacing desktop Posted Sep 10, 2012 6:33 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Not really. There are designs which can cover lower-power/lower-speed niche (ARM and MIPS), there are designs which cover higher-power/higher-speed niche (Itanic, POWER), there are no designs which scale better than x86. That's why most TOP500 computers use it: they need something with the best available performance per watt (wall-power is one of the most important limitations for the supercomputers) and that "something" is either GPU or x86. Often both.
mobile computers replacing desktop Posted Sep 10, 2012 6:56 UTC (Mon) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
Technically, the latest ARMs have a better peformance/power ratio than x86/64. But they still can't approach the single-core speed of x86.
mobile computers replacing desktop Posted Sep 10, 2012 7:07 UTC (Mon) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
> Technically, the latest ARMs have a better peformance/power ratio than x86/64. But they still can't approach the single-core speed of x86.
which doesn't approach the single-core speed of the Power systems.
each of them has a market, they don't have to directly compete.
Unless you are shipping binary-only software and aren't willing to ship multiple copies. the industry has been in that mindset for a long time.
But in the mobile space they don't have the luxury of having a single binary target, and until and unless they do (which seems unlikely to happen in the short term), we have a real chance for competition between different processors, and for different processors to be used in different places. In the short term it's easier to try and mandate a hardware monoculture, but I don't think anyone has enough power to do so, especially with Android and Linux _not_ mandating it and giving everyone an example and an option to work with when they run into the monoculture limitations.
mobile computers replacing desktop Posted Sep 10, 2012 11:55 UTC (Mon) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
> which doesn't approach the single-core speed of the Power systems.
It does. Easily.
New Xeons beat all the PPCs except for the top-of-the line POWER-7 CPUs. And then top-of-the line PPCs beat Xeons only because of their humongous die size and clock speeds (with corresponding TDP).
In reality there's no magic sauce that makes PPC to be inherently better than x86. They both use hardware decoders to split instructions into pipeline-able sub-instructions. Sure, decoders for RISCs are easier to implement but the difference in the number of transistors is trivial for desktop/server CPUs.
I'd several run-ins with IBM mainframe guys about a year ago. They told my client how great and fast their mainframes were, that $100000 per system couldn't be wrong, could it? So my client went and leased a 'small' unit - telling how great it would be.
IO turned out to be slow as hell compared to our simple Xeon-based server with a RAID of Intel SSDs. CPU performance indeed was higher, but not by much - and we got one of the fastest CPUs available.
mobile computers replacing desktop Posted Sep 10, 2012 13:16 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] But in the mobile space they don't have the luxury of having a single binary target, and until and unless they do (which seems unlikely to happen in the short term), we have a real chance for competition between different processors, and for different processors to be used in different places. Define "short term". We had similar situation on PC, too. Early versions of many programs supported many different CPUs (I've personally used Turbo Pascal on x86-based systems and on z80-based systems). But eventually market settled on "IBM PC compatible" and most other systems died of. Mac survived (barely), but all other IBM PC-incompatible personal computers perished. x86-incompatible systems perished without exceptions. This is why Intel and MIPS are so desperate to push their CPUs in mobile space: they know that if they'll not do that in a year or two they'll lose the opportunity forever. Already the biggest complaint WRT x86-phones Androids and MIPS-based Androids is poor ARM emulation and poor work of many popular programs with binary-only components. In the short term it's easier to try and mandate a hardware monoculture, but I don't think anyone has enough power to do so, especially with Android and Linux _not_ mandating it and giving everyone an example and an option to work with when they run into the monoculture limitations. Bwa-ha-ha. Just want and see. Windows NT also supported multitude of CPUs (), but in the end… market have chosen just one architecture: x86. Short-term? Nope, this is not the question of short-term. I'm not sure who'll win the mobile race (there are still some time left and MIPS and x86 both have advantages: MIPS is free and x86 makes it easy to port software from PC), but in the end it'll be one choice.
mobile computers replacing desktop Posted Sep 10, 2012 6:02 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] But the point was that just because they didn't jump on the latest bandwagon doesn't mean that they went bankrupt. Oh yes, it does. IBM sold out it's PC division because it was unprofitable and they no longer sell workstations, too. They survived by shifting to other venues, they are doing consulting work, they are selling mainframes, they no longer produce PCs or workstations. That part is gone. The problem with most players in desktop area today is that they have no plan B, or if they do (HP has printers and enterprise software, for example) they are not big enough to support the whole structure. Today they have difficult dilemma: either they will try to shift to mobile or they need to switch to some other field (like IBM did 20 years ago). Desktop will no longer support them. They have time (you right: right now, today mobile apps tend to be very weak at doing any content creation), but it's large shift, I'm not sure they have enough time.
mobile computers replacing desktop Posted Sep 10, 2012 6:21 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] as for the rate of growth, there's a xkcd for that http://xkcd.com/1102/ Beep, beep, beep. Bullshit detected. you are comparing a mature market (desktops) with a emerging market (mobile devices). The rate of growth of mobile devices is going to flatten out in a few years I'm comparing two markets of almost identical sizes - that's why XKCD is irrelevant here. They have almost identical sizes (PCs have [slightly] larger installed base, but smartphones already have bigger per-year sales). That's true that growth of mobile devices is going to flatten out in a few years (when there will be more smartphones than peoples on Earth), but why does it matter? We already are talking about big enough numbers to seal the PC fate. IBM only makes mainframes and servers, the vast majority of people don't buy such systems, and haven't for MANY years. why didn't they go bankrupt decades ago? They almost did. You can read about recounting of that era from the guy who saved them from that fate. IBM survived, but not as producer of workstations or PCs. Sure, they sell mainframes and servers - but this not where most of their money comes from.
mobile computers replacing desktop Posted Sep 10, 2012 6:53 UTC (Mon) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] I'm comparing two markets of almost identical sizes I wondered why you were comparing markets at all. We were having a discussion about whether mobile computing would replace desktop computing, and the figures you cited were in fact only tangentially related to that question. The figures that would help with that are how fast the number of people with mobile computers is growing and how fast the number of people with desktop computers is declining (if at all). The sales numbers totally skip the disposal side of the equation, and the high growth rate of sales is less predictive when you realize there's a saturation point. As for the matter of Lenovo taking over IBM's personal computer product line, I'm afraid I've become lost in the analogies again, and I can't see what that teaches us about whether desktop computing will still be around as mobile computing grows.
mobile computers replacing desktop Posted Sep 10, 2012 13:16 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] The figures that would help with that are how fast the number of people with mobile computers is growing. This is what the numbers above show, isnt't it? With market which is growing as fast as smartphones are growing disposal side of the equation is not relevant yet: 50% of smartphones ever sold were sold in the last 18 months. We can safely assume they all are still in use. And how fast the number of people with desktop computers is declining (if at all). It's growing right now :-) Disruptive collapse will happen later. UNIX workstations grew for more then decade after introduction of personal computers. In fact DEC was portrayed as unstoppable force and as pinnacle of business acumen in 1980th. Business Week warned IBM in 1986: "Taking on Digital Equipment Corp. these days is like standing in front of a moving train." This was five years after introduction of IBM PC! As for the matter of Lenovo taking over IBM's personal computer product line, I'm afraid I've become lost in the analogies again, and I can't see what that teaches us about whether desktop computing will still be around as mobile computing grows. It shows what happens when you try to stop the disruptive collapse. IBM owned the PC market. Heck, it created the "IBM PC-compatibles" market. But this happened because this thing was not created by "big IBM" (this attempt predictably failed), it was created by semi-autonomous group. When "big IBM" realized what happened it immediately tried to change the direction to make sure they have control over market. It tried to make sure personal computers will be confined it it's niche and will not hurt sales of RS/6000 and big iron with PS/2 and OS/2. It failed, of course, and IBM eventually relented, but by that time it was too late: ThinkPads were (and are) good devices (as were PS/1), and they are quite popular among some users (ThinkPads, not PS/1), but ultimately IBM was unable to keep up with a PC market.
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