Today’s New York Times reports back from the Consumer Electronics Show that the competition between the computer chip makers today is based on how well graphics can be processed and displayed, not just on MIPS or power efficiency (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/04/technology/04chip.html?nl=technology&emc=techupdateema3) This is quite interesting given that processors were originally designed without any consideration for I/O and now, it would seem, processors are going to be optimized for very large, very rich, very graphical (pictures and video) I/O. Nothing else, it would seem is more valued by users nor more demanding of consumer device architectures.
If we go back in time 20-25 years, the state of the art for video processing was the DVI Pro750 Application Development Platform, developed by Sarnoff Labs and then commercialized by Intel. This was a full 7 board architecture (3 main boards plus piggyback modules), built on the IBM/PC AT platform available in 1989 for $22k. It could process a full 1024 (pixels) x585 (lines) image in full color at 30 fps. If we go back another 10 years, there was no such thing as digital video, as processing power was architected for number crunching, not image processing.
I think of this graphics optimization of the General Purpose Processor as the logical result of the fundamental insight Steve Jobs had in the early days of Apple. Why not take some of the incremental processing power delivered by Moore’s Law and use it to improve the User Interface and user experience. Early Apple computers were significantly more graphical than their PC rivals (although some early game systems were even more graphically capable than the Apples.) Play out this logic for 20 years and the data structures of the video display permeate the entire consumer appliance architecture. As the processing power increases, there is no need to build separate video processors to drive the displays.
This trend sets up full voice and gestural Input. In the not too distant future, we will type less, we will muti-touch less and interact through voice, our facial expressions and body gestures. The appliance will constantly watch our expressions, much like the family dog does now. The appliance will react to our boredom, dejection, excitement and inadvertent expressions by modifying the current application or suggesting alternative applications. This will mean all appliances will have video input as well as video output. An appliance without video input will be considered “stupid.”
What’s your reaction to this trend? Am I extrapolating wildly or reasonably? I would appreciate your perspective.
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