If you could redesign the PC

[patentman]

I would have porn embedded in the motherboard flash memory so that I wouldn;t spend so much time downloading it :shocked:

 

[SGtheArtist]

I would have porn embedded in the motherboard flash memory so that I wouldn;t spend so much time downloading it

LOL, That would have to be the largest flash memory ever produced, jk.

Then again at the speed of broadband and future telecommunication options download speeds won't be so bad. Unless your talking DVD movies (that you already own on a server across the world )?

 

[filterxg]

It wouldn't be a good thing for newbies. But I'd make a bunch of changes to the motherboard. My biggest thing would be setting all the important processing units there in an upgradeable fashion. Think something like modern CPUs, but add a GPU and of course a good sound processor. Aside from that, I'd like PCs to consume a lot less power.

Lastly I want my computer to make my coffee, and get me dressed in the morning. That would save me a lot more time than another core or two.

 

[iwantanewcomputer]

i'd make it more accepting of interchangable parts. there is no reason to redesign everything when you want one thing faster. just make the processor the center of everything, then other components all work over one bus controlled on the motherboard(maybe buy a merory controller type thing) you could have a few high speed channels for memory/video cards and the rest slow, but all with same slots.

once a year or so they could come out with new models with everything capable of another 100 mhz or something. but have all the technology compatible

 

[grant2]

Originally posted by: SGtheArtist
Then again at the speed of broadband and future telecommunication options download speeds won't be so bad. Unless your talking DVD movies (that you already own on a server across the world )?

On a side note, pure-optical fibre optic switches were first commercially developed a few years ago.

As is inevitable with technological progress, we will probably eventually see $100 fibre optic "modems"... (just like rental t1 receivers used to be $1,500/mo to rent but now you can get ADSL modems for free almost).

As the hardware progresses we may see enough commercial pressure/appetite to begin installing fibre-to-the-socket to regular businesses & homes.

 

[HAM617]

First
Include a base amount of high speed RAM (one or 2 gig) directly on the CPU die. The Ram would be at the same speed of current L2 cache.

Second:
Remove bottleneck of mechanical devices like HD and Cd as noted earlier.

Third:
Operating system with a gaming mode that gave the option to only load the minimum resources absolutely necessary for applications like gaming.

 

[Kf6bbl]

The biggest problem I see int he PC industry is not physical size, heat, I/O busses, or anything like that, but support of various pieces of hardware in various OSs.

My solution is to have a base driver built into every piece of hardware that requires one, rather than have the OS provide it. This would be not that different than how VESA has helped video cards, but apply that thinking to all hardware.

An open standard would be developed that specified the interface to standard hardware. In essense, this would mean a BIOS on every device. It works for motherboards, it works for video cards, it can work for everything else too.

Remeber when you could take a new video card and plop it into your DOS PC, and run a simple program that entered a graphics mode? That was all possible because of the video card's BIOS support of VESA modes. Not to mention the fact that you booted the computer from disk, and DOS or your applications had no knowledge of MFM, IDE, or SCSI. That concept can also work fine for printers, sound cards, network cards, USB or other serial bus devices, etc.

If that was the world we lived in today, we would have:
1)Better hardware support in non-microsft OSs.
2)Better plug and play of devices (OS doesn't have to load a driver)
3)No having to reinstall dozens of drivers if the OS needs to be replaced or reloaded
4)Hardware would not be obsolete if you lost the disk and the manufacturer is out of business
5)More responsibility on the hardware manufacturer to make sure their crap works.
6)No conflicting drivers, shared dlls that get overwritten, dependancies, corrupted drivers, etc.

 

[imported_ceefka]

These are my ideas. I have no technical background so I'll accept any technical corrections.

If we are to abandon x86 I'd suggest to reconsider the entire electricity household on the motherboards and work with higher voltages and lower currents. There is a reason why transport of electricity is done at extremely high voltages. Also work with one voltage only (48V AC balanced or so), not 3 at various polarities. This should make it easier to manufacture a quality PSU. The balanced power will kick out 99,999% of hum and noise. (not fan noise).

Integrate shielding in the motherboard so the interference with my soundcards is kept to an absolute minimum.

Bigger RAM-chips so we can have 8, 16, 32GB etc RAM-sticks. You should be able to decide yourself how much of your RAM is non volatile, so RAM sockets will need to change too.

Ditch PCI in favour of PCI-E and make the width user configurable i.e. I can decide how many lanes I dedicate to my video card and how many to my soundcard. If I have a hefty professional soundcard (RME, MOTU etc. not Creative), it will of course get a lot of width. In the future we might need more than 16 lanes, also in order to put every other i/o protocol on the PCI-E bus: USB, FireWire, LAN etc. As earlier suggested, maybe we can look into unifying those into one standard. Ditch all legacy ports for sure especially if you ditch x86.

HDD's can still be useful but not for streaming and working on data, just for storage. With 16-128GB of RAM you should be able to put your entire project into RAM and work on it from there, only save when you think it's necessary.

And for crying out loud, let all of them: Intel, AMD, IBM, SUN, Maxtor, Samsung, NEC, Hitachi, nVidia, ATI, ULi, SiS, Seagate, WD, Apple, Antec, OCZ, Kingston, Tagan, Gigabyte, Tyan, iWill, MSI etc. work on this together.

 

[grant2]

Originally posted by: HAM617
First
Include a base amount of high speed RAM (one or 2 gig) directly on the CPU die. The Ram would be at the same speed of current L2 cache.

Ouch!! $$!! a cpu with that much ram would be the size of a pizza!

Back in '95 this was done, a 486 mobo sold with 4 or 8 mb of cache-speed memory on the mobo (as you may recall, in this era, 256kb of L2 cache cost a bit more than a MB of memory & was installed like a memory stick) ... they claimed a 486-75 had comparable performance with a p-100.

Obviously the price/performance ratio doesn't justify such an architecture.

 

[RichUK]

i think a solid state 10 gig memory cartridge or maybe more .. specifically for the OS, you could then just slot in the cartridge into the motherboard and have really fast response times ... and then of course all other data could be stored on the HDD's


of course i am on about non volatile memory as apposed volatile memory like the Gigabyte I-drive


just a thought

 

[vtohthree]

Yes I agree, my computer should be like my tv, I hit "on" and its ready to use.

 

[cecallred]

Everything goes into ram. Virtual components. Virtual CPU, Chipsets, Video, Sound, Nic ... all of it. 10 gigs of Ram standard. All of it runs off a EEPROM that starts the ram drive, loads the components into a protected space and the rest runs in what's left. A second EEPROM could store your data that you save. Programs run at the speed of the memory. Worried about your data? Burn to a DVD-RW.

 

[slidax]

i'd just like someone to start developing more of these with support for more dimms and a longer life battery so we could just copy our OS onto it.
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2005/05/31/gigabyte_ramdisk/

 

[CrimsonCutie]

have the base memory be more than 640k

 

[clarkey01]

I'd change X86...It's the biggest limiting factor.