Specs for a PC in the year 2020

[Braznor]

I believe there could be a separate chip for onboard AI. This A.I chip will be process stuff like the OS, computer security etc.

 

[klinc]

Did someone manage to replicate a human brain that I maybe missed. Still a man made thing driven by rules with bugs.

 

[Acanthus]

planetside 2 will probably still be cpu bottlenecked...

More than likely, because the dipshits made it single threaded

 

[Sephire]

16 core CPU with integrated graphix
Active cooling
1TB memory
100TB SSD...

 

[klinc]

World War III might have happened so we will be back to type writers fighting with sticks and stones

 

[amdhunter]

What's with people thinking about these high Ghz numbers?

Top of the line processor nine years ago: 3.4Ghz.

Top of the line processor today: 3.5Ghz.



You must've resized that. I have also been to the future, and while the screen looks exactly like that (to scale), it is in 3240p resolution.

I would still spot a dead pixel.

 

[Golgatha]

8 physical cores at 4-4.5Ghz will be standard, 32-64GB of DDR4 will be the average RAM installed, affordable 1TB SSD and 4TB mechanical drives are normal to find in the average desktop, 4-8GB graphics memory with 4x the performance at the high end, and SSD type cache is hard soldered to the motherboard and automatically utilized for mechanical drives. That's my 2020 prediction.

 

[edro]

It will all be server side.
We will just have thin clients.
Everything will be on the cloud.

 

[dank69]

Hopefully it will just be implanted in my head with a direct link to my optic nerves.

 

[amdhunter]

It will all be server side.
We will just have thin clients.
Everything will be on the cloud.

With 8GB/month data limits!

 

[TwiceOver]

Everything will be on the cloud.

Taco: "To the cloud!"

 

[ultimatebob]

It will all be server side.
We will just have thin clients.
Everything will be on the cloud.

Wow, I hope not. The people who live out in the sticks who will still have a choice of a 28.8 modem or 128K high latency satellite internet connection will be screwed.

 

[OBLAMA2009]

With 8GB/month data limits!

and monthly contracts that are $150

 

[SMOGZINN]

8 physical cores at 4-4.5Ghz will be standard, 32-64GB of DDR4 will be the average RAM installed, affordable 1TB SSD and 4TB mechanical drives are normal to find in the average desktop, 4-8GB graphics memory with 4x the performance at the high end, and SSD type cache is hard soldered to the motherboard and automatically utilized for mechanical drives. That's my 2020 prediction.

I think you are pretty close.

I think you are over estimating the size of RAM, most systems are still only running 2-4 gig, maybe 16 gig will be common by 2020. The fact is common users don't fully utilize 4 gig of ram, there is no need for OEMs to put any more in. Unless there is some major change in software, I don't see the need for RAM shooting up that high in the next 7 years.

I think you are about on track for the SSD, they might not quite be common at 1TB by then, but it will certainly be a premium upgrade.

I think the HD is actually the one thing you are under on. I think we will see mechanical drives take off again soon in another size/price war. 3TB drives will hit the $100 mark by the end of this year, and 4TB will be there by 2014. I think we will see 10TB drives in the ~$300-400 range by the end of 2015, they will be multiple spindle and slow, but with a 500GB SSD who will care? I think that by 2020 20TB drives will be common.

The main thing I think you got wrong is the hardwired SSD cache. I just don't think this will happen. MB's are going to continue to be price driven, and that means no expensive add-ons like SSD cache. I think more likely software will finally start to be written with the new paradigm that there is fast drives and slow drives, and a lot of the work of what files go where will be automated in a Drive Pool type of abstraction.

 

[mmntech]

2020 is only 7 years from now. Seven years ago what did the average system look like? Well, that was the year the Core 2 launched. A lot of people are still using those systems. Computers kind of reached a "good enough" plateau at the time. Meaning that the laptop I bought 5 years ago with it's 2ghz Core 2 still does everything your average user does with a computer, without noticeable performance impact.

By 2020, I'd say we're probably going to look at new average PCs being at least 2-4 times faster than the fastest systems now. But people are going to hold onto their old systems longer than before. What will really make the biggest impact is when SSDs finally become price comparable with conventional hard drives. Right now the single biggest bottleneck is mechanical hard drives. Putting an SSD into an old system can completely reinvigorate it.

The other big change is tablets. I think you'll start seeing more laptops shipping with ARM based CPUs as well. ARM generally performs better in a mobile environment than contemporary x86 processors.

I think you'll probably see the average person using a tablet or ARM based ultrabook. Probably eight core 64-bit ARM chip with 8gb of RAM. The real key with these systems is getting as much power as you can out of the chips while sipping energy and only requiring passive cooling. Efficiency over performance will be the focus of computing over the next decade me thinks.

 

[Acanthus]

I think you are pretty close.

I think you are over estimating the size of RAM, most systems are still only running 2-4 gig, maybe 16 gig will be common by 2020. The fact is common users don't fully utilize 4 gig of ram, there is no need for OEMs to put any more in. Unless there is some major change in software, I don't see the need for RAM shooting up that high in the next 7 years.

I think you are about on track for the SSD, they might not quite be common at 1TB by then, but it will certainly be a premium upgrade.

I think the HD is actually the one thing you are under on. I think we will see mechanical drives take off again soon in another size/price war. 3TB drives will hit the $100 mark by the end of this year, and 4TB will be there by 2014. I think we will see 10TB drives in the ~$300-400 range by the end of 2015, they will be multiple spindle and slow, but with a 500GB SSD who will care? I think that by 2020 20TB drives will be common.

The main thing I think you got wrong is the hardwired SSD cache. I just don't think this will happen. MB's are going to continue to be price driven, and that means no expensive add-ons like SSD cache. I think more likely software will finally start to be written with the new paradigm that there is fast drives and slow drives, and a lot of the work of what files go where will be automated in a Drive Pool type of abstraction.

The new consoles are getting 4GB. That means games will consume 4GB once they mature on the platforms. This makes me think that a 8GB system will be the bare minimum (Like 2GB is now) around that time for OS + background apps + games.

 

[GagHalfrunt]

World War III might have happened so we will be back to type writers fighting with sticks and stones

As typewriters were invented way after the gun was I think if we have typewriters we'll have the capability to fight with something beyond sticks and stones.

 

[Juddog]

2020 is only 7 years from now. Seven years ago what did the average system look like? Well, that was the year the Core 2 launched. A lot of people are still using those systems. Computers kind of reached a "good enough" plateau at the time. Meaning that the laptop I bought 5 years ago with it's 2ghz Core 2 still does everything your average user does with a computer, without noticeable performance impact.

^^ These were my thoughts as well; the main booming techs right now for computers are multi-core CPU's, integrated graphic GPU's on the CPU die, and SSD's. Speed of CPU's has only incrementally gone up the past 7 years.

Realistically, we'd be talking Intel going through another 2-3 "tick/tock" iterations, which means that they would be more aggressive at going after the tablet / smartphone market and the GPU / mobile PC market. They also have the M-SATA drives coming into the market, which have pretty incredible performance specs for such a small device.

My main thoughts is that PC's will be scalable; all the way from a smart-phone sized-unit to a full blown PC unit. Each set of items will be able to be plugged into a dock that acts as a full PC (we are already almost there, so it's not a big stretch, especially given tech like Thunderbolt). So you'd have the full PC experience with your smart phone, including games, a full keyboard, a 4k monitor, mouse, etc. and then be able to unplug the smart phone when done using it in that way and bring it around with you.

By scalable I mean everything from a smart phone that can run basic games on a 4k screen, to a tablet, to a ultrabook, to a notebook, to a mobile workstation, to an HTPC, to a medium sized PC, etc.. Docks that have a thunderbolt input that can take any of these items, and wireless tech such as widi (intel's wireless display tech), etc..

Basically any level of size / power you want, you can get. With mSATA drives being so ridiculously small, I picture tech like RAID-5 in a large notebook (alienware already has RAID levels for notebook drives, with MSATA being so small you could probably squeeze 4 drives in a laptop fairly easily). Scalable CPU's in the form of add-on cards, based on Intel's own super-multi-core Xeon cards, and more built into the CPU itself directly. This would allow for ray tracing-based games to finally hit the market.

 

[SMOGZINN]

^^ These were my thoughts as well; the main booming techs right now for computers are multi-core CPU's, integrated graphic GPU's on the CPU die, and SSD's. Speed of CPU's has only incrementally gone up the past 7 years.

Realistically, we'd be talking Intel going through another 2-3 "tick/tock" iterations, which means that they would be more aggressive at going after the tablet / smartphone market and the GPU / mobile PC market. They also have the M-SATA drives coming into the market, which have pretty incredible performance specs for such a small device.

My main thoughts is that PC's will be scalable; all the way from a smart-phone sized-unit to a full blown PC unit.

I think cell phone technology is about to his a plateau due to the one thing they can't get around in that form factor - Heat. Already my cell phone can get uncomfortably hot if I do anything that is processor intensive for more then a few minutes, try to shove much more power into that tiny of a case and heat is going to be a real problem.

 

[Wyndru]

Maybe by then hard drive prices will be down to pre-flood levels.

 

[Cattlegod]

If it hasn't been said, chips will be cubic with gpu and physics processors integrated. Likely a new type of memory will be out making a separate ram and hd obsolete. Hds will be as fast as ram. Ram will be merged into cache with cache being increased to gigabytes and on chips. Heat will still be a major problem and require pain in the ass solutions.

Chips won't be much faster due to size and speed of electrons if they stay flat so vertical is the only solution (cubic processors) to overcome processing power and speed.

 

[Ausm]

Quad-core fembots for everyone!

 

[CraigRT]

I can't imagine they are that much different than now.
It has been mentioned that there has been a huge plateau. That is true, and one reason I gave up on overclocking and tinkering as a hobby. Stuff just does not benefit from it anymore, and there is no reason to even bother.

 

[Juddog]

If it hasn't been said, chips will be cubic with gpu and physics processors integrated. Likely a new type of memory will be out making a separate ram and hd obsolete. Hds will be as fast as ram. Ram will be merged into cache with cache being increased to gigabytes and on chips. Heat will still be a major problem and require pain in the ass solutions.

Chips won't be much faster due to size and speed of electrons if they stay flat so vertical is the only solution (cubic processors) to overcome processing power and speed.

In 7 years? No way dude. Intel is working on the 3d part (tri-gate), which I can see developing, but not to the point where we'll have cubic chips 7 years from now. Maybe 20, 30 years.

 

[edro]

Wow, I hope not. The people who live out in the sticks who will still have a choice of a 28.8 modem or 128K high latency satellite internet connection will be screwed.

lolwut

There won't be dial up in 2020!

Everyone will have high speed wireless.