Ram & Reason: The Desktop PC of the (Near) Future
by Rob Rice August 2004
As I stand with both of my feet planted solidly in middle age, I am finally getting used to the fact that I will never have a futuristic house or a personal flying saucer. The comic books of my childhood lied to me. The dogmatic predictions that in the 21st century I would have a team of robots that would do all of my manual labor have not come true. But perhaps the bitterest pill that I have had to swallow is the fact that I have no personal rocket belt. This I refuse to let go of and will hunt down the vermin that crushed my dream through an obvious conspiracy!
So what does the future hold? Who knows, I obviously don’t! However, I can tell you what the near future holds, let’s say within a matter of months. In fact, the good old PC is poised for yet another renaissance. I can say by summer of next year the desktop PC will be greatly different from the PC of the last five years. Some of the limitations of that old PC that have been with it from the start will be gone. What follows are a few of the changes that you can expect.
Flat-panel screens have lost a little of their “gee whiz” appeal over the past two years as prices drop and they become more common. But what you might not know is that you can expect flat panel screens to decrease in cost more rapidly thanks to new technology. When we think of flat screens we are usually referring to plasma screens. Plasma screens work somewhat like fluorescent lights as they use electricity to excite gases which give off a glow. What is changing is that LCD, or Liquid Crystal Display, screens are replacing plasma. In an LCD screen an electric current passing through a liquid crystal solution which in turn causes the crystals to align and prevent any light from passing through. The light is typically supplied from the rear of the screen by a backlight. These screens are more economical and less prone to burn in than plasma. Moreover, several variations from such companies as Intel and JVC look terrific and look to be the future of displays. But don’t count the old conventional cathode ray tube out just yet. Still the most affordable, new technology is shaping the front and the rear of these good old stand-bys into thinner and flatter devices.
So where is the gee whiz in all of this? Well, last year Sharp introduced the Actius RD3D notebook computer. It uses Sharp’s TFT 3D LCD technology, which makes it possible to view 3D images without using the traditional red and blue glasses or any type of glasses or special visor. It can be easily switched back to 2D viewing for standard applications such as spreadsheets or email. The Actius RD3D technology makes possible a range of new applications providing three-dimensional images with an enhanced level of detail. You can expect to see this technology and similar attempts at 3D for the desktop PC. And if you are wondering as to whether your favorite game can be played on it, follow this link for a list of games with Value and Compatibility ratings on a scale of 1 to 5. One is considered the highest rating. The VALUE score rates how much extra value is derived from running the game in 3D/stereo. The COMPATIBILITY score rates how compatible the game is with 3D/stereo: http://www.sharp3d.com/partners/NVIDIA.asp.
One word will define the box of the near future, “Smaller”. The Small Form Factor, or SFF, has been around for a while and is really catching on. These computers are smaller than a box of crackers and really are versatile little machines with the horsepower to do just about anything. But the bigger, more traditional size box is not going anywhere just yet, but it may be shrinking. The reason is the good old ATX form factor motherboard is on its way out and is being replaced by the smaller BTX board.
The BTX form factor motherboard will have three sizes, the standard BTX, which will be the largest, and then Micro and then Pico. The main drive behind the BTX form factor is heat dissipation. The new graphics chips and video cards produce a lot of heat and the BTX will help dissipate this heat. Moreover it will incorporate PCI Express, a new system bus that will replace PCI.
PCI, was introduced by Intel in 1991. Since this time PCI sound cards, video cards and modems have replaced the ISA bus based cards. PCI Express will follow a similar path and replace the PCI hardware--with the exception that PCI express will have some backwards compatibility as far as software is concerned. It will be cheaper to produce, faster, and with lower power consumption as well. Oh, and the cards will be hot swappable, meaning you can add and remove cards without shutting down the system. This is something I am really excited about! And don’t worry about your old PCI cards; the initial PCI Express slots will be able to take them and run them as conventional PCI cards.
Two other names that you will come across, that is if you have not already, are PCI-X and HyperTransport. PCI-X, which is short for PCI extended, is a backward-compatible and speed-enhanced PCI bus that works with existing PCI cards. HyperTransport is a high-speed, high-performance link for integrated circuits on a motherboard. Developed by AMD it is developed for specific applications and should not be in competition with PCI-X. And, if this were not enough change for you, then try this one on for size, your future motherboard will most likely be 64, and not 32 bit, but more on this later.
One of the greatest changes that we will see will be in the BIOS. From its earliest days the PC has relied on the Basic Input-Output System, or BIOS to get the machine to boot. The PC of the near future might or might not rely on this system, but will certainly see changes in the way it operates and its intended use. I say may or may not because companies are implementing different strategies and have different goals. For example, Phoenix Technologies Ltd., San Jose, Calif., a manufacturer of computer basic input-out system chips, has developed the Core Managed Environment BIOS chip which includes additional utilities for diagnostics, self-healing hardware monitoring capabilities, security protection, virus protection, emergency network access, remote desktop installations and system recovery. Another thing that Phoenix is trying to sell its customers, and by customers I mean Dell, Gateway, Compaq, etc., is digital-rights-enabled BIOS. The software is designed to track software and authenticate it and thus prevent copying or possible copyright infringements. The computer owner, who in this case is apparently NOT the customer, will have no choice as to whether this protection is implemented or not.
However, Intel is also busy developing a new BIOS for its next generation of Itanium 64-bit computer chips. Called the Extensible Firmware Interface it does away with the DOS, legacy standard used by today's BIOS chips. Below is Intel’s description of the product:
The EFI specification defines a new model for the interface between operating systems and platform firmware. The interface consists of data tables that contain platform-related information, plus boot and runtime service calls that are available to the operating system and its loader. Together, these provide a standard environment for booting an operating system and running pre-boot applications.
The EFI specification is primarily intended for the next generation of IA-32 and Itanium® Architecture-based computers, and is an outgrowth of the "Intel Boot Initiative" (IBI) program that began in 1998.
The EFI specification has the support of American Megatrends (AMI), who is a direct competitor of Phoenix Technologies.
When it was released, Windows 95 made a big deal out of its ability to do 32-bit computing, yet Microsoft wisely kept the ability to run the older 16 bit applications and therefore insuring Windows 95’s success. Folks didn’t have to throw away their favorite programs, something they would have been faced with if Microsoft had made Windows 95 exclusively 32 bit; like Windows NT, OS/2 Warp, and Macintosh System 7 already were.
Now, chipmaker AMD has made a processor that is 64 bit but is backwards compatible with 32 bit operating systems, like Windows. More manufacturers will learn how to take advantage of the Athlon 64 and as processor speeds continue to climb expect your life to get even faster.
AMD already has 64-bit processors on store shelves, but wait, if moving to 64 bits were not enough for you then how about dual core processors? These are two separate processors on a single chip. In this way manufacturers can increase CPU performance without increasing clock speed. This will continue to change the traditional way we have been thinking of processors, that is judging performance by its MHz and Gigahertz ratings. So expect dual cores from both AMD and Intel in 2005.
Next month we will finish our look at the PC of the Near Future when we look at the major changes coming in operating systems and the rest of our beloved PC
The Sharp Actius R3D3 notebook: http://66.132.145.25/products/pc_notebooks/actius/rd/3d/
American Megatrends: http://www.ami.com/
Phoenix Technologies: http://www.phoenix.com/en/home/
Intel Corp. http://www.intel.com
AMD: http://www.amd.com
Microsoft: http://www.microsoft.com/
Rob Rice is a member of the Computer Club of Oklahoma City and a computer specialist working in Anchorage Alaska. You can email Rob at, articles@isp.com