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Cost-Effective IT: Hardware Trends

Cost-Effective IT: Web Applications, by Richard Sonnier

Houston Business Show "Advisor" Richard Sonnier, of the Information Technology Services firm Nimble Services, Inc., provides weekly information on our show about business technology issues. He can be reached at 281-445-4800 x250 or rsonnier@nimbleservices.com.

This week I will discuss IT hardware trends.

CPUs

The Central Processing Unit (CPU) is the engine that makes the PC go so the faster the CPU is the faster the overall PC can be. For our customers, Nimble Services track the CPU trends. 2004 marks a watershed in commodity CPUs. AMD and Apple have moved into 64 bit processing in PCs. 64 bit has a number of technical advantages that until this year were only available in very large and expensive computers. In our tests at Nimble, these processors are clearly superior. We expect the 64 bit take over the market as the operating systems and application are retooled to take full advantage of their power. Microsoft is expected to release Windows XP 64 bit in the third quarter.

Faster and Faster

As the 64-bit revolution takes hold, CPUs will be going ever faster. Today, 2.8 billion cycles per second (Ghz) are common. You can think of Ghz are engine horsepower in cars. The horsepower does not tell you how fast the car will be but it tells how fast the car is capable of being. 3.2 Ghz CPUs are available today but later this year Intel plans to release 3.7 Ghz CPUs and next year we will see the first 4 Ghz systems. Intel will be adding 64-bit support as well. Rumors are that AMD will introduce a 10 Ghz CPU in 2006.

Two for One

Everyone loves a two for one special. Over the next 12 months, the CPU vendors are all planning to introduce "dual core" CPUs. Essentially, these will be two current CPUs combined into a single chip. In the future, these two for one chips may become the standard in PCs.

Memory

Today, 512 megabyte memory is common and recommended for all PC's. 1024 megabyte parts are available and within a year we expect to standardize on 1024 megabyte PC's. The performance will be doubling of the next 12 months from 333 Mhz to 667 Mhz and next year you will be able to buy 2048 megabytes in a single part.

Hard Disk

Today, 250 gigabyte disk drives are common and 400 gigabyte drives are available. Over the next few years we will see 1000 gigabyte drives. 1000 gigabytes is called a terabyte.

The Future PC

We predict the standard desktop PC you might buy 3 years from now will have dual CPUs running 5 to 10 times faster than your CPU today with 4 times the memory and a terabyte disk drive. Whatever are we going to do with all that power? From economics we can invoke Say's Law that roughly states that supply creates its own demand. Therefore, we can rest assured that given all this computing power we will certainly find a profitable use for it.

Next week, I will discuss IT offshoring.

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