Wednesday, August 06, 2008

The End Of The PC....

Ponderings
What does the end of the Windows era tell us?

Does the PC really matter any more?

Is bandwidth more of a factor than chip speed?

Microsoft's announcement this week signals major transformation ahead.

Amazon, (and their recent VC funding of Elastra ) Microsoft, Google and IBM, AT&T, HP, Verizon and Salesforce.com are all shifting to a new type of "operating system", called cloud computing.

-----Cloud computing is the new catch phrase for utility computing, where customers buy computing power from a provider that hosts the software infrastructure applications on its own server computers and storage arrays.

-----That lets the customer save themselves the hassle and cash of having to purchase their own hardware and software; ostensibly, the customer rents the computing power necessary to run the applications they use on the Internet. This is a sign of the increasing Webification of the working world, where the Internet is the platform.

If the "Internet is the platform":

If "processing" is now being done on the Net, wouldn't bandwidth speed be more of a factor than chip processing speed?

Bandwidth, storage and delivery services become priorities.

Chip speed no longer a factor......

So where do chip companies turn for growth now that chip speed and the PC era is over?

Fear not, there's another industry for the chip companies that can utilize Moore's Law --the number of transistors that can be inexpensively placed on an integrated circuit is increasing exponentially
.

And that is exactly why why semiconductor companies are making their move into solar

So is the solar cell the PC for the 21st century?





Publicly Traded Solar Stocks

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Scott. Solar possibly has more PR value than utility for the semiconductor manufacturers out there but nonetheless will be a key tool in their repository for seeking the "next big thing".

From current developments, nano- seems to be a promising development for Intel etc as we will see biology play an increasing role in the computing architecture and cloud computing just as we have started to see biology play a key role in the design of systems once based on high-level cognitive maps - eg artificial intelligence, robotics etc.

Dean Collins said...

Hi Scott, on a similar concept of living in the cloud.

What are your thoughts on the potential extrapolation of the recent Cablevision 'Cloud'ification of entertainment content appeal?

http://deancollinsblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/cloudification-of-your-content.html

You're always fairly accurate with your long term visions Do you think this opens the door to a new type of wifi/wimax enabled 'content access' device that is physical but stores all of it's entertainment content within a virtual cloud allowing you lifetime access to anywhere/anytime/anyformat content?

If you can run a spreadsheet in the cloud - what about a video purchase?


Cheers,
Dean Collins
www.Cognation.net