1 6/3/99 The Next 50 Years of Computing © 1999 UW CSE Some inspirations: ACM 97 50th Anniversary Conference Beyond Calculation: The Next 50 Years of Computing; Peter Denning & Robert Metcalf The Invisible Computer; Donald Norman

2 6/3/99 50 Years of Progress 1947: Eniac 1997: Eniac-power computer plays “Happy Birthday” in a greeting card Overall factor of 10,000x to 100,000x improvement.

3 6/3/99 Moore’s “Law” Performance doubles every 18 months –Observation by Gordon Moore, founder of Intel, in the 1960’s No reason to expect slowdown anytime soon In 50 years, another 10,000x - 100,000x speedup Driven by consumer computing

4 6/3/99 Transistors 1978: Intel 8086, 5MHz, 29K 1989: Intel 80486, 1M transistors Pentium II: 7.5M transistors By 2011? –1,000M transistors/chip –8 electrons/transistor

5 6/3/99 Future Personal Computers When will these happen? GigaPC (1GB main memory, 1G operations/sec, 1Gbit communications bandwith) TeraPC (10 12 ) PetaPC (10 15 )

6 6/3/99 Future Personal Computers ACM97 Predictions GigaPC (10 9 ) 2000 TeraPC (10 12 ) 2015 PetaPC (10 15 ) 2030

7 6/3/99 Disk Storage When will these happen? 4 Terabyte disk for $400 1 Petabyte disk for $100

8 6/3/99 Disk Storage ACM97 Predictions 4 Terabyte disk for $ Petabyte disk for $

9 6/3/99 Storage Needed for 1 Human Lifetime Text read with some pictures: Compressed speech: Compressed video:

10 6/3/99 Storage Needed for 1 Human Lifetime Text read with some pictures: <300GB (200KB/hour) Compressed speech: 1.2TB (4MB/hr) Compressed video: 1PB (2GB/hr) What will we do with all of this computing power?

11 6/3/99 What will we do with all this? Software! Microsoft Software! Nathan Myhrvold Microsoft Chief Technologist ACM97

12 6/3/99 Myhrvold’s Laws of Software Software is a Gas Software grows until limited by Moore’s Law Software growth makes Moore’s Law possible Software is only limited by human ambition and expectation

13 6/3/99 Software Complexity Number of user commands in Microsoft Word –1992: 311 –1997: 1,033 –2000: ? Is this inevitable?

14 6/3/99 Evolution of a Technology Early development –Driven by what’s possible technically –Customers are technology enthusiasts and early adoptors –Market driven by new features, improved technology (feature count, MHz) –Business model is repeated upgrades

15 6/3/99 Contemporary PC’s The PC as a Swiss Army Knife –Does everything –Not particularly optimal for anything –Complex One or few PC’s per household –Expensive, large But that’s not the only computer in your house, your car, …

16 6/3/99 Evolution of a Technology Transition point when a technology is “good enough” for most users PC’s are just getting there (1999)

17 6/3/99 Evolution of a Technology Mature technology market –Market broadens to pragmatists who want technology to help them –These folks don’t care about how it works and don’t want to fix it –Market driven by perception, image –Low profit per unit; high volume –Enormously disruptive to technology- driven companies

18 6/3/99 Information Appliances Instead of one computer that does everything, many gadgets that are specialized to one task Augment human abilities with computation/communication Computers and communications as infrastructure

19 6/3/99 Families of Appliances Organizers, schedulers, navigators Dictation devices Digital cameras Displays, printing devices Medical sensors Audio/video components Wearable computers

20 6/3/99 Challenges Computers are getting “good enough” for more than technology enthusiasts Basic infrastructure is appearing now Information appliances are in their infancy How will computing change your world?