Llano Demo

[Mopetar]

Kinda like desktops are dead theory right? I think all form factors will do equally well. There's that overly focusing on one metric theory happening true again.

Not really, I don't think desktops are going anywhere any time soon. Even as phones, tablets, etc. become more powerful, the desktop will always be a few orders of magnitude ahead and more useful for professional work.

However, in a lot of markets, there was never a big PC explosion. It was too expensive or the country lacked the infrastructure necessary to support the PC revolution when it was happening in the rest of the world. Cellphones are used for communication and social networking in lieu of traditional computers. As the future gravitates more towards smart phones and tablets being more than capable of dealing with most needs, it's possible that these areas may largely eschew the PC in favor of these new devices.

It's a little like missing out on the first few seasons of a TV show and never bothering to watch the later seasons no matter how good they are.

 

[IntelUser2000]

Certain benefits exist with every form factor. Those who want a big screen, that wants all the performance, ergonomics: Desktop. Which is why I think Desktops still exist today.

Laptops are a compromise between the Desktop and super mobile devices like a phone/Tablet.

For example, I hate touchscreen only phones. I love the idea of touchscreen, just not on phones. It just makes everything slower. It'll never be a replacement for a physical keyboard/input for some people.

Or voice recognition. Just not comfortable of talking to a device to call my friend. Privacy being one reason, awkward being another.

Tablet is good for certain tasks. Can you live with touch forever? I don't think so.

Smartphone has way too small of a screen.

Docks can work I guess... but a computing device is so affordable nowadays that unless you are having difficulty affording food, most people have multiple.

Netbooks work too... They are far cheaper than Tablets/Smartphones, and there are apps that need Windows and aren't too demanding.

It's just a matter of choice. It's good. No "oh one device is going to be obsolete" Bullshit.

 

[drizek]

I think the Atom Netbook is obsolete now, between CULV and Bobcat on one end and Arm and tablets on the other.

 

[grimpr]

I think http://cva.stanford.edu/classes/cs99s/papers/myer-sutherland-design-of-display-processors.pdf is a good read for some food for thought on modern intel & amd socs with integrated graphics.

"Finally we decided to design the processor ourselves, because only in this way, we thought, could we obtain a truly complete display processor. We approached the task by starting with a simple scheme and adding commands and features that we felt would enhance the power of the machine. Gradually the processor became more complex. We were not disturbed by this because computer graphics, after all, are complex. Finally the display processor came to resemble a full-fledged computer with some special graphics features. And then a strange thing happened. We felt compelled to add to the processor a second, subsidiary processor, which, itself, began to grow in complexity. It was then that we discovered a disturbing truth. Designing a display processor can become a never-ending cyclical process. In fact, we found the process so frustrating that we have come to call it the "wheel of reincarnation." We spent a long time trapped on that wheel before we finally broke free. In the remainder of this paper we describe our experiences. We have written it in the hope that it may speed others on toward "Nirvana."

"3. General Conclusions

It was not until we had traveled around the wheel several times that we realized what was happening. Once we did, we tried to view the whole problem from a broader perspective. We found that some questions had fairly clear answers, but others remained in doubt. The remainder of this paper outlines our conclusions and sets forth the questions we could not answer.

The problem breaks down into two general questions: How closely should the display system be tied to the parent computer? How much computing power should be included in the display processor?"

 

[Mopetar]

Kind of old, but an interesting read.

I think that part of their problem was that they were new to designing such a chip so by the time they had a design nearly completed, they had learned enough to realize that they could do things better, creating this wheel of theirs.

The other problem they seemed to run into was feature creep. Because they didn't define a good set of requirements at the onset, their design was never truly finished because the end point always kept moving along with their desire to add more capabilities.

In industry, the process is somewhat more defined. Anand has some good articles about the design process behind RV870 which is a rather enjoyable read and gives some insight into how the Radeon 5000 series was developed. Here's the link