Can PS ever be fast enough?

WD
Posted By
Walter Donavan
Jan 14, 2006
Views
614
Replies
15
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Closed
I use PS 7 only for 1-3 MB images, so have no problems with 512 MB RAM and 2 gig processor. Zips right along, it does.

But I feel for you poor lads who can’t get your work done with CS99, 1024 GB RAM and 1024 GHz processors.

Can PS<whatever version> ever be fast enough or have enough RAM? I think not.

🙂
Walterius,
Old, and lurking in Fort Lauderdale

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E
edjh
Jan 14, 2006
Walterius wrote:
I use PS 7 only for 1-3 MB images, so have no problems with 512 MB RAM and 2 gig processor. Zips right along, it does.

But I feel for you poor lads who can’t get your work done with CS99, 1024 GB RAM and 1024 GHz processors.

Can PS<whatever version> ever be fast enough or have enough RAM? I think not.

🙂
Walterius,
Old, and lurking in Fort Lauderdale
I think the speed and skill of the user are more important.


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G
Gormless
Jan 14, 2006
"Walterius" wrote in message
RAM and 1024 GHz processors.
1024 GHz is something we won’t see in my lifetime or our grandchildren’s. I think we’re up to around 3.4 GHz at present.

Helen
D
Dave
Jan 14, 2006
On Sat, 14 Jan 2006 17:47:33 -0000, "Gormless" wrote:

"Walterius" wrote in message
RAM and 1024 GHz processors.
1024 GHz is something we won’t see in my lifetime or our grandchildren’s. I think we’re up to around 3.4 GHz at present.

Helen

maybe you should update your sense uf humour

Dave
MR
Mike Russell
Jan 14, 2006
"Gormless" wrote in message

1024 GHz is something we won’t see in my lifetime or our grandchildren’s. I think we’re up to around 3.4 GHz at present.

A 1024 GHz machine will be on the market within 5 and 10 years. That’s not to say our images won’t be correspondingly larger and more complex.

Processors have increased their speed by a factor of one million in the last 30 years, and this rate of progress shows no signs of changing —
Mike Russell
www.curvemeister.com
LK
Laura K
Jan 14, 2006
"Walterius" wrote in
news:wQ8yf.34542$:

I use PS 7 only for 1-3 MB images, so have no problems with 512 MB RAM and 2 gig processor. Zips right along, it does.

But I feel for you poor lads who can’t get your work done with CS99, 1024 GB RAM and 1024 GHz processors.

Can PS<whatever version> ever be fast enough or have enough RAM? I think not.

🙂
Walterius,
Old, and lurking in Fort Lauderdale

There’s a lot more to speed these days than just processor speed/ram. I’ve just upgraded to a new computer with a SATA hard drive and PCI-Express graphics card and the speed increase is significant. I can have CS2 versions of Photoshop, Indesign and Illustrator all open and running fast across two monitors.
N
noone
Jan 14, 2006
In article <wQ8yf.34542$
says…
I use PS 7 only for 1-3 MB images, so have no problems with 512 MB RAM and 2 gig processor. Zips right along, it does.

But I feel for you poor lads who can’t get your work done with CS99, 1024 GB RAM and 1024 GHz processors.

Can PS<whatever version> ever be fast enough or have enough RAM? I think not.

🙂
Walterius,
Old, and lurking in Fort Lauderdale

In short – probably not. In reality, especially for folk, who handle very large, multi-Layered files, it’s great to have everything happen in real-time, without delay. When one is creating and involved in the project, there is little worse than having to go make a pot of coffee, drink a cup, then come back to still find that hourglass. Well, maybe a systemic crash, without a recent BU tape IS worse! ;-}

Most of us also realize that as soon as we take delivery of a new "state-o- the-art" system, it will be replaced by a newer, faster, and less-expensive version, before we even have the software loaded onto it. We just have learned to cope.

Hunt
CJ
C J Southern
Jan 15, 2006
"Walterius" wrote in message

But I feel for you poor lads who can’t get your work done with CS99, 1024
GB
RAM and 1024 GHz processors.

We’re getting closer – with a Dual Core HT CPU overclocked to 5.5 GHZ on an 975XBX MB we’ve (kinda) got as close as the equivalent of 22GHz and 8GB RAM.

I’ll let you know if it’s fast enough 🙂
SG
Scott Glasgow
Jan 15, 2006
Gormless wrote:
"Walterius" wrote in message
RAM and 1024 GHz processors.
1024 GHz is something we won’t see in my lifetime or our grandchildren’s. I think we’re up to around 3.4 GHz at present.
Helen

Hmm, think again. Just 14 years ago the original IBM PC debuted with a 4.77 MHz processor. Less than half a generation later we’re almost 1000 times as fast at 3.4 GHz. I would venture that we will probably see at least comparable growth in the next half-generation (where a generation is generally taken to mean 30 years), yielding systems running comfortably beyond 1024 GHz by the time your children are only preparing to have your grandchildren, much less by the end of your grandchildren’s lifetime.

And that clock speed difference doesn’t even reveal the true speed delta between then and now. Those early PCs had an ISA bus with 8-bit and 16-bit peripheral expansion cards, and a slow 20-bit (IIRC) memory bus. The PC-AT introduced the blazingly fast 8 MHz ISA bus at a 12 MHz processor speed. Furthermore, the processors (CPUs) had no memory management, no floating point processor, no 1st or 2nd level cache, etc., as well as internal architectures which did not support pipelining, prefetch queues, or predictive execution. Now, we have systems with all of these features, built in multimedia extensions, supplied by a 64/128 bit memory bus, running on screaming fast dual-gate double data rate DRAM at 533 MHz, with independent graphics processing provided by video subsystems that are all but computers in themselves, and chipsets which provide standardized in-built networking, including wireless 802.11a/b/g (in my Thinkpad R50p with Pentium M), and 5.1 stereo sound support. And all this for 1/8 the price of the original PC-XT, and that’s in today’s dollars!

Rest assured, Helen. You ain’t seen nuthin’ yet! 😉

Cheers,
Scott
G
Gormless
Jan 15, 2006
"Scott Glasgow" wrote in message
Gormless wrote:
"Walterius" wrote in message
RAM and 1024 GHz processors.
1024 GHz is something we won’t see in my lifetime or our grandchildren’s. I think we’re up to around 3.4 GHz at present.
Helen

Hmm, think again. Just 14 years ago the original IBM PC debuted with a

4.77
MHz processor. Less than half a generation later we’re almost 1000 times
as
fast at 3.4 GHz. I would venture that we will probably see at least comparable growth in the next half-generation (where a generation is generally taken to mean 30 years), yielding systems running comfortably beyond 1024 GHz by the time your children are only preparing to have your grandchildren, much less by the end of your grandchildren’s lifetime.
And that clock speed difference doesn’t even reveal the true speed delta between then and now. Those early PCs had an ISA bus with 8-bit and 16-bit peripheral expansion cards, and a slow 20-bit (IIRC) memory bus. The PC-AT introduced the blazingly fast 8 MHz ISA bus at a 12 MHz processor speed. Furthermore, the processors (CPUs) had no memory management, no floating point processor, no 1st or 2nd level cache, etc., as well as internal architectures which did not support pipelining, prefetch queues, or predictive execution. Now, we have systems with all of these features,
built
in multimedia extensions, supplied by a 64/128 bit memory bus, running on screaming fast dual-gate double data rate DRAM at 533 MHz, with
independent
graphics processing provided by video subsystems that are all but
computers
in themselves, and chipsets which provide standardized in-built
networking,
including wireless 802.11a/b/g (in my Thinkpad R50p with Pentium M), and

5.1
stereo sound support. And all this for 1/8 the price of the original
PC-XT,
and that’s in today’s dollars!

Rest assured, Helen. You ain’t seen nuthin’ yet! 😉

Cheers,
Scott

Thanks for this Scott. I don’t confess to understanding an awful lot about computers. The leap from 3.4 to 1024 in, what, say 60 years, may or may not be possible, and may well be indicated as likely if a graph was produced which showed recent trends in increases. However, I thought that things were slowing down nowadays, something to do with them having got the little wires and things on chips as close together as they can be. Another issue at play, as I thought, was heat dissipation. I heard that if chips get much more powerful then getting rid of the heat produced will become very difficult.

Helen
Just a photographer, not a computer scientist.
SG
Scott Glasgow
Jan 15, 2006
Gormless wrote:
"Scott Glasgow" wrote in message
Gormless wrote:
"Walterius" wrote in message
RAM and 1024 GHz processors.
1024 GHz is something we won’t see in my lifetime or our grandchildren’s. I think we’re up to around 3.4 GHz at present.
Helen

Hmm, think again. Just 14 years ago the original IBM PC debuted with a 4.77 MHz processor. Less than half a generation later we’re almost 1000 times as fast at 3.4 GHz. I would venture that we will probably see at least comparable growth in the next half-generation (where a generation is generally taken to mean 30 years), yielding systems running comfortably beyond 1024 GHz by the time your children are only preparing to have your grandchildren, much less by the end of your grandchildren’s lifetime.

And that clock speed difference doesn’t even reveal the true speed delta between then and now. Those early PCs had an ISA bus with 8-bit and 16-bit peripheral expansion cards, and a slow 20-bit (IIRC) memory bus. The PC-AT introduced the blazingly fast 8 MHz ISA bus at a 12 MHz processor speed. Furthermore, the processors (CPUs) had no memory management, no floating point processor, no 1st or 2nd level cache, etc., as well as internal architectures which did not support pipelining, prefetch queues, or predictive execution. Now, we have systems with all of these features, built in multimedia extensions, supplied by a 64/128 bit memory bus, running on screaming fast dual-gate double data rate DRAM at 533 MHz, with independent graphics processing provided by video subsystems that are all but computers in themselves, and chipsets which provide standardized in-built networking, including wireless 802.11a/b/g (in my Thinkpad R50p with Pentium M), and 5.1 stereo sound support. And all this for 1/8 the price of the original PC-XT, and that’s in today’s dollars!

Rest assured, Helen. You ain’t seen nuthin’ yet! 😉

Cheers,
Scott

Thanks for this Scott. I don’t confess to understanding an awful lot about computers. The leap from 3.4 to 1024 in, what, say 60 years, may or may not be possible, and may well be indicated as likely if a graph was produced which showed recent trends in increases. However, I thought that things were slowing down nowadays, something to do with them having got the little wires and things on chips as close together as they can be. Another issue at play, as I thought, was heat dissipation. I heard that if chips get much more powerful then getting rid of the heat produced will become very difficult.
Helen
Just a photographer, not a computer scientist.

Well, you see, the thing is that it’s not just a matter of feature density (so many transistors per mm). A great many of the improvements in processor performance have come about as a result of other factors: architecture changes, microcode redesign, multiple operations per cycle, pipelining and prefetch, etc. Yes, these have been accompanied by increases in transistor count, but the performance improvements are far out of proportion to the transistor count delta.

Even there, the predictions of limits seem to be valid about as long as it takes to get them published. I recall back around the 486 period when the Pentium was introduced that they were talking about the .90 micron barrier (1 micron = 1 millionth of a meter). Now Intel has .18 micron and .13 micron processes in production. There are interesting developments underway which may eventually make feature size irrelevant, those involving quantum computing. Current processes basically depend upon storage and manipulation of two-state data. Proposed quantum computers have the potential of storing and manipulating multiple states simultaneously. This, as you can probably see, exponentially changes the equations describing what it is possible to do with processing power. Current developmental experiments building Long Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube Strands (bucky strands) for use in semiconductors and interconnects open the possibility of new physical concepts in computing, as well.

Other factors include those mentioned above–improvements in bus speeds, separation of bus functions for optimization of particular data types and logical and physical data flows, memory speed and capacity increases, improvements in operating systems to take advantage of these hardware improvements, and many other incremental improvements all combine to make our subjective computing experience faster and faster.

Basically, what it all comes down to, when one examines _all_ of the advances along the current frontiers of technological development, is that any flat statement as to the limitations of speed and power is likely to err seriously on the conservative side. If there was a Vegas line, I’d be betting on the upside myself. 😉

Cheers,
Scott
B
baldycotton
Jan 17, 2006
On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 10:22:23 -0000, "Gormless" wrote:
However, I thought that things
were slowing down nowadays, something to do with them having got the little wires and things on chips as close together as they can be. Another issue at play, as I thought, was heat dissipation. I heard that if chips get much more powerful then getting rid of the heat produced will become very difficult.

I’m no expert either, not by any stretch, but I HAVE been observing the world for over fifty years, and the rate of change is something that still boggles my simple mind.

The things we do now… thousands of children walking around with cell phones taking pictures and vids and mailing them around the world in no time flat… we could not have IMAGINED this just a few years ago.

What will be happening in another 20 years? Certainly something that neither you nor I can imagine today.
WD
Walter Donavan
Jan 18, 2006
Duh. 1024 GigaHertz is a TetraHertz and I was just kidding. Jeez!

"Gormless" wrote in message
"Walterius" wrote in message
RAM and 1024 GHz processors.
1024 GHz is something we won’t see in my lifetime or our grandchildren’s. I think we’re up to around 3.4 GHz at present.

Helen

WD
Walter Donavan
Jan 18, 2006
I’ll let you know if it’s fast enough 🙂

It won’t be. 🙂
SG
Scott Glasgow
Jan 18, 2006
Walterius wrote:
Duh. 1024 GigaHertz is a TetraHertz and I was just kidding. Jeez!

Umm, no, 1024 GigaHertz is a TeraHertz. A tetraHertz would be four Hertz, about the speed of an abacus in a well-practiced user’s hands. 😉
CJ
C J Southern
Jan 19, 2006
"Walterius" wrote in message
I’ll let you know if it’s fast enough 🙂

It won’t be. 🙂

Will play a mean game of pac-man though!

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