Thinking of more MP?

[dan_south]

I remember when Intel announced their x386 chips. This high-end microprocessor was intended for use in powerful servers. It would have

been unthinkable to put one into a personal computer.

 

Of course, pretty soon PCs with x386 chips became commonplace. They the 486 chips came out. Ooh! Ah! How could anyone harness

that much power?

 

Then the Pentium chips came out, and they were much more powerful than those old 486 chips. And pretty soon, we all had Pentium

PCs. And several generations have followed.

 

That x286 chip that seemed like all that you would ever need in 1991 doesn't seem so useful today. Technology moves forward, and

people find ways to use it. Advances in RAM and hard disk space made those faster microprocessors useful. Advances in optics and

storage are making high resolution sensors useful, and those advances will continue as well.

 

A friend spent big bucks on a 9 GB Seagate disk drive in the 90's. I couldn't imagine what that much storage could be used for. Today, I

use 64GB flash RAM cards in my cameras and multiple 4TB disk drive, and I still have to manage my space carefully. Progress is

constant.