Or, Intel rediscovers simplicity with in-order execution and a very low TDP. Put a bunch of those together on the same silicon with optimized shared logic (e.g., a high speed barrel), and you'd have... an X86-based contender suitable to take on a SPARC T1/T2/Tx?
Maybe not for everyone, but Intel can't be blind to the potential for heavy duty enterprise multithreaded and virtualized workloads (Sun certainly wasn't). As the original Banias/Core architecture caused a fundamental shift in thinking, and came to dominate--although ridiculed by many as a niche player at the time--Atom may be the most important thing since then.
1. SSD; with hope of getting prices to affordable level and capacity to be enough for average user (so about 250GB). Hopefully performance of these drives will make manufacturers of integrated controllers to show some progress, maybe include some cache etc. as well same like separate controllers do. Make pure hardware solutions, not the semi-software wannabe as it is now. As well I hope SSDs grow out of newborn illnesses.
2. Core i7 - for creating more developer nightmares with threading :-)
3. Lucid Hydra;; I am still not convinced that what they claim to do is even doable without massive (talking about tens gigabits per second) gfx memory transfers between the cards
4. nVidia 9300/9400 for being first gfx/chipset truly capable and reasonable for HTPC
I'm going to go the other direction. While these power hungry monsters (i.e., video cards and processors) you guys talk about are great for the high end, they don't do much for a guy with a family and an XBOX 360 (or PS3, whatever your persuassion).
1. HTPC components like the lower end 4xxx Radeons and the Nvidia 9300/9400 motherboards. All of these set top boxes could easily be replaced by a competent PC, but no one wants a jet taking off in their family room.
2. 6+ hour notebooks. I used to carry a Dell 8200 through the airport and all because its dual 8 cell batteries would give me 5.5-6hrs of battery life on site with a client. It weighed over 10lbs total. The 15" 1800x1200 screen was nice for the real estate though.
Now, I have a EEE pc 1000H. It's every bit as fast as my old pentium4 Dell, doesn't get nearly as hot, and weighs about 1/4 of what the old dell does. Plus, it gets 6-8hrs of battery depending on WIFI usage. I love it. I'll definitely upgrade when I can get a YYYYx768 or higher resolution screen with this kind of battery life, but for now, it's a blessing.
So, while you guys go to the high end, I'll go to the lower end based on products that meet my needs. I geek out over the high end stuff too, no doubt, but I buy things that make my life simpler or easier.
I'll go with simplicity as well. Cloud-based computing has made the netbook, MacBook Air, and Google's Android platform possible, while making file management for the average consumer much simpler. Instead of worrying about losing a flash drive in my backpack or in a lab, someday I'll be able to access everything I own digitally (including, hopefully, the software to manipulate it) with a simple login from any computer. I think storage on laptops is nearing its peak, and we're going to see an emphasis on laptops with cell-phone data access built in take off as consumers demand constant access to remotely stored data and applications.
So to my list, I should add Windows Home Server Power Pack 1 (all bugs fixed).
central file repository - check
central FTP site = check
remote computer access - sketchy, but fully available on pro version os's
automatic file backup - check
automatic system images - check
Try to attach drive to another computer and access data. Before you try this place the bad drive in a freezer overnight. If drive is not to far gone you may get access to it for a few minutes. I have had some success with this method, but be quick. Good luck.
I agree that SSD tech is a good pick for this year...
But why Intel? They were late to join the market segment overall, they were unavailable until very recently, long after being announced, and they are still absurdly expensive.
If we are to talk about SSDs, I think we can not ignore OCZ and their contribution to the field. I think their drives deserve to be pointed out, not Intel.
The problems that are associated with them aren't as bad as Anandtech made people believe, and this is another reason I think Anandtech owes more to OCZ... they are hurting their reputation unfairly. I still haven't tried the drives myself so can't speak from experience, but from reading around the net AT's claim that the JMicron controller in the drives is faulty are controversial at best. The more I read, the more it seems that it is just a matter of too small write buffers, a problem that can be negated by a suitable IO controller card... And by some reports may even be limited to certain intel controllers. More investigating of the topic is welcome.
P.S.: Another interesting technology that got its first commercial run this year was the initial attempt at brain-computer interfaces, incidentally again first brought to market by OCZ with its NIA. I am starting to love this company.
[quote]...but from reading around the net AT's claim that the JMicron controller in the drives is faulty are controversial at best. The more I read, the more it seems that it is just a matter of too small write buffers, a problem that can be negated by a suitable IO controller card...[/quote]
A controller card???
Since when should i have to put a controllercard between my I/O and the Hard drive? I agree if U happen to have 9-10 hard drives as many of my pals but Im on a Laptop and I dount think i have a PCI-slot anywhere to put another controller in.
I'm guessing the story of '09 will be SSD RAID. Something about seeing a CPU becoming the limiting factor for IOPS makes a lot of people happy.
As reliability increases RAID 0 will become the norm and I'm guessing mfgs will start selling bundles of 2+ drives in ready to boot PCI-E cards to bypass SATA-II limitations.
I'd like to see a review of onboard RAID chips vs. entry level SATA RAID cards. I want a blacklist of drives using the evil JMicron controller. And I want it all benchmarked using IO-Meter and real world benchmarks.
These things are all going to max out SATA-II in a few months on the read side. I want to see random write IOPS benched.
SSD and using GPU for general computing. No doubt these are the two techs I'm waiting most for to mature and become affordable and mainstream. I'm a gamer and heavy Photoshop user.
I have to give the nod to the Lucid Hydra. The ability to mix different gpus' of the same make and get near scalar performance increases out of the addition of that video card on any game not just ones that support crossfire or sli sounds like the biggest advancement announced this year. SSD's have been around for years they are just now making it to the consumer market and dont cost $1000/gig anymore. The hydra gives average people (not just those with more money than sense) a tangible reason to run multiple video cards. They even have a laptop version in the works as an external box... how cool would it be to be able to carry around a dual, triple or quad sli solution and plug it into your laptop?!
Lucid's Hydra also sounds too good to be true to me. All very exaggerated talk with no working product, rather like Bitboys in the 1990s. I certainly wouldn't put any of my own money behind them.
It's really about software if they can't handle all the DX calls and mojo they do correctly it will be a mess. Their demo did just support dx9 for instance. Sounds like a awful lot of work, making it work with every game problem free. It basically sits between the driver and game.
it does sound too good to be true yeah. But IF it is then it would be awesome. And for those who didnt look at their page again after being announced here on anandtech...
"October 29, 2008 — LucidLogix Technologies "Lucid", the provider of the recently launched multi-GPU HYDRA technology, today announced it has secured $18 million in Series C round of funding from Rho Ventures. This investment is the largest to date, bringing total capitalization to $32 million."
So they have 32 million dollars to do .... something.... with.
I mean the technology is pretty simple. Its a chip to put on a motherboard or in an external box board that intercepts the command going to the video card and it sends it to the one that either has the ability to render that pixel (like if you have a DX9 and a dx10 card and the instruction is a dx10 instruction the dx9 card cant run it so it has to go to the other card) or the card that is ready for another instruction. The problem will be convincing motherboard makers to cast their lot in with lucid instead of the big juggernauts in nvidia and amd.
Honestly i dont think SSDs are all there yet. Sure this was the first year that SSDs actually became affordable enough to be used at the consumer level, but the capacities are quite low.
The best use for it right now i think is to use it as a dedicated windows drive with other loading intensive applications stored on it like a few games.
I think the best thing to happen this year is the stiff competition in the GPU market. I wish Nvidia and AMD could always be neck and neck like they are now because it has brought down gpu prices to historic lows for the ammount of performance that both companies offer. SLI or Crossfire are actually realistic mainstream options thanks to the low prices.
For 2009 I hope to see the same thing happen in the CPU market. It would be awesome if AMDs Phenom II can give Intel some competition. I dont know if they can take the performance crown away from the Intel i7, but comming close and offering cheaper prices could really make things heatup in that market. :)
The most anticipated *anything* over here was the PCIe<->PCIe interconnects that were *supposed* to come via the PCIe 2.0 standard. Much cheaper than 10GbE to manufacture, and no TCP/IP overhead when dealing with external storage. I guess on some level it was realized, but it never seemed to make it to consumer level.
Imagine PCIe 32x direct system communications . . . that would be totally awesome. Not sure any desktop PC could handle 80Gbit/s transfers though !
SSDs now, I am not too thrilled with. Every time I start to read about the technology, or benchmarks, there always seems to be at least 2 caveats. The first being price of course, while the second ranges from marginal performance in some cases, to piss-poor reliability in others. That does not mean I dislike to technology, but to be honest I would rather see a reasonably large DDR2 (or faster RAM ) static RAM drive. On the enterprise level, you *can* buy a static RAM configuration, but unless you're a large corporation who can afford $100,000 + for such a device, the technology is just too expensive.
I bought one of these and was truely amazed even with really high expectations! Best single upgrade for "performance you can feel" than anything I've ever tried. So much so, I ordered a 2nd for raid 0 and barely even noticed a difference! I agree with the SATA controller saturation point comment!
I bought both of them using live cashback on ebay so I could enjoy them for a few months, sell them used and recoup all my money after the cashback and it worked! I actually made about $50. The speed wasn't enough for me to justify having over a grand tied up in 150gb of storage on my system, but I am sure missing them now! :( But I'm banking that the prices will come crashing down when some competition hits the market! Hurry already, will ya!
Also agreeing with SSD. This is the first time in prob 8 years that i have been unduly excited about the proposition of obtaining a particular piece of computer hardware. Before this for me it was the original Geforce.
Hopefully soon they will become more affordable ;-).
Definately SSD. Which means the final bottleneck of the computer system is gone.
I hope Anandtech do a technical overview on SSD.
SSD in itself it like RAID with 10 - 12 Flash Memory.
Intel Bascially have a SSD Controller with 12 Channel and DRAM Cache.
JMicro have 10 channel, with hopefully the new controller get 12 Channel and DRAM with the announcement of OCZ Vertex Drive.
Just how is that going to scale? Since there is a finite amount of space, Will be see 24 Channnel SSD ( 12 Chip on Both Side ).
Are there any limitaion on the SATA protocol that is stopping SSD from performing, is SATA the right Choice for SSD?
SATA 3.0 / 600MB/s is up next, for 2009. I wouldn't be surprised if SSD advancements increase rapidly and outpaces SATA 3.0, that they switch to PCI-E since x4 slots offer 2GB/s in each direction.
I totally agree that it's SSD though I wonder were the ioDrive went. That drive was blazing fast and big(tho not for consumers =P)
With SSD's i hope the prices will drop and sizes increases a lot in 2009(well more price drops atleast =P).
Others things id like to see is better colors in the computer screen market(like oled, fed, laser) as the LCD really was a huge downgrade in colors.(for me at my pricelevel atleast)
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has407 - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
Or, Intel rediscovers simplicity with in-order execution and a very low TDP. Put a bunch of those together on the same silicon with optimized shared logic (e.g., a high speed barrel), and you'd have... an X86-based contender suitable to take on a SPARC T1/T2/Tx?Maybe not for everyone, but Intel can't be blind to the potential for heavy duty enterprise multithreaded and virtualized workloads (Sun certainly wasn't). As the original Banias/Core architecture caused a fundamental shift in thinking, and came to dominate--although ridiculed by many as a niche player at the time--Atom may be the most important thing since then.
Holly - Wednesday, January 7, 2009 - link
1. SSD; with hope of getting prices to affordable level and capacity to be enough for average user (so about 250GB). Hopefully performance of these drives will make manufacturers of integrated controllers to show some progress, maybe include some cache etc. as well same like separate controllers do. Make pure hardware solutions, not the semi-software wannabe as it is now. As well I hope SSDs grow out of newborn illnesses.2. Core i7 - for creating more developer nightmares with threading :-)
3. Lucid Hydra;; I am still not convinced that what they claim to do is even doable without massive (talking about tens gigabits per second) gfx memory transfers between the cards
4. nVidia 9300/9400 for being first gfx/chipset truly capable and reasonable for HTPC
gipper - Tuesday, January 6, 2009 - link
I'm going to go the other direction. While these power hungry monsters (i.e., video cards and processors) you guys talk about are great for the high end, they don't do much for a guy with a family and an XBOX 360 (or PS3, whatever your persuassion).1. HTPC components like the lower end 4xxx Radeons and the Nvidia 9300/9400 motherboards. All of these set top boxes could easily be replaced by a competent PC, but no one wants a jet taking off in their family room.
2. 6+ hour notebooks. I used to carry a Dell 8200 through the airport and all because its dual 8 cell batteries would give me 5.5-6hrs of battery life on site with a client. It weighed over 10lbs total. The 15" 1800x1200 screen was nice for the real estate though.
Now, I have a EEE pc 1000H. It's every bit as fast as my old pentium4 Dell, doesn't get nearly as hot, and weighs about 1/4 of what the old dell does. Plus, it gets 6-8hrs of battery depending on WIFI usage. I love it. I'll definitely upgrade when I can get a YYYYx768 or higher resolution screen with this kind of battery life, but for now, it's a blessing.
So, while you guys go to the high end, I'll go to the lower end based on products that meet my needs. I geek out over the high end stuff too, no doubt, but I buy things that make my life simpler or easier.
andrewkfromaz - Tuesday, January 6, 2009 - link
I'll go with simplicity as well. Cloud-based computing has made the netbook, MacBook Air, and Google's Android platform possible, while making file management for the average consumer much simpler. Instead of worrying about losing a flash drive in my backpack or in a lab, someday I'll be able to access everything I own digitally (including, hopefully, the software to manipulate it) with a simple login from any computer. I think storage on laptops is nearing its peak, and we're going to see an emphasis on laptops with cell-phone data access built in take off as consumers demand constant access to remotely stored data and applications.gipper - Tuesday, January 6, 2009 - link
You're absolutely correct.So to my list, I should add Windows Home Server Power Pack 1 (all bugs fixed).
central file repository - check
central FTP site = check
remote computer access - sketchy, but fully available on pro version os's
automatic file backup - check
automatic system images - check
sxr7171 - Sunday, January 11, 2009 - link
I agree with you on the Windows Home Server but that came out last year as in 2007. I have one and recommend it to anyone.bigsal - Tuesday, January 6, 2009 - link
Try to attach drive to another computer and access data. Before you try this place the bad drive in a freezer overnight. If drive is not to far gone you may get access to it for a few minutes. I have had some success with this method, but be quick. Good luck.Visual - Monday, January 5, 2009 - link
I agree that SSD tech is a good pick for this year...But why Intel? They were late to join the market segment overall, they were unavailable until very recently, long after being announced, and they are still absurdly expensive.
If we are to talk about SSDs, I think we can not ignore OCZ and their contribution to the field. I think their drives deserve to be pointed out, not Intel.
The problems that are associated with them aren't as bad as Anandtech made people believe, and this is another reason I think Anandtech owes more to OCZ... they are hurting their reputation unfairly. I still haven't tried the drives myself so can't speak from experience, but from reading around the net AT's claim that the JMicron controller in the drives is faulty are controversial at best. The more I read, the more it seems that it is just a matter of too small write buffers, a problem that can be negated by a suitable IO controller card... And by some reports may even be limited to certain intel controllers. More investigating of the topic is welcome.
P.S.: Another interesting technology that got its first commercial run this year was the initial attempt at brain-computer interfaces, incidentally again first brought to market by OCZ with its NIA. I am starting to love this company.
Frallan - Tuesday, January 6, 2009 - link
[quote]...but from reading around the net AT's claim that the JMicron controller in the drives is faulty are controversial at best. The more I read, the more it seems that it is just a matter of too small write buffers, a problem that can be negated by a suitable IO controller card...[/quote]A controller card???
Since when should i have to put a controllercard between my I/O and the Hard drive? I agree if U happen to have 9-10 hard drives as many of my pals but Im on a Laptop and I dount think i have a PCI-slot anywhere to put another controller in.
apanloco - Monday, January 5, 2009 - link
For me the most interesting news was about Nvidia 9300/9400 and most of all the ION platform.
punjabiplaya - Sunday, January 4, 2009 - link
I am pretty intrigued by Ion and the pocket projectors. Mobility will rule.mckirkus - Friday, January 2, 2009 - link
I'm guessing the story of '09 will be SSD RAID. Something about seeing a CPU becoming the limiting factor for IOPS makes a lot of people happy.As reliability increases RAID 0 will become the norm and I'm guessing mfgs will start selling bundles of 2+ drives in ready to boot PCI-E cards to bypass SATA-II limitations.
I'd like to see a review of onboard RAID chips vs. entry level SATA RAID cards. I want a blacklist of drives using the evil JMicron controller. And I want it all benchmarked using IO-Meter and real world benchmarks.
These things are all going to max out SATA-II in a few months on the read side. I want to see random write IOPS benched.
Roland00 - Sunday, January 4, 2009 - link
Seconded everything he said.Zak - Friday, January 2, 2009 - link
SSD and using GPU for general computing. No doubt these are the two techs I'm waiting most for to mature and become affordable and mainstream. I'm a gamer and heavy Photoshop user.Z.
cactusdog - Friday, January 2, 2009 - link
For me the best of 2008 was the Mr T Flavour Wave Oven...followed by SSD's.Bonesdad - Saturday, January 3, 2009 - link
SIT DOWN, FOOL!shin0bi272 - Friday, January 2, 2009 - link
I have to give the nod to the Lucid Hydra. The ability to mix different gpus' of the same make and get near scalar performance increases out of the addition of that video card on any game not just ones that support crossfire or sli sounds like the biggest advancement announced this year. SSD's have been around for years they are just now making it to the consumer market and dont cost $1000/gig anymore. The hydra gives average people (not just those with more money than sense) a tangible reason to run multiple video cards. They even have a laptop version in the works as an external box... how cool would it be to be able to carry around a dual, triple or quad sli solution and plug it into your laptop?!PrinceGaz - Saturday, January 3, 2009 - link
Lucid's Hydra also sounds too good to be true to me. All very exaggerated talk with no working product, rather like Bitboys in the 1990s. I certainly wouldn't put any of my own money behind them.Penti - Wednesday, January 14, 2009 - link
It's really about software if they can't handle all the DX calls and mojo they do correctly it will be a mess. Their demo did just support dx9 for instance. Sounds like a awful lot of work, making it work with every game problem free. It basically sits between the driver and game.shin0bi272 - Monday, January 5, 2009 - link
it does sound too good to be true yeah. But IF it is then it would be awesome. And for those who didnt look at their page again after being announced here on anandtech..."October 29, 2008 — LucidLogix Technologies "Lucid", the provider of the recently launched multi-GPU HYDRA technology, today announced it has secured $18 million in Series C round of funding from Rho Ventures. This investment is the largest to date, bringing total capitalization to $32 million."
So they have 32 million dollars to do .... something.... with.
I mean the technology is pretty simple. Its a chip to put on a motherboard or in an external box board that intercepts the command going to the video card and it sends it to the one that either has the ability to render that pixel (like if you have a DX9 and a dx10 card and the instruction is a dx10 instruction the dx9 card cant run it so it has to go to the other card) or the card that is ready for another instruction. The problem will be convincing motherboard makers to cast their lot in with lucid instead of the big juggernauts in nvidia and amd.
Penti - Wednesday, January 14, 2009 - link
There are no DX10 or 9 calls to the graphic card, It's only the driver that has to interpret them, and lucids software. DX is a API not a ISA.EpsilonZero - Thursday, January 1, 2009 - link
Honestly i dont think SSDs are all there yet. Sure this was the first year that SSDs actually became affordable enough to be used at the consumer level, but the capacities are quite low.The best use for it right now i think is to use it as a dedicated windows drive with other loading intensive applications stored on it like a few games.
I think the best thing to happen this year is the stiff competition in the GPU market. I wish Nvidia and AMD could always be neck and neck like they are now because it has brought down gpu prices to historic lows for the ammount of performance that both companies offer. SLI or Crossfire are actually realistic mainstream options thanks to the low prices.
For 2009 I hope to see the same thing happen in the CPU market. It would be awesome if AMDs Phenom II can give Intel some competition. I dont know if they can take the performance crown away from the Intel i7, but comming close and offering cheaper prices could really make things heatup in that market. :)
yyrkoon - Thursday, January 1, 2009 - link
The most anticipated *anything* over here was the PCIe<->PCIe interconnects that were *supposed* to come via the PCIe 2.0 standard. Much cheaper than 10GbE to manufacture, and no TCP/IP overhead when dealing with external storage. I guess on some level it was realized, but it never seemed to make it to consumer level.Imagine PCIe 32x direct system communications . . . that would be totally awesome. Not sure any desktop PC could handle 80Gbit/s transfers though !
SSDs now, I am not too thrilled with. Every time I start to read about the technology, or benchmarks, there always seems to be at least 2 caveats. The first being price of course, while the second ranges from marginal performance in some cases, to piss-poor reliability in others. That does not mean I dislike to technology, but to be honest I would rather see a reasonably large DDR2 (or faster RAM ) static RAM drive. On the enterprise level, you *can* buy a static RAM configuration, but unless you're a large corporation who can afford $100,000 + for such a device, the technology is just too expensive.
gemsurf - Thursday, January 1, 2009 - link
I bought one of these and was truely amazed even with really high expectations! Best single upgrade for "performance you can feel" than anything I've ever tried. So much so, I ordered a 2nd for raid 0 and barely even noticed a difference! I agree with the SATA controller saturation point comment!I bought both of them using live cashback on ebay so I could enjoy them for a few months, sell them used and recoup all my money after the cashback and it worked! I actually made about $50. The speed wasn't enough for me to justify having over a grand tied up in 150gb of storage on my system, but I am sure missing them now! :( But I'm banking that the prices will come crashing down when some competition hits the market! Hurry already, will ya!
Kutark - Thursday, January 1, 2009 - link
Also agreeing with SSD. This is the first time in prob 8 years that i have been unduly excited about the proposition of obtaining a particular piece of computer hardware. Before this for me it was the original Geforce.Hopefully soon they will become more affordable ;-).
iwodo - Wednesday, December 31, 2008 - link
Definately SSD. Which means the final bottleneck of the computer system is gone.I hope Anandtech do a technical overview on SSD.
SSD in itself it like RAID with 10 - 12 Flash Memory.
Intel Bascially have a SSD Controller with 12 Channel and DRAM Cache.
JMicro have 10 channel, with hopefully the new controller get 12 Channel and DRAM with the announcement of OCZ Vertex Drive.
Just how is that going to scale? Since there is a finite amount of space, Will be see 24 Channnel SSD ( 12 Chip on Both Side ).
Are there any limitaion on the SATA protocol that is stopping SSD from performing, is SATA the right Choice for SSD?
Doormat - Saturday, January 3, 2009 - link
SATA 3.0 / 600MB/s is up next, for 2009. I wouldn't be surprised if SSD advancements increase rapidly and outpaces SATA 3.0, that they switch to PCI-E since x4 slots offer 2GB/s in each direction.yyrkoon - Thursday, January 1, 2009 - link
There will always be a system bottle neck, and it will always be storage related.Rubinsson - Thursday, January 1, 2009 - link
I totally agree that it's SSD though I wonder were the ioDrive went. That drive was blazing fast and big(tho not for consumers =P)With SSD's i hope the prices will drop and sizes increases a lot in 2009(well more price drops atleast =P).
Others things id like to see is better colors in the computer screen market(like oled, fed, laser) as the LCD really was a huge downgrade in colors.(for me at my pricelevel atleast)
RagingDragon - Thursday, January 1, 2009 - link
Fusion io and their ioDrive are still around:http://www.fusionio.com/">http://www.fusionio.com/
http://gizmodo.com/5107281/fusion+io-iodrive-is-th...">http://gizmodo.com/5107281/fusion+io-io...he-faste...
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/1683/1/exclusive_...">http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/1683/1...io_iodri...
dastruch - Thursday, January 1, 2009 - link
Definitely agree with you:) .I'm also looking forward to FED, OLED and laser monitors and tvs.
And happy new year to all!