Where do you think technology will be in near future (5 years)?

I'm just curious where people think technology will be in the near future. What do you think will be the new standards in screen resolution, processors, graphics power, touch screens, operating systems, etc, etc? I say 5 years because technology advances so fast.

 

The next generation of iRobot will be available.

On the downside, it will probably be running something like Android 2.3 Gingerbread.

 

DDR4 should be in its heyday, and perhaps we might get a glimpse of DDR5. I for one certainly hope that Ramdisk setups will have started to become mainstream by 2019.

 

The hipster movement will be in full swing and we'll all be using Palm Pilot's and Blackberry's again along with green/black CRT monitors...

Dedicated video cards will be powerful enough to drive 4k monitors on 120Hz screens for gaming, although we'll likely only have nVidia and they'll only advance enough to make it just "good enough" because there's no competition. But there should be GDDR6 at insane speeds. Although likely will be a big push for cloud based gaming, network speeds and latency will be reduced to the point making this possible (although I don't care for that). Spinning drives will no longer be used in PC's and laptops except in servers and possibly backup drives because SSD capacities will approach 4TB and the typical capacities will be 1-2TB and cost < $100/TB. Battery life will be improved by probably 50%. DDR4 will be as common as DDR3 today. Maybe we will finally see OLED displays in more common use and power consumption greatly reduced. Expect better than Xbox One / PS4 performance in SoC laptops and tablets. Microsoft or Sony may decide to drop out of the game console race altogether. Google will rule the world.

 

Yeah, I hope phones, tablets, laptops, etc will have more graphical capabilities than the X1 and PS4 in the near future. Right now, a top of the line mobile GPU (GTX 880/780) is less powerful than a GTX 760. I hope laptops will sometime be able to compete with the power of desktops for around the same price in the near future as graphics cards and CPU's get smaller and smaller. I also hope 4K is the standard for full size monitors, laptops, and large tablets (10+ inches).
Do you guys think convertible laptops will be more common or a standard?

 

We will see advancements trod along at a slower pace than they have for the previous five years.

The only things for sure are that anything above 1080p will still be a small niche segment, desktops will still be more powerful than laptops, everything will use DDR4, SSD's will still cost a lot more per GB and be smaller than HDD's, and internet speeds and latency will not improve by a whole lot.

 

I didn't mean that laptops will be as powerful as desktops in 5 years. I know it will still be a long time until that would happen.

 

I see ... I see... soldered ULV cpu's at the speed of Pentium IV's. 4GB Soldered DDR4 ram... 64GB proprietary SSD's that cost an arm and a leg. internal batteries that last a 1000 cycles and cannot be replaced.. And a windows 9 OS with just one metro tile that when clicked will spam your social media with "Hurrr durr I luv windows n1n3!!1!", but don't worry, the scaling on your 1634611x136125 screen will be so horrible no one can read it. All at the cheap price of $3000 for a new ultrasuperthinandlightbook.
And the best part? Consumers will LOVE it.

If the evolution of our beloved PC tech will keep slowing down like this then soon they'll be going backwards.
~Aeny

 

Lenovo will remove the Thinkpad name from its laptop line.

 

I fear the same. And same thing with Intel actually. If not for AMD, today's dual core i3's will be passed off by Intel as "enthusiast" processors, and quad core CPUs being "Xtreme editions". Thank goodness for AMD.

 

Too bad AMDs best quad core (5750M) performs on par with Intels Base line Core i3 (4000M). In the desktop world, AMDs best CPU performs on par with the Core i5s. The i7s, i7-hexcore and Xeons are still years ahead of AMD.

The only thing AMD had going for them then was their GPU line, until Nvidia waited for the perfect time to pull out Maxwell and just one-up them in the GPU section too.

I havent bought an AMD product since 2006-2007, and i dont plan on doing it in the near future either.

On the bright side, all three major consoles (XBone/PS4/WiiU) are all AMD products, so they still have quite a few years to prosper. As for the eventual demise of consoles, i dont think reddits over-hyped "pcmasterrace" will be the death of consoles, but rather HAAS (hardware as a service) where companies would have all their GPUs on an off-site server and charge money to have the games streamed/played real time onto any device.

 

Yes, which is why Intel hasn't made (or attempted to make) any real progress since Sandy Bridge.

As for GPUs, while nVidia traditionally had the best performance (even if it meant charging twice the price for a measly 10% improvement), ATi always had the best bang for buck, which kept nVidia in check and made sure they didn't drag their feet. I used to always buy ATi for that reason. But of course since AMD's acquisition of ATi the GPU line went to hell as well.

 

Not even. Nvidias mid range GTX 860M and 750Ti put AMDs (and the rest of Nvidias) entire lines to shame.

The 1000-2000$ cards sold by Nvidia are just for e-peen. But to say that Nvidia cards offer 10% more peformance for twice the price is just plain ignorant, since most people buy GTX 760/770 anyways, which perform on par with their AMD counterparts.

 

Guess I should've made it clear I was referring to cards made by ATi prior to AMD's acquisition. Actually ATi was still ok after the acquisition, it wasn't until AMD finally decided to kill the ATi brand that everything just really went downhill.

 

So from the Radeon 6000 series onwards?

 

What is wrong with AMD graphics cards? I don't understand. Maybe because I mostly just know them from dekstops?

 

Maybe collateral damage from all the bad press of the 6990M and 7970M dying prematurely?

More like after the 1000 series LOL. (which of course, coincides with the acquistion by AMD...)

 

I think we've reached a technological plateau until we see some true next generation, Minority - Report - type holograms and true AI married to non-military vehicles. I would suspect this will roll out in the medical fields first - computerized wheelchairs and advanced bionic limbs.

On the consumer front, I sadly agree with some of the more sarcastic posts. Consumers seem to take everything that gets thrown at them. SSD storage will get cheaper, but I don't see many advancements beyond that. What's the difference in true real world and/or gaming performance between a hexacore processor and an octo core?

 

It may not be a standard, but do you guys think 4K will be more common and a lot cheaper?

 

As of now, nothing, especially with the Lite/Dogecoin mining craze. But that all changed with Maxwell. The fact that Nvidia is capable of delivering the same performance for half the power with Maxwell means that AMD will really need to step up their game, or end up playing catch-up.

While this normally is good news (yay computers use less power!) it is also bad news because then only one company will start to have a monopoly over GPU tech, last time I checked, a lack of competition hurts innovation.

While I don't buy AMD products, i do like the competition between NVIDIA and AMD because it keeps new tech coming, and it prevents GPU makers from pulling off an "Intel" (5% performance increase every year... come on....).

Oh yeah. You can almost count on that. Plus 4K just sounds cool and can be marketed pretty well. Expect laptops with 4K to come out real soon, Lenovo Ideapad Y50 and Toshiba Tecra W50 being the pioneers.

For non-gamers/enthusiasts... none! But thats why Intel and AMD are mostly working on the power-efficient side of things now. I mean look at bay trail, 2.4ghz quad (with C2D performance) and HD 2500 performance within 4 watts! You could probably power that with a bag of potatoes! (not to be taken seriously)

Passively cooled low-power chips that can run for 10 hours on battery + SSD storage + small size = a whole world of possible applications, and no mechanical parts!

 

The sad thing is even with AMD around, Intel can still pull these 5% improvement BS and the market would absorb it. Now imagine if AMD was gone. Worst part is, AMD doesn't even have to fold for Intel to have a complete monopoly, they just simply have to pull out of the CPU market. From the way things have been going for the past couple years, if AMD doesn't seriously up its game, that just might become reality one day. Doesn't help that AMD seems to be shifting its focus to SoC platforms and consoles.

 

The saddest thing is that even for the several years when AMD processors were clearly at the top of the performance heap and sold for much less than competing chips, it was business as usual for Intel. Illegal anti-competitive deals with the major PC builders and a never-ending marketing onslaught meant that their netburst chips were still commanding over 50% market share while Intel was charging an arm and a leg for them.

So yeah, it sucks now that there is no competition and performance improvements have come to a standstill. Intel invested billions more than AMD into their top-end processors, and that investment is now paying off in spades. Now there is very little difference between processor generations and releases get pushed back and stretched out as much as possible, and Intel obsoletes old sockets just because they can.

 

Wow. Can anybody say great expectations here? But I do agree that 4k will be as standard as HD is right now. That means much more storage capacity in the form of mSTAT ports and 1.5-2 TB SSD.

Where we disagree is that disc will be no longer. It is because of 4k that discs will have a long life since they will still be the most viable and economic was to extend capacity necessary for 4k to exist for the mainstream.

I see 15% tops. As of today, battery life is only extended mostly due to powered down CPU/GPU and removing battery draining mechanics like the OD drive. There is no magic wand in the thin and light manufacturer's product development center.

If necessity is the mother of invention, progress here will be mostly superficial. Only the business user and/or enthusiast will care.

Absolutely agree here.

No gamer, so I got nothing.

 

Unless AMD surprises us with their next FX processors in 2015, I'll probably still be running the Core i5 2500K in my desktop, because Intel's processors will have only improved about 25% cumulatively.

They'll be a big push for cloud-based gaming (like OnLive), but it won't have really caught on in most places due primarily to network latency (which can only decrease so much due to the laws of physics), and secondarily due to insufficient bandwidth in a lot of areas due to insufficient competition between ISPs.

Steam boxes will likely end up being a fad due to not having as big of a selection as Windows boxes. Valve will have to convince major publishers to publish titles for Steam boxes, or perhaps do something like make Half Life 3 exclusive for it, if they are to really catch on, and that is unlikely to happen.

As long as their CPU division doesn't pull the whole place under, AMD GPUs will still be competitive with nVIDIA. I haven't been following Maxwell, but even if it is good, an advantage for one generation isn't the end of times for the competition. I'm actually quite surprised that there's been more doomsaying in this thread about AMD GPUs than CPUs.

SSDs will be increasingly common, but hard drives won't have gone the way of the dodo yet, due to cheap capacity. They may be the minority in laptops, though.

Touchscreens will probably still be below 50% in the desktop/laptop market, despite Microsoft's efforts. There will be more than today, but most people will only have tablets/phones for touch devices. Microsoft will be forced to make some real improvements to the desktop by Windows 10. Linux will see some gains before this happens, but still will be at around 2% home user share. Every year will be proclaimed as the year of the Linux desktop, and none really will be.

4K may be relatively common in external monitors, but won't be as popular in laptops because it's less useful on smaller screen sizes.

There will be at least one major international or well-on-the-way-to-major (think Yahoo!-scale) software company that isn't U.S. based as a result of privacy concerns. Key on international - Baidu, Yandex, and Vkontakte may be big enough but are focused on just a few countries.

We may see a breakthrough in battery life. There have been some companies working on this for years now, and with increased investment in that area thanks to electric cars, we might see the benefits within five years.

DDR4 will be common, but DDR5 won't be around yet. DDR3 was coming out in late 2007/early 2008; DDR5 won't come significantly more quickly than the 6+ years it will take DDR4 to arrive after DDR3.

On the plus side, patent trolling will have been significantly curtailed within 5 years, drastically decreasing the number of legal battles and money wasted on lawyers in the technology world.

 

You say there will be a major non-US based software company because of privacy concerns, and then list two Russian and one Chinese websites?

 

There are already a whole list of a non-US software companies that are successful and making money today (not just the three listed, but plenty more). You just don't hear a lot about them in the US due to little to no market presence here in the US. Two more examples that also happen to be well-known in the US: Kaspersky (Russian) and Mojang (Sweden).

Anyway, I don't really see much happening within five years, other than trivial improvements in technology (especially in CPU and GPU advances). Battery life will probably only improve marginally (chemistry limitations) unless we find something much more efficient and practical than LiPoly. 4K desktop monitors will get somewhat cheaper, which is nice, though people will still probably stick to 1080p in laptops, partly because of practicality and partly because it'll become the cheap standard option that 768p is today.

 

I feel Apple would move MBA to its custom ARM SOC no later than 2015. I see ARM convertibles running on Android Sundae? Windows probably merged phone and Windows 10 versions as single OS and so phone could be docked into a full laptop. Apple also merging IOS and MacOS(or making only IOS products). I am hoping for holographic technology going mainstream so that we dont need "screens". We will probably see truly holographic tv's that we can feel and smell.

 

This is more hope than anything else, but google will sell of its IPS service to the US Government and it will become available to 75% of the US population. President Christie's administration will make cell phones available to everyone and it will be mandatory that everyone have their phone turned on at all times.

 

Google will sell to the highest bidder. And every times you use their services you give them more and more data to categorize and process your profile.

Between that, and the tracking data that can now be attained from your cell phone usage, the government will have a complete record of virtually everything you do, and every where you go.

Your 1984, and all without costing a penny, rustling any feathers, or raising a single eye brow. Diabolically clever, don't you think.

 

Wouldn't it be more like Brave New World than 1984? In summary, BNW is all about citizens being distracted from real issues with petty BS such as entertainment and whatnot, like we have with reality TV today (for example)

 

How is it like either of those stories at all? The government isn't controlling what we say, do, or think. If you want that kind of crap, there are other countries you can go to, but the US isn't one of them.

 

I won't turn this into a political thread, but I will say this: if you thinks the U.S is impervious to corruption in its government then you'd better think again. If that information is out there all they have to say is national security to get anything they want. These are the times we live in.

I'm sure there were more than a a few Germans that believe the same way about their government until Hitler came to power and it was too late. The Constitutions is just some writing on an old parchment unless we defend it. And that defense never ends.

Now back to the thread. In 5 years the power of a Precision will be available in the form factor of a MBP.

 

Isn't the M3800 sort of like that already?

 

Offtopic

With about 6 corporations controlling all of the USA mainstream media, people effectively get BOMBARDED with all kinds of garbage on TV, the Internet, etc. ... garbage that THEY feed you - specifically oriented to promote 'consumption' and mostly occupy your time with frivolous nonsense which also has a tendency to prevent you from thinking and questioning things.
Patriotism is the single most effective form of 'brainwashing' I personally ever encountered.
The notion is idiotic, outdated and promotes social stratification (the glorification of any country or nation just because you happen to be born there - utterly disgusting - and of course, this same culture is programming people to think they are better than others, and all kinds of other nonsense - same thing happening in every other country).

Look at the educational system in the USA or across the globe. It's industrialized for the most part. People aren't exposed to relevant general education, critical thinking or problem solving.
They are effectively brainwashed into doing the opposite - soldiers being the prime example.
The more you limit people's exposure, they are that much more prone to being manipulated and used by others.
Classes aren't interactive.
Schools are like prisons.
Education is based around 'grading' and memorization which is then further degraded by competition.

As Krane nicely put it: "if you thinks the U.S is impervious to corruption in its government then you'd better think again"

USA is one of the most corrupt countries on the face of the planet..
The political system is a proverbial joke where people continuously 'vote' and actually think this makes a difference (repeating the same action over and over again expecting a different result) while people think that the only viable choices are the Democrats or the Republicans (both promising all kinds of things and BOTH equally failing on delivering any substantial changes that benefit the general population at large - building bigger and better bombs, the military budget increasing year by year while the actual population is starting to barely get by), and the inequality in USA alone is effectively increasing exponentially.
But USA is not alone of course... this is happening across the globe.
Priority is on things that are accumulation of money and profit - not well-being of people (with that kind of a messed up system, its no wonder you have one side seemingly 'flourishing' [if you can call it that] at the expense of someone else).

 

This is turning political guys and you already said you didn't want to go there and if you want this thread to remain open, you don't.

 

Other than the above post, it is difficult to say where technology will be in 5 years time.
But we do have some indications for example with AMD and Hynix collaborating to create better memory systems such as this one:
AMD and Hynix brings massive improvement over GDDR5

I think 'Pirate Islands' (next generation) AMD gpu's could see this implementation at the end of this year, or sometime next year.
Given the tiny size of this technology and increased bandwidth over GDDR5, I would imagine this technology could greatly benefit APU's and remove many bottlenecks which currently hold down integrated GPU's.

Perhaps this could be used for regular RAM as well.
Current consoles after all use a fully integrated APU design which uses GDDR5 for system ram as well... so I don't see why this concept couldn't be extended to AMD builds.

Then there's increased focus on Mantle and HSA.

I would also imagine the current companies will continue to milk silicon until they reach a dead end and then start incorporating hybrid materials which will augment existing technology yet again and only transition to completely new materials once they don't see any profitability or until cost efficiency reaches a certain point (even though we could have transitioned to far superior technologies/materials a long time ago - they are just too stubborn and only look at the monetary aspect of course).

I think smartphones might see increased usability in the medical field etc.

Perhaps better batteries - the tech is there, but as usual, the market waits a long time before it becomes widely available... and I there's a good chance they will artificially increase prices until they phase out the older stuff.

But there are too many variables to account for, and since things are changing at an exponential pace these days, its possible we might see radical changes compared to before.

 

I want my native PCIe hardware RAMDisk dammit!

 

What battery tech are you referring to?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Something like this:

Sugar-powered biobattery has 10 times the energy storage of lithium: Your smartphone might soon run on enzymes | ExtremeTech

And this:
Samsung’s graphene breakthrough could finally put the wonder material into real-world devices | ExtremeTech

Perhas even this:
MIT Energy Research Council : Research Spotlight

But I digress, technology, resources and science aren't the problem here since we can do these things far better now... the problem lies in whether if it will actually be adopted.
Cost effectiveness usually is adopted, but whether that translates to serious gains is another matter. The tech can be both insanely cheap and extraordinarily efficient, but I fear they will inflate the costs artificially for higher capacities if this does reach the market (even though there's never a justifiable reason to do this, seeing how they can make top-notch products in abundant supply either way - but of course, they don't really care about that).