Future of Computers The computers of the future are expected to be smaller, faster and smarter. For the past 20 years, CPU performance has doubled about every 18 months. The PowerPC will stay close to this pace for the next 10 years--a nearly 100-fold improvement in that time. The storage capacities of hard drives will continue to expand, they are currently growing at a rate of about 60 percent per year. Today, Intel's Pentium II has 7.5 million transistors. If the trend continues, Intel processors should contain 50 million to 100 million transistors in the first decade of the next century. In 5 years, computers will have 16 times the memory capacity they do now. "One big challenge is the time for the processor to acc-ess the memory. [One solution is that] the processor might be on the same chip as memo-ry. Every time you buy memory, you get a processor." Actual voice input will become a reality, but it may not be widely employed in offices because of privacy and environmental issues. According to Gates. He predicts that within ten years, "every computer will have speech and linguistics built into it. Instead of typing or clicking, you'll tell your PC to launch this application or print that document. At the off-ice, your e-mail message is just as likely to be a video clip. At home it probably means thatyour PC takes control of the lights, temperature, and appliances. When you have a prob-lem, software will look for conflicts, make sure drivers are up to date, when a fix is neces- sary, ask if you want to go online and get a patch. Later on, it will search for the medicine it needs with no intervention from you. Even later, software will watch what you are doing and step in when you're having trouble. In ten years there will be better input systems; handwriting, speech, visual recognition. As much as 90 percent of the operating-system code will go to these new capabilities. Predictable hardwar...
