just for fun, what do u guys think the next generation computers will be like??, specs( hardware and software) do you guys think in the next forty years ull be able to operate the computers?. lets take an introspective look at the advancement of the computer hardware. with diskettes becoming obsolete, monitors getting ultraslim, some few years ago use a 40GB hardisk and your a pro, now if u dont have 250GB uv not started. with operating system upgrades RAMS now have outerworld zapping speeds.before a usb believe me was Sci finow it is common. i was once comfy running my 250MB ram on my windows XP and it was adequate for most games. now systems now come bundled with 4GB. not to talk of parallel processors becoming common,Dual cores becoming obsolete etc, i even heard of a new discovery of a CD that stores data in terabytes.with handwriting recognition and quads, there will soon be no need for the classroom notebooks. What is the next evolution of the internet?, some people already have homes and families on facebook and other blogging forums. one day the world will wake up and instead of u going to operate your comuter, your computer will walk to operate you, where are we going, THIS IS STRICTLY FOR TECH GEEKS.

robots; they've been talking about that for years in scifi books

The prototype for a revolutionary new general-purpose computer processor, which has the potential of reaching trillions of calculations per second, has been designed and built by a team of computer scientists at The University of Texas at Austin.

The new processor, known as TRIPS (Tera-op, Reliable, Intelligently adaptive Processing System), could be used to accelerate industrial, consumer and scientific computing.

"The TRIPS prototype is the first on a roadmap that will lead to ultra-powerful, flexible processors implemented in nanoscale technologies,"

TRIPS is a demonstration of a new class of processing architectures called Explicit Data Graph Execution (EDGE). Unlike conventional architectures that process one instruction at a time, EDGE can process large blocks of information all at once and more efficiently.

Current "multicore" processing technologies increase speed by adding more processors, which individually may not be any faster than previous processors.

Adding processors shifts the burden of obtaining better performance to software programmers, who must assume the difficult task of rewriting their code to run well on a potentially large number of processors.

EDGE technology offers an alternative approach when the race to multicore runs out of steam

Each TRIPS chip contains two processing cores, each of which can issue 16 operations per cycle with up to 1,024 instructions in flight simultaneously. Current high-performance processors are typically designed to sustain a maximum execution rate of four operations per cycle.

Though the prototype contains two 16-wide processors per chip, the research team aims to scale this up with further development.

Microsoft's next-generation monitor , the touch screen sphere
By Microsoft Subnet on Tue, 07/29/08 - 4:39pm.

Blogger Todd Bishop has got a great story on a Microsoft Research project for creating sphere-shaped touch screens. He writes:

"After months of rumors, Microsoft researchers are taking the wraps off a prototype that uses an internal projection and vision system to bring a spherical computer display to life. People can touch the surface with multiple fingers and hands to manipulate photos, play games, spin a virtual globe, or watch 360-degree videos."

Bishop points out that the basic sphere is already available from the OEM, Global Imagination of Los Gatos, Calif., but notes that Microsoft researchers have tweaked the features and functionality quite a bit. While it seems unlikely that a globe will ever replace the LCD flat screen, it does lend itself to numerous applications that can't be done on a flat screen. These include using a monitor in the center of a room for conferences or video games and displaying global data in a geographically accurate way.

A picture is worth a 1,000 words, so we've posted the video demonstration here.

see the video on http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/30476