Technologies:

A PC Guide That Won’t, Technically, make your Head Explode.

by Rob Cheng and Bill Zahren

Central Processing Unit
(The need for spleen-ripping speed)

When people talk about computers with wistful, far-away looks in their eyes, slightly lusty voices and very reverent body posture, the conversation concerns what we like to call "The Big Unit."

Most other people call it the CPU, short for "central processing unit." The CPU, sometimes also called the "microprocessor," looks like a dark brown, matchbook-sized, steroidal cockroach grazing on the green motherboard field deep within the case of your computer.

The "processor" (which we’ll use as shorthand for "CPU" since all these capital letters make our heads pound) has two main duties. It’s the traffic cop of the computer, telling information where to go and when to go there. It’s also the brains of the outfit, gobbling data faster than people eat food at a cheap buffet. It uses the data to make your computer do what you want it to do.

Actually, the chip that unleashes all the magic is smaller than a postage stamp. Connectors and wiring that attach the chip to your computer account for the rest of the CPU’s size. Everything is coated in funky brown stuff to keep dust and dirt out.

Selecting Your Big Unit
For PCs, deciding what Big Unit to use really gets down to choosing between the Pentium and Pentium Pro processors, both made by those computer industry funsters, Intel. The 486 is still a good processor, but more and more software requires the extra brawn of the Pentium or Pentium Pro CPUs.

Both processors can run 32-bit software. Intel, however, tweaked the Pentium Pro processor big time so it runs 32-bit applications like a cheetah chasing dinner. The Pentium processor can also run 32-bit stuff, but not as fast. Both processors run 16-bit apps about the same. When we first wrote this chapter, the Pentium Pro chip was getting knocked for not being able to run 16-bit software as fast as the Pentium CPU. But in the last couple of months the industry has convulsed and gyrated like it does about eight times a year and now it looks like both CPUs run about the same on 16-bit applications.

Microsoft’s Windows 95 is part 16 bit and part 32 bit, so it runs better on a Pentium chip. Windows NT is pure 32-bit nitro fuel for your computer dragster. Run this high-test operating system through your Pentium Pro processor and you better wear a helmet, adjust your harness and make sure your seat back and tray table are in the fully upright and locked position because it flies. Businesses love Windows NT because it’s also less apt to crash, has better security and takes better care of your files. It’s also more expensive.

What does all that mean in English? For home use, go Pentium although the Pentium Pro chip, thanks to the rise of 32-bit home applications, looks to be the chip of the future. For business, grab a Pentium Pro and feed it Windows NT. Just wear gloves and buckle up, please.

Warp Speed — Now!
Once settled on the type of processor, most further discussion of CPUs that doesn’t end with someone laughing maniacally due to geek data overload, eventually focuses on brutal, eye-watering, cheek-stretching speed.

Basically, we’re talking about how fast the processor runs the 100-megabyte dash. Processors in today’s PCs can, to use a technical term, haul tail. The industry uses "clock speeds" to measure the actual rate of haul. You measure clock speeds in "megahertz." We could explain "megahertz," but then your head would explode all over your computer screen causing you to become, understandably, very cranky. So take our word for it, a megahertz is a very fast thing. We hope that’s not too technical for anyone.

The speed king of today’s PCs rips your hair out at 200MHz. Think of an F-16 in full afterburner mode. That’s slow compared to 200MHz. And even though a lot of other stuff about computers is nearly as confusing as getting bonked in the head with a 2x4, one thing you can count on: The relativity of CPU speed is all mathematical. Huh? That means that a 200MHz CPU is twice as fast as a 100MHz CPU. A 150 is 50 percent faster than a 100. You do the math.

A lot of people who speak in acronyms say you can probably never have a “fast enough” CPU, only one that is “as fast as possible” at that second in the continuing saga of computer evolution. What you want in a Big Unit really depends on what you want to do with your computer.

Do What You Want to Do
So if you want to run your vintage 1989 word processor program, and that’s all you ever, ever, want to run on your computer, a 66MHz 486 processor will probably do that as well as a 133MHz Pentium processor.

Sure, the Pentium chip can probably run that relatively simple 1989 program about a quarter heartbeat faster than the 486. Technically, it’s faster, but the difference is so infinitesimal no one with much of a life cares.

The raw power of the fastest bad-boy, new-generation processor does make a difference when you run the latest amazingly complex and sophisticated programs. To process the gobs of data included in the latest software and still keep things nicely instantaneous — with enough power to handle tomorrow’s programs as well — requires a CPU that runs very, very, very fast.

Many of us shopped for our first computer while insisting, "All I want to do is type letters," because, well, we had a lack of blood flow to our brains or something. That’s like saying you want to buy a car that just takes you to the grocery store, because that’s the only place we really need to go. But then you get the car, and you realize that cars can really take you a lot of other interesting places besides the grocery store. You had no idea these cool places existed before you bought your car. Now you want to go to all these other places, but you’re stuck with a car that only goes to the store. It won’t take long to get dissatisfied with that car.

Now substitute computers for cars. You buy a computer that can handle your simple programs (go to the store) thinking that’s as good as it gets, and then you discover all this other cool stuff a computer can do if it has enough horsepower to handle the modern software. Being human, you want your computer to do that stuff because it’s fun or productive or it will make your kids smart. Besides, you shelled out a few thousand bucks for this thing, it better do everything but shingle the roof. But your system just can’t handle that cool stuff, and eventually, you end up wearing the frowny face all the time and mistreating your dog.

Spiraling Out of Control
So we all upgrade and ingest faster and faster CPUs so we can do all this cool stuff. We’ve just entered the tornado-like vortex known as the "hardware-software spiral."

The hardware-software spiral illustrates the computer axiom — most everything in the industry can cause nausea. No. Sorry. Wrong axiom. The spiral shows that everything in computerville is built on something that’s gone before. Hardware makers, including chip producers, make new hardware. Software developers make software which can take advantage of the hardware and then some. Refusing to be outdone, those mad-capped hardware developers say, "We’re not impressed," and improve their stuff to take full advantage of the software and then some. Then software companies buckle down and do the upgrade thing and, well, you get the picture. Collectively, over the long haul, all this spiraling has led to much of today’s advanced technology.

Ultimately, it has also made some early processors obsolete because the technology has spiraled up so far the old processors are simply too weak to work on anything but programs from their era and those programs no longer achieve the desired results. It’s not that the programs have changed. They still do what they have always done. But the desired effect has changed, making the old stuff obsolete, like that car that only goes to the grocery store.

You can see how trying to keep track of all this could quickly become lethal to the average person. Let’s just say that this spiral has been going on for a long time and will probably continue until both sides get real dizzy and throw up.

When will that be? Rob, who has to help keep a grip on the spiral for Gateway, asks himself that every day — and sometimes in the middle of the night when he wakes with cold sweats and heart palpitations. He’s concluded that the spiral will stop exactly never. Because each new use for a PC spawns a whole new round of thinking of how to improve, improve, improve. Computers become more and more powerful, making tasks that were too difficult even for the biggest computer just a few years ago now within reach of your desktop PC. Breakthroughs today will shake down to more amazement five years from now and on and on. Next thing you know it’s the 24th century and we’re all sitting on the starship Enterprise having a replicated space cappuccino, yelling "engage" and marveling at the new, smaller, faster, more powerful computers that just hit the market on Baldar 6.

Humans In White With Alien Robots
The spiral started with that little, bitty processor chip. Despite their world-altering power and abilities, those little chips are more delicate than your flighty pet poodle on even her most neurotic day. Processor chips are so hypersensitive, chip companies manufacture them in virtually dustless "clean rooms." Workers look like some kind of lunar research squad, walking around the clean room wearing white suits and masks to keep the clean room clean.

You get an idea of why chip makers need clean rooms when you consider the geography of a computer chip. Each silicon chip holds little rows of squiggles called "logic." These rows sit very, very, very, very close together. About .25 microns away from each other to be disgustingly precise. That’s even closer than you came to strangling your boss when she told you to cancel your European vacation on the day before departure.

There are 10,000 microns in a centimeter, which is about a third of an inch. We’re talking one-quarter of one micron between lines of logic. A dust particle or hair landing on a chip is like a bolder or tree landing on your picnic table. The dust makes the chip about as valuable as a guitar pick. It’s toast. And advances in manufacturing continually narrow the distance between lines of logic on a chip. The more lines of logic on a chip, the more powerful it is. Don’t ask us why, it’s a long story and we’re nearly out of caffeine.

For PCs, Intel reigns as the big kahuna of processors. Calling Intel the "dominant" chip company is like calling a marlin rammed into a five-gallon bucket of water "a big fish in a little pond."

So how do chip makers create these little processor buggers? Sand, machines and people. The elusive and rare substance, sand, provides the raw material for silicon. From there, chip makers use fabrication plants, called FABs because — as you may have guessed — the computer industry loves a good acronym. FABs have been developed over years and years with billions and billions of dollars. FABs’ amazing complexity makes them seem almost alien. Big cyborg praying-mantis-looking devices all over the place putting logic on silicon chips and tended by white-wrapped people.

The Chip Drag Race
Once the chips are turned out, chip makers set up a little drag race to make sure each chip can go as fast as the chip maker thinks it can. Some clock out at 75 MHz, some at 100MHz and some at 200MHz and so on. Chip makers put each processor in a bin corresponding to its speed. Industry geeks, therefore, call testing processor speed at the factor "binning," as in "29.61 percent of the chips binned at 75MHz." Now you can ask your computer salesperson for something that "binned at 166" and feel like Mr. Insider.

From there, Intel and the tiny chip makers get into a very complex, scary system for pricing their CPUs. We have no confirmation that the process includes tarot cards. Like any sane company, Intel wants to make as much money as they can off their products while beating the competition. They also want to make sure they move all the product. After all, if the 200MHz chips cost $149 each and the 75MHz’s go for $145 a pop, nobody would buy the 75s. This would make the career paths for chip makers’ marketing people veer sharply toward the landfill.

So they do their ritual dances, read the tea leaves, throw ashes into the wind and set the price. But don’t write it down in ink. Lots and lots of people know that the big marlin, Intel, cuts its prices four times a year.

The reason prices continue to fall steadily has to do with what’s called Moore’s Law, (developed by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore) which says processor power will double every 18 months at the same production costs. That means producing a 200MHz chip now will cost the same as producing a 400MHz chip in 18 months.

This all makes chip manufacturers’ employees smile, perhaps even exchange pleasantries amongst themselves and order flowers for their spouses or significant others. But it also means chip makers have to pay close attention to prices and play things more like they are dealing with a commodity that’s in volatile supply. You could easily fit this whole serpentine system on a flow chart stretching for miles. The anal retentive among you have already started drawing.

Delayed Gratification
Since everyone knows that prices go down regularly, we get "market delay." Many people decide they want a certain configuration of computer and then they delay buying it, knowing the price will get lower the longer they hold out. So you end up with this big pool of customers just kind of hanging out, looking wistfully at the new computers in the same way they look longingly at the kitchen of a restaurant while waiting for their food to arrive. They’re waiting, waiting, waiting until they just can’t stand it anymore, it’s buy now or suffer internal hemorrhaging.

Sometimes while waiting to buy, some new configuration comes out and buyers decide that’s really what they wanted all the time, and the waiting clock starts over. Some people end up waiting decades to purchase a computer because they can’t pull the economic trigger and actually buy the dang thing.

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