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Seattle Times Brier Dudley column: Looks like PCs will be back in style

October 2, 2006
Seattle Times Brier Dudley column: Looks like PCs will be back in style. Check it out:
(Seattle Times, The (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Oct. 2--Maybe I'm stuck in the 1990s, but I think the PC is coming back after a long, dull spell.

Not long ago, it was thought that we'd do most of our computing on the Internet, connecting up through Web services and mobile devices. That's where most consumer-technology startups are focused nowadays. They're pursuing opportunities created by advances in wireless and broadband service that enable people to connect in interesting new ways.



It's not surprising that these Web 2.0 ventures are attractive. Pipes to the home have gotten fatter, and today's PCs can barely handle the videos, photos and other information we're sharing and downloading nowadays.

But that's changing, fast. An arms race between Intel and AMD is invigorating the PC industry, even before Windows Vista arrives and starts a wave of upgrades.

The chip companies are racing to beat each other to market with multicore processors that are boosting performance and lowering power consumption in laptops, desktops and servers.

Amazingly, these processors cost about the same as the single cores they're replacing. If you shop around and work the rebates, you can buy a dual-core laptop for about $600 -- within $100 of a single-core.

"You're getting two brains instead of one for about the same price," Intel spokesman Bill Kircos said.

He didn't say a lot about the rivalry, but look at Ford and Chevy trying to outdo each other by selling V8s for about the same price as four-cylinder motors. The only reason not to buy the V8, in this case, is because the V12s are just around the corner.

AMD got things rolling by introducing dual-core processors last year. Intel responded with its "Core Duo" systems in June. Now both companies will release "quad-core" processors by year-end.

Doubling cores doesn't necessarily double the power. Kircos said Duos are 40 percent more powerful and use 40 percent less power than Pentium processors.

Either way, mainstream PCs are suddenly becoming dramatically more powerful. And that's creating opportunities for software developers.

That's already happened in enterprise software, where Intel and AMD spent years preparing developers for multicore. Big software companies like Microsoft and Adobe have also modified programs for the new processors.

But there's still opportunity for new consumer PC applications, an area where the Puget Sound region has a lot of expertise.

So far games are the first to really take advantage of multicores. Game developers have been working on multicore processors for years -- the Xbox 360 and Sony PS3 consoles both have multiple cores.

Gabe Newell, founder of game developer Valve Software in Kirkland, says one quad-core processor can process a development application as fast as 32 previous generation processors connected by a 1 gigabyte local area network.

"This means that in the ongoing balancing act for application development, that client performance vs. network bandwidth and the other factors that define optimal architectures, have shifted toward the edge and away from the center," he said.

In other words, expect a greater focus on PCs now that they're getting some juice. The big question is, how much of that focus will come from tech companies around here?

Brier Dudley's column appears Mondays. Reach him at 206-515-5687 or bdudley@seattletimes.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, Seattle Times
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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