The ideal practical computer

[Aphex_Twin]

What do you think, at the current stage of development an ideal computer architecture would be?

I was personally thinking (for desktop gaming & the likes) of something with two processors (or modified dual-core) that uses one big, powerful processor to run the most processor-intensive application(s) and a smaller one that handles secondary attributes (like virus scanning and operating system day-to-day business).

What is yours?

 

[Dida]

One powerful CPU is enough to handle all the processing needs. Having 2 CPUs are a waste, so is dual-core. Plus, it is unnatural for programmers to write code that is optimized for parallel processing.
Parallel processing will not result in significant increase in performance. The best case is when it achieves linear speed up, but this require all CPUs to be fully utliized, which is almost impossible. So, a multi-cpu system always results in less than linear speed up.

 

[Aphex_Twin]

One powerful CPU is enough to handle all the processing needs. Having 2 CPUs are a waste, so is dual-core. Plus, it is unnatural for programmers to write code that is optimized for parallel processing.
Parallel processing will not result in significant increase in performance. The best case is when it achieves linear speed up, but this require all CPUs to be fully utliized, which is almost impossible. So, a multi-cpu system always results in less than linear speed up.

That's the thing, processors have a hard time doing lots of things at once. At best they are active 40-50% of the time. If you use two processors (or dual core) you can entitle one of them to do the hard work of the currently running app and the other to handle the day-to-day maintenance (anti-virus, various OS processes). What's diferent from the general idea of dual processor or dual core would be to make it asymmetric: one big processor (to do the hard work), and an auxiliary one (to handle secondary tasks). Well, a second alternative would be Intel's hyper threading - which is optimized for multiple processes, but it's significantly slower at doing singular tasks.

 

[Turner]

The ideal computer for me would be one that runs the software I want to run, has the options that I need, and is as expandable as need be. Obviously, it's gonna change, but one flexible enough to get what I need done. And one that I don't need to replace every two years.

Kind of a cop-out answer, but I'm not going to list this processor or that video card....