> One point I don't hear being talked about too much is how hopeful and stupid we were in the late nineties and early two thousands. We were supposed to have 10GHz processors by 2005, or I mean mass market for consumers by the end of the decade, at the latest?
Sure, but look at the decade prior. I had a 486 DX-50 in 1992. Within a decade, we had processors clocked in the GHz. A decade after that, clock rates had pretty much stagnated as we have shifted to multiple cores. We saw something similar happen with memory capacity (huge jump in the late 1990's, and near stagnation over the past decade). The switch from hard drives to solid state drives actually resulted in a huge step backwards (in terms of capacity, though we got a huge bump in performance).
There has been progress with modern computers, but the benchmarks we used in the late 1990's are practically irrelevant these days.
Sure, but look at the decade prior. I had a 486 DX-50 in 1992. Within a decade, we had processors clocked in the GHz. A decade after that, clock rates had pretty much stagnated as we have shifted to multiple cores. We saw something similar happen with memory capacity (huge jump in the late 1990's, and near stagnation over the past decade). The switch from hard drives to solid state drives actually resulted in a huge step backwards (in terms of capacity, though we got a huge bump in performance).
There has been progress with modern computers, but the benchmarks we used in the late 1990's are practically irrelevant these days.