Hardware has and probably won’t stop innovating anytime soon. The computers, laptops and even phones we have today are many magnitudes times faster than the stuff from just a few years ago.
However, the same can’t be said for the software we use on these incredible machines. Developers can take months and sometimes even years to take advantage of new hardware.
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How Far Has The Hardware Industry Come?
At times it can be a bit overwhelming to keep pace with the hardware industry, especially considering the rate at which it’s progressing. From AMD’s latest line of third-generation Ryzen processors to Ray Tracing technology making games look more real-life than ever.
The Products of Innovation
Nvidia RTX
While AMD has caught up to Intel in terms of CPU horsepower, the red giant still hasn’t quite managed to pin Nvidia as they continue to innovate with their rather confusing RTX line of graphics cards.
RTX GPU’s are currently the only graphics cards on the market to offer Ray Tracing technology. The technology allows developers to simulate the physical behaviour of light in order to bring their virtual worlds to life.
RTX technology being applied to even simple games like Minecraft has stunning results.
Why Is Innovation In Hardware Trending?
You might be asking yourself as to why such an overwhelming level of R&D is being put into hardware these days?
The main reason is competition. With companies being locked in a fierce battle to gain greater market share, they’re investing millions into making their hardware more appealing to consumers with a whole host of new bells and whistles.
Before AMD came back into competition with Ryzen, Intel rather stubbornly stuck to four cores within its desktop CPUs. As soon as Ryzen was released, Intel scampered to up the core count of its CPUs as to not get left behind.
Software is Lagging Behind Hardware
So, great hardware at competitive market prices, what’s not to love? Well, it has to do with another problem this has given rise to. It doesn’t matter how good you make the hardware when you haven’t got software that can fully utilize all of that shiny new horsepower, what’s the point?
Just take a look at modern games even as a prime example, you have hardware with up to 16 cores on the consumer market, Yet most games never seem to be utilizing more than 4 cores at a time.
A plethora of creative software such as Adobe Premiere Pro suffers from the same issue. Professionals have even begun resorting to lower core count, higher-clocked CPUs.
An executive from Intel is quoted as having said that when they release new hardware, it can typically take 5 to 7 years for software to catch up. Worst then that, most of the applications on the market today are still single-threaded.
The problem lies with modern-day programming languages not being too multi-thread friendly, as well as a lack of knowledge among software developers on how to effectively utilize parallel processing within their applications.
Its Time Software Caught Up
Now is the time that the Software Industry should buckle down and race to catch up with hardware. The silicon in our machines is now more advanced, efficient and cheaper than we could have ever imagined.
With powerhouse silicon now ushering its way into the homes of the general public, software developers can speed up their applications many times over through simple code refinement. With more power comes the possibility of new features that simply wasn’t possible before.
This could finally tempt consumers to upgrade from their 2008 versions of software thare reading this, stop wasting your time on constantly redesigning your application and just let us use our new-fangled hardware to its limit.
Conclusion
There remains no doubt that the software industry has some serious catch up to do with the hardware industry.
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