Herb Schaltegger wrote:
In article ,
Ian Stirling wrote:
snip

Yes, the Pentium 60 wasn't much faster than the 48DX at 100 MHZ (or
thereabouts - whatever they maxed out at wasn't much faster). So what?
Find me a commercially-available 486 that outperformed a Pentium 90
(which hit the market within a year or so). Stupid comparisons. Try
measuring processor floating point performance; measure disk, video and
overall data throughput for a bit more meaningful comparison.

IIRC, there were sequent multiprocessor boxes that would.
However, not exactly general purpose.

A number of factors conspired to make the advances comparatively
rapid at that time.
Increasingly capable design tools, enabling the designers to take
advantage of the relatively fab geometry upgrades.

Fabs were relatively cheap and easy to upgrade. Over time they've
gotten more and more hard and expensive to build.

existing Pentium chips a few Megahertz faster and a DVD player that
hold slightly more gigabytes. What the hell is the matter with
scientists today. The fact that we haven't colonized the moon yet and
had several manned missions to mars makes me want to puke. What the
heck is takin these chumps so long? I'm so mad.

Funding, and huge aerospace companies not wanting to lower the cost of
anything.

Oh, please. You must be a graduate of the "It's All a Big Conspiracy!"
school of higher education.

In some ways, it acts like one, though I don't believe there is general
intent.

You've got huge aerospace companies with lots of congressmen backing them.
You've got NASA wanting to build expensive stuff.
And congressmen can authorise NASA to do so, and send lots of work to
their constituents.

This can be a viscous circle, which can lead to "space is expensive"
getting stuck in peoples minds, perpetuating it.

If people know that space is expensive, then getting funding for
projects that propose methods that dramatically lower the cost of
space launch can be nearly impossible, as if you ask the obvious
source (NASA), they tell you it can't.

--
http://inquisitor.i.am/ | | Ian Stirling.
---------------------------+-------------------------+--------------------------
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornfull tone, "It means
Just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less." -- Lewis Carrol