possible things that a computer can do in the next generation?

Question

capabilities of the next computer generation...

Answer 1

Technology will have no limits. Computers of the future will let read and write emails, work with spreadsheet, write a letter, play some music watch videos and maybe after doing all that you'll have time to play some games.

Answer 2

In terms of PC gaming (which is pretty much the major application that's pushing the PC hardware's boundaries anyway), There's lot of improvement in terms of GPU and CPU

On the GPU front, one major milestone would be the ability to do ray tracing rendering in real time. Currently ray tracing is only done for CGI movies such as Cars, and we all know how they looked like.

CPU would be all about parallel processing, superscalar architecture with 100 or more cores.This could meant multiple independent AI, large scale physics simulation and so on.

Media format will get larger and larger, for improved quality, as well as good compression method that will take advantage of the ever increasing processor power. But they will basically just tag alone the increase in CPU power and RAM size and so on. It's more like hardware pushing software, rather than software pushing hardware as in the case of PC gaming.

But of course not all user needs a supercomputer sitting on their desk. A large number of users (office, campus PCs) would go for more power effective PC, that consume less power, generate less heat and runs more silent.

Answer 3

If you are talking true next gen and not the bi-annual increments in speed we are all used too...

You will be assimilated! No, wait, that was just a movie, or was it the latest Vista propaganda? Hmmm!

OK, multi-core chips that running cooler and several orders of magnitude faster than all current processors will allow real time speech and facial recognition, true AI*, real-world physics and photo-realistic gaming - and get nerfed by whatever version of Windows we are up to at the time.

*(Or at least indistinguishable by the casual person and initially be used by governements and major corporations as a replacement for 1st line telephone support, switch board receptionist etc)

In case you are wondering, I'm not talking 2 and 4 core and Vista but real next gen - Intel already have an 80-core teraflop cpu that only takes 62W and fits on a 275mm die.

Intel press release: http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20070204comp.htm

According to one quote in PC Advisor that's the equivalent to the old ASCI Red super computer - which used 500,000 watts of power to run, another 500,000 watts to cool the thing and 10,000 Pentium Pro's