CR Lum
Oh my god, you still don't get my point! How are CD-ROM maker able to produce a 50x CD-ROM cost-effectively? For how much will people pay more for a 50x CD-ROM when the real-life performance is similar to a 24x? About the sequential nature of CD-ROM, this is right only for VCD, CD-DA and perhaps CD-I. Data access of a CD-ROM is not sequential at all, when you do a search on your encyclopedia or database, the program file, the CD-FAT, the indices, the text, the pictures are all gathered from different locations of the disc. This is why Microsoft is not selling the Encarta deluxe (3 CDs) on a 2gig tape drive. The cache will certainly help but how much for a 128k or more generous 512k cache can do for a 650MB data??? Also most read instructions are to read only a small amount of data so the DTR becomes a small factor of the execution time of the read instr. The only time a 50x CD-ROM will show a different is when you copy a large file (eg. mpeg file, audio clip...) then the 90-100ms access time will become insignificant. Unfortunately by statistic, large block CD access is not very frequent in real life application except VCD, CD-DA but they only need 1x performance. Try to browse for some CD perforamnce information to see how much faster a 50x CD-ROM than a 12x CD-ROM.
About DVD-ROM, the problem is that current generation of DVD-ROM doesn't read CDR. When DVD-ROM is really multi-read enabled and support CDR perfectly with the price less than 20% more than a CD-ROM. Then you will see the big box makers put one in in every PC. Sales should pickup significantly in mid-1998 and take-over CD-ROM before 2000. Hopefully, we begins to see DVD version of Encarta and some games.
Thanks for your opinion on 3Dfx. Voodoo no longer the fastest 3D chipset anymore. Do you know when Banshee (Voodoo 2) will release?
aC |
