INQUIRER Hardware Guide to 2008

LAST YEAR was a bit of a mixed bag for the hardware sector. On the one hand, Intel’s processors and platforms moved forward without a hitch, with quad core entering mainstream desktops.

On the other hand, AMD took the most severe battering it has seen in a good few years, while Nvidia basically watched from the sidelines as its GPU and chipsets were delayed for more than six months.

At long last, DDR2 and flash memory pricing reached rock bottom, but only after several players slowed the pace of progress and others disappeared altogether, meaning what’s cheap today is likely to be more expensive in the longer term.

So what might we expect to see in 2008?

Intel’s 45nm chips enter the mainstream: those on the inside don’t seem to believe that the current "shortage" poses any serious problem. Simply put, Intel is in no danger of facing any performance competition on the desktop from AMD, so until most fabs switch to 45nm, all the initial Penryns will be siphoned off into ‘enthusiast PC parts – i.e. the expensive, high-ASP servers and workstations – in order to maximise profits before the competition kicks in.

AMD’s head is likely to start aching even more in several months' time when Intel starts replacing all 65nm parts with 45nm ones across the board.

Nehalems are scheduled to make an appearance in 2008 – well, at least in the dual-socket workstation, server and super PC arenas, as well as in the usual extreme uni-socket gaming rigs. And yes, they will be very fast, especially in FP, memory and threaded stuff – any of this sounding similar to the Pentium 4 promises?

Even if AMD has nothing comparable to offer this year, Intel isn’t going to miss the chance to charge premium bucks for its premium CPU range and get the machinery in motion before AMD – or whoever buys it – gets its act together.

AMD does 45nm too – even if that’s limited to a few dozen working wafers t aken from a test run, and Nvidia has to deliver at least something 45nm this year to keep from losing its last bit of credibility. This year, we’ll probably see selected "limited" Shanghai and Deneb 45nm quad-core chips sent out to a few friendly user sites, although its anyone’s guess about speed gains.

Flash storage will be everywhere with huge price cuts and similar capacity leaps, combined with better read/write reliability and faster interfaces. NAND chip vendors are not exactly happy with the pricing right now, but when you have flash embedded in everything from mobiles to eeePC, Macbooks and PC SSD storage, and with the real performance benefits far higher than from multi-GPUs or quad-core CPUs – especially once ONFI takes off – the manufacturers should be able to capitalise on that in 2008.

There is likely to be some GPU vendor uncertainty – will Nvidia buy DAAMIT? Will Intel snap up Nvidia? How long can ATI keep feeding AMD within DAAMIT? And will Intel’s Larrabee just steamroll the lot of them?

With all these M&A shenanigans, as well as Intel's forthcoming GPU entry across the board, it will be an interesting year, despite the uncertainty – so whatever graphics card you choose, even if it’s a £500 multi-GPU monster, it could theoretically become a white elephant depending on the outcome of the above.

Confusion over display interfaces: the brand new Displayport is likely to go head to head with HDMI 1.3 in the bandwidth battle, and neither looks likely to win a decisive victory over the other. On top of that, there is the still very-much-alive DVI and the VGA port – not to mention the upcoming USB Displaylink multi-monitor transmission.

Interestingly, neither of these ports has the capability to drive the next high-end standard – the QWUXGA 3840x2400 60 Hz 9 Mpixel resolution first seen on the IBM T221. Maybe two links, Displayport or HDMI 1.3 might come close, but it is still not a straightforward, single link connection.

Full HD 24-inch monitors will enter the mainstream: with the 1920x1200 resolution available at less than $400(£202), there’s no excuse to scrimp on this. Plus, such a screen combined with downloadable HD from the Internet might be the killer app for HD movies rather than DRM-ed BluRay and HD-DVD.

No more legacy I/O: unfortunately, the simple and reliable PS/2 and ATA IDE is likely to ride into the sunset in much the same way as the old serial and parallel interface. USB had better figure out a way not to bother the CPU unnecessarily for the keyboard and mouse, or else...

Converged comms: 2008 is likely to be the year in which Wimax, Wifi and 3.5G becomes a reality on one chip or two. So theoretically, you could be "online" all the time, everywhere. Or, you could take the healthy “radiation-free” option and switch it off to plug in your gigabit ethernet cable - the throughput is far more consistent.

Cases and cooling to go even more exotic: whether you’re looking for a super-duper overclocking rig or a super-silent home theatre PC, there will be a flurry of new cases integrated with 'special' cooling and power systems to address all your needs: cryo-freezing, fridge chilling, Peltier thermoelectric or simply a bunch of water pipes. And all of them will look weird.

So, it looks like we’re in for another year of further Intel domination rather than seeing any renewed competition, even though the latter would be in everyone's interest – even for Intel. µ