三明工行信用卡用户逾期3天还款遭遇“意外罚款”
We continue our discussion with Jon Hirschtick, founder of SolidWorks and now CEO and founder of OnShape, a startup pioneering the introduction of true cloud-based CAD. Though the product has not yet been introduced, we had the unique opportunity to talk to Jon about the future of the cloud, web and mobile and how those will all play into the future of CAD. We also got a few hints along the way about what benefits OnShape might offer to users.
Q: Why is the cloud becoming so important?
A: Cloud computing is going to make all desktops look low end. Traditional desktop systems get faster based on the clock speed of the CPU or perhaps the number of cores. Back when you had faster chips, we had to upgrade our computers to increase performance, but the clock speed of CPUs has reached a limit; they are not getting faster. There is 0% growth in clock speed. If you go and buy another computer in three years, the clock speed of the new one will be no faster than the one you currently have. I’ve been programming computers for 40 years and this is the first time that’s happened. So the prognosis for hardware-based improvements to the user experience is very poor.
Q: So performance will become contingent upon your Internet connection, not your computer?
A: When you look at Internet-connected computing, performance is a function of your Internet bandwidth, the ability to paralyze over many computers and the cost of accessibility. Network bandwidth in the U.S. has increased 50% over the last year, and do you know what we had to do to take advantage of that? Nothing. It’s the first IT upgrade that we have to do nothing to take advantage of.
So what’s happening is that the link between your computer and the Internet went up 50% last year, and it’s going to go up another 50% next year and it’s free and you don’t have to do anything. So a system that is cloud-based and tied to Internet bandwidth is getting better all of the time. Once we’re connected to the cloud, instead of asking can we use six cores or eight cores, the question will be can we use 6,000 cores or 8,000 cores? Someday I think we’ll be using 100,000 cores in the cloud. Not today, but in the future.
Cloud computing with high-network bandwidth is coming, and if we’re going to speed CAD up, we can’t bet on recoding software for eight-core machines with the same CPU speed five years from now. We can bet on having an uber-fast Internet connection to 100,000 cheap cores in the cloud. I think that’s all going to happen.
Continue reading our Q&A with Jon Hirschtick on 3D CAD World.