Windows upgrades haven’t needed faster hardware since about 2009. Same goes for Apple, to a lesser extent, although Apple does like to periodically obsolete its platforms... a cynic would say it was to drum up sales. What really kills personal computer performance these days is the relentless march of JavaScript, which is why so much effort is being put into single-thread performance these days.
The next big spur for PC upgrades is more likely to be Intel’s Alder Lake asymmetric-core CPUs, launching next month. This design is the first big leap in real performance since AMD’s high core-count Zen CPUs, and Alder Lake will also launch with the first mainstream CPU chipset to support DDR5 memory. Thing is, Alder Lake needs a new OS to properly take advantage of scheduling tasks on the small/large cores. Right now that OS is Windows 11; Linux support for these chips is also well under way, but it looks to be unlikely to have full support in place before the new year. (Intel appears to have been pretty good at supporting the kernel developers, but there really aren’t that many developers, and it’s a lot of work)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
