About processing power: yesterday evening I was updating a dusty Java toolkit and I run an FFT bechmark applet.
In 1985, I ran my first serious 1024-samples FFT using an Apple II (8 bit micro, 1 MHz, 40 bit floating point numbers done in software, BASIC) and it took 635 second for a run.
Now, the Java 1.6 version, running on a 64 bit micro, at 3 GHz, hardware floating point, was 4.4 MILLION times fasters (140 microseconds).
And all this on ONE core.
And, at the same time, you still find legions of idiots hand optimizing obscure loops.
Bye