And it looks jerky. The speed is made possible by all those tiny on-off switches, or transistors, on the chip or microprocessor. The first microprocessors that were just over 25 years ago had 2,300 transistors. And the latest processors have about 7 million transistors. And in the next 10 years we re going to approach 100 million transistors on a chip that will be running in a PC that you can have in your home or office.
Speed is essential for the designers and the players of video games.
This game, Dark Forces, was designed at LucasArts four years ago for the then hot 486 chip made by Intel. You ve got the gun here. But game designers and their customers are never satisfied. They want more realism on the screen. And to get it, they need faster chips.