http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/story/31594.html
The bottleneck inherent in the system bus has become increasingly restrictive and apparent as memory speeds and, most particularly, processor speeds, have continued to ramp up. Not long ago, a bus:processor ratio of 1:10 was not uncommon, which seems excessive [as a rule of thumb, anything worse than 1:5 represents a genuine block]. Now it is possible to buy cheap PCs where the ratio is cover 1:20.
The Apple solution to this is simply to have a fast bus, but the issue is much more complicated in the PC world, as this article explains. With the development of the front-side bus, some of the difficulties involved were relieved, but now that processor speeds approach 3GHz, we once again are in danger of sinking below the 1:5 ratio limit. The fact that most manufacturers agree with the need to address this problem suggests that major breakthroughs in speed are possible, as Apple, again, has demonstrated with the G5.
Posted by jho at September 25, 2003 10:38 AM