Patrick Reany
22 July 2023
Recently, I've been investigating the concept of the virtual machine. Although I've heard about this
concept for decades, presumably, I always thought that it was too burdensome on the computer's resources
to implement it on retail hardware -- at least efficiently. But it seems that these days it's all the rage in
the IT community, and for good reason.
I posed the following question to ChatGPT:
Patrick:
In what year (approximately) did the retail computer become robust enough in physical
resources (storage and memory) to allow for a virtual machine to be run on it without
too much loss of efficiency for the user?
ChatGPT
The retail computer became robust enough to allow for a virtual machine to be run without
too much loss of efficiency for the user in the early 2000s.Around the year 2000, personal computers started to have sufficient processing power, storage,
and memory to handle virtualization reasonably well. This was mainly driven by advancements
in x86-based processors, improvements in storage technology, and the increasing availability
of RAM at affordable prices. Virtualization software, such as VMware Workstation and
Microsoft Virtual PC, became more widely accessible and functional during this time.While virtualization technology existed before this period, it wasn't until the early 2000s
that it became feasible for the average consumer to run virtual machines on their home
or office PCs without experiencing a significant loss of efficiency. As the years have
gone by since then, computing resources have continued to improve, making virtualization
even more efficient and widely used in various applications and industries.
I had posed the same question to BingChat and its reply was not informative. And asking
this question in the search engine got me nowhere.
Having not been a particpant myself on the usage of virtual machines on retail hardware over the
last thirty years, I would have to resort to experts in the subject matter to reply to my inquiry.
But, access to such experts, I have not. So, the next best thing is for an LLM to answer the question.
Well, how did ChatGPT do?
First, although I can't rate Chat on the accuracy of its reply (as it is quite technical in nature), I can
claim that the bot appears to have at least understood the fullness of the question, which is no
small accomplishment. Within one second, it gave me a reply which is orderly, reasonable, and
seemingly accurate.
Second, Chat had to deal with the ambiguities within my question, such as suggesting an
'approximate' year and it had to come up with its own definition of a "retail computer".
To me, I meant a computer bought at a retail store (such as Best Buy) within the mid-level
cost range. Not the cheapest, not the priceist. Quite frankly, how ChatGPT was able to answer
this question at all is amazing. I score it 5 out of 5 points.