Author: Dann Corbit
Date: 19:18:03 10/17/03
Go up one level in this thread
On October 17, 2003 at 19:09:33, martin fierz wrote: >On October 17, 2003 at 14:41:10, Dann Corbit wrote: > >>On October 17, 2003 at 07:24:49, martin fierz wrote: >> >>>On October 16, 2003 at 23:48:18, Dann Corbit wrote: >>> >>>>On October 16, 2003 at 22:48:09, Robert Hyatt wrote: >>>>>On October 16, 2003 at 19:11:20, Dann Corbit wrote: >>>>>>On October 16, 2003 at 18:49:55, Anthony Cozzie wrote: >>>>[snip] >>>>>>>1. Moore's law is NOT A LAW. Its going to come to an end by 2020, if not >>>>>>>earlier. >>>>>> >>>>>>Not a chance. It will continue to accelerate. Of course, I could be wrong. >>>>> >>>>>It can't possibly continue to accelerate. Everything is limited by C. Nothing >>>>>can propagate faster than that. So we are stuck with shrinking to shorten >>>>>distances so that C doesn't kill us. But then we are limited by how far we >>>>>can shrink things. IE we now do traces that are a few dozen atoms wide. We >>>>>won't get to 1-atom widths. And we _certainly_ won't get below that. >>>> >>>>Too many assumptions. >>>> >>>>Imagine (for instance) if we grow IC's that are 3-dimentional. Suppose (for >>>>instance, that instead of making 10 nanometer traces on a 1x1 cm flat face, we >>>>are making 10 nm thick slices linked together in a 1x1x1 cm cube. Now the >>>>compute power is suddenly 1e8 times larger. >>> >>>sounds good at first, but think about this: today's processors generate >>>something between 10 and 100 watt of heat that you need to remove. since your >>>idea explicitly attempts to use today's technology, that would mean that you >>>also generate 1e8 times more heat. 1GW, that's about what an atomic power plant >>>delivers... now that will need one hell of a cooler :-) >>>ok, so you say you will go to lower voltages in the future, as we have done in >>>the past. but there is a limit there too, which is given by the band gap of >>>silicon. you can't go lower than that, and we are already quite close IIRC. >>> >>>>Now, that's just one sort of work-around. I imagine that there are many people >>>>a lot more clever than I am that can think of even better solutions. (Using DNA >>>>to compute is a popular idea that may have merit). >>>> >>>>When we run out of ways to make the chip faster, why not just add more chips? >>>>So instead of 1 50 GHz chip, why not use 1000 10 GHz chips? >>> >>>because you are increasing the distances again. and many tasks are not easily >>>parallelizable (e.g. chess...) >>> >>>>I would be very surprised if chips fail to follow Moore's law for the next 30 >>>>years. >>> >>>i would be very surprised if they do. the main drivers of moore's law over the >>>years have been miniaturization, miniaturization and miniaturization. and that >>>is very definitely going to end in the near rather than in the far future. >>>moore's law is an empirical observation. the laws of physics are a bit more >>>solid than that :-) >>> >>>you can bet your money on quantum computers, DNA computers or other fancy stuff. >>>IMO that's the only hope for moore's law in around 10 years time or so. and i >>>certainly won't bet my money on that kind of sci-fi stuff! >> >>Read this (if you have not read it already): >>http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?printable=1 > >yeah, i did. during my physics study, i once stumbled across a game called >"bullshit bingo", which works as follows: all persons listening to a seminar get >a grid (chessboard-like) with "hype"-words on it. every time the speaker says >one of the words on your sheet, you cross it out. the first person to have a row >of the grid crossed out completely is to stand up and shout "bullshit!" - the >reasoning is that if too many of these hype-terms come up then probably the guy >is talking BS. i guess i would have been able to shout "BS!" after a minute or >two of reading this :-) I think I agree with most of what he says. If the hype word was "exponential" or "doubly exponential" he clearly backed up everything he said with facts.
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