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Subject: Re: Is there a theoretical limit to the speed of a processor?

Author: Michael a

Date: 09:53:25 06/08/02

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On June 06, 2002 at 17:38:07, Russell Reagan wrote:

>What I would like to know is if there is a theoretical limit to the speed
>processors can reach.
>
>I'm not sure if this is related or not, but I'll throw this out there also. I
>recall long ago hearing or reading about how the electrons passing through a
>wire (or whatever medium) bang into each other and thus cause the travel time
>from one end of a wire to the other end to take longer, and also causing heat to
>be generated from the collisions. It went on to talk about how the smaller the
>wire gets, the fewer the number of collisions, the faster the travel time, and
>less heat is generated. So is the theoretical limit to processor speed when we
>are able to create a wire (or whatever medium) that has the width of a single
>electron, and can thus move freely with no collisions? Sorry if this has nothing
>to do with my original question.
>
>I'm not talking so much about other approaches to computing such as quantum
>computing. I'm speaking in terms of our current architecture.
>
>Russell

I had posted a link to a book on the CIA and NSA at amazon.com about 3 weeks ago
citing a 17 septillion (can't remember the number) op/sec but no one responded
to it.

My original question was what would the SSDF rating list look like with that
type of number.



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