4 ms·

So there's two obvious ways for faster machines, one of which we can do today: 1) Move off of silicon. 2) Write better code.

tachyonbeam 11y ago
I'm kind of skeptical we'll move off of silicon any time soon, but fortunately, I think there's still a lot we can do with silicon. We aren't nearly done optimizing hardware. Then there's the promise of 3D stacking, optical interconnects, more cores and more memory bandwidth.
- monk_e_boy 11y ago
  > optical interconnects This leads on to less heat which means you can stack the layers more. 3D chips. Cram more cores in, layer memory into the mix.
- fudged71 11y ago
  From an article a while ago, I was convinced that the next generation of computers would be built on memristors... Allowing you to dynamically allocate memory and computation resources in a 3D framework. And photonics would be used to connect multiple computing units. Is any of this feasible or realistic?
  - dTal 11y ago
    Sounds a bit like using FPGAs for everything. I actually think we'll start seeing a lot more of that sort of thing once tooling for FPGAs stops sucking.
jeffreyrogers 11y ago
I don't think moving off of silicon will help all that much. What would you move to? Germanium I guess, but I don't think you'll get a factor of 10 from that. We're already down to a scale where the feature size isn't much larger than the atoms themselves.
- dharma1 11y ago
  I think some types of computation can be done with optical processors orders of magnitude faster. It's still early days but I think really interesting http://www.optalysys.com http://www.optalysys.com http://www.lighton.io http://www.lighton.io
  - jeffreyrogers 11y ago
    Hmmm, interesting. Another problem is memory latency. Actual throughput is usually about 10% of advertised throughput because programmers and compilers can't give the processor useful work to do for most of the clock cycles. My source for this 10% figure is from some slides from Ulrich Drepper, but I don't have time to find them right now.
- marcosdumay 11y ago
  A big obvious candidate is organics. It is not clear what kinds of short term gains are possible, nor what kinds of designs it would allow. But it looks very likely that the theoretical optimum substrate will turn out to be some kind of organic compost. If not them, there are all kinds of III-V crystals. They come with their own share of problems, but they might be good for something beyond LEDs. I think the greatest help from any non-silicon design will be from better heat dissipation and lower leakage. Those still have a lot of room to improve.
  - beeboop 11y ago
    Would organic processing actually be any faster? A human brain is capable of more than an Intel CPU in some ways due to its complexity, not due to its speed. And obviously the brain falls short of the CPU in many many ways.
    - marcosdumay 11y ago
      Organic transistors are stuff made of nanotubes, graphene, diamond, polypropilene, poly-benzoates, and other stuff like that. Not cells, RNA and protein (although, who knows? maybe there's something on them).

tachyonbeam 11y ago

I'm kind of skeptical we'll move off of silicon any time soon, but fortunately, I think there's still a lot we can do with silicon. We aren't nearly done optimizing hardware. Then there's the promise of 3D stacking, optical interconnects, more cores and more memory bandwidth.

monk_e_boy 11y ago
> optical interconnects This leads on to less heat which means you can stack the layers more. 3D chips. Cram more cores in, layer memory into the mix.
fudged71 11y ago
From an article a while ago, I was convinced that the next generation of computers would be built on memristors... Allowing you to dynamically allocate memory and computation resources in a 3D framework. And photonics would be used to connect multiple computing units. Is any of this feasible or realistic?
- dTal 11y ago
  Sounds a bit like using FPGAs for everything. I actually think we'll start seeing a lot more of that sort of thing once tooling for FPGAs stops sucking.

jeffreyrogers 11y ago

I don't think moving off of silicon will help all that much. What would you move to? Germanium I guess, but I don't think you'll get a factor of 10 from that. We're already down to a scale where the feature size isn't much larger than the atoms themselves.

dharma1 11y ago
I think some types of computation can be done with optical processors orders of magnitude faster. It's still early days but I think really interesting http://www.optalysys.com http://www.optalysys.com http://www.lighton.io http://www.lighton.io
- jeffreyrogers 11y ago
  Hmmm, interesting. Another problem is memory latency. Actual throughput is usually about 10% of advertised throughput because programmers and compilers can't give the processor useful work to do for most of the clock cycles. My source for this 10% figure is from some slides from Ulrich Drepper, but I don't have time to find them right now.
marcosdumay 11y ago
A big obvious candidate is organics. It is not clear what kinds of short term gains are possible, nor what kinds of designs it would allow. But it looks very likely that the theoretical optimum substrate will turn out to be some kind of organic compost. If not them, there are all kinds of III-V crystals. They come with their own share of problems, but they might be good for something beyond LEDs. I think the greatest help from any non-silicon design will be from better heat dissipation and lower leakage. Those still have a lot of room to improve.
- beeboop 11y ago
  Would organic processing actually be any faster? A human brain is capable of more than an Intel CPU in some ways due to its complexity, not due to its speed. And obviously the brain falls short of the CPU in many many ways.
  - marcosdumay 11y ago
    Organic transistors are stuff made of nanotubes, graphene, diamond, polypropilene, poly-benzoates, and other stuff like that. Not cells, RNA and protein (although, who knows? maybe there's something on them).