6 ms·

Well, none of those listed technologies is practical. Ternary logic is really cool, but it only gets you about a 10% efficiency improvement. I think it would

by ansible 10y ago

Well, none of those listed technologies is practical. Ternary logic is really cool, but it only gets you about a 10% efficiency improvement. I think it would be awesome to go in this direction, but retooling our entire tech stack for that isn't going to happen. I mean, look at x86. The only thing that will really make progress is molecular nanotechnology. I had always believed that reaching the end of silicon process technology would necessitate the research into MNT. What's funny is that we have arguably already reached the end on the silicon process technology, if Intel's desktop product offerings are used as a guide. There are gamers who are building new rigs using chips that are 2 or 3 generations old, because there isn't really anything better available. What's really hilarious are the guys building systems with used Xeon CPUs from retired servers! So I don't know what's going on any more. You would think that the profits and stock prices of all the silicon companies would collapse if they weren't able to continue producing improvements on their existing products. Intel is spending massively on R&D, but the gains are nowhere close to what we saw 15 years ago. Note that keep referencing Intel, because they've been at the leading edge. AMD doesn't have 14nm in production, for example.

chii 10y ago
if Intel has reasonable guesses as to what their competitor's level of R&D is at, they can stall the current gen tech for as long as possible, in order to milk the max profits off the capital investments. Chip design and manufacturing isn't something a garage tinkerer can do (at the level of cutting edge research to compete with existing silicon makers). Therefore, companies like Intel can afford to lax until their customers demand differently (in which case, they will probably put the gas on R&D).
swalsh 10y ago
"retooling our entire tech stack for that isn't going to happen. I mean, look at x86." I wonder if today it's easier than people imagine, but the lessons of Itanium are used as a signal to not try. Sure there are plenty of apps which make low-level use of x86 features, and those probably aren't going to be updated. However a lot of modern software is written in languages that go through interrupters. Java, C#, Python.. if you can update the runtime, in theory the apps can be supported anywhere.
- pjc50 10y ago
  Switching to ternary means retooling not just the programming stack but the IC design stack. IC design is actually quite a conservative business, mainly because failures are so expensive. You'd need to spend several years writing a ternary RTL synthesis, place, route and verification suite before starting.
  - Symmetry 10y ago
    I would expect that once silicon stops shrinking and both chips and fabs can be allowed to pay for themselves over longer time horizons we're going to see a lot more architectural experimentation.
    - mmmBacon 10y ago
      I hope you're right. The costs of 7nm are so high that even the "big guys" are being very careful about what they do. It's become so expensive they just can't afford a miss in the market. I worry the high costs will stifle innovation and that we'll see something that's more like a tweak here and there for a while.
    - ansible 10y ago
      Oh, for sure that will happen. I like the Mill CPU design, and they're saying it will have a 10x power/performance advantage over traditional architectures. But we're just about done with the times where we had easy gains in price/performance/power by just moving to a smaller process node.
  - amelius 10y ago
    Also, how reliable is ternary compared to binary? For instance, would a Schmitt-trigger device be as reliable? What would the consequence be for clock speed?
- pantalaimon 10y ago
  What about ARM?
Symmetry 10y ago
Note that keep referencing Intel, because they've been at the leading edge. AMD doesn't have 14nm in production, for example. AMD actually just released their first 14 nm products this summer in the form of graphics cards. They don't have any CPUs out in such an advanced process but I think that reflects the architectural cul de sac they've been stuck in. They're next architecture, Zen, is supposed to be 14nm and it doesn't look like it makes business sense to port a Bulldozer derivative to 14nm before Zen is ready.
tzakrajs 10y ago
If anything this necessitates advances in parallel computing. We can keep up with Moores law for a bit longer if we add more cores too.
- nine_k 10y ago
  Probably live things had to develop massively-parallel async processing and then things akin to "deep learning" and other thick neural nets because their wetware was (and is) ridiculously slow.
- greggyb 10y ago
  Moore's law is about transistor density.
  - DenisM 10y ago
    You don't have to increase density to increase the number of transistors.
    - ansible 10y ago
      Yes, but: 1. That's not Moore's Law, which is specifically about density. 2. When you aren't getting density increases, your processing power / memory size / whatever increases linearly with die area. We've been used to living in an age with regular process node shrinks, meaning that more and more powerful computers don't end up being more expensive. Sometimes the cost goes down while the performance goes up. We're seeing the end of that right now.
  - Symmetry 10y ago
    Traditionally the term has been mostly about speed rather than density. Well, a lot of people say it's about transistors per chip since Moore wrote a paper on that doubling and that was the first time people noticed periodic doubling in the semiconductor industry. But it took almost 10 years for "Moore's Law" to come into currency and in the mean time Moore had made lots of speeches about lots of different doubling. And the term "Moore's Law" has never really referred to one aspect of semiconductor technology in particular since during the era of Dennard scaling they all improved together.
Artlav 10y ago
Ternary logic actually happened - a bunch of Soviet computers used it [1], and it was somewhat faster/more cost efficient, but not decisively so. In the end, the party decided that code compatibility with the west was more important than independent innovation, and the soviet computer industry slowly lost it's charm and died in the late 80s. Never heard of a ternary computer since then. [1] http://www.computer-museum.ru/english/setun.htm http://www.computer-museum.ru/english/setun.htm
- mtrn 10y ago
  An acquaintance wrote his thesis about Setun and later (2007) published a book about it: http://www.irmielin.org/setun-an-inquiry-into-the-soviet-ternary-computer/ http://www.irmielin.org/setun-an-inquiry-into-the-soviet-ter...
nickpsecurity 10y ago
I tried to fix that by submitting this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12227555 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12227555 What do you think about that advancement? Think the quantom dot circuits can get practical enough to go anywhere? Or even good potentially for low-volume, high-price applications we see with some S-ASIC's or ASIC's?
- ansible 10y ago
  I think it will be difficult to bring some of these technologies into mass production with subtractive manufacturing like lithography. We really need additive manufacturing techniques instead.
gene-h 10y ago
This is an absolutely terrible article, it seems the author just quickly threw together a list of alternative computing technologies and added a clickbaity title. Fluidics as a post Moore's law computing technology is laughable. The maximum possible processing speeds are somewhere in the 10s of KHz. In addition, fluidics does not scale down well. Slime molds are purely a gimmick. However, fluidics was/still is a practical technology for niche applications. Fluidic non-moving part logic devices have been used for for factory process control and integrated pneumatic controllers for aerospace for decades now. Fluidics can be very robust and reliable. In the time period of the 1960s-1970s fluidics was more reliable than similar electrical and electromechanical systems. One thing that still makes fluidics attractive today is its robustness in environments where transistors don't work. Fluidics can with stand high temperatures, high shocks, high radiation, high magnetic fields, etc. As long as the shape of the channel remains intact, fluidics still works. Fluidics has been demonstrated to work inside jet engines, nuclear reactors, and molten steel. Because of fluidics inherent EMP resistance, fluidics has been considered for use in anti-ballistic missile guidance systems[0]. One interesting current day application of fluidics is kosher sound amplification[1]. Orthodox Judaism prohibits electronic sound amplification on the sabbath because it constitutes work. Using a speaker to produce sound constitutes labor because it creates a sound that did not exist before from electricity. Fluidics is able to get around this prohibition and can amplify sound in the range of human speech. As far as molecular nanotechnology goes, some of the first molecular computers we may see might resemble the BZ media mentioned in the article. Right now we can make a whole range of interesting molecular devices including logic gates and motors among other things, but it is difficult to put them together into larger devices. It's hard to hook up a molecular motor to a molecular wheel to a molecular suspension to make a molecular car[2], much less wire up a bunch of molecular logic gates in a defined pattern to make a molecular computer. However, it is significantly easier to make periodic structures. Metal Organic Frameworks(MOFs) offer a way to organize molecular machines into periodic structures. They are pretty great for this because they self-assemble and have a bunch of open space for molecular machines to move around, but still close enough that they can interact with each other. Some researchers have proposed that we could use MOFs with molecular machines in them to make cellular automata with mole quantities of cells.[3] [0]http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf&AD=ADA204334 http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?Location=U2&doc=GetTRDo... [1]http://acoustics.org/pressroom/httpdocs/132nd/2aaa8.html http://acoustics.org/pressroom/httpdocs/132nd/2aaa8.html [2]http://www.cemes.fr/Molecule-car-Race?lang=en http://www.cemes.fr/Molecule-car-Race?lang=en [3]http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2012/CS/c1cs15262a#!divAbstract http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2012/CS/c1cs15...
esmi 10y ago
Samsung is mass producing the A9 in 14nm. TSMC is mass producing in 16nm. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A9 Intel, Samsung and TSMC have all demonstrated their 10nm processes with TSMC expected to be the first to mass production. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_nanometer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_nanometer I believe nVidia and AMD use Samsung and TSMC as their advanced fabs which is how they stay alive. They get to keep the expensive factories off their books and the factories can use their capacity to make more than just AMD and nVidia parts keeping their lines full. At least that's the theory...

by ansible 10y ago

chii 10y ago

if Intel has reasonable guesses as to what their competitor's level of R&D is at, they can stall the current gen tech for as long as possible, in order to milk the max profits off the capital investments. Chip design and manufacturing isn't something a garage tinkerer can do (at the level of cutting edge research to compete with existing silicon makers). Therefore, companies like Intel can afford to lax until their customers demand differently (in which case, they will probably put the gas on R&D).

swalsh 10y ago

"retooling our entire tech stack for that isn't going to happen. I mean, look at x86." I wonder if today it's easier than people imagine, but the lessons of Itanium are used as a signal to not try. Sure there are plenty of apps which make low-level use of x86 features, and those probably aren't going to be updated. However a lot of modern software is written in languages that go through interrupters. Java, C#, Python.. if you can update the runtime, in theory the apps can be supported anywhere.

pjc50 10y ago
Switching to ternary means retooling not just the programming stack but the IC design stack. IC design is actually quite a conservative business, mainly because failures are so expensive. You'd need to spend several years writing a ternary RTL synthesis, place, route and verification suite before starting.
- Symmetry 10y ago
  I would expect that once silicon stops shrinking and both chips and fabs can be allowed to pay for themselves over longer time horizons we're going to see a lot more architectural experimentation.
  - mmmBacon 10y ago
    I hope you're right. The costs of 7nm are so high that even the "big guys" are being very careful about what they do. It's become so expensive they just can't afford a miss in the market. I worry the high costs will stifle innovation and that we'll see something that's more like a tweak here and there for a while.
  - ansible 10y ago
    Oh, for sure that will happen. I like the Mill CPU design, and they're saying it will have a 10x power/performance advantage over traditional architectures. But we're just about done with the times where we had easy gains in price/performance/power by just moving to a smaller process node.
- amelius 10y ago
  Also, how reliable is ternary compared to binary? For instance, would a Schmitt-trigger device be as reliable? What would the consequence be for clock speed?
pantalaimon 10y ago
What about ARM?

Symmetry 10y ago

Note that keep referencing Intel, because they've been at the leading edge. AMD doesn't have 14nm in production, for example. AMD actually just released their first 14 nm products this summer in the form of graphics cards. They don't have any CPUs out in such an advanced process but I think that reflects the architectural cul de sac they've been stuck in. They're next architecture, Zen, is supposed to be 14nm and it doesn't look like it makes business sense to port a Bulldozer derivative to 14nm before Zen is ready.

tzakrajs 10y ago

If anything this necessitates advances in parallel computing. We can keep up with Moores law for a bit longer if we add more cores too.

nine_k 10y ago
Probably live things had to develop massively-parallel async processing and then things akin to "deep learning" and other thick neural nets because their wetware was (and is) ridiculously slow.
greggyb 10y ago
Moore's law is about transistor density.
- DenisM 10y ago
  You don't have to increase density to increase the number of transistors.
  - ansible 10y ago
    Yes, but: 1. That's not Moore's Law, which is specifically about density. 2. When you aren't getting density increases, your processing power / memory size / whatever increases linearly with die area. We've been used to living in an age with regular process node shrinks, meaning that more and more powerful computers don't end up being more expensive. Sometimes the cost goes down while the performance goes up. We're seeing the end of that right now.
- Symmetry 10y ago
  Traditionally the term has been mostly about speed rather than density. Well, a lot of people say it's about transistors per chip since Moore wrote a paper on that doubling and that was the first time people noticed periodic doubling in the semiconductor industry. But it took almost 10 years for "Moore's Law" to come into currency and in the mean time Moore had made lots of speeches about lots of different doubling. And the term "Moore's Law" has never really referred to one aspect of semiconductor technology in particular since during the era of Dennard scaling they all improved together.

Artlav 10y ago

Ternary logic actually happened - a bunch of Soviet computers used it [1], and it was somewhat faster/more cost efficient, but not decisively so. In the end, the party decided that code compatibility with the west was more important than independent innovation, and the soviet computer industry slowly lost it's charm and died in the late 80s. Never heard of a ternary computer since then. [1] http://www.computer-museum.ru/english/setun.htm http://www.computer-museum.ru/english/setun.htm

mtrn 10y ago
An acquaintance wrote his thesis about Setun and later (2007) published a book about it: http://www.irmielin.org/setun-an-inquiry-into-the-soviet-ternary-computer/ http://www.irmielin.org/setun-an-inquiry-into-the-soviet-ter...

nickpsecurity 10y ago

I tried to fix that by submitting this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12227555 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12227555 What do you think about that advancement? Think the quantom dot circuits can get practical enough to go anywhere? Or even good potentially for low-volume, high-price applications we see with some S-ASIC's or ASIC's?

ansible 10y ago
I think it will be difficult to bring some of these technologies into mass production with subtractive manufacturing like lithography. We really need additive manufacturing techniques instead.

gene-h 10y ago

This is an absolutely terrible article, it seems the author just quickly threw together a list of alternative computing technologies and added a clickbaity title. Fluidics as a post Moore's law computing technology is laughable. The maximum possible processing speeds are somewhere in the 10s of KHz. In addition, fluidics does not scale down well. Slime molds are purely a gimmick. However, fluidics was/still is a practical technology for niche applications. Fluidic non-moving part logic devices have been used for for factory process control and integrated pneumatic controllers for aerospace for decades now. Fluidics can be very robust and reliable. In the time period of the 1960s-1970s fluidics was more reliable than similar electrical and electromechanical systems. One thing that still makes fluidics attractive today is its robustness in environments where transistors don't work. Fluidics can with stand high temperatures, high shocks, high radiation, high magnetic fields, etc. As long as the shape of the channel remains intact, fluidics still works. Fluidics has been demonstrated to work inside jet engines, nuclear reactors, and molten steel. Because of fluidics inherent EMP resistance, fluidics has been considered for use in anti-ballistic missile guidance systems[0]. One interesting current day application of fluidics is kosher sound amplification[1]. Orthodox Judaism prohibits electronic sound amplification on the sabbath because it constitutes work. Using a speaker to produce sound constitutes labor because it creates a sound that did not exist before from electricity. Fluidics is able to get around this prohibition and can amplify sound in the range of human speech. As far as molecular nanotechnology goes, some of the first molecular computers we may see might resemble the BZ media mentioned in the article. Right now we can make a whole range of interesting molecular devices including logic gates and motors among other things, but it is difficult to put them together into larger devices. It's hard to hook up a molecular motor to a molecular wheel to a molecular suspension to make a molecular car[2], much less wire up a bunch of molecular logic gates in a defined pattern to make a molecular computer. However, it is significantly easier to make periodic structures. Metal Organic Frameworks(MOFs) offer a way to organize molecular machines into periodic structures. They are pretty great for this because they self-assemble and have a bunch of open space for molecular machines to move around, but still close enough that they can interact with each other. Some researchers have proposed that we could use MOFs with molecular machines in them to make cellular automata with mole quantities of cells.[3] [0]http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf&AD=ADA204334 http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?Location=U2&doc=GetTRDo... [1]http://acoustics.org/pressroom/httpdocs/132nd/2aaa8.html http://acoustics.org/pressroom/httpdocs/132nd/2aaa8.html [2]http://www.cemes.fr/Molecule-car-Race?lang=en http://www.cemes.fr/Molecule-car-Race?lang=en [3]http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2012/CS/c1cs15262a#!divAbstract http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2012/CS/c1cs15...

esmi 10y ago

Samsung is mass producing the A9 in 14nm. TSMC is mass producing in 16nm. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A9 Intel, Samsung and TSMC have all demonstrated their 10nm processes with TSMC expected to be the first to mass production. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_nanometer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_nanometer I believe nVidia and AMD use Samsung and TSMC as their advanced fabs which is how they stay alive. They get to keep the expensive factories off their books and the factories can use their capacity to make more than just AMD and nVidia parts keeping their lines full. At least that's the theory...