4 ms·

I know Moore's Law is basically dead but I think that advances in applications of existing computing power like this will resurrect it, or something like it, be

I know Moore's Law is basically dead but I think that advances in applications of existing computing power like this will resurrect it, or something like it, before too long. Basically, there's a less dramatic version of the AI snowball where faster computers lead to even faster computers. Whether someone manages to build strong AI on top of that is different question.

jacquesm 9y ago
I think we'll see something different. We're now at 'peak datacenter' again and because there is only so much power and so much cooling and bandwidth that you can haul to a DC we'll see the pendulum swing back towards decentralization. We've gone through several of those cycles and they're not in any fundamental way tied to Moore's law.
- aptwebapps 9y ago
  That's not really what I'm talking about. I'm just talking about new applications of datacenter computing power eventually driving research to the point where we get around some of the limitations that put the brakes on Moore's Law.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    The limitations that put the brakes on Moore's Law are physical limitations there is no getting around those (at room temperature, using Silicon) in this universe at a cost level that consumers are willing to accept.
    - aptwebapps 9y ago
      Nice set of caveats you've got there. ;) Let's check back in ten years, see how things are going.
      - jacquesm 9y ago
        > Let's check back in ten years, see how things are going. I'd have written the same thing 10 years ago and you would have written the same thing back then too. So, another 10 years then? What will happen on the chip level is more cores, not faster cores, possibly larger caches.
        aptwebapps 9y ago
        No, ten years ago I wasn't so optimistic. There are a bunch of things that can and will happen to move things along incrementally but what I think, based on no real evidence, is that there will be one or more major breakthroughs at some point that will likely be computation-assisted and we will get back to something similar to Moore's Law. Edit: typo
        jacquesm 9y ago
        I'm super curious in what area you feel these breakthroughs will be. Tunnel effects are real and very hard to reduce, even at lower temperatures. The band-gap can't get much smaller, supply voltages are about as low as we know how to get away with. There are solutions in terms of exotic materials with even more exotic fabrication methods. I linked to a nice video the other day, see if that interests you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGFhc8R_uO4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGFhc8R_uO4 That's the state of the art per 2012, not much has changed since then, though there has been some incremental improvement and optimization as well as larger dies for more cores.
        pegasus 9y ago
        3D circuits/chips is one possibility. There are others that are being researched. Then there are the unknown unknowns...
        jacquesm 9y ago
        > 3D circuits/chips is one possibility. Yes, but we've been aware of that one for decades, it just isn't going to happen for anything other than maybe (and that's a small maybe) for memory. Removing the heat is hard enough with 3D heat infrastructure and 2D chips. Removing the heat from 3D chips is not possible at a level where the interior of the chip is above permissible values unless you clock the whole thing down to where there are no gains. > There are others that are being researched. Yes, but nothing that looks even close to ready to mainstream. > Then there are the unknown unknowns... They've been 'unknown' for a long time now. Really, this is as far as I can see more hope than reason.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
TeMPOraL 9y ago
There's at least a 10x speedup potential in existing hardware if people stop doing silly things like Electron apps and shoehorning everything into web browsers.
- afarrell 9y ago
  What is your recommended tutorial/book for learning to build well-designed desktop UIs that work on Windows, OSX, and multiple different flavours of Linux?
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    1) documentation of any chosen cross-platform UI framework 2) any decent software book that teaches to separate the presentation layer and platform layer from the rest of the program (that way, you have much less to port between platforms and maintaining it is not as costly as people fear)
    - afarrell 9y ago
      > of any chosen cross-platform UI framework such as... EDIT: my purpose in this line of questioning is to assert that if you are trying to persuade someone to not do a thing, you will be more effective if you can give someone a straightforward alternative. I likewise think that the folks trying to get people to stop writing python2 should pick a release of python3 to become an LTS release in the same way that in 2014 python2.7 was effectively declared an LTS release with support until 2020.
      - TeMPOraL 9y ago
        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_platform-independent_GUI_libraries https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_platform-independent... EDIT to parent's edit: I'm not really trying to persuade anyone; not anymore. I understand the incentives that push people toward wasteful solutions. This won't stop until we hit a resource limit. All I'm saying is that there's a lot more we can do with current hardware once Moore's law is definitely dead. The mostly untapped potential is conditioned on people not doing extremely wasteful things just to shave off a little development time.

jacquesm 9y ago

I think we'll see something different. We're now at 'peak datacenter' again and because there is only so much power and so much cooling and bandwidth that you can haul to a DC we'll see the pendulum swing back towards decentralization. We've gone through several of those cycles and they're not in any fundamental way tied to Moore's law.

aptwebapps 9y ago
That's not really what I'm talking about. I'm just talking about new applications of datacenter computing power eventually driving research to the point where we get around some of the limitations that put the brakes on Moore's Law.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  The limitations that put the brakes on Moore's Law are physical limitations there is no getting around those (at room temperature, using Silicon) in this universe at a cost level that consumers are willing to accept.
  - aptwebapps 9y ago
    Nice set of caveats you've got there. ;) Let's check back in ten years, see how things are going.
    - jacquesm 9y ago
      > Let's check back in ten years, see how things are going. I'd have written the same thing 10 years ago and you would have written the same thing back then too. So, another 10 years then? What will happen on the chip level is more cores, not faster cores, possibly larger caches.
      - aptwebapps 9y ago
        No, ten years ago I wasn't so optimistic. There are a bunch of things that can and will happen to move things along incrementally but what I think, based on no real evidence, is that there will be one or more major breakthroughs at some point that will likely be computation-assisted and we will get back to something similar to Moore's Law. Edit: typo
        jacquesm 9y ago
        I'm super curious in what area you feel these breakthroughs will be. Tunnel effects are real and very hard to reduce, even at lower temperatures. The band-gap can't get much smaller, supply voltages are about as low as we know how to get away with. There are solutions in terms of exotic materials with even more exotic fabrication methods. I linked to a nice video the other day, see if that interests you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGFhc8R_uO4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGFhc8R_uO4 That's the state of the art per 2012, not much has changed since then, though there has been some incremental improvement and optimization as well as larger dies for more cores.
        pegasus 9y ago
        3D circuits/chips is one possibility. There are others that are being researched. Then there are the unknown unknowns...
        jacquesm 9y ago
        > 3D circuits/chips is one possibility. Yes, but we've been aware of that one for decades, it just isn't going to happen for anything other than maybe (and that's a small maybe) for memory. Removing the heat is hard enough with 3D heat infrastructure and 2D chips. Removing the heat from 3D chips is not possible at a level where the interior of the chip is above permissible values unless you clock the whole thing down to where there are no gains. > There are others that are being researched. Yes, but nothing that looks even close to ready to mainstream. > Then there are the unknown unknowns... They've been 'unknown' for a long time now. Really, this is as far as I can see more hope than reason.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

TeMPOraL 9y ago

There's at least a 10x speedup potential in existing hardware if people stop doing silly things like Electron apps and shoehorning everything into web browsers.

afarrell 9y ago
What is your recommended tutorial/book for learning to build well-designed desktop UIs that work on Windows, OSX, and multiple different flavours of Linux?
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  1) documentation of any chosen cross-platform UI framework 2) any decent software book that teaches to separate the presentation layer and platform layer from the rest of the program (that way, you have much less to port between platforms and maintaining it is not as costly as people fear)
  - afarrell 9y ago
    > of any chosen cross-platform UI framework such as... EDIT: my purpose in this line of questioning is to assert that if you are trying to persuade someone to not do a thing, you will be more effective if you can give someone a straightforward alternative. I likewise think that the folks trying to get people to stop writing python2 should pick a release of python3 to become an LTS release in the same way that in 2014 python2.7 was effectively declared an LTS release with support until 2020.
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_platform-independent_GUI_libraries https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_platform-independent... EDIT to parent's edit: I'm not really trying to persuade anyone; not anymore. I understand the incentives that push people toward wasteful solutions. This won't stop until we hit a resource limit. All I'm saying is that there's a lot more we can do with current hardware once Moore's law is definitely dead. The mostly untapped potential is conditioned on people not doing extremely wasteful things just to shave off a little development time.