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"‘SpiNNaker’ machine is capable of completing more than 200 million million actions per second, with each of its chips having 100 million moving parts." Could
by llcoolv 8y ago
"‘SpiNNaker’ machine is capable of completing more than 200 million million actions per second, with each of its chips having 100 million moving parts."
Could someone elaborate? I am probably missing something as I hadn't heard of moving parts on a solid-state device?
- rm999 8y agoI believe they are referring to the number of transistors per chip (which as you correctly state are not "moving parts"). Also, fun fact: these chips are 7+ years old now! https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6330636 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6330636
- wallace_f 8y agoThe supply side of people who want to do journalism is full of so many people, and the competition for jobs sends most to other career fields. Yet the product of modern journalism is often so sad.
- vkou 8y agoIs it because journalists are bad at doing their jobs, or is it because they do what their employers tell them to?
- adrianN 8y agoMaybe the journalist knows that transistors don't actually move, but thought that its still a useful analogy for the lay audience they target.
- llcoolv 8y agoThis is what caught me off guard - I also share this view on journalism and would not have been surprised, but this piece is published by the Uni of Manchester itself.
- stochastic_monk 8y agoThe press release office, as opposed to the researchers.
- dkfellows 8y agoOur press office are definitely a law unto themselves, but the analogy was drawn in the event. It's also inaccurate, as it doesn't count the extra ~billion gates per chip for the memory (as that's just a co-packaged standard SDRAM module). It's just that we don't usually think about those as those SDRAMs are very reliable and don't cause us much trouble at all.
- Pica_soO 8y agoSome deep loathing for budget-cutting and project rejecting administration, can have some scientists not raise their hands to veto embarrassing articles.
- PhasmaFelis 8y agoThey could have been trying for a figure of speech. People sometimes say a complex problem or piece of code "has a lot of moving parts," so there's precedent for not taking "moving parts" literally. I agree it's awkward regardless.
- gnufx 8y agoI'm not sure this is "journalism". It's a product of university Communications, and by no means the worst example.
- reaperducer 8y agoThis isn't journalism, it's communication. It's a press release from the university. Both journalism and communication are subsets of "communications." If this university is anything like the ones I went to, the press releases are written by journalism and communication students to give them some hands-on experience.