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In 10-12 years a 200$ cellphone is probably going to have a faster faster CPU, more memory, and more disk space than the desktop / laptop your using right now.

In 10-12 years a 200$ cellphone is probably going to have a faster faster CPU, more memory, and more disk space than the desktop / laptop your using right now. and it will be powered and cooled by what? I wouldn't want to hold a phone that gets as hot as my laptop does.

rms 18y ago
Well, the storage will be all memristors, so that will make the storage significantly larger, smaller, lower powered, and faster. I can't wait. HP says the first commercial memristor memory will be out in 2009, here's hoping. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor
- bayareaguy 18y ago
  Well, perhaps the storage may be better but I can't see how memristors will change the CPU heat equation. Why will memristors actually require less power to do the equivalent of what conventional CMOS transistors do? They both seem to require power to effect changes of state. Can anyone explain what it is about memristors that allow them to use much less power to operate at the same speed as CMOS? Also the wiki page itself says Although the HP memristor is a major discovery for electrical engineering theory, it has yet to be demonstrated in operation at practical speeds and densities. Graphs in Williams' original report show switching operation at only ~1 Hz. Although the small dimension of the device seem to imply fast operation, the charge carriers move very slowly Woah. 1Hz is once per second, or twelve orders of magnitude slower than current CPU speeds, so unless we're talking about some radical alternative to Von Neumann I wouldn't expect them to be viable for CPUs for a few decades. Caveat: I have only a minimal understanding of hardware and semiconductor physics.
  - Retric 18y ago
    As transistors get smaller they use less power per cycle. So a going from a 34.8W, 7.5million transistor PII @233 MHz to a 500million transistor Core 2 Duo at 2400 MHz uses a lot less than 34.8W(500 * 2400) / (7.5*233) = 23,896W or 23KW. Note: Q6600(Core 2 Quad)@2.40 GHz uses 95 W but a lot of that is L2 cash which is less power hungry than it's computational units. PS: If you want portable power today a U1400 Intel Core Solo @1.20 GHz uses 5.5 W of power and will crush a PII in the same way I expect a new 5.5W CPU to crush a Core 2 Duo in 10 years.
    - bayareaguy 18y ago
      That all makes sense since a PII and a Duo use the same kind of transistors. I was more curious about what the effect on power would be when memristors augment or replace transistors on a CPU.

rms 18y ago

Well, the storage will be all memristors, so that will make the storage significantly larger, smaller, lower powered, and faster. I can't wait. HP says the first commercial memristor memory will be out in 2009, here's hoping. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor

bayareaguy 18y ago
Well, perhaps the storage may be better but I can't see how memristors will change the CPU heat equation. Why will memristors actually require less power to do the equivalent of what conventional CMOS transistors do? They both seem to require power to effect changes of state. Can anyone explain what it is about memristors that allow them to use much less power to operate at the same speed as CMOS? Also the wiki page itself says Although the HP memristor is a major discovery for electrical engineering theory, it has yet to be demonstrated in operation at practical speeds and densities. Graphs in Williams' original report show switching operation at only ~1 Hz. Although the small dimension of the device seem to imply fast operation, the charge carriers move very slowly Woah. 1Hz is once per second, or twelve orders of magnitude slower than current CPU speeds, so unless we're talking about some radical alternative to Von Neumann I wouldn't expect them to be viable for CPUs for a few decades. Caveat: I have only a minimal understanding of hardware and semiconductor physics.
- Retric 18y ago
  As transistors get smaller they use less power per cycle. So a going from a 34.8W, 7.5million transistor PII @233 MHz to a 500million transistor Core 2 Duo at 2400 MHz uses a lot less than 34.8W(500 * 2400) / (7.5*233) = 23,896W or 23KW. Note: Q6600(Core 2 Quad)@2.40 GHz uses 95 W but a lot of that is L2 cash which is less power hungry than it's computational units. PS: If you want portable power today a U1400 Intel Core Solo @1.20 GHz uses 5.5 W of power and will crush a PII in the same way I expect a new 5.5W CPU to crush a Core 2 Duo in 10 years.
  - bayareaguy 18y ago
    That all makes sense since a PII and a Duo use the same kind of transistors. I was more curious about what the effect on power would be when memristors augment or replace transistors on a CPU.