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This is an amazing step and the transistor density chart shows you just how big a deal this is. 1/3B transistors per square mm. Now for 'grins' take a piece of

This is an amazing step and the transistor density chart shows you just how big a deal this is. 1/3B transistors per square mm. Now for 'grins' take a piece of paper and make a 2 x 2 mm square on it. Now figure out what you can do with 1.3B transistors in that space. Based on this[1] you are looking at a quad-core w/GPU desktop processor. Of course you aren't really because you cant fit the 1440 pins that processor needs to talk to the outside world. But it suggests to me that at some point we'll see these things in "sockets" that connect via laser + WDM to provide the I/O. An octagonal device with 8 laser channels off each of the facets would be kind of cool. Power and ground take offs on the top and bottom. That would be some serious sci-fi shit would it not? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count

anigbrowl 6y ago
I suspect over the next decade we'll see architectural changes and a whole host of liberating form factors where relatively modest processing power is sufficient to provide huge utility, from eyeglasses to earrings, to implants of various sorts. Also we're already at the point of being able to do some serious processing in a pill that's small enough to digest and excrete safely. Near-real-time chemical assay can't be that far off.
- eric__cartman 6y ago
  That makes a lot of sense. Computers nowadays have gotten so fast that in many use cases the performance is more than enough while heat/power constraints are still an issue. This could open up the possibility to embed chips in many crazy contraptions.
  - loop0 6y ago
    But at the same time software got slower and slower to the point that every processor upgrade just feels the same as the previous one. Sure there are some speedups, but I feel software could be way faster than it is today. There is little reason for a command line only linux to be slow in an older machine, and yet it is slugish.

anigbrowl 6y ago

I suspect over the next decade we'll see architectural changes and a whole host of liberating form factors where relatively modest processing power is sufficient to provide huge utility, from eyeglasses to earrings, to implants of various sorts. Also we're already at the point of being able to do some serious processing in a pill that's small enough to digest and excrete safely. Near-real-time chemical assay can't be that far off.

eric__cartman 6y ago
That makes a lot of sense. Computers nowadays have gotten so fast that in many use cases the performance is more than enough while heat/power constraints are still an issue. This could open up the possibility to embed chips in many crazy contraptions.
- loop0 6y ago
  But at the same time software got slower and slower to the point that every processor upgrade just feels the same as the previous one. Sure there are some speedups, but I feel software could be way faster than it is today. There is little reason for a command line only linux to be slow in an older machine, and yet it is slugish.