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> Think Moore's Law, which is dead now. Look again. Moore's law in terms of single threaded performance is dead. In literal terms of number of transistors on a
by eloff 5y ago
> Think Moore's Law, which is dead now.
Look again. Moore's law in terms of single threaded performance is dead. In literal terms of number of transistors on a wafer, it's still increasing exponentially, just slower. And in terms of what mattered when people cited Moore's law, the decrease in price/performance, it's still exponential, just slower and multi core.
It will end, as all exponential trends must end lest they consume the universe, but the end is not yet in sight. Recently chips have started to go multi chip and three dimensional. So even when we finally hit that scaling limit, we haven't quite reached the end of exponential progress.
- bin_bash 5y agohasn't it always referred to transistor count and not performance?
- eloff 5y agoDid you read the whole comment? I edited it, but that part was in there from the beginning, just in different words.
- bin_bash 5y agoI agree with you, I just think you weren't making your case strongly enough by implying that Moore's Law referred to more than just transistor count.
- jeffbee 5y agoIt has always referred to the minimum of the cost-complexity curve for integrated circuits. The progress of Moore's Actual Law has never stopped. The thing people mean when they are talking about the deceleration of single-threaded CPU performance is actually Dennard scaling. Dennard said that density and power efficiency were complementary in such a way as to keep areal power constant. That was true until it suddenly stopped being true. If Dennard scaling had continued you'd be using a 20GHz CPU right now.
- sova 5y agoOxford Dictionary says: "the principle that the speed and capability of computers can be expected to double every two years, as a result of increases in the number of transistors a microchip can contain." Which notably mentions performance. I have often interpreted Moore's Law to be the fact that doubling improvements in performance will continue roughly every 16-18 months, but not always directly proportionally to transistor count -- other ways to squeeze out doubling performance gains arise and often in unexpected places.
- epistasis 5y agoSingle threaded performance and overall performance are quite different. But I'm not sure that Oxford is the most authoritative source here, as they are talking about a "computer" which is an awfully vague term. Wikipedia uses transistor count of an IC, which is much more specific: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law Would be interested to know if the process inside Oxford's is as precise to distinguish, or if they intentionally dumbed it down.
- IncRnd 5y agoOxford Dictionary doesn't know what Moore's law is, then. Moore's law was an observation by Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, relating to the doubling of transistors per densely integrated circuit chip every 24 months. Originally, it was every 12 months, then every 24 months, etc. Moore's second law, which isn't as well known, relates to the exponentially increasing capital cost of manufacturing ICs.
- lanstin 5y agoI am sure there is some sci fi novel where species compete for neutron stars because they are a very dense compute substrate.
- Hjfrf 5y agoAsimov's "The Last Question" is close, though the focus is on entropy rather than any kind of space wars.
- arthurcolle 5y agoIsn't Three Body Problem kinda like this?
- mgoetzke 5y agoIs that book worth reading ? I am half-way through and I still don't see the point ;)
- lovemenot 5y agoI read all three books. The first was a couple of years ago. But from memory, half-way through the first should be enough to tell. If you haven't seen anything worthwhile yet, you won't by continuing.
- kevml 5y agoNot neutron stars specifically, but Accelerando by Charles Stross covers this.
- eloff 5y agoThat was a good book, it challenged many of my assumptions.
- Isinlor 5y agoIn the Perfect Imperfection by Jacek Dukaj [0] has something called "Remy's curve" [1]. On the curve you can find: - Ultimate Computer is the computer using the best hardware as allowed by the physical constants of our universe. See also physics of computation. - Inclusions are in essence 'pocket universes'. They are created for specific entities to run hardware in a dedicated universe with physical constants different from ours, allowing for better performance than those in our universe - Ultimate Inclusion is the inclusion with the best possible set of physical constants in the entire multiverse Seth Lloyd wrote a paper "Ultimate physical limits to computation" [2]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_Imperfection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_Imperfection [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_Imperfection#/media/File:Jacek_Dukaj_Perfekcyjna_wykres_REMY.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_Imperfection#/media/Fi... [2] https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9908043 https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9908043
- cogman10 5y agoWith the current silicon manufacturing processes, I'd say the end is in sight. Every node shrink is taking longer and longer and getting more and more expensive to fabricate. We've been reliant on node shrinks to push things further. That hard limit is 0.2nm (silicon atom size) we are at ~2nm gate features. It remains to be seen if we can get to that 0.2nm size, I honestly don't think we can push much further past the 2nm size (I'd imagine 0.5nm will be the limit). That, to me, is very much being "in sight".
- holoduke 5y ago3d chips. Imagine current size with 1 million layers. Sure it will start with just a few layers. And many obstacles to be overcome like temp and delay. But one day our cpus will look like little cubes. Moore's law can continue for at least another 30 years
- cogman10 5y agoCouple of problems. First, how do you cool such a chip? Sure, you could add a bunch of transistors but the thermal costs per transistor will stay the same. Assuming similar design but adding 20 layers, how would you account for your CPU now consuming 600W? Second, The tech doesn't exist. The problem we have is that layering chips today is basically growing crystals in a controlled fashion. Defects in lower layers spoil upper layers. Today that's already a problem (CPUs today have ~7 or 8 layers). Can you imagine the problem of 20 or 30 layers? Who knows, maybe we'll come up with solutions to both problems, but that's a big maybe. My bet is that instead we focus on architecture designs. We revisit old but deemed too expensive concepts like an async CPU.
- eloff 5y agoThis is real, shipping technology. See 3d nand flash cells, see stacked cache and HBM memory. All the usual characters are working on it. Intel, AMD (TSMC), Samsung. Cooling is an issue, but there are solutions.
- 5y ago