5 ms·

I love buying new and better gadgets like everyone else but if cpu advancements froze after the next generation of ones using the 3nm transistor node, would lif

by prng2021 4y ago

I love buying new and better gadgets like everyone else but if cpu advancements froze after the next generation of ones using the 3nm transistor node, would life on Earth really be that bad? We’d be in a world where we have no choice but to optimize existing algorithms, software, and hardware designs. And yes, after many years even that would reach its limits. Even so, I still think life would be great for every generation that lives on after that.

FrontierPsych 4y ago
It really makes no difference to most people. I have 10 and 15 year old computers and they work just fine for me. Web browsing, spreadsheets, word processing documents. I don't use the latest gamer stuff, or have 285-dimensional graphics that rotate in 48 dimensions or whatever. I'd think that 95% of the computer users are just like me. Pissed me off...my parents essentially use their computer and smart phones the same exact way - email,browse the web, and that's about it. My siblings decided they had to upgrade and got them new computers and smartphones. WTF? Total waste of maybe $5000. If anyone else has $5000 that they want to spend on nothing, let me know and I will give you my bank routing number and account number and you can just send it to me for nothing in return, too. :P
1123581321 4y ago
I would personally be content, but I’m thankful for the advances made possible by faster computing, especially in medicine, and I’d like to see more. If we keep advancing computing power, today’s research supercomputers will be tomorrow’s personal computers in the hands of researchers of all income levels all over the world.
- jiggawatts 4y ago
  The vast majority of hardware devices haven’t even caught up to 14nm, let alone 3nm which is still an experimental node used by a few customers “at risk”. It would take decades at the current pace of progress just for everyone to catch up to the current bleeding edge. I would have retired from IT work by the time that happens! In other words, we’re already at the stage that many people will continue to see non-stop improvements even if 3nm is “the end”. Meanwhile Intel says that their 18A node is looking good and ahead of schedule…
  - 1123581321 4y ago
    I think we’re talking past each other. You’re talking about getting the lagging sigmas of the distribution on today’s fastest retail computers, and I’m talking about advancements and discoveries that will require more than our current leading edge retail capabilities. Distribution of our leading capabilities will always be uneven, and will not push out an old computer at a 1:1 rate, so hard to measure via global mean/median retail computer speed in any middle or lower percentile.
    - jiggawatts 4y ago
      I'm agreeing with you in the sense that even if the bleeding edge didn't progress, we will still have the kind of advancements occurring that you would like to see. As a random example, full-frame camera CMOS sensors are made with very old processes (relatively speaking), and have very little "logic" on them. If manufactured with 3nm, they could have something like 2,000 transistors per pixel! That would enable seemingly magical "digital imaging" capabilities, such as infinite dynamic range, perfect digital vibration compensation, ultra-high framerates, etc...
kart23 4y ago
I think we're still pretty far off from that. Graphics are still held back massively by processing power, and algorithms that significantly could improve visuals would have been developed by now if it were that easy.
- awestroke 4y ago
  Graphics is very parallel, and so not that affected by a single-core performance plateau. We can keep increasing number of gpu cores.
  - IshKebab 4y ago
    Sure but not many people want a 1 kW GPU.
    - awestroke 4y ago
      That has more to do with frequency. Frequency requires higher voltage
      - IshKebab 4y ago
        Not really, frequency has plateaued precisely because of the crazy power scaling with frequency. The easily parallelisable nature of graphics means you can always make a faster GPU with more cores. The trouble is, newer nodes aren't reducing power usage per transistor very much, so all the newer GPUs just have a ton more silicon, and therefore much higher power requirements.
        awestroke 4y ago
        RTX 3090 TI: 1560 MHz base, 1860 MHz boost RTX 4090: 2235 MHz base, 2520 MHz boost
        kart23 4y ago
        yeah, and the power draw is around the same because the 4090 is 4nm, and the 3090 ti is 8nm. smaller transistors means more power efficient chips, and thus larger improvements in graphics.
charcircuit 4y ago
Mobile graphics is still too primitive for this to be the end.
bioemerl 4y ago
It's not just gadgets AI Protein folding. Weather simulation. Etc. This will literally mean millions of people dead who otherwise wouldn't have been.
- prng2021 4y ago
  I consider all of those as nice-to-haves. We have over 7B people in the world and got to this point without the technologies you mentioned. We already have the technologies today to allow people to live way longer than would otherwise be possible, to find and use any natural resources the planet has, and to dominate any other organism that could threaten our lives. I’m content with that.
  - bioemerl 4y ago
    I think it is a big mistake to be content with how crazy primitive we are today. We can't even operate on a brain tumor that's inside your head - we lack the precision to get in there without damaging the rest of your brain. When we want to operate at microscopic levels we continually fail. The mysteries of how and why we age, how many diseases work, remain unknown. There is so very much left to learn. There may come a day I might feel it's time to be content, but every second that passes I'm a little closer to death. We should continue to strive for more. May there come a day that we can live for very long periods of time and each individual can have as much as 100 people have today.
dougmwne 4y ago
I think it would be quite bad actually in opportunity cost. The performance per watt alone would represent a huge energy savings. New chips enable new applications and no new chips would mean that the entire nonlinear economic engine of tech industry would sunset in a few years once every existing application catches up to state of the art. Computationally heavy applications like ML would remain locked in the high tower of large organizations and out of the hands of individuals. VR and AR would probably never arrive to the mainstream.
- prng2021 4y ago
  I think that’s an illusion. The last 50 years of modern computing have proven without a doubt that global energy consumption will far outpace improvements in performance/watt that come with each generation of cpus. Any improvement in energy usage is wiped out by more kinds of and ever faster gadgets: Desktop computers followed by mobile phones, every possible sized tablet screen, voice assistance speakers, voice assistance speakers with screens, smart watches, smart lights, smart vacuum cleaners, drones, and so on. And with all these smart devices, we have more and more data, which we then need AI to make sense/use of in order to develop new or more useful things. It’s a never ending cycle. VR and AR never arriving to the mainstream would possibly be true. But our lives are already great today without that.

FrontierPsych 4y ago

It really makes no difference to most people. I have 10 and 15 year old computers and they work just fine for me. Web browsing, spreadsheets, word processing documents. I don't use the latest gamer stuff, or have 285-dimensional graphics that rotate in 48 dimensions or whatever. I'd think that 95% of the computer users are just like me. Pissed me off...my parents essentially use their computer and smart phones the same exact way - email,browse the web, and that's about it. My siblings decided they had to upgrade and got them new computers and smartphones. WTF? Total waste of maybe $5000. If anyone else has $5000 that they want to spend on nothing, let me know and I will give you my bank routing number and account number and you can just send it to me for nothing in return, too. :P

1123581321 4y ago

I would personally be content, but I’m thankful for the advances made possible by faster computing, especially in medicine, and I’d like to see more. If we keep advancing computing power, today’s research supercomputers will be tomorrow’s personal computers in the hands of researchers of all income levels all over the world.

jiggawatts 4y ago
The vast majority of hardware devices haven’t even caught up to 14nm, let alone 3nm which is still an experimental node used by a few customers “at risk”. It would take decades at the current pace of progress just for everyone to catch up to the current bleeding edge. I would have retired from IT work by the time that happens! In other words, we’re already at the stage that many people will continue to see non-stop improvements even if 3nm is “the end”. Meanwhile Intel says that their 18A node is looking good and ahead of schedule…
- 1123581321 4y ago
  I think we’re talking past each other. You’re talking about getting the lagging sigmas of the distribution on today’s fastest retail computers, and I’m talking about advancements and discoveries that will require more than our current leading edge retail capabilities. Distribution of our leading capabilities will always be uneven, and will not push out an old computer at a 1:1 rate, so hard to measure via global mean/median retail computer speed in any middle or lower percentile.
  - jiggawatts 4y ago
    I'm agreeing with you in the sense that even if the bleeding edge didn't progress, we will still have the kind of advancements occurring that you would like to see. As a random example, full-frame camera CMOS sensors are made with very old processes (relatively speaking), and have very little "logic" on them. If manufactured with 3nm, they could have something like 2,000 transistors per pixel! That would enable seemingly magical "digital imaging" capabilities, such as infinite dynamic range, perfect digital vibration compensation, ultra-high framerates, etc...

kart23 4y ago

I think we're still pretty far off from that. Graphics are still held back massively by processing power, and algorithms that significantly could improve visuals would have been developed by now if it were that easy.

awestroke 4y ago
Graphics is very parallel, and so not that affected by a single-core performance plateau. We can keep increasing number of gpu cores.
- IshKebab 4y ago
  Sure but not many people want a 1 kW GPU.
  - awestroke 4y ago
    That has more to do with frequency. Frequency requires higher voltage
    - IshKebab 4y ago
      Not really, frequency has plateaued precisely because of the crazy power scaling with frequency. The easily parallelisable nature of graphics means you can always make a faster GPU with more cores. The trouble is, newer nodes aren't reducing power usage per transistor very much, so all the newer GPUs just have a ton more silicon, and therefore much higher power requirements.
      - awestroke 4y ago
        RTX 3090 TI: 1560 MHz base, 1860 MHz boost RTX 4090: 2235 MHz base, 2520 MHz boost
        kart23 4y ago
        yeah, and the power draw is around the same because the 4090 is 4nm, and the 3090 ti is 8nm. smaller transistors means more power efficient chips, and thus larger improvements in graphics.

charcircuit 4y ago

Mobile graphics is still too primitive for this to be the end.

bioemerl 4y ago

It's not just gadgets AI Protein folding. Weather simulation. Etc. This will literally mean millions of people dead who otherwise wouldn't have been.

prng2021 4y ago
I consider all of those as nice-to-haves. We have over 7B people in the world and got to this point without the technologies you mentioned. We already have the technologies today to allow people to live way longer than would otherwise be possible, to find and use any natural resources the planet has, and to dominate any other organism that could threaten our lives. I’m content with that.
- bioemerl 4y ago
  I think it is a big mistake to be content with how crazy primitive we are today. We can't even operate on a brain tumor that's inside your head - we lack the precision to get in there without damaging the rest of your brain. When we want to operate at microscopic levels we continually fail. The mysteries of how and why we age, how many diseases work, remain unknown. There is so very much left to learn. There may come a day I might feel it's time to be content, but every second that passes I'm a little closer to death. We should continue to strive for more. May there come a day that we can live for very long periods of time and each individual can have as much as 100 people have today.

dougmwne 4y ago

I think it would be quite bad actually in opportunity cost. The performance per watt alone would represent a huge energy savings. New chips enable new applications and no new chips would mean that the entire nonlinear economic engine of tech industry would sunset in a few years once every existing application catches up to state of the art. Computationally heavy applications like ML would remain locked in the high tower of large organizations and out of the hands of individuals. VR and AR would probably never arrive to the mainstream.

prng2021 4y ago
I think that’s an illusion. The last 50 years of modern computing have proven without a doubt that global energy consumption will far outpace improvements in performance/watt that come with each generation of cpus. Any improvement in energy usage is wiped out by more kinds of and ever faster gadgets: Desktop computers followed by mobile phones, every possible sized tablet screen, voice assistance speakers, voice assistance speakers with screens, smart watches, smart lights, smart vacuum cleaners, drones, and so on. And with all these smart devices, we have more and more data, which we then need AI to make sense/use of in order to develop new or more useful things. It’s a never ending cycle. VR and AR never arriving to the mainstream would possibly be true. But our lives are already great today without that.