4 ms·

With 5nm silicon process, I wonder where this is going to start with retooling and building new machines? I'm guessing they will start with 8bit RISC cpus with

by ptek 3y ago

With 5nm silicon process, I wonder where this is going to start with retooling and building new machines? I'm guessing they will start with 8bit RISC cpus with maybe the first 128 bytes as a data cache which could also be used as extra registers? It will be great having a lot of expired patents and 50+ years of silicon work to build on, Machine Learning tools and free operating systems (NetBSD, Linux) I hope they do it all again, I want to relive the C64, Amiga and 680x0 era again.

thijson 3y ago
This will start with small devices used in power electronics likely. There are faster materials than silicon, but they still aren't used for highly integrated digital logic due to cost.
logicchains 3y ago
If starting from scratch with new tooling, I wonder if they'll consider ternary, which is theoretically more efficient than binary (as it's closer to the optimal encoding: e-ary).
- BoiledCabbage 3y ago
  I believe it, but do you have any links to somewhere discussing why e-ary is the optimal encoding?
  - f_devd 3y ago
    It's likely a reference to the radix economy [0], however it's actually very minor for the cases where it works. And in "the best way to count"[1] there compelling arguments as to why the formulation used on Wikipedia is not necessarily correct for arbitrary precision numbers as well as being bad for human notation compared to binary. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radix_economy[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radix_economy[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDDaEVcwIJM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDDaEVcwIJM
    - akoboldfrying 3y ago
      That was an interesting read, thanks. I'm not convinced that the "cost" of a b-ary digit is appropriately modelled as exactly b in all circumstances, though it is in the example of minimising the average length of time a caller must wait when using a phone menu system.
- ahf8Aithaex7Nai 3y ago
  It's even closer to pi-ary
- NegativeK 3y ago
  I can't believe that they'd do that, since it'd mean rewriting huge swaths of existing software.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

by ptek 3y ago

thijson 3y ago

This will start with small devices used in power electronics likely. There are faster materials than silicon, but they still aren't used for highly integrated digital logic due to cost.

logicchains 3y ago

If starting from scratch with new tooling, I wonder if they'll consider ternary, which is theoretically more efficient than binary (as it's closer to the optimal encoding: e-ary).

BoiledCabbage 3y ago
I believe it, but do you have any links to somewhere discussing why e-ary is the optimal encoding?
- f_devd 3y ago
  It's likely a reference to the radix economy [0], however it's actually very minor for the cases where it works. And in "the best way to count"[1] there compelling arguments as to why the formulation used on Wikipedia is not necessarily correct for arbitrary precision numbers as well as being bad for human notation compared to binary. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radix_economy[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radix_economy[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDDaEVcwIJM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDDaEVcwIJM
  - akoboldfrying 3y ago
    That was an interesting read, thanks. I'm not convinced that the "cost" of a b-ary digit is appropriately modelled as exactly b in all circumstances, though it is in the example of minimising the average length of time a caller must wait when using a phone menu system.
ahf8Aithaex7Nai 3y ago
It's even closer to pi-ary
NegativeK 3y ago
I can't believe that they'd do that, since it'd mean rewriting huge swaths of existing software.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]