4 ms·
Seeing how many here are having fun with the choice of units, here's a puzzle: Assuming the Moore's law holds, how long will we have to wait before there are m
by pyrale 2y ago
Seeing how many here are having fun with the choice of units, here's a puzzle:
Assuming the Moore's law holds, how long will we have to wait before there are more transistors in a chip the size of a 8086 processor than moles of water in Earth's crust (the choice of time unit is left to the student) ?
- itishappy 2y ago10 million cubic miles of water is 4.2*10^22 ml or the same number in grams. The molecular weight of water is 18 g/mol, so dividing that out gets us 2.3*10^21 moles of water in the Earth's crust. According to a quick 'n dirty Google search, in 2024 chips can have up to 208 billion transistors. This leaves us with a 1.1*10^10 improvement needed to hit our target, which works out to be about 33 doublings. Moore's law says one doubling happens every 1.5 years, so we're looking at a 50 year timeline. Assuming Moore's law can hold for another 50 years is likely pushing it, but it's cool to see that if we manage to duplicate the last 50 years of progress we'll be approaching a mole of transistors per chip.