You're right in the numbers, I wasn't thinking of trying to push all of that into one chip, but if you can distribute the problem such that an array of chips ca

You're right in the numbers, I wasn't thinking of trying to push all of that into one chip, but if you can distribute the problem such that an array of chips can break the problem apart cleanly, the numbers fall within the range of what's feasible with modern technology. The key to this, in my view, is to give up on the idea of trying to get the latency as low as possible for a given piece of computation, as it typically done, and instead try to make reliable small cells that are clocked so that you don't have to worry about getting data far or fast. Taking this idea to its limits has a completely homogeneous systolic array that operates on 4 bits at a time, using look up tables to do everything. No dedicated switching fabric, multipliers, or anything else. It's the same tradeoff von Neumann made with the ENIAC, which slowed it down by a factor of 6 (according to wikipedia), but eliminating multiple weeks of human labor in setup by instead loading stored programs effectively instantly. To multiply numbers, you don't have to do all of it at the same time, you just have to pipeline the steps so that all of them are taking place for part of the data, and it all stays synced (which the clocking again helps) Since I'm working alone, right now I'm just trying to get something that other people can grok, and play with. Ideally, I'd have chips with multiple channels of LVDS interfaces running at 10 Gbps or more each to allow meshing the chips. Mostly, they'd be vast strings of D flip flops and 16:1 multiplexers. I'm well aware of the fact that I've made arbitrary choices, and they might not be optimal for real world hardware. I do remain steadfast in my opinion that providing a better impedance match between the computing substrate and the code that runs on it could allow multiple orders improvement in efficiency. Not to mention the ability to run the exact same code on everything from an emulator to every successive version/size of the chip, without recompilation. Not to mention being able to route around bad cells, actually build "walls" around code with sensitive info, etc.