6 ms·

A 200km-long System Class GSV might ruin the diagram's scaling a bit...

arethuza 13y ago
It would be cool to see a diagram comparing the computing power of different science fiction spaceships - I suspect Culture ships would do fairly well in that comparison!
- jerf 13y ago
  Unlike distance, I don't think there's a comparable metric that can be used. Star Trek, just to take one tiny example, always talks about "quads", where one might expect bits. What's a quad? You might think "maybe it's a four-state bit", but in that case the numbers talked about on the show are absurdly low [1]. One "gigaquad" would be 2 gigabits, or about 256 megabytes (depending on whether we're using 1000 or 1024 as our base). Indeed, the entire point of the measurement is to be mysterious. This does not play well to comparisons. By contrast, "kilometer" means the same thing... well... more or less... across a wide variety of fictional universes. By "more or less", I mean that it's pretty easy to just splat a number down without thinking about it. Here, let me write my own story: One day, astronomers spotted a perfectly spherical, shiny spaceship approaching Earth from outside of the orbit of Pluto. It was a trillion kilometers in diameter! They sent it radio greetings, but before the message got there, the ship blew up. Truly, Man was humbled by his place in the capricious cosmos. The End. There's all kinds of things wrong with that. I mean, jeez, could the moral have been any more trite? Umm... wait... that's not what I was trying to say... I mean, those numbers are silly. Ah, yes, that was the point. If I were serious, it's likely that my understanding of "kilometer" is a bit off. And to be honest, I rather think the Independence Day ship fits that description. It's absurdly large for what it actually did; if taken seriously, our little fusion bomb should probably not so much have "exploded" it as "caused a bit of a flash, if you were looking". (Secondary explosions may have finished the job but it would have looked quite different.) [1]: http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Quad http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Quad
  - arethuza 13y ago
    The refugee Mind from Consider Phlebas actually had a rather nice way of visualizing its data storage capacity. However, as later stories make clear, this Mind was very limited compared to later models.
    - incision 13y ago
      I enjoyed that visualization. When you consider that Consider Phlebas was published in 1987, it was probably necessary. In 2013, a writer can count on all sorts of metaphors and approximations that wouldn't even have been a concept to most in 1987.
  - asciimo 13y ago
    Good story. Perfectly crafted for my attention span.
  - ctdonath 13y ago
    That's what drove me batty about Ringworld: distances were obnoxiously large and speeds ridiculously fast without really adding anything to the story and certainly without demanding a cost for that scale. Sure, the scale of the Ring had to be vast, but a mountain 1000 times higher than Everest proves unimpressive when one's flying motorcycle travels 1000 times faster than a grounded one circa Earth 2000.
- noir_lord 13y ago
  According to in-universe canon for the Culture they are the most powerful AI's you can possible have without subliming. Comparing on a like for like basis I can't think of any other series that have similarly powerful AI except for the Neil Asher Polity novels (if you haven't read them check them out best description I can think of is Culture novels crossed with die hard) which also has god-like AI's.
  - IvyMike 13y ago
    Vinge's Zones of Thought series?
  - arethuza 13y ago
    Actually, I suspect the Eschaton that Charlie Stross writes about is probably more powerful that a Culture Mind as it appears to use time travel for computational purposes: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/09/books-i-will-not-write-4-escha.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/09/books-i-... Of course, proving that the Eschaton is more powerful than a Culture Mind (or one of Vinge's Transcendent Powers) might be a bit tricky.
    - andyjohnson0 13y ago
      In Consider Phlebas, the refugee Mind that was hiding in the tunnel system was described as existing mostly in hyperspace [1]. Whether that beats time travel as a computational shortcut I really wouldn't know. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_(The_Culture)#Structure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_(The_Culture)#Structure
    - mcguire 13y ago
      See also Scott Aaronson, Quantum Computing Since Democritus, or the lectures on which it's based[1], or his paper, "Closed Timelike Curves Make Quantum and Classical Computing Equivalent".[2] [1] http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec19.html http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec19.html, Lecture 19: Time Travel. [2] http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/ctc.pdf http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/ctc.pdf
  - 13y ago
- darasen 13y ago
  Wouldn't the AI in Asimov's "The Last Question" top that chart.
  - DuskStar 13y ago
    Probably not. If I recall correctly, Culture Minds could create mass from nothing, travel significantly faster than light, existed mostly in "hyperspace", and were actively working on the ability to travel between universes. (As shown in "Excession") And they did it in < 10000 years, whereas the AI in "The last Question" took until significantly past the heat death of the universe to figure out the whole "mass from nothing" problem.
qwerta 13y ago
There is novel which suggest using entire star cluster for inter-galactic travels..

It would be cool to see a diagram comparing the computing power of different science fiction spaceships - I suspect Culture ships would do fairly well in that comparison!

jerf 13y ago
Unlike distance, I don't think there's a comparable metric that can be used. Star Trek, just to take one tiny example, always talks about "quads", where one might expect bits. What's a quad? You might think "maybe it's a four-state bit", but in that case the numbers talked about on the show are absurdly low [1]. One "gigaquad" would be 2 gigabits, or about 256 megabytes (depending on whether we're using 1000 or 1024 as our base). Indeed, the entire point of the measurement is to be mysterious. This does not play well to comparisons. By contrast, "kilometer" means the same thing... well... more or less... across a wide variety of fictional universes. By "more or less", I mean that it's pretty easy to just splat a number down without thinking about it. Here, let me write my own story: One day, astronomers spotted a perfectly spherical, shiny spaceship approaching Earth from outside of the orbit of Pluto. It was a trillion kilometers in diameter! They sent it radio greetings, but before the message got there, the ship blew up. Truly, Man was humbled by his place in the capricious cosmos. The End. There's all kinds of things wrong with that. I mean, jeez, could the moral have been any more trite? Umm... wait... that's not what I was trying to say... I mean, those numbers are silly. Ah, yes, that was the point. If I were serious, it's likely that my understanding of "kilometer" is a bit off. And to be honest, I rather think the Independence Day ship fits that description. It's absurdly large for what it actually did; if taken seriously, our little fusion bomb should probably not so much have "exploded" it as "caused a bit of a flash, if you were looking". (Secondary explosions may have finished the job but it would have looked quite different.) [1]: http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Quad http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Quad
- arethuza 13y ago
  The refugee Mind from Consider Phlebas actually had a rather nice way of visualizing its data storage capacity. However, as later stories make clear, this Mind was very limited compared to later models.
  - incision 13y ago
    I enjoyed that visualization. When you consider that Consider Phlebas was published in 1987, it was probably necessary. In 2013, a writer can count on all sorts of metaphors and approximations that wouldn't even have been a concept to most in 1987.
- asciimo 13y ago
  Good story. Perfectly crafted for my attention span.
- ctdonath 13y ago
  That's what drove me batty about Ringworld: distances were obnoxiously large and speeds ridiculously fast without really adding anything to the story and certainly without demanding a cost for that scale. Sure, the scale of the Ring had to be vast, but a mountain 1000 times higher than Everest proves unimpressive when one's flying motorcycle travels 1000 times faster than a grounded one circa Earth 2000.
noir_lord 13y ago
According to in-universe canon for the Culture they are the most powerful AI's you can possible have without subliming. Comparing on a like for like basis I can't think of any other series that have similarly powerful AI except for the Neil Asher Polity novels (if you haven't read them check them out best description I can think of is Culture novels crossed with die hard) which also has god-like AI's.
- IvyMike 13y ago
  Vinge's Zones of Thought series?
- arethuza 13y ago
  Actually, I suspect the Eschaton that Charlie Stross writes about is probably more powerful that a Culture Mind as it appears to use time travel for computational purposes: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/09/books-i-will-not-write-4-escha.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/09/books-i-... Of course, proving that the Eschaton is more powerful than a Culture Mind (or one of Vinge's Transcendent Powers) might be a bit tricky.
  - andyjohnson0 13y ago
    In Consider Phlebas, the refugee Mind that was hiding in the tunnel system was described as existing mostly in hyperspace [1]. Whether that beats time travel as a computational shortcut I really wouldn't know. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_(The_Culture)#Structure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_(The_Culture)#Structure
  - mcguire 13y ago
    See also Scott Aaronson, Quantum Computing Since Democritus, or the lectures on which it's based[1], or his paper, "Closed Timelike Curves Make Quantum and Classical Computing Equivalent".[2] [1] http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec19.html http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec19.html, Lecture 19: Time Travel. [2] http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/ctc.pdf http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/ctc.pdf
- 13y ago
darasen 13y ago
Wouldn't the AI in Asimov's "The Last Question" top that chart.
- DuskStar 13y ago
  Probably not. If I recall correctly, Culture Minds could create mass from nothing, travel significantly faster than light, existed mostly in "hyperspace", and were actively working on the ability to travel between universes. (As shown in "Excession") And they did it in < 10000 years, whereas the AI in "The last Question" took until significantly past the heat death of the universe to figure out the whole "mass from nothing" problem.

qwerta 13y ago

There is novel which suggest using entire star cluster for inter-galactic travels..