On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 6:36 PM, BGB <cr88...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 10/28/2011 7:28 AM, K. K. Subramaniam wrote: >> >> On Thursday 27 Oct 2011 11:27:39 PM BGB wrote: >>> >>> most likely, processing power will stop increasing (WRT density and/or >>> watts) once the respective physical limits are met (basically, it would >>> no longer be possible to get more processing power in the same space or >>> using less power within the confines of the laws of physics). >> >> The adoption of computing machines at large is driven primarily by three >> needs >> - power (portable), space/weight and speed. The last two are now solvable >> in >> the large but the third one is still stuck in the "dark ages". I recollect >> a >> joke by Dr An Wang (founder of Wang Labs) in keynote during the 80s that >> goes >> something like this: >> >> A man struggled to lug two heavy suitcases into a bogie in a train that >> was >> just about to depart. A fellow passenger helped him in and they start a >> conversation. The man turns out to be a salesman from a company that made >> portable computers. He showed one that fit in a pocket to his fellow >> passenger. >> "It does everything that a mainframe does and more and it costs only >> $100". >> "Amazing!" exclaimed the passenger as he held the marvel in his hands, >> "Where >> can I get one?". "You can have this piece," said the gracious gent, "as >> thank >> you gift for helping me." "Thank you very much." the passenger was >> thrilled >> beyond words as he gingerly explored the new gadget. Soon, the train >> reached >> the next station and the salesman stepped out. As the train departed, the >> passenger yelled at him. "Hey! you forgot your suitcases!". "Not really!" >> the >> gent shouted back. "Those are the batteries for your computer". >> >> ;-) .. Subbu > > yeah... > > this is probably a major issue at this point with "hugely multi-core" > processors: > if built, they would likely use lots of power and produce lots of heat. > > this is sort of also an issue with video cards, one gets a new/fancy nVidia > card, which is then noted to have a few issues: > it takes up two card slots (much of this apparently its heat-sink); > it is long enough that it partially sticks into the hard-drive bays; > it requires a 500W power supply; > it requires 4 plugs from the power-supply; > ... > > so, then one can joke that they have essentially installed a brick into > their computer. > > nevermind it getting high framerates in games... > > > however, they would have an advantage as well: > people can still write their software in good old C/C++/Java/... > > it is likely that the existence of existing programming languages and > methodologies will continue to be necessary of new computing technologies. > > > also, likewise people will continue pushing to gradually drive-down the > memory requirements, but for the most part the power use of devices has been > largely dictated by what one can get from plugging a power-cord into the > wall (vs either running off batteries, or OTOH, requiring one to plug in a > 240V dryer/arc-welder/... style power cord). > > > elsewhere, I designed a hypothetical ISA, partly combining ideas from ARM > and x86-64, with a few "unique" ways of representing instructions (the idea > being that they are aligned values of 1/2/4/8 bytes, rather than either more > free-form byte-patterns or fixed-width instruction-words). > > or such... > > > _______________________________________________ > fonc mailing list > fonc@vpri.org > http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc >
This is also relevant regarding understanding how to make these computers work: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/We-Really-Dont-Know-How-To-Compute Karl _______________________________________________ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
