[fonc] Massively Parallel Computer Built From Single Layer of Molecules
(also a crystal, only 2D, not 3D; yet) https://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/27291/?p1=blogs Massively Parallel Computer Built From Single Layer of Molecules Japanese scientists have built a cellular automaton from individual molecules that carries out huge numbers of calculations in parallel kfc 10/27/2011 2 Comments Modern computer chips handle data at the mind-blowing rate of some 10^13 bits per second. Neurons, by comparison, fire at a rate of around 100 times per second or so. And yet the brain outperforms the best computers in numerous tasks. One reason for this is way computations take place. In computers, calculations occur in strict pipelines, one at a time. In the brain, however, many calculations take place at once. Each neuron communicates with up to 1000 other neurons at any one time. And since the brain consists of billions neurons, the potential for parallel calculating is clearly huge. Computer scientists are well aware of this difference and have tried in many ways to mimic the brain's massively parallel capabilities. But success has been hard to come by. Today, Anirban Bandyopadhyay at National Institute for Materials Science in Tsukuba, Japan, unveil a promising new approach. At the heart of their experiment is a ring-like molecule called 2,3-dichloro-5,6-dicyano-p-benzoquinone, or DDQ. This has an unusual property: it can exist in four different conducting states, depending on the location of trapped electrons around the ring. What's more, it's possible to switch the molecule from one to state to another by zapping it with voltages of various different strengths using the tip of a scanning tunnelling microscope. It's even possible to bias the possible states that can form by placing the molecule in an electric field Place two DDQ molecules next to each other and it's possible to make them connect. In fact, a single DDQ molecule can connect with between 2 and 6 neighbours, depending on its conducting state and theirs. When one molecule changes its state, the change in configuration ripples from one molecule to the next, forming and reforming circuits as it travels. Given all this, it's not hard to imagine how a layer of DDQ molecules can act like a cellular automaton, with each molecule as a cell in the automaton. Roughly speaking, the rules for flipping cells from one state to another are set by the bias on the molecules and the starting state is programmed by the scanning tunnelling microscope. And that's exactly what these guys have done. They've laid down 300 DDQ molecules on a gold substrate, setting them up as a cellular automaton. More impressive still, they've then initialised the system so that it calculates the way heat diffuses in a conducting medium and the way cancer spreads through tissue. And since the entire layer is involved in the calculation, this a massively parallel computation using a single layer of organic molecules. Bandyopadhyay and co say the key feature of this type of calculation is the fact that one DDQ molecule can link to many others, rather like neurons in the brain. Generalization of this principle would...open up a new vista of emergent computing using an assembly of molecules, they say. Clearly an intriguing prospect. Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1110.5844: Massively Parallel Computing An An Organic Molecular Layer TRSF: Read the Best New Science Fiction inspired by today’s emerging technologies. ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
[fonc] ARM CTO predicts chips the size of blood cells
(cores, that is) http://www.techworld.com.au/article/405599/arm_cto_predicts_chips_size_blood_cells ARM CTO predicts chips the size of blood cells The chip design company is on its way to making chips no bigger than a red blood cell, its CTO says James Niccolai (IDG News Service) 28 October, 2011 07:57 Comments In less than a decade, that smartphone you're holding could have 32 times the memory, 20 times the bandwidth and a microprocessor core no bigger than a red blood cell, the CTO of chip design company ARM said on Thursday. ARM has already helped develop a prototype, implantable device for monitoring eye-pressure in glaucoma patients that measures just 1 cubic millimeter, CTO Mike Muller said at ARM's TechCon conference in Silicon Valley Thursday. The device includes a microprocessor sandwiched between sensors at the top and a battery at the bottom. Strip away those extra components, rearrange the transistors into a cube and apply the type of advanced manufacturing process expected in 2020, and you'd end up with a device that occupies about the same volume as a blood cell, Muller said. ARM designs the processor cores used in most of today's smartphones and tablets, and smaller cores are generally more energy efficient, he said. That helps to extend battery life. That's a good thing, because battery technology is advancing much more slowly, and Muller expects only twice the improvement in battery performance by the end of the decade. That could be a gating factor for all the other improvements, so the electrical systems inside portable devices will have to be redesigned so that people don't have to recharge them multiple times a day. For example, smartphones today contain basically a single compute system, with one type of CPU and some memory attached. But the tasks performed by smartphones, such as making a call or playing a 3D game, require very different levels of performance. So in the future, MulIer said, some systems will have entire subsystems within them, including their own CPU and their own memory, devoted to a particular task such as music playback. That way, other subsystems in a device can be shut down, conserving battery life. It's a model ARM is already pursuing with its Big.Little architecture announced last week. That design will see two types of processor core in the same device, one powerful and one less so, and uses the most power-appropriate device for the task at hand. The idea of entire subsystems takes that a step further. The bandwidth gains in 2020 will come mostly from advances in topology, according to Muller -- basically increasing the number of cellular base stations. Spectrum, and the technologies used to send bits across that spectrum, won't advance much, he predicted. That's okay for people in cities, where it can make financial sense to install more base stations. If you're out in the middle of nowhere, I'm sorry, there's not going to be much big change for you, Muller said. He spoke at ARM's TechCon conference in Silicon Valley, where ARM also announced its next microprocessor architecture, ARMv8, which will be its first to support 64-bit computing. James Niccolai covers data centers and general technology news for IDG News Service. Follow James on Twitter at @jniccolai. James's e-mail address is james_nicco...@idg.com ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
Re: [fonc] IBM eyes brain-like computing
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
Re: [fonc] IBM eyes brain-like computing
On 10/28/2011 2:27 PM, karl ramberg wrote: On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 6:36 PM, BGBcr88...@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 seems interesting, but is very much a pain trying to watch as my internet is slow and the player doesn't really seem to buffer up the video all that far when paused... but, yeah, eval and reflection are features I really like, although sadly one doesn't really have much of anything like this standard in C, meaning one has to put a lot of effort into making a lot of scripting and VM technology primarily simply to make up for the lack of things like 'eval' and 'apply'. this becomes at times a point of contention with many C++ developers, where they often believe that the greatness of C++ for everything more than makes up for its lack of reflection or dynamic features, and I hold that plain C has a lot of merit if-anything because it is more readily amendable to dynamic features (which can plug into the language from outside), which more or less makes up for the lack of syntax sugar in many areas... although, granted, in my case, the language I eval is BGBScript and not C, but in many cases they are similar enough that the difference can be glossed over. I had considered, but never got around to, creating a language I was calling C-Aux, which would have taken this further, being cosmetically similar to and mostly (85-95% ?) source-compatible with C, but being far more dynamic (being designed to more readily allow quickly loading code from source, supporting eval, ...). essentially, in a practical sense C-Aux would
