February 6, 2008: Two Billion Transistors

[monster]

Well I've heard of it before too, despite not dipping into the tech forum very often. Apparently, my bachelor's degree is in computer science, but my degree is so old, it was still considered an "interesting statement" then, rather than an "axiom of the industry" My degree is so old, I was one of the first students to get a university email account as standard issue! (1989)

[xoxoxoBruce]

It's an industry thing for engineers and MBAs.

[glatt]

Originally Posted by monster

I was one of the first students to get a university email account as standard issue! (1989)

I was too! I had to ask around, talking to a few professors before I found out who I needed to talk to to get an e-mail account. There were (I think) three terminals on campus I could use to check my e-mail, but only one was in a public location. The others were in physics labs, etc.

I was the only student I knew of with an e-mail account, but I heard from the professors that there were a couple others. This was 1988.

[dar512]

There are a number of "laws" to go along with Moore's law. Programmers and techies of all sorts have a fondness for them.

Here are a few:

Ellison's Law: The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.

Hanlon's Law: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Hoare's Law: Inside every large problem is a small problem struggling to get out.

Occam's Razor: The explanation requiring the fewest assumptions is most likely to be correct.

Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage

[monster]

Originally Posted by dar512

There are a number of "laws" to go along with Moore's law. Programmers and techies of all sorts have a fondness for them.

Here are a few:

Ellison's Law: The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.

Hanlon's Law: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Hoare's Law: Inside every large problem is a small problem struggling to get out.

Occam's Razor: The explanation requiring the fewest assumptions is most likely to be correct.

Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage

You missed Murphy

[tw]

Moore's Law is more of an industry benchmark to determine if the industry is still innovating.

What makes that chip possible is high-K dielectric that Intel took a great risk on in Jan 2006. Hafnium (with some other secret materials) made it possible to replace glass (silicon dioxide) with a gate material that does not leak so many electrons. Less leakage means less power consumption and less heat. This risk and its resulting rewards have left AMD in trouble both financially and in competitive products. AMD is suffering from processors that are either too hot or too slow. The buzz word for this new Intel technology is 45 nm transistors. AMD is just getting to 65 nm transistors.

Intel produces annually more transistors than there are stars in the universe.

Meanwhile, the next generation of processing is multicore. But as Sony's Playstation Three demonstrates, we have a serious problem making software that can utilize multicore processors. Where would be a good place to invest? Who can solve this software problem now that Intel has solved the Moore Law challenge using multicore processors?

[tw]

Originally Posted by tw

Meanwhile, the next generation of processing is multicore. But as Sony's Playstation Three demonstrates, we have a serious problem making software that can utilize multicore processors. Where would be a good place to invest? Who can solve this software problem now that Intel has solved the Moore Law challenge using multicore processors?

Multiprocessing, multicore processors, parallel processing, and the associated software appears to be a next bottleneck for the computer industry.

From the NY Times of 30 April 2008:

Race Is on to Advance Software for Chips
Stanford University and six computer and chip makers plan to announce Friday the creation of the Pervasive Parallelism Lab. Besides Stanford, the backers are Sun Microsystems, Advanced Micro Devices, Nvidia, I.B.M., Hewlett-Packard and Intel.

Last month, Intel and Microsoft announced they were jointly financing new labs at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to tackle the same problem.

All three efforts are in response to a growing awareness that the software industry is not ready for the coming availability of microprocessors with 8 or 16 or more cores, or processing units, on a single chip. Computer and chip makers are concerned that if software cannot use the new hardware efficiently, customers will have little reason to upgrade.

[dar512]

I think the answer will be computer languages (and to a certain extent operating systems) that help the programmer facilitate multi-processing.

Coding for multiprocessing can be incredibly easy - if none of the tasks depend on the other or share resources. But that's not what people are going to want. Most people can't multitask past a few tasks. They want the one or two tasks they're working on to go faster.

In order to take advantage of multiple cpus in that scenario, a lot of interdependence and sharing of resources has to happen. This is typically pretty klunky to do in current languages. I suspect the next big thing in computer languages will be the one that sorts this stuff out.

[nil_orally]

Is it just me that sees a cubist representation of a robotic goatse in this image?

[monster]

Originally Posted by nil_orally

Is it just me that sees a cubist representation of a robotic goatse in this image?

thanks, now I do too

[Gravdigr]

Originally Posted by nil_orally

Is it just me that sees a cubist representation of a robotic goatse in this image?

Goatse. Tubgirl. Two girls one cup. Two girls one finger. There, we never have to hear about any of them EVER AGAIN!!!!

[Flint]

But what is that sauce that goes on it? That's where the magic is.

[torgut9]

Is this fake-proof picture??? Over 2 billion transistors..??!!
*starts to count every single of them*

(wish me luck)

[Shawnee123]

I see this:

[deadbeater]

In ten years the Tukwilla will be part of a 16-core CPU/motherboard that will fit about the size of that current chip. The board will be used to play iTunes.