tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5235419263414453422.post3435779260656227161..comments2024-02-23T01:30:06.101-08:00Comments on Early Warning: Planning for Moore's LawStuart Stanifordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07182839827506265860noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5235419263414453422.post-69535858423519701152010-06-08T14:46:26.315-07:002010-06-08T14:46:26.315-07:00Stuart - what does Moores Law imply for GINI coeff...Stuart - what does Moores Law imply for GINI coefficient?Nate Hhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16047228065827556610noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5235419263414453422.post-29616307157190763192010-05-31T01:45:55.843-07:002010-05-31T01:45:55.843-07:00India is a land of growing opportunities. You migh...India is a land of growing opportunities. You might be amazed to know the demand for software development in India. Software development proves to be a vital tool for businesses in order to achieve their desired goals and objectives.<br /><a href="http://s4support.com/" rel="nofollow">Hire Programmer</a>tusharhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14581755375871462670noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5235419263414453422.post-40702808956315025472010-05-28T14:32:09.190-07:002010-05-28T14:32:09.190-07:00@Stuart: There's no Moore's Law for softwa...@Stuart: There's no Moore's Law for software, but the changes are happening for it, too.<br /><br />Both MS and Apple have made major strides in supplying parallelization tools to its software developers (internal and 3rd parties). Intel, AMD, the graphics chips companies, ARM, … all of the processing companies are exploiting the lower power per transistor that comes with size reduction to make multi-processor designs, and the software types are making good strides on exploiting them.<br /><br />My laptop could time-slice between keeping KCSM.Org playing, my browser and monitors for new mail, new news, … all running. Or, as it's really doing, give each function one of the four threads available in my processor. There ARE some older programs (Excel), operating systems (much older Win or Mac) that can't divvy up their work, where you stare at the hourglass. <br /><br />But the major bottlenecks are the low-hanging fruit. Adobe is still behind the curve on the Macs, but graphics programs generally use multiple processors very efficiently; monster stat problems are no longer monster; even the huge branch & cut optimizations I do on my portfolios can have their algorithms tweaked to divide the search effort.<br /><br />The future still looks pretty bright.Walt Frenchhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00873789914522579055noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5235419263414453422.post-13102133757028514382010-05-28T12:05:45.776-07:002010-05-28T12:05:45.776-07:00Bert:
Absolutely - those of us doing software are...Bert:<br /><br />Absolutely - those of us doing software are acutely aware that single-threaded applications stopped getting much faster a few years back, but we keep getting more and more cores to play with even on very low end platforms. Personally I'm designing stuff that runs on numerous cores now, and figuring I have to allow for hundreds of cores in the lifetime of the architecture.<br /><br />In a way, though, it kind of reinforces my overall point, as it will create a kind of additional income gradient within the software industry. If you can handle multi-threaded code/design well, you'll be worth more than if you can't.Stuart Stanifordhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07182839827506265860noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5235419263414453422.post-78487414714025735482010-05-28T05:54:43.504-07:002010-05-28T05:54:43.504-07:00While the number of gates is anticipated to scale ...While the number of gates is anticipated to scale significantly, the growth in clock speed is less promising. From the system drivers document: "Modern MPU platforms have stabilized maximum power dissipation at approximately 120W due to package cost, reliability, and cooling cost issues. ... <i> the updated MPU clock frequency model ... is projected to increase by a factor of at most 1.25× per technology generation </i>, despite aggressive development and deployment of low-power design techniques".<br />This can be seen with the plateau in current CPU clock speeds since 2007. <br /><br />Smaller gates means more processing, not necessarily faster processing. Given the challenges with taking rich advantage of multiple cores and parallel processing paths, the speed increases that have enabled significant new applications will become harder (lower processing return on advancement :) ).ColdNorthhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13140379108815093606noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5235419263414453422.post-21193000209149470032010-05-26T14:08:31.102-07:002010-05-26T14:08:31.102-07:00MisterMoose:
Yeah, that's more or less exactl...MisterMoose:<br /><br />Yeah, that's more or less exactly what Kurzweil thinks (he has a chapter of <i>The Singularity is Near</i> titled something like "Singularity as Transcendence".<br /><br />I am reminded of Isaiah 14:12-16:<br /><br />12 How you have fallen from heaven, <br /> O morning star, son of the dawn! <br /> You have been cast down to the earth, <br /> you who once laid low the nations!<br /><br /> 13 You said in your heart, <br /> "I will ascend to heaven; <br /> I will raise my throne <br /> above the stars of God; <br /> I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, <br /> on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain.<br /><br /> 14 I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; <br /> I will make myself like the Most High."<br /><br /> 15 But you are brought down to the grave, <br /> to the depths of the pit.<br /><br /> 16 Those who see you stare at you, <br /> they ponder your fate: <br /> "Is this the man who shook the earth <br /> and made kingdoms tremble,Stuart Stanifordhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07182839827506265860noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5235419263414453422.post-67005987818837698992010-05-26T13:53:53.022-07:002010-05-26T13:53:53.022-07:00Speaking of alien civilizations, Moore's Law m...Speaking of alien civilizations, Moore's Law may explain where all the advanced alien civilizations are, in response to Fermi's famous question.<br /><br />If we encounter an alien civilization that is only a hundred years ahead of us, it'll be much worse than the disparity between Cortez and Montezuma. A hundred years' worth of Moore's Law (assuming a conservative five twenty-year generations) will give the aliens a computer technology a quadrillion times more powerful than ours. Such a technology would be, as Arthur C. Clark said, "indistinguishable from magic."<br /><br />Let's continue Moore's Law for a thousand years, or ten thousand, or a million, or... <br /><br />Well, at some point, it becomes indistinguishable from God. They won't be using silicon by then, of course, but their computerized advanced intelligence will have helped them unlock other ways (quantum level computing, computing in other dimensions, or things that we literally are incapable of comprehending).<br /><br />This is the sort of thing that can happen once you take a bite out of the fruit of the tree of knowledge.MisterMoosehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14484672208906420595noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5235419263414453422.post-87530286594742492182010-05-26T11:05:16.151-07:002010-05-26T11:05:16.151-07:00May this progress, including the increases in vide...May this progress, including the increases in video-conferencing capabilities, rapidly percolate to the many workplaces where people still must drive to work each day just to (mostly)sit at a computer terminal.Mike Aucotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05692592170835103639noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5235419263414453422.post-62398945920408699472010-05-26T10:58:21.397-07:002010-05-26T10:58:21.397-07:00Madhu:
Well, my general rap on that is that as lo...Madhu:<br /><br />Well, my general rap on that is that as long as the degradation is slowish, then yes, we will. Or at least we could assuming we don't respond really stupidly (admittedly, that last is not a rock-solid assumption).<br /><br />Climate change is likely, as far as anyone knows at present, to proceed relatively slowly.<br /><br />I also believe that that the post peak decline in oil supply is likely to be relatively slow, certainly in the beginning. So society has to get a few percent more efficient each year and that's doable. <br /><br />So, to boil the scenario down to a single stereotype, the defining image of the problems of the early decades of the twenty-first century might be an unemployable young guy conserving oil by living in his parent's basement playing video games all day.Stuart Stanifordhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07182839827506265860noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5235419263414453422.post-52436105992857631342010-05-26T10:49:29.983-07:002010-05-26T10:49:29.983-07:00Great post - thanks !
But if the underlying physi...Great post - thanks !<br /><br />But if the underlying physical environment degrades, would we have the resources to run a virtual environment at all ??Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00217820949211906932noreply@blogger.com