Moore's Law

[CaveCreekRay]

Dinna wanna hijack Brother Skeets' thread on "confuser issues." But I thought some might find this interesting. And, its A YEAR OLD!

Moore's Law says computer power will double every two years. Or will it? This video looks at what the problems are inside the transistors in tiny computer chips.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnGWRRexRlk

 

[skeets]

I have read that the amount of information that is being gleaned each hour would take a person a life time to understand. And yet they keep getting faster and smaller.
Will one day man, circum to AI ruling the planet. And then what, revolution ? That Detective is the right question.

 

[85Hokie]

Another part is the materials being "created" for chip production.

For those that have never looked at this "new" super material ....

LOOK up GRAPHENE..... yes that is spelled correctly .......

A single atom thick "material" that will conduct electrons 1000's times easier than copper/silver/gold...

stuff is very difficult to make - but as with all things, time and money will make it an everyday thing here soon.

Batteries as we know them will become archaic when we look back to old NiCd and even the newest Lithium Ions. Computers will run all day and night with a little ol AA battery !

Graphene is really amazing stuff!

As ol Stephen Hawking said and is right, we do not "want" AI running around .....man will create the machine that will replace man. Much like the movies..... Hope I ain't around to see that !

 

[sagor]

Moore's law is based on number of transistors per chip. Generally this has equated to compute power at the same time. However, Moore's law ignores one higher level "law", the laws of physics. Electrons can only travel at near the speed of light, no faster. This prevents CPUs from talking to devices farther away as their speeds increase. With today's technology, it is rare to find any commercial CPU running faster than around 4Ghz, due to the fact that the next device it is talking to has to be within a few inches of the CPU itself.
Light (laser?) based computing will be no better.

What has to happen, to keep Moore's law alive, is to evolve to Bio/organic devices, which have much smaller sizes but high densities, like cell level. Also, building CPUs in cube format allows more devices within that magic distance from the CPU, so there are no delays due to propagation of electrical signals. Our brain is an organic computer, with a very high density, but not easy to program to specific tasks at high speeds, due mostly to the "human" interface.

So, to keep computing power doubling every period, like transistor count, we have to engineer electrical devices that have a higher density than what can be done with Silicon. Or, we have to change the laws of physics and increase the speed of light (at which electronic signals run very close at)...

Organic computing is a possibility. Just think of the power savings, when all you have to do is feed your organic computer a hotdog once in a while, instead of plugging it in...

"Resistance is futile" may come to reality some day...

 

[bxray]

We are Kubota!
You will be assimilated!
Resistance is futile!

I thought it doubled every 18 months.
That is why the pc boards are multi level to put parts closer.

 

[dlsmith]

The problem with making devices larger in the 3rd dimension, like cubes, is the problem of heat dissipation. Devices with more gates or transistors produce more heat, and if you stack more of them up on a die the problem gets worse. Increasing the clock speed adds to the heat problem in addition to the signal transit times.

It still amazes me that we have such complex devices that work so well most of the time, Windows 10 excluded.

 

[skeets]

Well there is work going on using light waves, which should really speed things up and I dont think heat would be a problem

 

[sagor]

Well there is work going on using light waves, which should really speed things up and I dont think heat would be a problem

Light travels at the same speed as electricity (close to it). While it may not speed things up directly, it will reduce heat for sure....
That said, a single light can carry a large bandwidth of information, carrying lots of data at once (vs single wire trace). How that speeds up a CPU engine remains to be seen.

It may be decades before we see full commercial use of these new technologies.

 

[skeets]

Thats true light does travel the same, but there is no worries of having the width of a silicon molecule to worry about, and the degradation of the signal. Over short distances this is not an issue, fiber optic cables while much smaller can carry many times over the amount of information a copper cable can. So if this becomes a feasible technology things will get really small and faster. Ray is right the future is expanding exponentially,, may we survive it

 

[sagor]

As long as the fiber cables are colored "Orange", I'm all for it....

 

[hagrid]

Quantum entanglement will solve the C/distance problem.

 

[CaveCreekRay]

Nice discussion from a bunch of "dumb 'ol tractor people." No wonder I spend so much time here. What an outstanding group of folks.

 

[dandeman]

Nice discussion from a bunch of "dumb 'ol tractor people."

It might be that some folks carrying challenging, stressful responsibilities in high tech fields were fortunate enough and had the wisdom to appreciate living in the sticks and made it happen. Finding the way back just seemed to be in the instinct, especially if that's where someone came from long ago. And getting on the tractor to mow the north 40, scraping the gravel road, working on old blue or the orange whippersnapper, or whatever... was a great, welcome relief from the rat race. Don't need no 3 piece suit to get up in the tractor seat!

On one long ago weekend break from running with the rats, spitting some wood a ways from the house was my cup of tea. After a lunch break, caught myself while walking back to the site thinking "well my goal this afternoon is...." then a little light bulb came on.... Wait a minute! What's this goal crap?! If I want to sit on the back of the tractor a while and just enjoy the view down in the woods, I do that.. If I happen to decide to split a little more wood, well that could be OK too.

There'll be plenty goals to chase when back with the rats.

 

[CaveCreekRay]

Well said.

Speaking of which, my goal is to get a stall cleaned out in my barn to get my weight machine set up. But the rain hasn't moved on quite yet and I'll have to move the Orange Machine out in the rain.

On second thought, I'll take my wife out for some good Mexican food and re-evaluate options after lunch. Chicken fajitas have a way of clearing one's mind.

 

[lugbolt]

Reading this on a 10 year old laptop that weighs like 10 lbs, out in the sticks thinking to myself at some point this thing is going to die (computer). Then what? I probably won't replace it.

Unfortunately those who have the smarts are integrating their "knowledge" into tractors-and I am having a hard time adapting. At some point, I'm gonna have to make a decision whether to keep doing this (tractor repair) as technology-and it's effects on tractoring-have passed my pea brain by so quickly that I'm not sure I can re-learn it, at my age. I may be better off with the powersports stuff where I feel more comfortable. It, too, is being electronically taken-over but at least at this point, I still halfway understand that stuff better (gasoline powered) than these diesel counterparts and their complexities. Dealing with one now that has SCR issues, and I am having a tough time figuring it out, got Kubota TSC involved, and they have no clue either. Probably going to have to escalate it to engineering-which takes time and we all know that people have all kinds of patience-especially when the tractor is their livelihood.

 

[CaveCreekRay]

lugbolt,

I feel your pain. My car is a 2000. My truck is a '99. Bought my wife a newer "used" 2015 truck and it has computers in the seat controls. No simple wiring, everything is on a bus and controlled by digital information sent via the bus to turn items on or off. Works great until it doesn't and then you MUST have a "confuser" to reset a new part or figger out what is not working. And for some reason, the software to de-bug these issues is hard to come by. Fortunately, its also fairly easy to use. With products two to three years old, open source versions are popping up for layman use.

Technology has made reliability what we always hoped it would be -until it takes a dump or reboots with corrupt data. God help us all when the next solar flare comes along.

(sigh)

 

[thirdroc17]

Using Moore's law, in another context. Every year your computer will be outdated and should be replaced. There are already many websites I can't load on my 5 year old laptop. Just imagine if your Kubota was engineered to be replaced every 2-5 years. This is BETTER?

Sure, if you're rich.

One more payment to go on my Kubota, (Wooo HOOOO) should I be replacing it as it's older than my laptop? I can hardly afford that. So what good is all this so called progress? In the real world where I live, it's only for the rich, not the working class I'm in.