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134 comments on The Spike and the Peak
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134 comments on The Spike and the Peak
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Ugo wrote:
Sorry Ugo, but that is just not the case anymore. The exponential growth in computing power has been slowing for some time now and there is no doubt it will soon stop completely. The problem is silicone. You can make silicone only so thin before the current overheats it and burns it up. That problem was overcome in the past by lowering the voltage and reducing the current with each new generation of chips as each circuit got thinner and thinner. Now each circuit is about as small or thin as it can get without even the tiny currents they currently carry burns them up.
A search went out to find "something else" other than silicone to make chips from. A breakthrough was thought to be found by Bell Labs but the scientist who made the breakthrough, J. Hendrik Schön, was found to have faked the data. Now there is nothing on the horizon that is expected to replace silicone and save Moore's from hitting a brick wall. The speed of the computer cannot increase much more and each circuit in the chip cannot get much smaller.
Moore's Law, better described as "Moore's Observation" has been tailing off in recent years, increasing but at a much slower rate, and will very soon come to a complete stop. Computers will keep working but Moor's Law will not stay alive.
Jan Hendrik Schön
Ron Patterson
The problem is not silicone nor limits of whatever physical. A von Nemann computer is a formally deciding machine ( not : system) and is therefore limited pretty much harder.
Most human decision is not formal it is
"intuitive". von Neumann computing lacks "gut feeling" as well as "ideas".
So intelligence is rather non sequitur -
the new idea is not consistent with the problem.
That is human and most possibly animal
solution finding is not logical.
So far there is no such thing as artificial intelligence.
That would require a not formal theory of context.
Hahfran, we are talking apples and oranges here. I, or we, are talking about computing power, or the speed and physical size of computers as programmable data processors. And here, as far as Moore's Law is concerned, the problem is silicon or rather the limits of silicon.
You are discussing something else entirely. You are speaking of computers as thinking machines that may someday replace humans and all the innate capacities the human mind possess. That is another matter altogether and I would never argue with you on that point. Computers will never possess these capabilities. But Moore's Law has nothing to do with this concept, but only computers as programmable data processors.
Ron Patterson
Partly agreed.
As everyone has the subject of peak of a physical ressource apparently no one is concerned about peak of human ressources.
Outsourcing workload at first is profitable but second one loses skill which grows abroad.
I think that the idea to keep research and development and source out only mechanical repetitive work will fail.
It has already failed in Switzerland.
Their industry depends on continued influx of skill of all kind inclusive of engineering and research experts.
Because as the basic is lost the upper class- so to speak - runs out of ideas.
Manufacturing quality deteriorates and eventually the profit from outsourcing
is lost in extended cost of qualtity control and engineering , rework, and loss of market share.
But the skill is gone.
IMO the way of thinking predominant in a technologically advanced society is already algorithmic. It may be clever algorithms but insofar computers can replace humans because the latter are on their intellectual way down.
Recently a friend adivised me a book written by O'Shea an US mathematician. I said no I am familiar with topology. But he kept on insisting. I read it and I am perplexed. This man has an incredible educational talent. But he is a rare exception.
Thus I am far more worried about peak education than about peak oil and that like.
What people fail to realize is that any AI will have the same mental limitations (and diseases) any human being has, and therefore will act in similar ways. Of course an AI will be non-corporial (less-corporeal at first, until it's computer systems are truly everywhere).
There is, however, no problem whatsoever with simulating a large, very humanlike AI on von Neumann processors. It's not as fast as it might be given optimal hardware, but that goes for everything. Certainly the most useful computers are von neumann computers.
Probably not, however I find this guy's work rather interesting.
Link
Jeff Hawkins
Numenta
November 2, 2007
Jeff Hawkins is the founder of two computer companies, Palm and Handspring, and the designer of many computing products including the PalmPilot and Treo Smartphone. He also founded and ran the nonprofit Redwood Neuroscience Institute (now part of UC Berkeley) and founded the for-profit Numenta, which is developing a new technology, Hierarchical Temporal Memory, based on neocortical memory architecture. Hawkins has a BSEE from Cornell University. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineers in 2003.
Yes. His book with Sandra Blakeslee On Intelligence is worth reading, he's a smart guy, and gives a good talk if you get a chanced to hear him. This is worth keeping an eye on, if for no other reason than it might lead to parallel algorithms amenable to serious hardware acceleration, in the same way (but in opposite direction) as has has occurred with 3D graphics.
Most AI has really not gotten very far, although there are some useful expert systems around (but those are not general AI in the sense that most people think). In chess & checkers, brute force essentially won over AI, just as Ken Thompson predicted in early 1980s.
Jeff's approach is at least interesting and different.
See also: Cyc.
Well, all the data I could find say that Moore's law is still going on. Of course, nothing can go on exponentially forever - I think we'll see chips growing in power for several years; maybe not exponentially any more, but still getting more powerful. Then, there are innovations that might revolutionize the field and start a new and even faster exponential spike - quantum computing for instance. In the end, however, this is not the point. The point is what we are going to do with all this computing power. I argue in my text that better computers are simply taking us to hell faster. Quantum computers are not going to help much, if this is the case.
I must admit I can hardly find somebody I would agree more with than Ugo (da Vinci)!
Better to have internet in hell than telegraph in heaven.
How about calculating & simulating how to do fusion ? if that works, we're back at 1960's
Sorry to be anal about this but silicon is the semiconducting metal that makes most of modern computing possible where as silicone is a polymer using a silicon and oxygen backbone most commonly used to seal the edges of baths.
Actually silicon is much more than a semiconductive element. Germanium is also a Group IV semiconductive element. But silicon is magic. First because it is abundant in the Earth's crust and thus cheap. Second because it so easily forms into crystals. Third because when you burn silicon (Si) in pure oxygen (O2) you get this amazing electrical insulator (SiO2) --also known as glass. Fourth because one particular metal, aluminum (Al) naturally adheres to SiO2. It is this coincidence of amazing characteristics plus the wonders of photolithography that bought us what we take for granted now a days, the microprocessor chip.
If Si was also a direct bandgap, that would be amazing!
It might have been a typo, but just to get even more anal, silicon is not a metal its a semiconducting element as is carbon and germanium. They are somtimes described as "semi metals".
I think Darwinian is on to something, but I have recently read a report that states (paraphrased) "the transistors are getting so close together now that tiny impurities in the crystal latice are starting to introduce transistor failures and the reliability of integrating circuits is being compromised".
I cannot comprehend how these devices are made, its miraculous really.
As for drawing a line under progress, I think we have gone far enough too but its hard (or even impossible)to win that argument. You loose on the grounds that "with that attitude we would still be in caves". So progress continues until nature draws the line for us, I suppose.
Don't forget Breast Implants!
;-)
haha! i recently saw a shirt made for babies at Nashville airport, the front of it said:
"mmm....boobies", i need to stop and ask if that shirt comes in adult size!
This is why Intel and AMD are not offering any new technology below 0.8 Micron instead launching Dual Core and Quad Core using the the last genuine drop in cricuit size off the PENTIUM 4
Hate to bring you up to date but microns (10^-6 meters) are so yesterday. We're doing double digit nanometers (10^-9 meters) now a days. That's just two orders of magnitude above the width of single atoms (measured in Angstroms or 10^-10 meters).
And I suspect that the width of a single atom represents a hard ceiling, beyond which we cannot go. That is the absolute limit that will kill Moore's law.
0.8 microns is 800nm. That was a very long time ago.
Umm, well before we had transistors no-one would have thought you could go beyond some speed in valve switching. Perhaps we will stop using transistors and use some new invention not yet discovered which does not depend on silicon? You may see this as unlikely, but given that is has happened at least once before in this particular field I don't see any evidence for this. Saying nothing can replace silicon is a bit like Lord Kelvin in 1900 making the following statement:
"There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now."
He believed only refinements in measurement were left to be made. This was before relativity, quantum theories, subatomic particles etc.
No new technology is "on the horizon" before it is discovered, if it was, we wouldn't have to discover it!
Seems to me that before making absolute pronouncements on the future of electronics chips, one should learn the difference between silicone (caulking, implants) and silicon (computer chips, etc.)