What it there limit in memory.
I belive there is a limit because with current techonlogy heat is a problem, so to have a laptop with a Cpu of 5G hz and ram of 10G and a harddrive of 1000G, with out superconducters this may never be a reality.
So my point is how powerful can a copmter become before it becomes too big for avrage Joe.
I am not sure so I cant give an estimate but I know the current problem is heat.

Yep, I agree. I think computer developments will hit a brick wall within 10 years, short of a new breakthrough in technology. Quantum computers would be nice, but sadly they're still just sci fi...

Maybe computers could start to use nerve tissue instead of wires.
But that could start to conflict with current ethical issues like cloning.

Heat issues won't prevent computer development. As far as I know laptops nowadays make little effort to prevent overheating, but it can be easily prevented; liquid cooling systems, more efficient components, more efficient fans etc.

Just wait to see what happens with either wetware or quanutm computers.

Actualy, quantum computers are in development. I read recently that they have plans for a quantum processors, except they are still trying to figure out how to make the structure stable. Eventualy we will hit a wall, but maybe before that wall will come another breakthrough.

Well you could just hook up an array of *Terrabyte (TB) hard drives...that would solve the problem and there are even bigger memory units coming through. Also quantum computing is closer than you think..

Hey i got a question about quantum computers:

What would they look like?
And how do they run, do they still run with normal power outlets, circuit boards etc...? Or like some sci fi thing where it runs off a crystal?

computer processing power, HD capacity what have you .. their devolpment wont stall in our lifetime, too much money involved, too many vested interests. Its mankinds favourite 21st century toy , there'll always always be people out there looking for ways to improve it .

The only problem that could prevent computers advancing now, is the physical limit of how many transistors you can fit on to an integrated circuit.

Moore's law

I'm guessing it would look quite similar.
At the moment computers send information in a series of 'bits', Quantum computers send information in a series of 'qubits' which are just more efficient than bits.

Try and read this http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?printable=1

This guy is well respected and has a very good record on past predictions because he doesnt just pull them out of thin air but look at technology trends, patterns.

If you want to figure out this question then get reading.

Maybe start with age of spiritual machines or this new book by ray kurzweil

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/067003384...glance&n=283155

The heat problem may be fixed with computers that are encased in a gel also....parts would also conduct better.... I just need to find the link for it...

That would make upgrading hardware a playdoe goop fest, and a mess on my carpet. No thanks. I'm fine with my P177mhz. I mean come on, it opens firefox within a minute.

I think theres a limit, thats not to close, but we'll be there in the next century.

the only problem that would limit mostlikely would be the processors but i dont think heat would ever be an issue. And many advances in computers many years ago they burned hotter then today but we put these issue in when we create computer parts

The whole problem with this question is that it doesn't consider the demonstrated near omnipotence of human innovation. Computers will continue to get faster, more powerful, and more efficient until they are powerful enough that the effort of creating the next generation is greater than the benefit that said next generation would provide.

Every prediction ever made about the limits of technology has been wrong.

GT

Nice idea lol, i think your right about the ethical issues.

Yeah, I never really figured that part out...maybe the gel would have a strange consistency to it allowing things to pass through and then closing up again... P177MHZ?...please please please say your joking

The short answer is, with quantuum computing on the forseeable horizon, I don't think there will be a theoretical limit.

This is the long answer:

In the last 25 years we've gone from 1k to 1mb to 1gig as a standard amount of memory within a computer.

Wouldn't surprise me at all if in the next 8 years of so we saw 1 terrabyte as standard memory for a computer, and a petabyte 8 years or so after that, etc.

The biggest (short term) change, speedwise, will be the switch from hard drives to non volatile memory storage.

Disk access has always traditionally been one of the slowest components of software - get ready to see a 20 - 30% speed increase in computers from just this alone.

As to the theoretical limits for a computer? Well, we're approaching them, in terms of silicon. However, we can always just stack the layers of silicon, which will keep us happily going for the next decade or two, while research continues into other mediums...

Is it possible to develop a storage system to store people in a virtual place where their life can be extended beyond the next million years, also what problem dose it pose to humanity

well there is hard ware and software and storage and memory
in thee hardware the hardrives are designed to last around six years and the fan and motor which boots up the system and runs the motor are eventualy wearing out

so from what i know the comupeter age still has a lifespan and they will advance technology , thats a given . but the mechanics involved are designed with a market in mind so basically military and nasa would carry this kind of technology to the fullest but as a market they would probably continue to give us the leftover lifespan types.
another thing is pretty simple to me is it is alot like keeping up with a old but expensive luxury car. except fuel is not used to start the computer on. it powers it through electrical or satalite energy or circuts.

even if computer technology was so advanced eventualy the circut boards would have to continuously make a revision for a better system and recycling is already being done to reproduce such machines. cell phones today are the same upgrade upgrade upgrades and recycling recyling and less quality circut boards will not be able to always keep excelling eventualy it should be and probably will be a way for storage in memory will no longer be needed
why well they modeled the computer after the human brain
except most people are depending on there electronic conviences instead of using there brain to begin with .
cause all it would take is a power outage or satalite breakdown
then back to suare one ,..no power no computer ,.its our brains that are the memory storage for the futuer or written records .
we are bound to gravity from the earth, and the resouces of natual sources. electricity is key herefuel is what keeps engines and rockets launching satalites up in space so we can utilze computers and other such elecronic resources. if anything happend to our satalite systems it would prevent alot of eaisly taken for granted energy. still bank on the brain the ones we were born with and utilze the brain . that i know is one i can rely on when the s**t hits the fan.

bla blah blah
oh satalites burn up after a period in space and it just ends up floating around up there
so we are creating a junkyard of metals that remain in and up above our planets atomophere as well as orbiting indefinetly .

plasma and lazer technology is where were headed and actually we have arrived
but it remains a mystery as to why its been a non issue as to where and what ever happened the plasma ray .

sorry im sleepy and rambling now
im going to sleep
what do i know ? lol
well ive typed too much now to just quietly back down from my own irratic fingers typing zzzzzzz
snore zzz

have a great day everyone and hey we survived the day of triple sixes ha


Abecrombie

Diamond semiconductors, semiconductor economics and the improvement logjam

http://advancednano.blogspot.com/2006/06/d...iconductor.html

During the past year, scientists have mastered the ability to grow 10-carat single crystals with a color and clarity that surpass mined diamonds. Within a decade, they'll also be cheaper. Expect to see the first diamond semiconductors hit the market in 2011. Diamond semiconductors could operate at 81GHz. This would be 8-20 times faster than where semiconductor is at and where semiconductors are having heat problems.

This would be great but I think it will initially be a niche market. It may stay a niche market, depending upon costs and competing tech. The new plants will gradually replace regular silicon plants. Diamond semiconductors will have to scale up their processes (wafer size). Wafer size drives costs and efficiency.

If the processes can be performed at low enough temperature and integrated with silicon then it could be possible to make some hybrid chips. Having some diamond cells that perform some high frequency work and calcs. It would allow faster rollout.

So 8-20 times performance boost but over how many years is that impact spread ?

If it is 10 years (optimistic) that is 5 iterations of Moore's law. Instead of 32 times faster it ends up at 256 or 600 times. So 3-4 more iterations of Moore's law.

Other tech being developed could also provide substantial boosts in speed: carbon nanotube electronics, advanced spintronics, laser interconnect etc...

All together it is a lot of new tricks to master. Some of them will be competing. Probably some will be in different niches. It also means that the end game for when Moore's law runs out of steam keeps getting pushed out decades until all the tricks get mastered at low cost.

Diamond semi looks good for military and space apps where you want resistance to high temp and don't care as much about price.

Something that I think looks good for boosting high end computing is taking the cheap and what will be high volume Cell chips (Sony PS3) making slight modification to one cell for double precision and getting 10-40 times more speed. Cell+ are about 20 times faster, 2 times faster again going to match 65nm process and then keeping pace with smaller process lithography. 2-4 years to ramp up the Cell chip volumes.

Semicon industry has resisted getting out of their silicon comfort zone (for valid economic reasons and for rapid scaling). If they can use tricks with silicon to get a pretty close speed boost (better strained silicon, substrate tricks, etc...) then they will use those instead of bringing in an entirely new process.

There are a lot of interesting ways to speed things up. I think advancement should get faster than Moore's law even without MNT.

Obviously if we get good MNT then a lot of the economic road blocks to integrating and rolling out new materials and shortening the gap from lab to product could get removed. The technology improvement logjam could get broken. We could get maybe 19-26 iterations of Moore's law when we were expecting 1 to 5.

4 from Diamond/carbon nanotubes, 4 from laser interconnects between chips (plus there is a Sun microsystems process for put chips end to end for communication), 5 from advanced cell architectures, 6 from smaller size processes. Maybe 5 from going early 3d. (processing cube instead of chip.), 2 from better cooling.

I would be surprised if even with MNT that we could rollout MNT simulaneously with a fully realized computing process with all of the optimal tricks at once. So not over a few months but a few years. Still probably a big impact quite fast. 50 years of rapid Moore's law progress in say 6-9 years.

Plus the boost to quantum computing, superconductors, etc...

Moore's law is also a cost thing, so MNT could also throw in some extra iterations by making things cheaper faster.

A lot better supercomputers accelerate the simulation and R&D. We learn new tricks faster.
The increase in the rate of progress even after the initial burst I think gets sustained. (if we don't screw it up). 6-9 month cycles instead of 24 months. That is without strong AI or strong intelligence enhancement.

I think the new thing (post-MNT) would be to push out products that were say 4-X times better every year. Doubling speed would not be worth switching for in most cases.

Beautiful. Great Post, Whoa182.

The created diamonds are hitting the tech market like crazy. They're certainly a godsend. However, there has been some resistance to them because they can be created with natural-looking flaws so that they are literally indistinguishable from mined diamonds (cubic zirconia had no flaws so they were obvious under close scrutiny). As a result, diamond dealers are getting a little...pissed off. They're afraid it will drive the price of mined diamonds down and pretty much kill the cost effectiveness of diamond mining.

And then there's the jewelry dealers who are even more ticked...

Also, I really really really hope they fix that laptop heat problem before they try to make anything bigger. My laptop is new as of last September, though a lower-end model, but the heat output is so high that I literally burn my legs through my jeans. I have to wear oven mitts on my lap in order to use my computer. And forget about touching the vent. My fan actually just started to go out because the heat is more than it can take. I left a comic book resting on the keyboard the other day, and when I picked it up, it was hot to the touch. I left a receipt on the keyboard last week and the heat turned the whole thing black.

I can't imagine what this is doing to the computer itself.

Yeah, so I'd like them to either fix the heat problem before they try to make computers bigger and better, or come up with a new system that can cool computers more efficiently. I think the heat issues are just too important to ignore. And now that summer is coming, I'm going to have to plug in the AC so I don't overheat using my computer. Heck, I overheated in winter and had to run around outside to cool off! (Though it was kind of nice when the temperature hit 30 below 0).

My Powerbook G4 isn't near as bad, but it can still get warm if I start playing any videos.

I'm afraid to put in a DVD in this one, lest it burst into flames.

The question I have about the crystals that are virtually the same as diamonds is would be are they as hard as diamonds? That could revolutionize mining as well if they were. The quantum computer sounds like something great, and I do think there will be another breakthrough before we hit a wall.

Yes, the manufactured diamonds are just as hard as the mined diamonds. If you create them with flaws, they are indistinguishable from mined diamonds. That's why diamond dealers are upset about it.

I think I have a brew on how to make processors somewhere in my basement.

Well please share your brew to us, i am sure not going to copy your recipe.