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I'm writing...sci-fi? (Or, "Help!")


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I'm writing...sci-fi? (Or, "Help!")
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Robo
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2010-06-08, 20:27

I've noticed that most sci-fi is dominated by strong male characters designed to appeal to men, with the occasional strong female character designed to appeal to...men. (Throw in a token minority and an inexplicably human alien and you've got your starship a crew!) Why the sci-fi community is then surprised that it is so male-dominated is beyond me. This has led to a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts, where sci-fi (and fantasy, outside of "paranormal romance") is presumed to appeal to men almost exclusively by default, leading to more and more male-oriented works being created, which (when Stripperific Space Bitches inevitably falls to take with female demographics) leads more content creators and consumers to presume that sci-fi is inherently masculine, which leads to more male-oriented works, &c. This cycle colors everybody's perceptions of the genre, and is loaded with stereotypes and unfortunate implications all around (is the reason sci-fi isn't more popular with women because science itself is intrinsically masculine? Really?).

I want to take that cycle, fuck it, and then throw a wrench in it. I think all art worth doing should have a reason to be, should attempt to put a ding in the universe in its own small way, and I think it's a shame that young girls might be turned off from liking sci-fi (or worse, the sciences) because all they see are Scantily Clad Space Hooker X or Cyberpunk Razorgirl in Tight Leather X. I'm not a great writer, not even a writer, really, and I'll probably never be the most clever or original. But if I could make science just that much less of a sausage party, I think I'd be okay with whatever criticisms I got.

We all need heroes to inspire us, and there's a lack of intelligent, fleshed-out, complicated heroines in sci-fi. (This is why Contact is my favorite sci-fi movie. Send hate mail here.) And so...I'm writing sci-fi?

Specifically, a five-part miniseries, with the hope of it becoming a substantially less mini series if things go well (the episode titles spell out P-I-L-O-T ). Both the genre and the medium are new to me, but I reasoned the best way to get a story out of the bookstore's sci-fi ghetto is to not make it a book, and I've been dying to experiment with serial storytelling for some time. ("No, not experiments with serial storytelling!" *explosion* LOST.)

It's been going okay so far (well, not for the crew!), the conflict is natural and plentiful, and the miniseries format gives me ample opportunity to introduce the characters at the small cost of ensuring that the show will never see production. I'm finding the territory not entirely unfamiliar, as the current sci-fi genre seems be prone to many of the weaknesses of fantasy, namely sameness and over-emphasis of setting and showing off the writer's research over things like characters and plot. (The trick, of course, is to write something that's captivating as a down-to-Earth character drama first, but it's much easier to hide behind the literary equivalent of special effects.)

But there's challenges involved in writing a story that's set in Our World but still fantastical. Like, math. I was hoping one of you could help me out on that regard.

Okay, so, the best thing about writing sci-fi as opposed to fantasy is obviously robots, and of course I had to have one. (Well, more than one, but one "main" one.) I won't bore you (any more than I have ) with the details, but he's based on three processors, with a combined 18 petaFLOPS of processing power (a multiple of nine, significant? In one of my stories? No way!). The most powerful of his processors runs at 12 petaFLOPS.

That is, of course, far more powerful than even any massive supercomputing cluster today, and it's one processor that has to fit inside the chest cavity of a bulky but humanoid robot and run on batteries without exploding. What I want to know is, with reasonable assumptions made regarding Moore's law and the like, about when would such a processor be available (using Earth technology)? I can't quite figure out the maths myself. I get that it's probably going to be a very vague estimate but I just want to make sure it's sometime later than next week but before the heat death of the universe. Are we talking, like, 50 years, or 500, or...?

I'm trying to avoid a situation like where The Computer on a 23rd century starship has "over a million transistors!" or something, but I don't want to be implausible either. It's all backstory but it's Symbolically Significant and I'd like the series to be more grounded, so I don't want to just use meaningless units (or unit-less numbers).

Thanks for reading, or skimming, or doing whatever it is people do instead of reading these days. (Watching TV?)

P.S. The working title of the series is "Still," though people who follow me on Twitter may know the real title. I'll try to avoid talking about it too much.

and i guess i've known it all along / the truth is, you have to be soft to be strong
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alcimedes
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2010-06-08, 21:35

I would guess that you're more likely to hit quantum computing which would provide more 'power' for a robot, than a traditional present day processor reaching 12 petaflops of processing power, but I'm sure one of our more technically inclined members would be able to chime in with better, actual data.

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AsLan^
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2010-06-08, 22:01

I think the question should be answered by a girl
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Robo
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2010-06-08, 22:09

Quote:
Originally Posted by alcimedes View Post
I would guess that you're more likely to hit quantum computing which would provide more 'power' for a robot, than a traditional present day processor reaching 12 petaflops of processing power, but I'm sure one of our more technically inclined members would be able to chime in with better, actual data.
Would quantum computers still use FLOPS to measure power or something else (QuOPS?)? I must confess I don't know much about quantum anything. I know that they have qubits, which just sounds funny to me. Ha ha, qubits.

I wanted to avoid using technology that would be too alien or require too big of a breakthrough to have a scientific basis, i.e., magic. "The robot's 'brain' was a giant glowing neurocrystal!" sounds suspiciously similar to "The doll's 'brain' was a giant glowing Crystal of the Gods!" That was my reasoning behind my "like what we have now, but better" thinking. But I'm not at all a computer person so I have no idea if that makes any sense. Maybe the Intel Quentium is right around the corner, I dunno.

and i guess i've known it all along / the truth is, you have to be soft to be strong
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ezkcdude
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2010-06-08, 22:10

1.21 Gigawatts.
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ezkcdude
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2010-06-08, 22:11

Ok, so find out how many FLOPS a human brain does, and that will be roughly your answer. Apparently, Kurzweil said it's 20 quadrillion FLOPS (20 teraFLOPS, I think). I'd go with that.
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Robo
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2010-06-08, 22:19

Quote:
Originally Posted by AsLan^ View Post
I think the question should be answered by a girl
Ha ha

Quote:
Originally Posted by ezkcdude View Post
Ok, so find out how many FLOPS a human brain does, and that will be roughly your answer.
I'm not asking how many FLOPS the robot brain needs, but when a 12 petaFLOP processor might be available. Maybe that's working backwards, but characters > setting, so...

And the robot isn't really designed to emulate a human, because that would sort of be a waste of a character, no? It'd be like the inexplicably human aliens mentioned above.

The ship's autopilot runs at 90 petaFLOPS, but it's a large array of processors, so that's different.

and i guess i've known it all along / the truth is, you have to be soft to be strong
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ezkcdude
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2010-06-08, 22:24

robo, I made a mistake. I meant to write 20 petaFLOPS.

The #1 supercomputer in the world right now does a little over 2 petaFLOPS peak. It has over 200,000 CPUs. If the brain does 20 petaFLOPS, that's like 2,000,000 cores. Intense, dude.

You may want to bump that up a few orders of magnitude. Say 20 exaFLOPS.
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jdcfsu
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2010-06-08, 22:28

I like the realisim approach. I don't have an answer for you (math is above my pay grade) but I'll pitch it to my NASA friends tomorrow and see what they have to say.
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ezkcdude
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2010-06-08, 22:29

robo, if you do write a scene where FLOPS are used, don't dare explain to the audience what that acronym stands for.
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Robo
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2010-06-08, 22:33

Quote:
Originally Posted by ezkcdude View Post
robo, I made a mistake. I meant to write 20 petaFLOPS.
So, wait. My totally-stabbing-in-the-dark symbolically-minded choice of the robot's processing power (18 petaFLOPS total) just happened to almost match Kurzweil says the human brain runs? Interesting!

Quote:
You may want to bump that up a few orders of magnitude. Say 20 exaFLOPS.
Bump what up and why?

The most powerful single processor that's mentioned in the story, IBM's Blue Will, is currently set to run at 1000 petaFLOPS. But that's later.

and i guess i've known it all along / the truth is, you have to be soft to be strong
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Robo
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2010-06-08, 22:38

Quote:
Originally Posted by jdcfsu View Post
I like the realisim approach. I don't have an answer for you (math is above my pay grade) but I'll pitch it to my NASA friends tomorrow and see what they have to say.
OMG NASA friends? Sweet!

Quote:
Originally Posted by ezkcdude View Post
robo, if you do write a scene where FLOPS are used, don't dare explain to the audience what that acronym stands for.
This is all back-story, like "series bible"-type stuff. It's only mentioned in passing, I just want to be consistent so that things don't change wildly from episode to episode like on some other shows.

I have no intention on launching into a lengthy explanation on what FLOPS actually are, don't worry. That'd be boring, and I'm not one of those writers who writes just to show off their research.

and i guess i've known it all along / the truth is, you have to be soft to be strong
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ezkcdude
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2010-06-08, 22:44

Quote:
Originally Posted by Roboman View Post
So, wait. My totally-stabbing-in-the-dark symbolically-minded choice of the robot's processing power (18 petaFLOPS total) just happened to almost match Kurzweil says the human brain runs? Interesting!



Bump what up and why?

The most powerful single processor that's mentioned in the story, IBM's Blue Will, is currently set to run at 1000 petaFLOPS. But that's later.
1 exaFLOP = 1000 petaFLOPS
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Robo
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2010-06-08, 22:54

Quote:
Originally Posted by ezkcdude View Post
1 exaFLOP = 1000 petaFLOPS
Yes, but A) not switching units makes it easier for non-technically-minded viewers to compare (1000 is obviously more than 100, but an exa- is less obviously more than 100 peta-) and B) as the most powerful single processor in the world, the Blue Will would only be compared to petaFLOPS-class processors, and could thus comfortably share their already-familiar units, just as the first GB drives were dual-branded 1000 MB. Also, C) Symbolism.

(I knew someone would post that, and I was ready. )

But I'm still curious what you meant when you said I should "bump that up"? Were you referring to the robot's CPU(s), or the autopilot's? And why?

and i guess i've known it all along / the truth is, you have to be soft to be strong
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AsLan^
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2010-06-08, 23:48

Wikipedia says that a Core i7 can do 107 GigaFLOPS, so about 10^11 FLOPS.

If we make the assumption that personal computers have been doubling in power every year since their introduction then we can say that computing power is increasing at an exponential rate.

So, looking at 10^11 = 2^x and solving for x should tell us how many years it took to get to our current 10^11 FLOPS.

10^11 = 2^x
x = 36.5412...

So, roughly 36 years after the introduction of the personal computer which sounds about right.

Assuming your robot isn't anything special and is using off the shelf processors, then we can simply replace 10^11 with 10^15 petaFLOPS and solve for x again.

10^15 = 2^x
x = 49.8289...

So, in approximately 15 years our personal computers should be capable of petaFLOPS.

Thanks Wolfram Alpha

Last edited by AsLan^ : 2010-06-09 at 00:05. Reason: Complete rewrite!
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Robo
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2010-06-08, 23:57

Quote:
Originally Posted by AsLan^ View Post
At the current rate of exponential growth in computing power, personal computers should be at the petaFLOPS level in about 50 years.

10^15 = 2^x
x = 49.8289...

Thanks Wolfram Alpha
Yayayayayayayayay thx so much
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AsLan^
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2010-06-09, 00:18

Not sure if you caught it but I rewrote my answer above, I forgot that the 50 years was from the first PC, not from now.

15 years in the future might be a little close for science fiction, and due to the nature of exponential growth, even bumping it up to the exaFLOPS level only takes another 10 years!

I'm sure you'll think of something
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Robo
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2010-06-09, 00:55

Quote:
Originally Posted by AsLan^ View Post
So, in approximately 15 years our personal computers should be capable of petaFLOPS.
Wait, seriously? So, like, even though massive computing clusters with hundreds of thousands of processors hit about 2 petaFLOPS, we'll have PCs like that in just 15 years? I get the whole "exponential" thing, but somehow that doesn't seem quite right.

Quote:
If we make the assumption that personal computers have been doubling in power every year since their introduction
Is that a reasonable assumption, though? I thought Moore's law doubled every two years.

Quote:
Assuming your robot isn't anything special and is using off the shelf processors
This is partially true; he's pretty high-end but still a mass-produced model, and he's also not the newest model. Of his three processors, the least powerful (at "just" 2 petaFLOPS) was added as a gimmick after his predecessor's sales didn't meet expectations. So this is an environment where that can, y'know, happen.

and i guess i've known it all along / the truth is, you have to be soft to be strong
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Xaqtly
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2010-06-09, 01:32

No petting flops! No petting flops! Only exxon flops! WHY THE PETTING FLOPS.
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AsLan^
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2010-06-09, 02:00

Quote:
Originally Posted by Roboman View Post
Wait, seriously? So, like, even though massive computing clusters with hundreds of thousands of processors hit about 2 petaFLOPS, we'll have PCs like that in just 15 years? I get the whole "exponential" thing, but somehow that doesn't seem quite right.
I don't really know, in 1993 (17 years ago) the fastest supercomputer was doing 143 gigaFLOPS which is only a little faster than a Core i7 now.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Roboman View Post
Is that a reasonable assumption, though? I thought Moore's law doubled every two years.
It really doesn't matter what the constant being used is (whether 1 year or 2 years in this case) an exponential algorithm will always shoot up after relatively small number of iterations. What this means is that if you said that it doubled every 2 years instead of 1, then within 30 years we would have petaFLOP processing capacity and 20 years after that exaFLOP capacity, and 10 years after that zettaFLOP and so on. The exponential algorithm continues to grow at a pace that makes the initial constant irrelevant.

Also, there's a couple of problems with Moore's law.

1. It's not really a law, just an observation by Moore that seems to be holding up so far.
2. It has to do with transistor density on dies rather than computer speed.

So, is computer speed increasing at an exponential pace? So far yes, but when will it end? If you know the answer to that then I'm sure Intel has a job for you

In fact, it seems Intel can now arbitrarily add cores so there shouldn't be any limit to the number of FLOPS a chip can do but what meaningful work can it do?

This turns the problem into a software problem. That is, each added core linearly increases the amount of operations a CPU can perform (2 cores are twice as fast as 1 core and so on) but our ability to create software to take advantage of this remains limited.

In fact, if we look at your robot intelligence as a software problem rather than a hardware problem I think the time scales would become much larger, and advances in software definitely have not followed an exponential growth pattern. Think about what computers could do in 1993 and think about what they can do today, not really that much different - there are still programs actively being used today that were created the 1970s!

Your robot could very well be processing 12 petaFLOPS in the next 30 years or so, but will humans have created the necessary software in that same time? Hopefully we create true AI in my lifetime but nobody even knows if it's a solvable problem
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Robo
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2010-06-09, 03:10

Quote:
Originally Posted by AsLan^ View Post
It really doesn't matter what the constant being used is (whether 1 year or 2 years in this case) an exponential algorithm will always shoot up after relatively small number of iterations. What this means is that if you said that it doubled every 2 years instead of 1, then within 30 years we would have petaFLOP processing capacity and 20 years after that exaFLOP capacity
Right, that's what I'm getting at. There's a bit of a difference between setting a story in the 2020s and setting it in the 2040s.

Quote:
and 10 years after that zettaFLOP and so on.
Are you sure? I think if you doubled every two years, each SI prefix would continue to take 20 years to get through, since there are always ten "doublings" to get from 1 to ~1000 -- 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024. Note that this is true whether we're talking about mega, giga, tera, whatever -- there's always ten doublings, so if you double once every two years it'll always take twenty years. Each jump is twice the size of the last, of course, but each SI prefix is also far larger than the last. You'd only start moving through each successive SI prefix faster if you also accelerated the rate of doublings, like to being only one year apart, and then to six months, and then three, &c. Right?

Quote:
So, is computer speed increasing at an exponential pace? So far yes, but when will it end? If you know the answer to that then I'm sure Intel has a job for you
I wanted to know when it'd be possible based on what's happened "so far," that's all. Obviously in ten years we could hit a massive roadblock and advancement could slow drastically, but I didn't want that to have to happen for my numbers to make sense.

Quote:
This turns the problem into a software problem. That is, each added core linearly increases the amount of operations a CPU can perform (2 cores are twice as fast as 1 core and so on) but our ability to create software to take advantage of this remains limited.

In fact, if we look at your robot intelligence as a software problem rather than a hardware problem I think the time scales would become much larger, and advances in software definitely have not followed an exponential growth pattern. Think about what computers could do in 1993 and think about what they can do today, not really that much different - there are still programs actively being used today that were created the 1970s!

Your robot could very well be processing 12 petaFLOPS in the next 30 years or so, but will humans have created the necessary software in that same time? Hopefully we create true AI in my lifetime but nobody even knows if it's a solvable problem
in the series, AI development is a huge industry, and the largest corporations in the series that don't exist today are AI development corporations (SUNRiSE and Unison, for those curious). Like today's computers and cars, the robots aren't homogenous -- a model might be designed by one company and assembled by another with parts from a third and fourth and AIs from a fifth through seventh, while an eighth sells "Emotion Packs" based on popular manga characters and a ninth offers to design AIs based on your loved ones, &c.

and i guess i've known it all along / the truth is, you have to be soft to be strong
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Brad
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2010-06-09, 03:18

Quote:
Originally Posted by Roboman View Post
(This is why Contact is my favorite sci-fi movie. Send hate mail here.)
Jesus Christ... I keep clicking it and clicking it and oh god why won't it work??
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Brad
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2010-06-09, 03:31

As for performance scales, consider this:

The ENIAC in 1947 consumed 174,000 watts of power, weighed 27 tons, covered 63 m^2, and performed at roughly 350 flops.

Today, the Intel Core i7 consumes about 100 watts of power when under full load, weighs a few grams, covers a few square cm, and (as mentioned) can theoretically perform ~100,000,000,000 flops.

The quality of this board depends on the quality of the posts. The only way to guarantee thoughtful, informative discussion is to write thoughtful, informative posts. AppleNova is not a real-time chat forum. You have time to compose messages and edit them before and after posting.
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AsLan^
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2010-06-09, 03:36

Quote:
Originally Posted by Roboman View Post
Are you sure? I think if you doubled every two years, each SI prefix would continue to take 20 years to get through, since there are always ten "doublings" to get from 1 to ~1000 -- 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024. Note that this is true whether we're talking about mega, giga, tera, whatever -- there's always ten doublings, so if you double once every two years it'll always take twenty years. Each jump is twice the size of the last, of course, but each SI prefix is also far larger than the last. You'd only start moving through each successive SI prefix faster if you also accelerated the rate of doublings, like to being only one year apart, and then to six months, and then three, &c. Right?
Oops, you're right

Quote:
Originally Posted by Roboman View Post
in the series, AI development is a huge industry, and the largest corporations in the series that don't exist today are AI development corporations (SUNRiSE and Unison, for those curious). Like today's computers and cars, the robots aren't homogenous -- a model might be designed by one company and assembled by another with parts from a third and fourth and AIs from a fifth through seventh, while an eighth sells "Emotion Packs" based on popular manga characters and a ninth offers to design AIs based on your loved ones, &c.
Sounds like it will be fun, I like a good corporatist future (in fiction that is).
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Brad
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2010-06-09, 03:41

And before anyone points out that ENIAC wasn't transistor-based and that Moore's Law doesn't necessarily apply, consider that over longer periods of time one shouldn't be constrained to a specific form of processing technology. Just as we went from vacuum tubes to transistors, we'll eventually move from microprocessors to quantum processors or some other technology that will advance us leaps and bounds.

The quality of this board depends on the quality of the posts. The only way to guarantee thoughtful, informative discussion is to write thoughtful, informative posts. AppleNova is not a real-time chat forum. You have time to compose messages and edit them before and after posting.
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Robo
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2010-06-09, 03:49

@Brad: So you're saying that 12 petaFLOPS isn't that big of a deal, then? It has to be a bit more than 15 years out, I mean the show might actually be airing then and that would be awkward. 30 years out would be okay, but I might bump everything up an SI prefix just to be safe. Hmm.

and i guess i've known it all along / the truth is, you have to be soft to be strong
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Brad
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2010-06-09, 03:55

Heck, no, not a big deal.

Shoot, just think about small time scales. Anyone else remember in '99 when Jobs was touting how the then-bleeding-edge G4 processor was classified as a "supercomputer" because it cranked in 1-4 gigaflops?

1 to 4 gigaflops!

A mere decade later, the i7 performs 25-100 times that many flops.

I dunno about you, but that kind of advancement in just a short span of one's lifetime is pretty mind-boggling.

The quality of this board depends on the quality of the posts. The only way to guarantee thoughtful, informative discussion is to write thoughtful, informative posts. AppleNova is not a real-time chat forum. You have time to compose messages and edit them before and after posting.
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Robo
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2010-06-09, 04:02

Quote:
Originally Posted by Brad View Post
Heck, no, not a big deal.

Shoot, just think about small time scales. Anyone else remember in '99 when Jobs was touting how the then-bleeding-edge G4 processor was classified as a "supercomputer" because it cranked in 1-4 gigaflops?

1 to 4 gigaflops!

A mere decade later, the i7 performs 25-100 times that many flops.

I dunno about you, but that kind of advancement in just a short span of one's lifetime is pretty mind-boggling.
It is (and that's why I love technology), but in this case we're talking about a CPU that has to be about ten times as powerful as not a prior CPU but a 300,000 CPU cluster. That would take more than a decade, right?

and i guess i've known it all along / the truth is, you have to be soft to be strong
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Brad
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2010-06-09, 04:10

True, good point. That would take a bit of time. My brain is still waking up and wasn't quite putting the scales into context with all you'd described here.

The quality of this board depends on the quality of the posts. The only way to guarantee thoughtful, informative discussion is to write thoughtful, informative posts. AppleNova is not a real-time chat forum. You have time to compose messages and edit them before and after posting.
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AsLan^
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2010-06-09, 04:17

Quote:
Originally Posted by Roboman View Post
It is (and that's why I love technology), but in this case we're talking about a CPU that has to be about ten times as powerful as not a prior CPU but a 300,000 CPU cluster. That would take more than a decade, right?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Brad View Post
True, good point. That would take a bit of time. My brain is still waking up and wasn't quite putting the scales into context with all you'd described here.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AsLan^ View Post
I don't really know, in 1993 (17 years ago) the fastest supercomputer was doing 143 gigaFLOPS which is only a little faster than a Core i7 now.
I know I was off on the doubling thing but 17 years ago the worlds fastest computer (Intel Paragon) really was using 2048 processors to process 143 gigaFLOPS, today we can do that in a Core i7.

More than a decade sure, but probably not more than two decades.
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