Seriously though... I just finished watching the first season of Humans...the program about robots built in a perfect human form. A few were even developed with a "conscious". The program left me feeling uneasy.
Posted on 01/29/2017 12:45:19 PM PST by oblomov
n 1971, Intel, then an obscure firm in what would only later come to be known as Silicon Valley, released a chip called the 4004. It was the world’s first commercially available microprocessor, which meant it sported all the electronic circuits necessary for advanced number-crunching in a single, tiny package. It was a marvel of its time, built from 2,300 tiny transistors, each around 10,000 nanometres (or billionths of a metre) across – about the size of a red blood cell. A transistor is an electronic switch that, by flipping between “on” and “off”, provides a physical representation of the 1s and 0s that are the fundamental particles of information.
In 2015 Intel, by then the world’s leading chipmaker, with revenues of more than $55bn that year, released its Skylake chips. The firm no longer publishes exact numbers, but the best guess is that they have about 1.5bn–2 bn transistors apiece. Spaced 14 nanometres apart, each is so tiny as to be literally invisible, for they are more than an order of magnitude smaller than the wavelengths of light that humans use to see.
Everyone knows that modern computers are better than old ones. But it is hard to convey just how much better, for no other consumer technology has improved at anything approaching a similar pace. The standard analogy is with cars: if the car from 1971 had improved at the same rate as computer chips, then by 2015 new models would have had top speeds of about 420 million miles per hour. That is roughly two-thirds the speed of light, or fast enough to drive round the world in less than a fifth of a second. If that is still too slow, then before the end of 2017 models that can go twice as fast again...
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Brought to you by the greedy free market.
Leftists everywhere mourn...
A transistor is much more than that, this is a very simplistic explanation. Nothing here about gating power when it is switched.
ABC (always be charging) these days for my stuff.
Seriously though... I just finished watching the first season of Humans...the program about robots built in a perfect human form. A few were even developed with a "conscious". The program left me feeling uneasy.
Using computers is logical. Using computers for Facebook is illogical. Facebook is getting very weird with the Democrats posting their drivel against Trump.
Just to put it into perspective, PC’s have had for quite some time now, more memory than IBM mainframe models 360 & 370 combined, and each required a big air cooled, dust controlled, room to operate in. But these new chips also improved the mainframes. So while a PC is powerful a mainframe has also gotten much more powerful.
Excellent point!
Isn't that a brand new series debuting on AMC on Feb. 13?
My 1971 truck has outlasted 75% of the computers ever made..(1971 is the starting year of Intel) there is something to be said of keep it simple stupid...the only thing I have altered on my 71’ International is changing out the points to an electronic ignition gizmo for about a 100 bucks...come to think of it thats the same money I paid for this whole compter set-up i use....newer is not always better....and you will never see a machine doing re-roofs/plumbing installs...siding/changing over electrical panels....if all you can do is push paper then you should worry...me not so much...I have never seen a machine twisting wrenches for car repair?...The machine Davinci they use for operations is hacking people up and is drowning in law suiots for slicing intestines and people bleeding out ...(doctors remotely operate with this thing)
And the military.
Intel was not founded by the military. Zilog was not founded by the military. TI was not founded by the military. AMD was not founded by the military. Microsoft was not founded by the military. Apple was not founded by the military.
“....and you will never see a machine doing re-roofs/plumbing installs...siding/changing over electrical panels...”
Disagree. It will happen within a decade or two at the most. Structures will be built more quickly with a work force that stays on the job 24/7 and isn’t constrained by OSHA rules.
But before that you will see expendable robots take over the really dangerous stuff like underground mining and firefighting rescue.
I want Moore....
I was referring VLSI and LSI. both developments were born out of the space race and military. Ditto for the internet.
Wait a minute! 4/3 the speed of light is impossible.
TI invented the IC.
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