The bottle neck in computer data management has never really been about processor speed. But about ‘retrieval and storage’ speed.
You can have the fastest processor in the world, but if your data stream runs at the speed of a 386, then the processor is going to be waiting a long time before it can even begin any calculations or data handling.
Even ‘solid state’ drives aren’t adequate enough,in terms of speed, and there useful life span, and replacement cost, isn’t much of a help either.
They need to develop a better way to access the data.
Note that the equivalence between ‘exa’ and ‘trillion’ is based on this article probably being written in the U.K. The British use the “long scale” where a ‘trillion’ is a million billion. In the U.s. we use the “short scale” where a ‘trillion’ is a thousand billion.
When I saw this in the article I had to look it up on Wikipedia. I was unaware of this difference in scale usage in various areas of the world.
The article is quite correct in that “Power Remains the No. 1 Problem”. I just filed a patent for a change to the scheduling algorithms for an HPC system which is designed to reduce peak power consumption. Just controlling the way user jobs are launched on these platforms can make a big difference in the power consumed and the heat generated.
My company has bragging rights on an installation in France which is in the top 10 of the Top500 Supercomputing list. I visited the site last year when it was installed. We build the hardware and supply the infrastructure software.
So when are they coming out with a pure optical chip that uses NO electric power?
(Reverse engineered from alien craft at Area 51, like all “discoveries” of course.)
The ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime—let's call it the Transformer Prime, for short—can now be pre-ordered online, report several sources. It may not be the most eagerly awaited gadget of all time, and it may not be the most elegantly named, but it marks a new era: the Transformer Prime is the first tablet that comes with a quad-core processor built in.
For the spec-hungry: The tablet ships with the Android 3.2 Honeycomb operating system, though it can be upgraded to Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0). It has a 10.1-inch screen, in 1280 x 800 resolution, protected by Gorilla Glass. RAM's one GB, and the device packs two cameras, an eight-megapixel affair in the rear, a 1.2-megapixel affair in the front. A fully charged battery should get you 12 hours, and the whole thing will set you back either $500 or $600, depending on whether you want 32 GB or 64 GB of flash storage.
But again, the main event here is the processor: the Tegra 3 quad-core CPU, heretofore only available in desktops and the occasional high-end laptop. The chip, codenamed Kal-El, debuted in February. Per the Verge, Tegra 3 supposedly quintuples the performance of Tegra 2. By juggling processing demands among its four cores, as well as a fifth "companion core," the device can handle heavy-duty assignments while still keeping a reasonable battery life.
The cool-running Tegra 3 quad core
Plug in an HDMI cable and hook it to your big HDTV and use a bluetooth keyboard. :-)
Poor Amy probably doesn't have a clue what a heat sink is.