Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

Author Topic: It's THE FUTURE!  (Read 2457 times)

Ampersand

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
It's THE FUTURE!
« on: February 19, 2009, 03:31:32 am »

http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/02/08/rice.university.pcmos Holy Crap!

Teal Deer version; new type of processor. 30 times more energy effecient, 7 times faster than it's CMOS predecessors.

Finally a CPU that can run dwarf fortress.
Logged
!!&!!

Assassinfox

  • Bay Watcher
  • [FANCIFUL]
    • View Profile
    • Raging at the Box
Re: It's THE FUTURE!
« Reply #1 on: February 19, 2009, 03:45:54 am »

Didn't understand 100% of what that article said, but I want one. >_>

Rilder

  • Bay Watcher
  • Rye Elder
    • View Profile
Re: It's THE FUTURE!
« Reply #2 on: February 19, 2009, 05:38:00 am »

So its a processor that instead of going 1.2222222399254234812394u823924483 it only needs 1.2?
Logged
Steam Profile
Youtube(Let's Plays), Occasional Streaming
It felt a bit like a movie in which two stoners try to steal a military helicopter

Vaiolis

  • Bay Watcher
  • I Am Penguin!
    • View Profile
Re: It's THE FUTURE!
« Reply #3 on: February 19, 2009, 10:19:16 am »

Pretty exciting, but not nearly as awesome as memristors.

If you don't feel like reading the entire article on Wikipedia, memristors can hold information without using a charge. From this, we will soon have chips which produce little to no heat when used. We will have computers which do not need to power down/up; they will instantly turn on/off. Because of the way in which they hold information, the bit will vanish; a single part of it will, instead of holding a value of 0 or 1, be able to hold many more values, perhaps one part could hold an entire byte; 256. That's 128x more space in the computer, so a computer with 100 gigabytes of space would now have around 13 terabytes. Of course, that may not be the limit, for all I know a single part could hold 2 bytes, or 3, or maybe 4. But that's not all. Memristors are far easier to stack on top of each other, allowing for denser packed circuits. There's even more space to add to your computer. They also function as fast as RAM, so games and such would never need to "load up" (get information from the hard drive and place it into the RAM for faster access) again; you just click and play. And of course, with the entire hard drive then becoming so easy to access, games could become much larger in size and depth without any decrease in performance. What I mean is, a single level or area in a game would normally take up a certain amount of the RAM, but with the entire hard drive being just as good, a level could be hundreds of times larger, and as long as you don't try to draw the entire thing to the screen all at once, there won't be any decrease in performance. Of course, if memristors are put into graphics processors as well, then you could draw the most complicated map you can think of to the screen without a significant change in speed as well. Games where, after you beat a level, you load the next map and remove the other from RAM will be a thing of the past. By the time you finish clicking through the game menu everything will already be loaded and ready.

Since the way the memristor's memory works is that, when a charge is put through it, its resistance changes, this means that the more often a memristor gets a certain response, the greater/more noticeable the difference in resistance. In other words, memristors are the future for AI. So a while in the future we may also be getting robots with memristor brains.

Sorry, didn't mean to rant, but memristors get me so excited ;D I can't wait until they are implemented into computers more. Note that a good deal of what I said was me hypothesizing, such as the game loading speed and storage capacity of memristors, but they are all entirely possible.
Logged
Today's Toady Tip: 3 and 4 are not the same number.
How borgly is your borgle's borgle?
The Minister of BEEEES! and of The Great Charter for the Toady Protectorate!

Tormy

  • Bay Watcher
  • I shall not pass?
    • View Profile
Re: It's THE FUTURE!
« Reply #4 on: February 19, 2009, 10:32:24 am »

Didn't understand 100% of what that article said, but I want one. >_>

Not that you could use it for anything... ;D
Logged

Makrond

  • Bay Watcher
  • Like fuzzy dice, only more slicey
    • View Profile
Re: It's THE FUTURE!
« Reply #5 on: February 19, 2009, 10:41:24 am »

Meh. Seems kinda iffy. I mean, a computer that guesstimates? What a stupid idea.

I want my quantum CPU. You know, the ones that can run more than one instruction per cycle. They had a working 7-qubit (and therefore 7-instruction-per-cycle) quantum CPU nearly 5 years ago... so what happened?
Logged
Quote from: Jusal
Darwinism? Bah! This is Dwarvinism!

JoshuaFH

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: It's THE FUTURE!
« Reply #6 on: February 19, 2009, 06:06:43 pm »

I want some of whatever Vaiolis is talking about.
Logged

Assassinfox

  • Bay Watcher
  • [FANCIFUL]
    • View Profile
    • Raging at the Box
Re: It's THE FUTURE!
« Reply #7 on: February 21, 2009, 06:27:05 pm »

I want some of whatever Vaiolis is talking about.

Seconded.  Gimme a better computer!  ;D

woose1

  • Bay Watcher
  • Yay for bandwagons!
    • View Profile
Re: It's THE FUTURE!
« Reply #8 on: February 21, 2009, 09:42:07 pm »

I want some of whatever Vaiolis is talking about.

Seconded.  Gimme a better computer!  ;D
Hurray for ignorance and greed!
Just like the vikings!
Logged

Ignoro

  • Guest
Re: It's THE FUTURE!
« Reply #9 on: February 21, 2009, 11:58:22 pm »

I don't care if the calculations are a little off. Imagine what this means for devices like laptops? Netbooks? With such small screens you'd hardly see the errors from a GPU using this tech and the batteries would finally last as long as you'd like them to.
Logged