Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>>>   I'm not even sure it would be physically possible. L1 caches are always
>>> quite small, and I'm not sure it's all about money.
> 
>> Yeah, speed-of-light delays can kill you, and a huge amount of the delay 
>> comes from address decoding rippling thru the cascade. Or at least used to.
> 
>   The speeds involved are much lower than c.

Yep. Even in fiber optics, it's noticably slower. But even if you *did* 
do speed-of-light transfer, having a huge amount of memory that takes up 
a cubic foot of space means you're still not going to get transfers in 
nano-second timeframes.

>   If I'm not mistaken, the electric current phenomenon traverses in copper
> at about 0.7c. 

That's my memory too.

>   The major factor is, however, the transistor phase change delays.

And waiting for all the transistors to settle. I.e., waiting for the 
clock to propagate. Some of teh really cutting-edge high speeds are done 
with clockless architectures. Of course, they're rather limited in what 
they can do, very special-purpose.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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