David Fontaine <dav### [at] faricynet> writes:

> Simon Lemieux wrote:
> 
> > (<dreamMhz>*<secs> = 12990Mhz * 60 = 779400Mhz....)
> >
> > This... is... INSANE!
> > We won't be living in that dream future!
> 
> Moore's Law...
> It'll happen.

Are you sure? The light has a speed of 300.000 km per second. So a signal
with the speed of light travels in one cycle of such a processor
3*10^8 / 7.794*10^11 m which makes approximately 0.38 mm. If you assume
that a signal should be able to traverse a processor in one cycle, the
whole processor must be smaller than 0.38 mm.

On the other hand the manufacturers are already getting quantum effects,
because the conductor paths are so small. Decreasing their size is
limited.

That's why I expect the market share of parallelism to increase.

The first steps in this direction are already done: Current Intel processors
have several FPUs and video and sound cards take over parts of the main
processor duties.

Thomas


-- 
http://www.thomas.willhalm.de/ (includes pgp key)

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