computer chip evolution

[Cameron Wood]

According to the book I'm reading (What If ? 2 by Randall Munroe)

The second programmable computer, UNIVAC was the size of a room, made in 1951 from vacuum tubes.

If the same machine was made from Iphone chips today, they could be imbedded in a single grain of salt.

[Warren Lake]

When i was a kid my father took me to work. He was an actuary at a big insurance company. The computer room was all glass windows floor to ceiling on one side and there was a security guard in the room. All walls were lined with big machines that maybe had tape on them like a studer machine. Now likely one of my desk tops could hold all that info. Have a four terra getting full on the offline computer.

im sure I just saw a thing last days of some new technology that is close and insanely faster. Id didnt read it or even focus on the headline.

[Jim Becker]

Yea, there are a few major things that have been happening relative to computer processor technology that are remarkable in the "where it started vs where it is now" timeline. Every generation gets smaller, both in footprint and in the thickness of the processor layers. Additional speed is gained by simplifying instruction sets and how the processing occurs. There's also another potential shift that's gaining speed and thats an evolution from the very long lived "Intel" world toward ARM. Apple already did that with it's in-house processors and in an article I read the other day, Microsoft is starting to embrace that direction more seriously now that they have available a very fast translation engine, similar to Rosetta that helped things in the Apple world over the years, so that existing code for Intel can be used directly on ARM with high efficiency while software developer work to create native ARM code for their applications. There are some other things that will likely kick things up even further in the areas of data storage as well as increased use of AI to optimize processing. All that stuff we enjoyed in SciFi movies and books over the years will seem antiquated!

[Curt Harms]

There is another processor that seems to be gathering steam in China and other countries, RISC-V (pronounced RISC 5). It seems similar to ARM but uses an open standard instruction set so not controlled by one company or country.

[Jim Becker]

There is another processor that seems to be gathering steam in China and other countries, RISC-V (pronounced RISC 5). It seems similar to ARM but uses an open standard instruction set so not controlled by one company or country.

RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) has been used in the industry for a very long time now...pre-Intel Apple, for example, as well as a lot of 'NIX machines "back in the day". ARM is a RISC processor.

[Alan Rutherford]

"In 1965 Gordon Moore, one of the co-founders of Intel, observed that the number of transistors—a type of electronic component—that could be crammed onto a microchip was doubling every 12 months, a figure he later revised to every two years...Chips produced in 1971 could fit 200 transistors into one square millimetre. Today’s most advanced chips cram 130m into the same space, and each operates tens of thousands of times more quickly to boot. If cars had improved at the same rate, modern ones would have top speeds in the tens of millions of miles per hour." From the Economist.

In 1965 I was in the USAF serving as an Intercept Director in the SAGE system, which meant I sat in front of a screen and told fighter-interceptor aircraft in detail where to go to shoot down their targets. Or would have if it came to that. The computer driving the whole thing had vacuum tubes, not chips and covered about an acre of floor space and whatever your first computer was - this one didn't even come close. The idea that I can buy a 128 gb flash drive for under $10 today is mind-blowing. I doubt that there was 128 gb of computer memory in the world in 1965.

Our children's children will live in a world we can't imagine. I hope they can keep it under control and heading in good directions.

[Mark Wedel]

The other anecdote I heard long ago is 'If car prices reduced at the same rate of computer processing power, you would drive your rolls royce into town, throw it out, and buy a new one because it would be cheaper than paying for parking'

This doesn't mean that computers are 10 thousand times cheaper than they were 30 years ago, but if you take into account the increase in performance along with the decrease in price, you are getting 10 thousand+ more processing power/dollar spent.

[Mike Henderson]

The reply to that comment about cars getting less expensive is that if you car developed as fast as a computer, it would stop working when you came to a stop sign and you'd have to re-boot it before it would drive on.

[Patty Hann]

The reply to that comment about cars getting less expensive is that if you car developed as fast as a computer, it would stop working when you came to a stop sign and you'd have to re-boot it before it would drive on.

Why would it wait to encounter a Stop Sign to stop working? :-D (My computer goes BSOD if I even think about opening another window .)

[Jason Roehl]

I can't believe nobody mentioned quantum computing... It's still very much in its infancy, but may be the plateau-breaker when the current technique of manufacturing computer chips hits its physical limit--the traces in a chip have to be large enough to pass an electron!

[roger wiegand]

It's a little mind boggling that chip designers have now pushed up against the speed of light as a serious limiting factor in chip speed. I don't think chips actually move electrons, they're way too slow, but an electric field that can move at a speed much close to c. (I'm way out of my depth here!) Quantum computing is one way around that fundamental limit.

[Roger Feeley]

I read once that they were having problems in the chips when the traces get really small and tightly packed. As explained to us mere mortals, electrons don’t corner all that well at extremely small scale.

[Jerome Stanek]

The reply to that comment about cars getting less expensive is that if you car developed as fast as a computer, it would stop working when you came to a stop sign and you'd have to re-boot it before it would drive on.

With the auto stop start it does just that

[Warren Lake]

this was what I saw on the side bar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNwoA5akBlg

[Curt Harms]

RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) has been used in the industry for a very long time now...pre-Intel Apple, for example, as well as a lot of 'NIX machines "back in the day". ARM is a RISC processor.

Right, but ARM and other RISC machines are proprietary, RISC V is not, it's open source. China and other countries have learned about proprietary goods and embargoes.