Four Core Processor to Bring Tera Ops

panhandler writes "As reported at CNet and the Austin American Statesman, researchers at UT are working with IBM on a new CPU architecture called TRIPS (Tera-op Reliable Intelligently adaptive Processing System). According to IBM, 'at the heart of the TRIPS architecture is a new concept called 'block-oriented execution"' which will result in a processor capable of executing more than 1 trillion operations per second."

Comments

It won't work...

[heironymouscoward]

Sure, the machine will work.

But it's going to take more than a faster CPU to kick-start the IT industry in the West.

Right now, IT is a sunset industry, serving a market that is itself rapidly becoming extinct as entire business chains get automated in foreign countries. Within five years the famous Western IT industry will become a thin service layer reselling products (hard and soft) developed and produced elsewhere.

Building yet faster CPUs does not alter this. There is no way new generations of faster hardware can pull the industry out of its situation.

What can?

Possibly two things. First, to realise that the market for IT is rapidly globalising, and that western technology will have to sell to China and India if it is to sell at all.

Secondly, to realise that this means extraordinary cost efficiency, based on a true understanding of the nature of today's technology, rather than an attempt to shoehorn today's reality into yesterday's way of working. Technology - such as operating systems that was a luxury item only ten years ago is now not only a commodity, it is basically free. The same applies to so many technologies that a business which does not take advantage of this simply will not be able to compete.

Guess what I'm saying is: switch to Linux and OSS before you croak, folks. It just seems to make so much sense.