Slashdot Mirror
Sun Working to Obsolete Motherboards
perl_camel_jockey writes "Sun is developing a new technology that promises to increase computing power by eliminating the need for physical, soldered chip-to-chip connections on the motherboard. Called 'proximity communications', it portends the ability for chips to talk to one another wirelessly just by being next to each other. Potential applications in computer design abound. Apparently this is part of Sun's Hero program, recipient of a $50 million grant from DARPA's High Productivity Computing Systems program to rejuvenate supercomputing in the US and regain the lead lost to Japan, in particular to NEC's Earth Simulator, ranked as the most powerful supercomputer in the world."
Slashdot Microsystems is working hard on a system to eliminate duplicate postings. They hope to have the system working by early 2008.
...
You'd think that since they ask subscribers to email them if there's any problem with the story, they'd pay attention when we email them...
*sigh*
Buttsex.
Now I can get the CPU into a separate cooling unit from the rest of the system so that I can pay less for more cooling where I need it.
I think this has happened before...
Cost of all the chips and stuff that makes up an über-1337 computer - 1000$
Cost of fancy cabinet w/ window to artisticly put all your wireless chips in - 200$
The look on your face as your motehr fires up her old vacuum cleaner, blanketing the area with RF-noise - priceless.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
To obsolete grammar!
Such a good feeling to know that /. moderators actually know what is posted a few days ago. I mean, suppose ./ moderators would not even read the postings. Wouldn't that be silly?
About obsolete motherboards I have my doubts though. The Von Neumann (may be spelled wrong) model has been around for a long time because it has proven to work and it also supplies a lot of companies with revenue. If you only have a single chip, then a lot of companies are going to lose money and they won't like that. In fact there may be a silver lining in this that it will push motherboard manufacturers even further for fear of being wiped out by this type of technology.
Well, unless each chip comes equipped with its own miniaturized nuclear reactor, aren't they still all going to have to have leads running to the powersupply?
I don't mean to be a heckler, but are you really "doing away" with the motherboard or just reducing it to a voltage bus with transmitters and receivers replacing some of the input and output pins?
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
One thing is for sure. If they can get this to work and if heat production can be cut down, this would make computing equipment and electronics much smaller. The printed circuit board is one of the big things holding us back from much better electronics miniaturization.
WARNING: Viewing This Sig May Cause Blindness.
I might just be horribly ignorant, so please inform me...security? Even though all it is transferring is system calls and such, I am certain that there are ways to back-engineer what the computer is doing at that time by reading the (very faint, I'm sure) wireless signals. Again, I do not know, so will someone please enlighten me? What exactly is going on, what are the security ramifications?
Honey, I'll warm you something in the microwave!
Noooo...
[Beep] rebooting... grmbl...
Dust & dirt. I would imagine that at such low voltage levels, induced current would require a damn near perfect level of alignment between the chip and the "socket". This is admitted in the article. What they don't admit is that it's going to be nearly impossible to get the damn thing in the socket without letting dust or dirt inbetween the chip and the socket. And a more interesting topic is their consistent mentioning of taking the cache of the chip. That's a nice dream and all, but where the hell are you going to put it then? Hardwired onto the motherboard? That's going to dramatically increase the cost of mobo's (so they are simply shifting who gets to eat the high sticker price on their products). And what if I buy a quad capable mobo, but only put 2 processors on it, I'm effectively wasting 2 sets of cache, rather than simply wasting 2 cpu sockets, and the sockets are a hell of a lot cheaper than the cache. I suppose you could fix this by going back to COAST (cache on a stick, yeah i know you remember that nasty stuff). But that brings in a whole new problem: These days, cache is only fast because it's so close to the cpu. If they move it off the die, it's just going to be put back on in 2 years because we can't access the cache fast enough ever since we moved it off the die. I'm no super computer engineer, but these guys better have an entire family of rabbits they plan on pulling out of their asses or this fucker's gonna flop.
WARNING: Viewing This Sig May Cause Blindness.
Sun should find this project rather easy going - their motherboards ARE already pretty obsolete anyway.
i like when i see a headline and go "i wonder how many 'dupe!' posts there will be?" don't eliminate dupes... what would /. readers do with all their spare time?
System.out.println(syynnapse.getSig());
The downside is that kids can no longer tell the difference between their candy bags and your new UBER-1337 computers.
Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
I think you mean Slashdot repeats itself.. yet again. Imagine that. Slashdot repeats itself.. yet again. Imagine that. Slashdot repeats itself.. yet again. Imagine that. Slashdot repeats itself.. yet again. Imagine that. Slashdot repeats itself.. yet again. Imagine that. Slashdot repeats itself.. yet again. Imagine that. Slashdot repeats itself.. yet again. Imagine that.
I guess some people will cover their chips with little tinfoil hats so they don't broadcast to home?
At last we get off the flat and can assemble chips in 3d.
Paul Beardsell
Let me visualise this... you need the chips but you don't need them to be on a motherboard... how would a computer look? A plastic bag full of chips? you dig in, take the processor out and throw in a new one to upgrade? groovy
http://www.automatiq.se
As pointed out by jdb2 here
Probably best to go read Sun's paper on the topic.
It was pointed out yesterday, when this article was duped first the first time, that this had been posted sometime last year. Seriously, WTF? How out of touch are the slashdot moderators?
Now is our chance go steal the +5 insightful comments and karma-whore like there is no tommrow ;).
3dinfo@maficstudios.com
It's about increasing chip-to-chip bandwidth by using capacitative coupling instead of (comparatively huge) physical wires. This means the chips would have to be more closely connected, probably slotting together like lego bricks.
i guess /. really, really, really wants to make sure everyone reads this story.
i'm still trying to figure out why though.
I'd heard that the phage department of that hospital was in danger of being shut down due to funding problems a few years back. Are they still going?
Is that it represents the first step towards real ubiquitous computing. With this technology, there's really no need to have the computer be bound to the actual physical box. You can put the chips in just about anything as long as they can communicate, basically. So you could literally be surrounded by a computer when stepping into a room with chips embedded in the walls. Now that's pervasive computing, we could have real "smart" buildings!
----- One learns to itch where one can scratch.
I still fail to see how this is not going to mix up the signals from various different chips without modulating the ones and zeros, and thus, how it is going to be faster than direct electrical connections at light speed. But they've probably spent some time thinking about it so i'll believe it for now. What I think is spectacular about the idea are the possibilities to cluster. Now if they make them transparent and solar powered and spherical, building a supercomputer may get as simple as filling up a pool with marbles.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
This reminds me of an issue with a C=64 I used to have that I had removed the aluminum foil casing from (inside the case). The 6502 processor wirelessly queried the SID chip for reassurance and understanding.
Sincerely,
Ass-embly Language
Say what you want about Sun (and BSD and SGI etc etc) at least they do produce the odd cool thing. I think this sort of development is cool, kudos to Sun for having a go at it. Least they're not like those useless Redmond f*ckers who shout "innovation" left and right while developing precisely nothing new, just buying up anything that works and works well and rebranding it their own.
Yeah...f*ck Microsoft..so sue me.
One of the issues we run into where I work (we make oscillators) is that chips behave differently over their specified temperature operating range. Commercial parts are rated from 0 to 70 Celsius (Industrial : -40/+85, Military : -55/+125). Commercial range is pretty decent for most applications; the average user wouldn't expect their computer innards to be heating up past 150 Farenheit. Anyhow, the simpler chips we make operate differently at different temperatures (the part I'm working on now is rated +- 100 parts per million).
A more complicated way of making these is to make what's called an Oven-Controlled model - you basically create a little oven that responds to the temperature of the chip, keeping it at a certain optimal temperature. These parts are much more stable and accurate; they vary in parts per billion. Dust is a big concern during manufacture; they're pretty sensitive, but once they're sealed, they're more or less set to go.
On a completely seperate note, I have to wonder what kind of issues Sun will be having with crosstalk on their new mobo's.
tr.v. obsoleted, obsoleting, obsoletes: To cause to become obsolete.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=obsolete And it gets used, too, even in slashdot headlines.
when do you think we'll see a wireless power cable? that's what's truely needed.
I write code.
Making hacking easier than ever, eh?
There you are, staring at me again.
I don't know if slashdot works like this, but when a new story is submitted, previous postings (say, of 1-2 days) can be searched if they match. If they do, then moderators receive the new story with a remark that it may be a dupe. Then the moderator searches the last 2 days' stories, and if it finds a dupe, the new story is rejected.
Here is some technical background on the subject:
Abstract
This paper reports results from wireless chip to chip communication experiments. Sixteen bit words pass from one chip to another in parallel without detectable error at 1.35 billion data items per second for a total data rate of 21.6 Gigabits per second. The experiment transmits pseudo random patterns between chips built in 350nm CMOS technology. Chips touch face-to-face to communicate. The same pseudo random data pattern is loaded onto both chips so that the receiving chip can check the accuracy of every bit communicated. Each communication channel consumes a static power of 3.6 milliWatts, and a dynamic power of 3.9 picoJoules per bit communicated. The channels lie on 50 micron centers. Because the capacitive communication works through covering oxide, ESD protection is unnecessary. Vernier position measuring circuits built into the chips indicate the relative position of transmitting and receiving arrays to assist mechanical alignment. The test chip includes a Vernier circuit that provides inter-chip position measurements with a resolution of 1.4 microns.
Background
On-chip performance has been increasing much more rapidly than off-chip communication bandwidth because both on-chip transistor density and clock frequency are increasing faster than off-chip input/output (I/O) density and frequency [2]. This difference occurs because off-chip bonding and wiring are about two orders of magnitude larger than on-chip wiring. On-chip wiring pitch is on the order of 1 micron, while off-chip wiring and ball-bond pitches are on the order of 100 microns. The performance gap between on-chip and off-chip bandwidth makes off-chip bandwidth a performance bottleneck.
Fig. 1 shows a comparison of the density of I/O pads for proximity communication versus area ball bonding [2]. Because proximity communication structures use the lithographic pitch of on-chip wires, proximity communication can achieve a density about 60 times greater than area ball bonds.
Proximity Communication
Proximity communication is based on the observation that faster, lower-cost communication is possible over shorter distances. We name this communication method "Proximity" because chips are placed in a face-to-face arrangement with the transmitter and receiver circuits aligned with only microns of distance between them.
Fig. 2 illustrates two chips positioned for proximity communication. Because the transmitter and receiver are close to each other and communicate by capacitive coupling rather than through large off-chip wires, the transmitter and receiver circuits are small. Moreover, the transmitter and receiver pads are protected from exposure to electrostatic discharge (ESD) events by the top layer dielectric and passivation. Thus the transmitter and receiver omit ESD protection, further reducing the parasitic capacitance and power consumption.
We chose to couple the transmitter pads directly to the receiver pads [1][5], in contrast to [3][4] in which the transmitter couples to a multi-chip module (MCM) substrate trace which couples in turn to a receiver pad. Coupling the transmitter pad directly to the receiver pad provides a stronger signal, improving signal integrity and reducing power.
Alignment
Alignment is a critical issue. Misalignment reduces received signal strength by reducing coupling area and increasing distance. Cross-talk also increases with misalignment because the voltage swings on adjacent transmitter and receiver pads couple into the receiver pad. In order to couple the transmitter and receiver pads best, the pads must be placed in correct alignment. Fig. 3 shows the six alignment dimensions, three translational and three rotational.
We use an on-chip Vernier measurement system to measure the relative positions of two chips in the x, y, and dimensions. Verniers are common in mechanical systems, and a micro electro-mechanical system (MEMS) Vernier strain gauge has demonstrated a resolution of 10 nm [6].
Have fun...
-- My hovercraft is full of eels.
Sun Microsystems: The air between stuff is the computer.
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
I'm sure they have this worked out but I wonder how much outside RF interference is needed before it becomes an issue. A lightning strike wipes my TV from 5 miles away. I wonder how easy it will be for the black hats to come up a jammer. A focused narrow beam aimed at a Home Depot from the parking lot (hehe). Oh what fun!
Going by an extrapolation of the decrease in computer size over the past 50 years, I fully expect kids in the next 20 years or so to laugh at the size of today's machines.
What I had not been able to figure out was how this would be achieved - I just assumed it would be on the lines of an all-on-one chip kinda thing.
Eliminating the need for a physical layer on which to solder components on does go quite a long way to reducing the space footprint.
However, what of the bulky power suppplies and the hard drives and DVD burners that are still as bulky as ever? Methinks we need a breakthrough in memory tech too.
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
This idea reminds me of the free online novel Prime Intellect which I can strongly recommend.
Slashdot Microsystems is working hard on a system to eliminate duplicate postings. They hope to have the system working by early 2008.
The power will still come from the wall. Even if the power supply is without wires, and instead beams the power to the devices. So the computer, how ever small the computer parts, is still as big as the power supply. And still has to be wired into a wall, at some point.
I seriously mean this. Imagine being able to bring some of these chips together and watch them working more powerfully.
The best planning can be done after the project completes.
http://www.kuro5hin.org/prime-intellect/mopi2.html
I learned about this a while back on that one site......you know the one. Slashdot. CowboyNeal should read it sometime. They have some great material there, maybe they could us it for stories on this site.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
Though I was concidering chip-to-chip connections being optical, the benifit there being you can take your signals some length with a bit of fibre-optic.
But you can't get rid of a motherboard, youre always going to need power, optical power is probably a long way off, and proximity power is only really used in electric toothbrush rechargers.
Chips or no chips, screw smart building - I want smart people. Stupidity and ignorance are spreading like a plague.
The word 'obsolete' is an adjective, not a verb.
I personally welcome our new replicant overlords, and hope that I can prove useful.
Sig
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars
If you want fast computers developed in the US, buy them from the US market and try to mould your tax incentives so that they simulate, as closely as possible, a net asset tax as described in "A Net Asset Tax Based On The Net Present Value Calculation".
The reason Cray Computer Corporation's gallium arsenide fab went out of business wasn't for lack of funding -- it was for a lack domestic market for the end product, supercomputers, in the wake of the end of the cold war. One could also chalk it up to Cray's fixation on supercomputers since the output of the GaAs fab line could have been altered to serve high speed telecom markets, but if DARPA wants fast supercomputers, there was help available from private capital sources.
Its never a good idea for government to compete with private capital sources in high technology.
Seastead this.
Does anybody have a fear or feel paranoid about all of the wireless devices that we currently use, the radio waves that they produce and their affect on the human body?
Why did I lurk so long before registering for a Slashdot account? I could have had a Slashdot ID of less than 100000.
One of the chief difficulties in developing the technology comes from the environment where computer chips live. Heat and vibration in this environment can cause chips to get out of the precise alignment needed for proximity communication. Sun is currently tinkering with different techniques and different packages to prevent, or correct, these effects.
Solution
Beowulf clusters of chips just sitting in a great big heap!... So in the year 3200 we'll have Self-aware garbage dumps. Another interesting point would be eaves-dropping on processors ala Tempest radiation, but now the processor will be doing the transmission.
meh
That will be great when we can just buy chips and literally drop them into a box with i/o ports. But since that isn't going to happen - what's the real advantage to the consumer of having no motherboard?
... something. My guess is that will be ports on a board. Essentially, doesn't this mean we will all be buying the 'new' computers from scratch, making our AT, ATX motherboards obsolete - even if they operate at speeds we can live with?
Won't we just be fastening our add-on cards, etc to some sort of board? And won't these chips need to be fastened to a 'board' so that they can communicate with each other properly? ie. be the proper distances away from each other, not be rolled around like bingo dice?
In the least, we will still require our standard ports to be fastened to
It is interesting that computing power will increase, but:
P.C.'s have reached a speed in recent years that standard, home-user software will not exceed in terms of requirements - for some time. (even CounterStrike doesn't appear to be bloating up too fast). So why the excitement over more computing power for home users, at the cost of replacing entire systems?
I think the real advantage would be a cost effective communications chip that can be 'distributed' throughout an area - bringing an intranet or internet access to that area for fairly cheap (after all, these chips do communicate at breakneck speeds, no?)
Don't get me wrong, the invention is fascinating, and I do hope the future of computing moves to modular designs such as this - I'm just saying the excitement factor here may be more grandiose and dillusional than is necessary.
Infofile
Ace
"I don't care if it's in the dictionary or not."
:-)
That's funny in itself.
"'Obsolete' is not a verb, damnit."
All nouns can be verbed.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Lightbeams can cross without disturbing each other, on/off switch times are very high (see modern telecommunication), physical distance doesn't matter much, connections can be electrically isolated, and the dataflow can't be tapped into by placing an antenna nearby.
Integrating optic/electronic conversion shouldn't be too hard, I think.
You could stack building blocks in 3 dimensions, and leave some space in between for air or cooling liquids...
They call it a replicator.
Not really, it's also used as a way to charge electric cars, and uses inductive coupling to transfer power. You can find a description and some pictures here. There's likely other applications on the market.
And weren't there some research projects using microwaves to power high-altitude planes or low-orbit satellites?
Not really, it's also used as a way to charge electric cars, and uses inductive coupling to transfer power. You can find a description and some pictures here. There's likely other applications on the market.
And weren't there some research projects using microwaves to power high-altitude planes or low-orbit satellites?
does anybody else see the 'why add another layer of things that can get fucked up?' problem behind this? if the chips have to be inside the box anyhow, they might as well stay on some sort of motherboard.
-Cnik
So... eventually I could build a powerful machine by throwing a bunch of chips into my pockets.... mmm I can see it now:
Hey there, is that a beowulf cluster in your pants, or are you just happy to see me?
My patience is infinite, my time is not.
I asked my boss about it, since he's been working here in Silicon Valley for thirty years and knows many of the interesting people (not the ones with lots of money -- the ones that invent things, like FORTH). His reply "They're smoking crack. They've poured tons of money into that for YEARS and have yet to produce anything viable."
Even if they manage to get the coupling working, there's the problem of constrained path placement. It'll be like playing four (or six)-sided dominoes when there's four thousand combinations of dots.
You're not going to "stack chips like Scrabble tiles". The unpackaged chips have to be aligned within a few microns and held in position. That's going to be done in an IC packaging facility. The result will be a multi-chip module, a single package containing several chips."
Obsolete not verb. pls fix. k? thx.
You know how sometimes you have an old friend, who was with you in good times, and in bad? You love that old friend, but lately he's been acting very oddly, and you're afraid you might just need to have him committed?
That's starting to be how I feel about Sun and their recent spate of bizzarre announcements and news releases. Breaks my heart.
No weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men.-Ronald Reagan
Thanks, but no thanks...
I'll keep my old motherboard,
Finding out how the garage door opener, wireless telephone,
and microwave oven all crash my computer would be such a drag.
In other news... The Chinese government dedicate 50,000 engineers to work on their version of proximity communications.
In other news, General Electric was found working on a cordless extension cord. However, they hit a snag when one of the lab techs were killed while attempting to walk through the arc.
This sig no verb.
I can throw my new GPU right into the box, close the case and not have to worry about anything else!
SIGFAULT
If this is really one of the "first" (I know it isn't *the first* attempt, but another attempt) attempts to take CPU and supporting chipsets "3D"? That is, manufacture the IC chips (the bits of silicon), then "stack" them aligning the connectors (or whatever) on the edges to allow for more processing power in the same (or nearly same) space? It may not be this, exactly, but perhaps the technology developed will help lead to this?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Can you say we are one step closer to the replicators.
I think it's also used to power those rfid tags.
An amourous cow herd
the red pill...
get over it.
does this mean my 2.4ghz phone will crash my computer instead of just my network connection?
We are ahead of japan. I dont know where this guy is from or thinking.
just think, you want a faster computer, you dump a bag of chips in a drawer with your current computer. You want to power up your PDA? Stuff your jacket pockets with these critters on your way out.
Silly? Yah, but in a fun way.
Not just me, but now my computer is gonna have to wear a tinfoil hat...
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
Now i gorra wear lead underwear to use the computer.
Y!!
Now I'm going to have to wear my tin foil hat when I use my computer! That thing is so uncomfortable.
If only slashdot were around then.........
... for 30 years..
Wang Laboratories announced today the 1200 series word processor which will make paper obsolete.......
COMMENT:: Quick, Taco post this again,... monthly
Seeing as how this is the most powerful supercomputer in the world and will calculate your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself a question:
Do I really need to simulate the whole Earth?
Well?
Do ya, punk?
I've sent power over a video signal wire, and they were happily coexistant.
What would be interesting is to know the frequencies they are using, because a transmitter(it is what it mimics) has an antenna radiating length associated with it.
At insanely fast speeds(gHz), it shortens the size of the antenna needed. Now, suppose you get a chip lead length(same chip) that is this wavelength-you broadcast signal to itself. Not good. My guess-they use a non-harmonic(multiple of that wavelength-and antenna length) to couple the signals at the speed they want. Tuning the chips to be EXACTLY that distance from each other will be a trick, but, as they have said, it is possible in theory. One problem is chips cross modulating each other, unless they run at exactly the same clock speed, and you would need to distribute it, as well as power, to each chip. Power can be distributed in the clock signal,(but it would have to be away from the signal lines), and filtered with diodes/capacitors. The chips themselves would act as mini microwave xmit-recievers. Neat!
Hacking one of these things will be difficult. Since you would want to run all chips off one system clock, it would be easier to analyse signals off monitors/internet cables, HD load waveforms, etc. than the chips themselves. There is another article about blocking wifi not cellphone use. Use same thing on the case. Not saying you couldn't detect/inject signals, but you would need to do some kinna hack job! You would start melting things before you succeed?
My fear is cell phones will somewhere use this, without antihack precautions(who cares, eh?), allowing all kinds of wackiness.
This mind intentionally left blank.
The KKK a bunch of sheetheads? You decide!
How about allowing subscribers to ignore stories which they don't want to read -- even when they hit the main site?
People who are really busy would not be forced to read dups and to participate in 200-comment threads writing that the article is a dupe, like they do now.
I, for one, would gladly pay for such a privilege.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."