IBM's Snowflake Microchips

Phantom of the Opera writes "The BBC reports that using self-assembled polymers and copying natural patterns, IBM hopes to have microchips that are 30% faster and consume 15% less energy. The secret? Adding a little nothing in all the right places."

Comments

Boo

[fatduck]

What happened to the provocative, editorializing troll-summaries? How am I supposed to start a heated argument based purely on speculation? You give me what, two sentences, like you want me to read TFA? Well, fuck you. Self-assembling polymers? Copying natural patterns? Who makes these things, IBM, or CYBERDYNE? What if these get into the hands of our children? Will the next school shooting be 30% faster and 15% more efficient?

Re:Boo

[RealGrouchy]

Yeah, it's a little editorial tactic called "putting a little nothing in all the right places".

- RG>

Just like a snowflake.

[Anonymous Coward]

So, no two will be alike? Programming for them will be interesting.

Re:Nature's Little Inventor

[FooAtWFU]

On a cosmic timescale, I can agree with you about Strong AI. But, having spent the past semester (exam on Wednesday!) learning about the state of AI, I can indeed assure you that you will need to wait quite a while before you start to see anything really Strong AIish coming to pass. Maybe towards the end of my lifetime you'll start to see something decent, but I'm guessing not. And even if they do have something by then, consider that NIs (natural intelligences) take many years (decades!) to get to the point that they do. Some of that can probably be skipped for the artificial version, but I've got little reason to doubt training the things will be Fast at all.