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One Step Closer To Speedier, Bootless Computers
CWmike writes "Physicists at the University of California at Riverside have made a breakthrough in developing a 'spin computer,' which would combine logic with nonvolatile memory, bypassing the need for computers to boot up. The advance could also lead to super-fast chips. The new transistor technology, which one lead scientist believes could become a reality in about five years, would reduce power consumption to the point where eventually computers, mobile phones and other electronic devices could remain on all the time. The breakthrough came when scientists at UC Riverside successfully injected a spinning electron into a resistor material called graphene, which is essentially a very thin layer of graphite. The graphene in this case is one-atom thick. The process is known as 'tunneling spin injection.' A lead scientist for the project said the clock speeds of chips made using tunneling spin injection would be 'thousands of times' faster than today's processors. He describes the tech as a totally new concept that 'will essentially give memory some brains.'"
am i the only one who read the title and thought that PR firms and politicians could be in serious trouble?
So, this is becoming a trend. Bad summary. It's not an outright lie, just misleading. From reading the article, one might get the sense that we might see this in products in 5 years. However, the article actually states that the guy said:
"I'm one of those researchers that really cringes at the thought of saying this [new technology] can be useful. I think for us, maybe within five years we can get one device working."
So, the guy is realistic, and not a douche. "We can maybe get one working in 5 years" is not the same as seeing it in devices in 5 years (which, again, wasn't explicitly stated in the summary, but i feel like thats what people would think).
In reality, we might get something in products in 10 years.
-Taylor
Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
But the one about 'You can keep them powered on', it's like a game changer from out of left field. Maybe booting will become irrelevant by then?
Not if they're running Windows. Doesn't it still have to reboot whenever you update the freaking PDF viewer?
Will this new technology finally bring us to our beloved flying cars?
Tired of my customary (Score:1)
For that matter, wouldn't any non-volatile, high speed memory device do the job?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
even today's mainstream cpus are far more powerful than what our everyday tasks involve. even the fps-hungry gaming crowd has been reaching perceptive limits in regard to human eye, and the frame rate has become a sport, a statistical value.
unless society takes on seti, parallel computing etc as hobbies, we wont need more processing power in our daily lives.
Just wait till the next version of windows hits the shelves...
I'm fairly certain that computing power is like hard drive space or time 'till the deadline , we will always find ways to fill it, no matter how much we think we have in the beginning.
-I only code in BASIC.-
1000x in 5 years IS wishful thinking, but it isn't THAT drastically off from Moore's law, which predicts a 1000x increase every 10 to 15 years. And it's never happened overnight, but in steps every few months. Many of the "1000x-predicted" technologies that /. covered 10 years ago probably have been part of the 1000x-actual increase of the last 10 years.
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
Windows update?
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
'will essentially give memory some brains.'" Now if they can develop this for human consumption think what it would do for people with Alz........Aaahhhhhh......whassitcalled? ....
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
So, all very nice, we'll be able to have always-on computers that don't pig out on energy, BUT...
How much of the software we use can handle running for long periods of time without crashing? Not many, in my experience.
What with memory leaks, bounds overflows and who knows what else, some of which may be an oversight in your own code, but more likely is a bug inside some library you're using, or a compiler bug, or linker bug, or...
As anybody who has tried it and knows, writing software that runs for weeks and months on end without restarting is really quite hard. And it's no bloody use if the hardware can stay up for months on end if the software can't.
(And, not having used Windows in about 14 years, I'm not talking about that piece of shite.)
New mod option wanted: -1 DrunkenRambling
I don't want to sound like your usual get-off-my-lawn but in the in the days of home computers you could switch it on and it would be ready literally in under a second. Yes I know the "OS" was probably only 16K in size or less but it was in ROM and the computer didn't bother with pointless self checking (you'll soon know if some hardware on your PC isn't working).
Even early DOS machines could boot in mere seconds. So really all this very complicated technology is doing is bringing us back to where we were 20 or 30 years ago.
Plus ca change.
When you start advocating the death, en masse, of your political opponents, you've moved outside the realm of civilized society. Stop. Even if it's "just a joke".
Again, let's just look at the history. Computers are about 1000x faster than they were in 1980. What does software have to show for it? It's often more of a pain to use (I hate it when software tries to be "smart". Don't second-guess me, just give me an easy way to express what I want to do), and it's buggier than ever.
Even if this were true, we would have no clue as to how to write one. I have yet to see anyone satisfactorily define "intelligence", let alone propose a plausible algorithm for it. As far as AI is concerned, don't hold your breath.
Uhhh...who boots anymore? Everyone has them set to sleep now, which wakes them in seconds. The only time I see a boot anymore is when a customer brings their desktop in, hell even the XP machines that cross my desk are set to sleep when you push the button. Unless your laptop is nearly dead why would you bother? And even then the new Win 7 hybrid sleep is still faster than a boot and has all your apps going, so why do it?
Don't get me wrong, setting here with a quad and 8Gb of RAM I sure as hell enjoy fast, but to me it makes about as much sense as all those new distros that make a point to brag about their boot speed. Unless the thing crashed, why would you boot?
And as for "1000x faster than the day before"? I think that won't happen until app programmers decide that "throw moar at it" isn't a valid strategy. While I've run stripped down OSes on monster machines, as well as built rigs for gamers that had truly insane specs, the OS was fast as greased lightning but the apps just got bigger and slower. Just look at how apps like Reader want to use quickstarters to cover up how bloated they've become. I think the only way you'd get 1000x speed is by starting a new OS from scratch and doing like Minuet and writing it for low level code to minimize the bloat. Because it don't seem to matter, FOSS or proprietary, all the apps are getting fatter.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Is it wrong that as fast as things as changing these days, part of me still hopes for one of these '1000x faster in 5 years' technologies to live up to its full promise?
I know it's coming; if not this tech than surely another one... I guess one hopes to live in interesting times, and I still dream for the day I wake up and there's a computer for sale that shatters Moore's Law. A computer 1000x faster than what was available the day before.
Faster, please.
(and thank you)
If you create stuff, you should know that everything takes longer than you think it will; and, therefore, nothing happens as fast as you expect it to happen.
Read up on Single mode fiber - in multi mode yes its the same problem as with Electrical waves on wires. But in Single mode fiber it's more like a serialized pipe.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-mode_optical_fiber
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'