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Boffins Fear We Might Be Running Out of Ideas (theregister.co.uk)
Innovation, fetishized by Silicon Valley companies and celebrated by business boosters, no longer provides the economic jolt it once did. From a report: In order to maintain Moore's Law -- by which transistor density doubles every two years or so -- it now takes 18 times as many scientists as it did in the 1970s. That means each researcher's output today is 18 times less effective in terms of generating economic value than it was several decades ago. On an annual basis, research productivity is declining at a rate of about 6.8 percent per year in the semiconductor industry. In other words, we're running out of ideas. That's the conclusion of economic researchers from Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In a paper published this week through the National Bureau of Economic Research, "Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?", economics professors Nicholas Bloom, Charles Jones, and John Van Reenen, and PhD candidate Michael Webb, defy Betteridge's Law of Headlines by concluding that an idea drought has indeed taken hold. "Across a broad range of case studies ... we find that ideas -- and in particular the exponential growth they imply -- are getting harder and harder to find," the authors declare in their paper.
Apple Announces iPhone X With Edge-To-Edge Display, Wireless Charging and No Home Button
Nah, see? We still have plenty of ideas. Oh, wait, you may have meant good ones... OK, that might be a problem. The low-hanging fruit has been already eaten.
Ezekiel 23:20
The low hanging fruit was easiest to pick? What a shocking new revelatory cliche that we've totally never seen before in any other aspect of life and therefore would have had no reason to believe would apply here!
I wonder whether it's really a lack of ideas, and or worse engineering staff. I think engineers are, on average, less passionate than they used to be. For many people in the industry it's just a career now, and not a passion. Especially in large companies like Intel.
We are running out of ideas because we stoped funding the sources of ideas like Xerox Park or Bell Labs. Innovation takes money and when all of the money chases development, not research, you run out of ideas to develop.
There's going to be a finite number of practical possibilities; we may actually be close to hitting a wall with regards to finding improved ways to push electrons through transistors. And then there's physics itself - there is an information processing limit based on the universe's physical laws.
That still leaves memristors, photonics, and quantum computing, and there's likely still a corner or two of under-understood physics to find and exploit.
I don't think we've reached the limits yet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Seriously? So a few researchers make the move from germanium to silicon that is (directly) used by approximately 2 people. 70 years later a team of researchers make a design change to reduce battery consumption 2% - for 100M iPhones. Which had more direct economic impact?
To measure by "economic impact" is complete blarney. You can claim it takes more people/time/money/resources, but to weigh it against the economic impact by saying "it takes 18 people to do [double density] where it used to take 1" is crap.
That means each researcher's output today is 18 times less effective in terms of generating economic value than it was several decades ago.
Assuming that the absolute number of transistors still matters, this math is ridiculous. A doubling of transistor count now means roughly 10 billion new transistors vs. a doubling in the 70s meaning maybe 10,000. So for 18x the headcount you get 1 MILLION times the transistors. A researcher is about 50,000 times more effective than he was in the 70s.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
We're not running out of ideas. What has happened in CPU development is that we have made all of the relatively easy advances in transistor miniaturization, and further advances are becoming incremental as progress runs up against the asymptotic curves imposed by the laws of physics. Further advances in processing power are therefore coming to rely upon increasingly multicore designs and sophisticated caches, mainly because that's a less risky business proposition than investigating architectures other than the von Neumann and (occasionally) Harvard architectures.
It's also worth noting that most of the several orders of magnitude increase in processing power over the last three decades has been consumed by increasingly inefficient software as a way of keeping software development costs down.
Nature only provides so many free rides, and humans have proven themselves very good at exhausting them quickly. Ideas, even good ones, are always cheap and plentiful. It's a willingness to do hard (and therefore expensive) work that is in short supply.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
First the headphone jack, now the home button. If Apple has enough courage, eventually they'll get rid of the whole damn phone.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
"it now takes 18 times as many scientists as it did in the 1970s. That means each researcher's output today is 18 times less effective in terms of generating economic value than it was several decades ago"
In 1970s, they used to make only few hundreds to few thousands of each high end chip. Today, Apple A11 or Qualcomm 835 or Intel x64 will get produced in hundreds of millions in quantities.
The real problem is that we've seen the rise of extreme leftism over the past 40 to 50 years. The seeds were planted in the late 1960s, but it wasn't until the last decade that it has really taken off and become entrenched throughout Western society, especially within the so-called "Millennial Generation".
Leftism abhors originality. It abhors creativity. It abhors free thinking. Why is that? Because individuals who engage in such activities quickly tear apart the intellectual "foundation" (or lack thereof) of leftist ideologies. Leftism collapses when confronted with any sort of intelligent analysis. That's why leftists try to hard to stamp out free thought in favor of people just mindlessly parroting leftist narratives.
Leftism is often wrongly described as "progressive", when it is actually an intense form of conservatism, even to the point of regression. Leftist ideologies revolve around fixed, unchanging narratives. There is no flexibility for these narratives to evolve. What's wrongly perceived as "progress" is actually a society regressing so as to conform to these fixed leftist narratives.
We shouldn't be surprised that we see stagnation within academia, within the various R&D fields, and within business. As more and more leftists have worked their way into academic, research and business organizations, the focus has been taken away from doing real work and coming up with real innovation.
Instead, the focus has been put on political "correctness", on faux "tolerance", and on artificial "equality". These constructs prevent real forward progress. They only allow for regression, which is exactly what we're seeing today.
While I appreciate throwing dirt over the younger generations from time to time (a pastime of the not so young), let's admit science and technology have become too darned complex, requiring any person lot more time to become more-or-less proficient in a single topic,and as a consequence, it takes much longer to find the almost mythical "synergies" accelerating any field with the help of sideways/cross-pollinated knowledge.
Also, we may have started hitting some hard physical limits, not just a lack of better ideas. If silicon makers are finding so hard to improve their chips, it may be because electronics and digital systems as we known them break up when the gates' size is comparable to that of atoms.
The solutions may again come from other fields of knowledge. If quantum effects ruin your logic gates because they are too small, better start thinking on quantum computing approaches leveraging your knowledge to make small things on a waffer.
Easier said than done, though.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Your doing a good job spouting out what Rush Limbaugh told you that liberals believe. Why don't you actually ask a liberal next time.
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
I just see it accumulating at the top. You make a good point, but don't forget all the gov't research we used to do and stopped (gotta cut all that pork, after all). Folks like to forget how much basic research was done on the public dime.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Another thing we can outsource to AI.
Possibly not if Moore's law fails. However, this study arguably just shows the failure of focussing entirely on applied research. For each of their case studies they focus on one thing, such as Moore's law, crop yields etc. and conclude that it gets harder each year to drive the increases. This is because each of these areas is sticking to one fundamental approach and refining and improving it more and more which is clearly going to get harder over time.
What keeps the ideas coming is fundamental research which opens up entirely new approaches to solving problems. As the quote says "No amount of continuous improvement of the candle would have lead to the electric light bulb". Indeed the entire IT revolution owes its existence to the discovery of quantum mechanics and its application to understanding condensed matter physics. Without this applied researchers would be still be working on improving the valve.
The problem is that governments love to focus less on helping companies develop better widgets. The economic returns are almost immediate - or at least immediately obvious - and so useful to a politician seeking re-election. What they need to do is to put more money into fundamental research so that as fields run out of ideas there are completely new areas full of potential ideas to improve our lives in ways we cannot yet imagine. The problem is that the return on this investment is both uncertain and likely 50+ years away and the average politician has trouble caring about anything further away than the next election.
To bring us this information...
You you are thinking of a puffin, a boffin is one of those guys who died trying to get the plans to the second death star.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
This gave me a good chuckle. It's always amusing when people from the left or right try and explain the other side and get it completely wrong.
Newsflash to every extremist on either side: no political ideology is completely wrong or completely right. They all get somethings right and somethings wrong, and the same ideology doesn't always work in every situation and every society.
Get over yourselves. As with most things, the best solution is often somewhere in the between what the extremists from either side espouse. Stop demonizing or regaling people based on their political preferences.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
~ Charles H. Duell, Commissioner of US patent office (1899)
Not true. Commissioner Duell never said that, and what he actually said was pretty much the exact opposite:
In my opinion, all previous advances in the various lines of invention will appear totally insignificant when compared with those which the present century will witness. I almost wish that I might live my life over again to see the wonders which are at the threshold. -- Charles H. Duell 1902
Huh. A few seconds of a search and replace and peeling off the "progressive" bit makes your post actually reflect reality.
================
The real problem is that we've seen the rise of extreme rightism over the past 40 to 50 years. The seeds were planted in the late 1960s, but it wasn't until the last decade that it has really taken off and become entrenched throughout Western society, especially within the so-called "Baby Boomer Generation".
Rightism abhors originality. It abhors creativity. It abhors free thinking. Why is that? Because individuals who engage in such activities quickly tear apart the intellectual "foundation" (or lack thereof) of rightist ideologies. Rightism collapses when confronted with any sort of intelligent analysis. That's why rightists try to hard to stamp out free thought in favor of people just mindlessly parroting rightist narratives.
Rightism is actually an intense form of conservatism, even to the point of regression. Rightist ideologies revolve around fixed, unchanging narratives. There is no flexibility for these narratives to evolve. What's wrongly perceived as "progress" is actually a society regressing so as to conform to these fixed rightist narratives.
We shouldn't be surprised that we see stagnation within academia, within the various R&D fields, and within business. As more and more rightists have worked their way into academic, research and business organizations, the focus has been taken away from doing real work and coming up with real innovation.
=============
All that is necessary for the triumph of good is that evil men do nothing.
What a horrible, xenophobic attitude you have.
Not seeing the causal link there either.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Cretin. It has nothing to do with political fetishes about leftism or the stupidity of modern Americans because of the lack of investment in education. The reason for the reduced progress in semiconductor technology is because we are running out of physics. The physical dimensions are now so small that leakage currents and power dissipation are reaching the limits of what is possible with the available materials. Lots of clever and difficult manufacturing processes and material configurations have been developed to make today's silicon chips. The factories that make the latest and most powerful chips cost in the region of $10 Billion because it has become so hard to make them. The problem is not a shortage of ideas, the problem is that it has become 18 times more difficult to make advances in chip performance. Of course both a right wing political expert and a bunch of media reporters choose to misrepresent academic research that measures this slow down in progress as 'political defects in society' and a 'lack of creativity' because, hey screw facts, we have irrelevant opinions and random talking points to argue about. What this demonstrates in fact is that general society is almost completely ignorant about where its technological marvels come from.
I await with interest the response to CRISPR/Cas 9 and Genetic Medicine which will be a mainstream technology marvel of the coming 50 years. You folk are probably too dumb to know what to do with it let alone recognize its potential benefits. For goodness sake learn a bit more about how the science and the world works before ranting about your prejudices and politics.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
"In order to maintain Moore's Law -- by which transistor density doubles every two years or so -- it now takes 18 times as many scientists as it did in the 1970s."
That doesn't mean that "each researcher's output today is 18 times less effective in terms of generating economic value than it was several decades ago".
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
The AI systems are "trained". They can only reproduce the expertise by someone who provides the training data sets. You can show the system pictures of cars, trains and bicycles, with the desired inputs and outputs, and it will reproduce that expertise. It won't know to create new categories for hovercraft and aircraft.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
I believe that you are wrong. The world made do with the spoken word before it invented writing. No one seriously suggests that we throw away all the books and go back to the spoken word. Writing opened up new possibilities such as amassing bodies of knowledge in library's and passing ever more complex ideas down the generations - not just science but things like Art History. Computers have similarly made available the internet and the ability such as this - for people from all around the world to discuss what they think and what they know. The act of writing software may not be much better than writing a book but it is the use to which the software or the book is put that is the measure of its effect on the world. So software engineering is a valuable occupation, particularly when it is part of a collaborative enterprise like providing services like smart power, insurance quotations - you name it the modern world would not exist without software engineering.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
What great work they have done for mankind:
The Cultural Revolution
The Great Leap Forward
Russian political Gulags and forced relocations,
The Red Terror
The Great Purge
The Killing Fields
The Ethiopian Red Terror
To name just a few. I wont even begin to put numbers of the deaths, however its pretty obvious they are 'leading' in the last 100 years..
The thing to remember here is that left vs right is not actually that important or decisive.
Open versus Totalitarian is (I would have used the word Liberal there, but America has redefined that word, as they like to do)
Totalitarian is consistently bad - on the left AND the right - a direction that man western governments are racing towards.
The really sad thing is that both Parent and GP are correct. Who has time for original thought when everyone is so busy repeating the party lines?
The real problem is that people have gotten so lazy that they are fine just assuming that everyone on "the other side" fits into a single category and we are all in complete agreement with anything thats said or done by "our side."
That sort of mindless pigeonholing make it impossible to hold adult conversations.
Many boffins died to bring us this information...
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
The other AC was not wrong. The left has been cannibalized and taken over by fanatics who espouse the most violent racism and sexism and call for the return of segregation, government promotion of Islam, the total extermination of all "white" people (especially Jews), and the state seizure of everyone else's private property but they would get to keep what they own. They hate the old left's principles of tolerance, equality, freedom, worker rights, science, rule of law, neutrality in government, etc. They're not called "regressives" for nothing, and "an intense form of conservatism" is a good description. "Fascist" is another good description. If you follow the money back to the billionaires financing them, you find that the rich people are even more insane than their pet nutters.
Some of the names to look into are Stephen Heintz, Julia Middleton, Muna AbuSulayman, Alwaleed bin Talal, Wadah Khanfar, George Soros, Carlos Slim, Farah Pandith, Eric Schmidt, Jared Cohen, Qatar Investment Authority, Arcus Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Annie E. Casey Foundation, that's just off the top of my head. I don't have access to my research at the moment. Look into how much money they control and then go laugh at anyone who complains about the Koch brothers, the Mercers, or Sheldon Adelson influencing politics.
You're not hearing about this in the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, BBC, etc, because they run these outlets. All of the big social media, Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia, etc, are partnered with them to censor their content so no one will hear a bad word about them. Google and Microsoft are working on algorithms to do it automatically.
Ooh, ooh, what if you actually did some research instead of just making stuff up?
Energy payback for solar panels is 1-4 years: https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04...
Energy payback for wind turbines is 5-8 months: https://www.sciencedaily.com/r...
Electric vehicles (or hydrogen vehicles if you're into that) don't make much sense if you run them off of coal, but they make a lot of sense if you charge them with wind or solar power. There is no other way to drive a car without emitting lots of greenhouse gases, gobbling up lots of scarce farmland (i.e., chopping down forests), or using up the surprisingly scarce supply of uranium.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Seriously--there is no AI. Everyone who thinks humans suck at everything because they themselves suck at everything can just get over it. You're not a representative sample of human capability and there is no such thing as AI. There are clever algorithms that make decidedly un-clever people think they're dealing with intelligence greater than themselves, but that's it. Now, for some people that would be a true statement, but for many of those people they're dealing with a greater intelligence when they're in the same room as a golden retriever or a clever 4 year old. That AI is routinely sold to people with the emotional intelligence of 2 year olds (most modern day CEOs) is a failure of our economy, not brilliance on the part of machines.
This gave me a good chuckle. It's always amusing when people from the left or right try and explain the other side and get it completely wrong.
Newsflash to every extremist on either side: no political ideology is completely wrong or completely right. They all get somethings right and somethings wrong, and the same ideology doesn't always work in every situation and every society.
Get over yourselves. As with most things, the best solution is often somewhere in the between what the extremists from either side espouse. Stop demonizing or regaling people based on their political preferences.
Hey, if I give up my extremist views then the middle will no longer be the middle, it will be somewhere on THEIR side of the line.... No way am I giving up ground to THEM....
At least, that's how I imagine the extremists view things. Being fiscally conservative and socially liberal, I'm fairly close to the center. My problem is that none of the political parties are fiscally conservative. They all want to spend money and are just arguing over the pile...