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How Many Computers Does the World Need? (ft.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: It is almost a decade since Rick Rashid, then head of research at Microsoft, posed that question and ventured his own answer: no more than a few, at least to handle the vast majority of the planet's digital workload. Back then, he thought, it was possible to discern the emergence of a small group of companies that would run those computers. The give-away was that a fifth of all the servers sold in the world were already being purchased by a clutch of US tech groups that included Amazon, Google and Microsoft.
[...] Of course, "how many" is a trick question when it comes to the distributed computing systems being built by today's tech giants. There are many nodes to these octopus-like systems, each with its own silicon brain and information-processing capabilities. But they are connected to a greater whole. One sign of just how far their tentacles are starting to reach came this week with Google's announcement that it has designed an AI chip to run in smartphones and other devices. Google's TPUs -- processors that are optimised to both train deep-learning algorithms and then apply them to make inferences from new data -- are already a key part of its data centre infrastructure. The new low-power version of the TPU can make inferences in "edge" devices, far from the computing core, and will be an important element in making sense of the world's data.
[...] The rise of the global computers raises many questions, but two stand out: will they comprise a truly competitive market, or come to look like the more Balkanised "platform" markets in the consumer world? And what will it mean for so much computing power to be concentrated in a handful of private companies? The good news is that the cloud landscape is shaping up to be a competitive one, at least if competition can be said to truly exist between oligarchs.
[...] Of course, "how many" is a trick question when it comes to the distributed computing systems being built by today's tech giants. There are many nodes to these octopus-like systems, each with its own silicon brain and information-processing capabilities. But they are connected to a greater whole. One sign of just how far their tentacles are starting to reach came this week with Google's announcement that it has designed an AI chip to run in smartphones and other devices. Google's TPUs -- processors that are optimised to both train deep-learning algorithms and then apply them to make inferences from new data -- are already a key part of its data centre infrastructure. The new low-power version of the TPU can make inferences in "edge" devices, far from the computing core, and will be an important element in making sense of the world's data.
[...] The rise of the global computers raises many questions, but two stand out: will they comprise a truly competitive market, or come to look like the more Balkanised "platform" markets in the consumer world? And what will it mean for so much computing power to be concentrated in a handful of private companies? The good news is that the cloud landscape is shaping up to be a competitive one, at least if competition can be said to truly exist between oligarchs.
oughtta be enough for anyone.
Table-ized A.I.
Article is paywalled.
Also, define "need." We could go back to the client (dumb terminal)/server centralized model of computing, but even the "dumb terminals" are computers in this day and age.
And not everyone wants to hand their private data over to a megalith like Microsoft, Google, or Amazon, so there's a place for computing devices that don't HAVE to act as terminals.
I mean, you could always take Uber, be recorded, tracked, and advertised to. But sometimes, you just need to drive that red Barchetta on a winding mountain road.
That is all.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Just one computer, and everyone has to share.
42 computers is The Answer...
One granted from employer for work
One for home - connected to the internet
Another one for home - to be never connected online, disconnected from any network
...define "need".
Maybe double or treble that for all the industrial devices, server farms, infrastructure. And all the stuff we take for granted.
So in total, probably a few TRILLION is a good guess.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
F...Forty-two?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
If there was some freak incident that knocked out every computer on the planet and prevented us from building more, there would be widespread chaos, yes -- but our civilization would recover from that and manage to thrive again regardless.
In many ways we've become too dependent on computers in one form or another, and spend way too much time paying attention to them instead of everything else. In many ways, we'd be better off if there were fewer of them than there are right now. Just eliminating smartphones alone would solve a number of problems we're having right now.
As-is, the question posed by this article is absurd; there's no rational answer for it.
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
–– Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943
The answer is always.....
Just one more than I currently have.
So, if you apply the same logic to the rest of the world, we need at least one more for each of us.
Joking aside.. How many? I don't know, but you will be able to tell you are approaching the right number when folks stop buying and manufacturers stop building them. Which basically says, more than we have now and are likely to have built any time soon.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Three computers for Elven-kings under the sky.
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone.
Nine for mortal men doomed to die.
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the shadows lie.
One computer to rule them all, one computer to find them
One computer to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them.
In the Land of Mordor where the shadows lie.
Article is paywalled.
Also, define "need." We could go back to the client (dumb terminal)/server centralized model of computing, but even the "dumb terminals" are computers in this day and age.
And not everyone wants to hand their private data over to a megalith like Microsoft, Google, or Amazon, so there's a place for computing devices that don't HAVE to act as terminals.
I mean, you could always take Uber, be recorded, tracked, and advertised to. But sometimes, you just need to drive that red Barchetta on a winding mountain road.
Also, the summary implies the article is stupid.
If, and I mean if, this is the sort of question to ask, it would ask how much computing does the world need. Computers run the gamut of speed from slow to fast, and capabilities from microcontroller to high-end server.
Not to mention the capabilities of a display adapter used for rendering or as a general-purpose parallel computing device.
From the viewpoint of information theory, all computers are equivalent in the sense that they can be shown equivalent to a universal turing machine, so the question isn't even definable in the mathematical sense, but we could assign an arbitrary measure and time scale to make it meaningful to humans.
For example, "millions of 8-bit additions per second" sounds like a reasonable low-level measurement (compare to "mm", for instance).
Then one could ask "how much computing does the world need".
And now we need to define "need". Just about every electronic device you can purchase today has an embedded microcontroller with a fixed program. Clocks and watches have little computers inside them.
All cars need computers to manage their inner workings, and most of the world doesn't own a car but would like to. The average car has about 30 computers.
Has that been included in the calculations?
Computer time used to be metered. To take a course in college you were allocated a (generous for the application) number of CPU minutes to do your homework (both computer and non-computer classes). To do a study you were allocated a number of CPU minutes to use for the calculations.
Today, compute time is so cheap we don't to meter it - we meter the amount of electricity that is used, or the annoyance of keeping the hardware running.
How much computing would people use if they had access to an unlimited supply?
We don't really know, because we're still on the leading edge of the bell curve. We yet to saturate even one person's use of computing - we still don't have ubiquitous AI in self-driving cars and factories.
Article is stupid. It's impossible to answer the question today, and they're even asking the wrong questions.
In the 1990's, they said that Bill Gates didn't 'get' the Internet. And it sounds like most of the minions of the big companies still don't. I have a server in my basement and symmetrical fiber bandwidth to my house. I'll handle my own e-mail and host my own cat videos.
Have gnu, will travel.
Half a dozen is enough ...
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
It will be what it will be and whether we understand it or not is irrelevant to the course of technology in the world today.
E Proelio Veritas.
If you define a single "computer" as any device that performs computations that's ever been connected, or ever WILL be connected to another device (including through computing proxies like humans). Since SOMETHING must interact with the computer, eventually that means all "computers" will be inter-linked in some way, creating "one computer".
This definition is absurd of course. But it underlies the absurdity of calling a bunch of connected computers by a network (i.e. cloud computing) "a single computer".
That depends greatly on hoew yoy define computer, do wy coung evry gps reciever engein cpntroll unit etc, etc or are we only desktops/laptops/tablers/servers ie whet 99% of non slashdot readers think of as computers, and yes I could have pickrd way more exampels in the first category beadicly any embeded system you can think of.
No, really. Define it first.
My car has like 5 main computers and even more microcontrollers and smart sensors. My apple watch could be considered a computer. Same with my cell phone, my tablet, and the raspberry pi that I use to run PiHole on my home network. My router is a linux computer. My Smart TVs really are their own computers, not to mention the Roku boxes, ChromeCast, Fire Sticks, etc. My kid's got electronic games that contain their own little computers.
A dumb terminal talking to an Amazon or Microsoft cloud? Technically, each of those would still be some form of a computer.
Stupid question really.
The correct answer, of course, is the same as the answer to "how many guns do you need?"
"As many as I can afford," which really translates to "as many as my wife will let me get away with."
No more than 6!
there is a one computer, one person, and one dog. the person's job is to feed the dog. the dog's job is ensure the person never, ever touches the computer.
nothing to see here - move along
...and it remains a stupid question now. This is one of those "The Cloud Will Take Over Everything" navel gazing questions.
Computers are smaller, cheaper, and more powerful than ever. We've gotten them down to the size of smartphones and sold billions of them that way. If you make a viable voice interface and remove the screen & keyboard, you could shrink them to the size of a ring, a watch or a broach.
It's not that the Cloud isn't useful, it's that this is a dumb concept; the idea of turning your back on the power, flexibility and capability of the distributed computing model. Like the Internet itself, the Cloud should be viewed as a "goes great with your local computer" concept, not as a replacement for distributed computing.
But sure. Turn your back on the marvels and power of small, affordable computing devices. Why? So that some concept-driven schmuck can make a name for themselves. Then 10 years later they can revive the whole pointless debate and explain why it hasn't happened yet (Tip: the answer is always, Tech Luddites Foiled My Beautiful Plan!). Repeat every 10 years until eternity, mixing it up with differing flawed concepts now and again.
Software developers already know the answer: Zero, one, or infinity
0: we probably don't strictly "need" computers.
1: we could have one big one that we all time slice. Our current political and economic system wouldn't tolerate single ownership of all computing. (sorry Google!)
infinity: really this means (k * N). it's the current model we're following, factor k is probably a small integer. N is number of human beings currently alive.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
The internet 3.0 will run on eos.
1 computer per body cell should do it...
Each of us should carry no less than 5 computers at all times, like a sensible person.
... permanently. The reason "platforms" like steam exist is because the outrage at videogame theft couldn't reach these companies. Consumers don't have any power anymore now that products can be held hostage on servers on the other side of the internet. Companies are re-engineering the internet to obey them and turn it into a dumb network for consumers.
The same way gabe newell half life when he inserted DRM into it, DRM would have been removed if we had portal tech and could storm his offices way back in the day and prevent his billion dollar trojan horse criminal heist of videogame software.
The reason "platforms" exist is because the internet has allowed companies the ability to steal and defraud the worlds consumers from the safety of their offices. If I can release a piece of software and keep part of it on my computer while the worlds millions of customers are hundreds of miles away, what am I? An asshole.
The reason companies got away with this shit is because the internet allows those who control the means of software production to steal at the point of production. AKA they have the market over a barrel so its not a market, otherwise customers would force these companies to release the software they've stolen and called a "platform".
The world -needs- zero computers. We were doing just fine before the first one was invented, so we don't really need them.
But how many computers does the world want? Now that's a question. I've literally lost count of how many I interact with on a daily basis. I mean, I could count the obvious ones: my desktop PC, my server PC, my smartphone. But then there's the less obvious ones.. My microwave has a computer in it, so does my clock-radio, and my stereo amplifier. My car has numerous computers in it, I don't even know how many. Even my coffee maker has a computer in it! Not a very good one, but we didn't put a qualifier of how good a computer has to be to count. Glancing around I have a couple remote controls for TV and stereo. Computers again.
The Internet Of Useless Things says we need even more things to be computers.
Like a hammer.
Or a screwdriver.
Or a glass for drinking with.
If it's not a computer, it's useless.
(brought to you by The Council To Make You Install Our Silicon Overlords Everywhere And Become Serfs)
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
n/t
TPU thinks you!
I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.
- Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer.
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They are a convenience and entertainment but not a necessity.
There is only one appropriate answer to people who ask the various "how many do you need" questions because their real question is "how may i restrict you to my satisfaction?"
The answer is: Fuck off.
Oh, really?
For a start, every piece of farm machinery would stop working. Going to get hungry by and by.
And then there's the fact that pretty much every piece of machinery in every factory would stop working. So we're not building any new equipment for a while.
Trains, ditto. Ships. Automobiles. Nothing works, and nothing can be repaired into workable condition. You can't even call someone to tell them you have a problem, since the phone system is gone forever...
And, yes, you'd lose electricity till you rebuilt the entire system. With 1940's technology....
Our civilization might survive. After most of humanity died off, and we rebuilt back to pre-1940 tech....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Designed by Deep Thought to calculate the ultimate question.
It depends on if they are going to kill the planet to get 1 1000 of cent more profit or 1 10,000 of a cent more profit.
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Well, clearly and objectively you'd be one of the ones running around like a chicken with your head cut off, waving your arms in abject panic, being part of the problem instead of part of the solution. Meanwhile, people who can keep their heads and who know how to do things would be working to alleviate the situation -- assuming that is people like, apparently, you, weren't getting in the way. :-)
Was that computers? Or copy machines?
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Sure, but I had read (a long time ago) that quote applying to copy machines. Who knows, too much trouble to try and do the research to figure it out :)