For many systems you can make away with dedicated PLC and use something like TwinCAT - turn your windows PC into PLC and have everything in one box with as much oomph and memory as a PLC could ever want. Of course for the particular system it must be acceptable that when windows goes belly up so does the PLC, doesn't happen all that often but it will happen eventually.
Chinese mentality is to save money at any cost. Example, I had to spend some time repairing a machine doing some wiring. The toolbox didn't have a wire stripper, I had to make do scissors, they do bloody everything with scissors if they can. So I told the local guys, wtf, go buy some wire strippers, they come back with the shittiest pair you have ever seen. I ask wtf, how much did you pay for these, 40yuan. And why didn't you just buy better ones? Back home decent pair would be maybe 50 euros or so, the answer was, oh I would never buy so expensive tools. I had to carefully explain that the time spent fixing the machine cost way north of 50 euros and a good tool would have payed for itself that very first time it was used, don't think the local guys quite got it. Sometimes I wonder how the bloody hell can Chinese manage their own space program.
Considering that 56 qubit computer has been simulated on a supercomputer its no wonder you don't hear faster than classical news yet. Any quantum computer with less than 56 qubits, that supercomputer can beat it.
You could say that One Time Pad is symmetric encryption that is unbreakable with infinite CPU resources, that's semantics tho as OTP needs a single use key with length equal or greater than message and I think deserves a category all of it's own.
I would point out that Bitcoin has popped, quite a few times by now. It doesn't zero out tho and keeps coming back. In fact, can someone point out a cryptocurrency that has crashed, completely zeroed out and winked out of existence?
Yes, quantum computer is not a replacement for classical computers, but it should be able to do few things classical computers will never be able to do, provided good enough quantum computer and good enough algorithms.
There are many ways to build something you can call "quantum computer" not all are equal and actually do the same thing, number of qubits is not all, what operations you can actually do with them matters.
Nope, you can easily simulate 30 qubits on home computer, 49 qubits, not so much. If a quantum computer has enough qubits that no classical computer could ever simulate it, then it's useful because it can do some things classical computer will never be able to do. That limit is thought to be around 50 qubits. The whole fura over quantum computers is that it can bring down computational complexity for some problems, not reduce it to zero and break all the encryption in the world, but bring it down nevertheless and it's a huge thing for some problems making the difference between computable and non-computable. Taking advantage of a quantum computer and doing something useful with it is obviously huge pain in the rear, but with this new machine by Intel we just might start hearing a few interesting successes soon.
Most people are probably okay drivers most of the time
Fixed that for you. Human driving ability is not constant, a guy can be totally ok driver one day and piss drunk the next, fiddle with his cellphone at completely the wrong time etc, a robot at least performs consistently. Its not your regular driving that kills you, its your worst moments that do and everyone has them every now and then.
Yeah... that factory is just an operator looking at pornsite away from shutdown, hard lesson to learn, but you'll cut the cord when it happens, restore the machines and continue. Its not the hacker you need to fear, but just the regular old viruses that try to sell you penile enlargement pills and crash everything while they are at it. Question, when did you last stop the production in order to apply windows updates? What's that I hear, never in the last 10 years?
Anything dangerous has hardware failsafes. If you didn't have that the programmers would blow up the factory by accident, no hackers needed. Plus you can't get access over internet, if you could the viruses would have gotten there first, all industrial automation runs outdated windows, no updates ever. To actually mess with industrial automation instead of just faulting it out as any random virus could, you need to be on the level of Stuxnet creators and have your personal spy agency to do the homework on the machinery for you.
All else being equal? Sure. But if there is a 10min queue at the cashier and no queue at self checkout? Stores adjust how many cashiers are working to always have a slight queue both to minimize labor costs and in the hopes that the customer makes a last minute impulse buy from small items and sweets placed near the cashier.
In China McDonalds has these order placing touch screens and they don't look like that, and generally in china things are dirty and run down. If even chinese can manage west should have no problems.
If you do the totals you get the same answer regardless, self service cashiers work out even in countries with 2-3x smaller minimum wage. You still need some cashiers to overseer the mechanical slaves, deal with customers experiencing technophobia or buying booze and tobacco.
FPGA is exactly what you are talking about, and yes you can do all that with an FPGA, in many cases with significant performance boost over CPU, while underperforming a true purpose built chip. Its costly though and hardly a panacea you are imagining it to be, it is being done in many cases nevertheless. Powerful routers are a good example, that is exactly how they are built. The technology you are talking about exists and is in fact used in some cases, but its not as all powerful as you imagine it to be and is expensive, thus it's not in every generic PC.
Just buy a FPGA on PCI board, integrating one on CPU is moronic. And its not going to outperform a dedicated GPU for gaming etc. Or a dedicated crypto chip. Field programmability comes at a cost. Plus more powerful FPGA-s cost an arm and a leg, too much to have as an standard feature of regular PC. Even supercomputers don't generally bother with it, if you need raw compute power its usually faster and easier to buy it on cloud. FPGA-s are cool as frig, but they are not a universal fix to every problem.
I know a guy who designed his own CPU for the lulz, implemented on FPGA, if it was any good and he was willing to throw in megabucks he could have ordered it put on silicon too. Not much point in creating few decade old PIC equivalent chips tho. Chip design is not magic and yes people can just up and do it, getting it implemented with modern processes tho is expensive(in the realm of crowdfunding tho) and getting it implemented in bleeding edge Intel processes is basically impossible. But Moore's law is winding down and the gap between what Intel can do and what everyone else can do is reducing.
Oh yes you can and lots of people do it, it's not that different from writing programs really. The chip logic is written as code. Just having the chip logic doesn't get you latest and greatest CPU tho, having the manufacturing processes up to snuff is entirely different thing and major R&D effort, but that is completely separate from actual chip logic. Chip developer writes the logic, foundry handles the manufacturing process, Intel does both and it's the latter where they really earn their bread. You can take your chip logic to any foundry, but not all are equal on how latest and greatest their manufacturing process is and all of them lag behind Intel. Moore's law will eventually plateau tho and foundries will equalize on what is possible with silicon, then you can take your logic anywhere and get more or less same results. But we are not quite there yet.
Not every semiconductor foundry can make a modern CPU, you can get your hands on latest i7 IP but only Intel will have the foundry with equipment to make a equivalent chip out of it. When moore's law truly flattens out then rest of the semiconductor manufacturing might catch up and difference between a CPU and CPU will truly be just the IP.
Unless I have missed something it isn't exactly public knowledge what precicely the manufacturing bottleneck is, could be something major and pretty much unsolvable, or it could be relatively minor issue, no way to tell without insider information really. As for the competitiveness, well EV is pretty much a battery pack with wheels, being a battery manufacturer is a major advantage over other car manufacturers. Trying to manufacture EVs without being a battery manufacturer is like trying to manufacture normal cars without being able to manufacture the bloody engine.
The problem is that some people expect AI to be like something from sci-fi movie and happen to know that sci-fi AI and real world AI are nothing alike. For a layman it doesn't really matter, it's all magic anyway. "Deep learning neural networks" is a bit of a mouthful and doesn't get the point across as well as "AI", even if some people have unrealistic expectations about what AI is supposed to be. Complaining about it is nonsense semantics anyway, whatever you call it won't change what it is.
Being good for economy, being liked by nations or being particularly energy efficient are not among the reasons why cryptocurrency very much is taking off. It's taking off because people are greedy and bitcoin was built to spectacularly exploit it. And there is not much anyone can do to stop it short of turning off internet.
Slashdot Mirror
BSOD is not that much scarier than your regular power outage, with much the same results really.
Linux has pretty much zero footprint in industrial automation, if you have a full OS running somewhere its going to be windows.
For many systems you can make away with dedicated PLC and use something like TwinCAT - turn your windows PC into PLC and have everything in one box with as much oomph and memory as a PLC could ever want. Of course for the particular system it must be acceptable that when windows goes belly up so does the PLC, doesn't happen all that often but it will happen eventually.
Chinese mentality is to save money at any cost. Example, I had to spend some time repairing a machine doing some wiring. The toolbox didn't have a wire stripper, I had to make do scissors, they do bloody everything with scissors if they can. So I told the local guys, wtf, go buy some wire strippers, they come back with the shittiest pair you have ever seen. I ask wtf, how much did you pay for these, 40yuan. And why didn't you just buy better ones? Back home decent pair would be maybe 50 euros or so, the answer was, oh I would never buy so expensive tools. I had to carefully explain that the time spent fixing the machine cost way north of 50 euros and a good tool would have payed for itself that very first time it was used, don't think the local guys quite got it. Sometimes I wonder how the bloody hell can Chinese manage their own space program.
Considering that 56 qubit computer has been simulated on a supercomputer its no wonder you don't hear faster than classical news yet. Any quantum computer with less than 56 qubits, that supercomputer can beat it.
You could say that One Time Pad is symmetric encryption that is unbreakable with infinite CPU resources, that's semantics tho as OTP needs a single use key with length equal or greater than message and I think deserves a category all of it's own.
I would point out that Bitcoin has popped, quite a few times by now. It doesn't zero out tho and keeps coming back. In fact, can someone point out a cryptocurrency that has crashed, completely zeroed out and winked out of existence?
Yes, quantum computer is not a replacement for classical computers, but it should be able to do few things classical computers will never be able to do, provided good enough quantum computer and good enough algorithms.
There are many ways to build something you can call "quantum computer" not all are equal and actually do the same thing, number of qubits is not all, what operations you can actually do with them matters.
read your article "The resulting systems are not universal quantum computers capable of performing any calculation"
Nope, you can easily simulate 30 qubits on home computer, 49 qubits, not so much. If a quantum computer has enough qubits that no classical computer could ever simulate it, then it's useful because it can do some things classical computer will never be able to do. That limit is thought to be around 50 qubits. The whole fura over quantum computers is that it can bring down computational complexity for some problems, not reduce it to zero and break all the encryption in the world, but bring it down nevertheless and it's a huge thing for some problems making the difference between computable and non-computable. Taking advantage of a quantum computer and doing something useful with it is obviously huge pain in the rear, but with this new machine by Intel we just might start hearing a few interesting successes soon.
Most people are probably okay drivers most of the time
Fixed that for you. Human driving ability is not constant, a guy can be totally ok driver one day and piss drunk the next, fiddle with his cellphone at completely the wrong time etc, a robot at least performs consistently. Its not your regular driving that kills you, its your worst moments that do and everyone has them every now and then.
Yeah... that factory is just an operator looking at pornsite away from shutdown, hard lesson to learn, but you'll cut the cord when it happens, restore the machines and continue. Its not the hacker you need to fear, but just the regular old viruses that try to sell you penile enlargement pills and crash everything while they are at it.
Question, when did you last stop the production in order to apply windows updates? What's that I hear, never in the last 10 years?
Anything dangerous has hardware failsafes. If you didn't have that the programmers would blow up the factory by accident, no hackers needed. Plus you can't get access over internet, if you could the viruses would have gotten there first, all industrial automation runs outdated windows, no updates ever. To actually mess with industrial automation instead of just faulting it out as any random virus could, you need to be on the level of Stuxnet creators and have your personal spy agency to do the homework on the machinery for you.
All else being equal? Sure. But if there is a 10min queue at the cashier and no queue at self checkout? Stores adjust how many cashiers are working to always have a slight queue both to minimize labor costs and in the hopes that the customer makes a last minute impulse buy from small items and sweets placed near the cashier.
In China McDonalds has these order placing touch screens and they don't look like that, and generally in china things are dirty and run down. If even chinese can manage west should have no problems.
If you do the totals you get the same answer regardless, self service cashiers work out even in countries with 2-3x smaller minimum wage. You still need some cashiers to overseer the mechanical slaves, deal with customers experiencing technophobia or buying booze and tobacco.
FPGA is exactly what you are talking about, and yes you can do all that with an FPGA, in many cases with significant performance boost over CPU, while underperforming a true purpose built chip. Its costly though and hardly a panacea you are imagining it to be, it is being done in many cases nevertheless. Powerful routers are a good example, that is exactly how they are built. The technology you are talking about exists and is in fact used in some cases, but its not as all powerful as you imagine it to be and is expensive, thus it's not in every generic PC.
Just buy a FPGA on PCI board, integrating one on CPU is moronic. And its not going to outperform a dedicated GPU for gaming etc. Or a dedicated crypto chip. Field programmability comes at a cost. Plus more powerful FPGA-s cost an arm and a leg, too much to have as an standard feature of regular PC. Even supercomputers don't generally bother with it, if you need raw compute power its usually faster and easier to buy it on cloud. FPGA-s are cool as frig, but they are not a universal fix to every problem.
I know a guy who designed his own CPU for the lulz, implemented on FPGA, if it was any good and he was willing to throw in megabucks he could have ordered it put on silicon too. Not much point in creating few decade old PIC equivalent chips tho. Chip design is not magic and yes people can just up and do it, getting it implemented with modern processes tho is expensive(in the realm of crowdfunding tho) and getting it implemented in bleeding edge Intel processes is basically impossible. But Moore's law is winding down and the gap between what Intel can do and what everyone else can do is reducing.
Oh yes you can and lots of people do it, it's not that different from writing programs really. The chip logic is written as code. Just having the chip logic doesn't get you latest and greatest CPU tho, having the manufacturing processes up to snuff is entirely different thing and major R&D effort, but that is completely separate from actual chip logic. Chip developer writes the logic, foundry handles the manufacturing process, Intel does both and it's the latter where they really earn their bread. You can take your chip logic to any foundry, but not all are equal on how latest and greatest their manufacturing process is and all of them lag behind Intel. Moore's law will eventually plateau tho and foundries will equalize on what is possible with silicon, then you can take your logic anywhere and get more or less same results. But we are not quite there yet.
Not every semiconductor foundry can make a modern CPU, you can get your hands on latest i7 IP but only Intel will have the foundry with equipment to make a equivalent chip out of it. When moore's law truly flattens out then rest of the semiconductor manufacturing might catch up and difference between a CPU and CPU will truly be just the IP.
Unless I have missed something it isn't exactly public knowledge what precicely the manufacturing bottleneck is, could be something major and pretty much unsolvable, or it could be relatively minor issue, no way to tell without insider information really. As for the competitiveness, well EV is pretty much a battery pack with wheels, being a battery manufacturer is a major advantage over other car manufacturers. Trying to manufacture EVs without being a battery manufacturer is like trying to manufacture normal cars without being able to manufacture the bloody engine.
The problem is that some people expect AI to be like something from sci-fi movie and happen to know that sci-fi AI and real world AI are nothing alike. For a layman it doesn't really matter, it's all magic anyway. "Deep learning neural networks" is a bit of a mouthful and doesn't get the point across as well as "AI", even if some people have unrealistic expectations about what AI is supposed to be. Complaining about it is nonsense semantics anyway, whatever you call it won't change what it is.
Being good for economy, being liked by nations or being particularly energy efficient are not among the reasons why cryptocurrency very much is taking off. It's taking off because people are greedy and bitcoin was built to spectacularly exploit it. And there is not much anyone can do to stop it short of turning off internet.