This doesn't use RF waves (that would mean they were EM waves with frequency in the radio spectrum) per-se. Rather it uses the same effect you can see illustrated with a balloon and someone's hair. Take the balloon and rub it on a shirt and hold it near the hair. The hair should start lifting up to try and touch the balloon even if it never touches it - sending a signal. Also note how it only works when the balloon is really close to the hair and not on the other side of the head. Basically think of that. Not the same thing from a EM perspective as this tech uses since that is static charge, but it is still capacitive and illustrates to a layman how the concept works.
This would be a replacement because more and more of a processor is not "processing". Its largely cache and now starting to do these ancillary functions. All these additions, yes, improve performance. That is at the cost of silicon space. Since the silicon must be perfectly free from defects for a good chip to be produced, the larger the chip the more likely that there will be unpreventable manufacturing defects.
This is the real issue. If you could break processors into smaller parts, you could dedicate more space to processing data and control circuitry to make that processing more efficient. That is what motherboards do, but at the cost of slow or shared communication with the other chips due to the lack of available connections and thus bandwidth. This technique avoids those problems. It has its own problems, but every technology has its strengths and weaknesses.
This isn't about repairing motherboards. Actually its about replacing them. Think of the AMD 64. It has a memory controller built in for speed because there aren't enough physical connections to attach a second chip and have it have enough bandwidth. With this, the entire surface of the chip could be filled with thousands of transmitters. Basically, a motherboard is just an extension for the processor so that it can talk with its other important peripherals. Its a bit of an oversimplification, but basically this tech will eventually allow the motherboard to be slowly merged into the individual components.
The solution to these problems are simple: you make the transmitters low enough power that they dont interfere with each other. From the Sun document I believe that the total power of each individual transmitter was on the order of 1-10 picojoules. That is precisely the reason alignment is such a prime concern - if the chips shift you have the wrong transmitters talking to the wrong receiver.
The thing is cache latency is still for the most part pretty huge. With pipelines as deep as they are, the cache needs to be really huge to prevent stalls that will totally obliterate performance. Now, if you are able to separate the cache physically while not being restricted in the bandwidth between the external cache and processor by a lack of physical pins and the need for arbitration from other chips (the reason why external cache was so terribly slow) by using capacitive connections, well... the game has changed substantially.
A lot of the reason CPUs have become more and more integrated is simply due to the fact that connecting multiple chips together is the simple fact that there are not enough connections available to keep them separate _and_ fast.
I think it would be awesome to have the "chip clip". Think of an semi auto magazine with power rails. You slide the chips in like bullets, power it up, and then watch the thing melt itself from the power dissipation.... oh well. Still would be cool to have an "AK-2004" mod computer.
Im pretty sure thats nothing like what we need. We have protocols for short range RF communication that dont require careful alignment of the transmitter and receiver. Thats old hat. But to do what sun and other companies are proposing you would require a few dedicated chips for every few connections between individual components. The advantages of requiring alignment is allowing very low power since you dont need a strong signal and not requiring any sort of arbitration. Sort of like whispering a question to your neighbor in a classroom instead of raising your hand, waiting, and asking the professor what the last word of the last slide was.
Umm... you do realize this is referring to the NX (no execute) extension of the CPU right? It merely means that if you are running SP2 you will be able to utilize this hardware feature of the processor. Linux also has support of this in all recent 2.6 kernels.
Good pun, becuase the Europeans are feeling pretty saturnine after their spectacularly unspectacular lander successes.
Also, could make a joke about France & Germany and having no balls stemming from the derivation of the word saturnine but shall refrain for decorum's sake.
On the continuing hunt for life on Mars, the leading (and quite suspect) NASA scientist had this to say:
"They used ammonia.... that means that none of this is any good! Even if we do get suspects we got nothing on them! FUCK!"
In other news there have been popular calls for these renegade life forms to set up colonies "on every major planet."
I can see you've never taken basic photonic physics or even and introductory EE course. Lasers are coherent radiation. Without some very inefficient, energy wasting filters, you will not be able to create a coherent laser from a non-coherent source.
Actually the prime directive is kind of bastardly. Letting species die because of incurable disease is not really nice. Think anyone on earth would be pissed after we meet our new alien overlords and they say, "Yeah. We coulda cured AIDS and cancer, but, we didn't want to bother you." The appropriate response: "...." *gunshot*
That would be the planet Kashyyk. Now, the presence of wookies on Endor would not make sense. But there is Chewbacca on Endor. Therefore France must quit surrendering to the beowulf cluster of our linux alien overlords and acquit OJ.
Really though. Do teachers even need to teach the existence of more planets? Every child who has gone through fifth grade science would assume there are other planets -- a scientifically flawed induction, but oftentimes simple intuitions tend to be at least partially accurate.
You only hav 50 gigs of porn? I have a beowulf cluster of beowulf clusers of RAID 0+1 disks in order to store all of mine -- and Im about ready to upgrade.
I agree that for most model rocketry restrictions like these are draconian and stupid. But from the article "Today, thousands of people fly model rockets that range in size from about 12 inches to more than 30 feet tall." Now. That covers quite a range there. A 30 foot tall rocket should almost certainly have some restrictions to it, no? Once you get to 2 feet it length you can start thinking of homemade RPGs. A complete stretch, but one illustrating a point that not all model rockets are squirt guns. A 1/100th model is pretty small, but a 1/10 model can be pretty fucking huge.
Of course this same argument can be made for anything. I mean making a basic gun is easy -- long tube, black powder, and a projectile. Sure, it'll be inaccurate and the range will be crap, but the same thinking goes. Ultimately nothing can be totally prevented, but it just putting up barriers.
As far as rocketry goes, if these type of regulations were put on other types of explosives (they are) there would be no fuss. It is just because it impacts something near and dear to our hearts that it seems so intolerable.
Think of the complaints people made for sport shooting and hunting when gun restrictions (something most slashdotters seem to embrace) were enacted. Same basic premise, completely different reaction from the slashdot crowd.
Slashdot Mirror
"Perfectly usable"... VAX... VMS... hahaha hhahaaahahhahaha. Good. Got that out of my system.
HA HAHAHAHAH!
This doesn't use RF waves (that would mean they were EM waves with frequency in the radio spectrum) per-se. Rather it uses the same effect you can see illustrated with a balloon and someone's hair. Take the balloon and rub it on a shirt and hold it near the hair. The hair should start lifting up to try and touch the balloon even if it never touches it - sending a signal. Also note how it only works when the balloon is really close to the hair and not on the other side of the head. Basically think of that. Not the same thing from a EM perspective as this tech uses since that is static charge, but it is still capacitive and illustrates to a layman how the concept works.
This would be a replacement because more and more of a processor is not "processing". Its largely cache and now starting to do these ancillary functions. All these additions, yes, improve performance. That is at the cost of silicon space. Since the silicon must be perfectly free from defects for a good chip to be produced, the larger the chip the more likely that there will be unpreventable manufacturing defects.
This is the real issue. If you could break processors into smaller parts, you could dedicate more space to processing data and control circuitry to make that processing more efficient. That is what motherboards do, but at the cost of slow or shared communication with the other chips due to the lack of available connections and thus bandwidth. This technique avoids those problems. It has its own problems, but every technology has its strengths and weaknesses.
This isn't about repairing motherboards. Actually its about replacing them. Think of the AMD 64. It has a memory controller built in for speed because there aren't enough physical connections to attach a second chip and have it have enough bandwidth. With this, the entire surface of the chip could be filled with thousands of transmitters. Basically, a motherboard is just an extension for the processor so that it can talk with its other important peripherals. Its a bit of an oversimplification, but basically this tech will eventually allow the motherboard to be slowly merged into the individual components.
The solution to these problems are simple: you make the transmitters low enough power that they dont interfere with each other. From the Sun document I believe that the total power of each individual transmitter was on the order of 1-10 picojoules. That is precisely the reason alignment is such a prime concern - if the chips shift you have the wrong transmitters talking to the wrong receiver.
The thing is cache latency is still for the most part pretty huge. With pipelines as deep as they are, the cache needs to be really huge to prevent stalls that will totally obliterate performance. Now, if you are able to separate the cache physically while not being restricted in the bandwidth between the external cache and processor by a lack of physical pins and the need for arbitration from other chips (the reason why external cache was so terribly slow) by using capacitive connections, well... the game has changed substantially.
A lot of the reason CPUs have become more and more integrated is simply due to the fact that connecting multiple chips together is the simple fact that there are not enough connections available to keep them separate _and_ fast.
I think it would be awesome to have the "chip clip". Think of an semi auto magazine with power rails. You slide the chips in like bullets, power it up, and then watch the thing melt itself from the power dissipation.... oh well. Still would be cool to have an "AK-2004" mod computer.
Im pretty sure thats nothing like what we need. We have protocols for short range RF communication that dont require careful alignment of the transmitter and receiver. Thats old hat. But to do what sun and other companies are proposing you would require a few dedicated chips for every few connections between individual components. The advantages of requiring alignment is allowing very low power since you dont need a strong signal and not requiring any sort of arbitration. Sort of like whispering a question to your neighbor in a classroom instead of raising your hand, waiting, and asking the professor what the last word of the last slide was.
Meanwhile in the NASA server room the doom phrase "contingency procedures" was heard over the intercom.
Umm... you do realize this is referring to the NX (no execute) extension of the CPU right? It merely means that if you are running SP2 you will be able to utilize this hardware feature of the processor. Linux also has support of this in all recent 2.6 kernels.
ASPs... very dangerous..... You go first.
At the end of WWI they were merely testicularly wounded (and darn mad about it), but by the end of WWII they were full fledged geldings :-)
Good pun, becuase the Europeans are feeling pretty saturnine after their spectacularly unspectacular lander successes.
Also, could make a joke about France & Germany and having no balls stemming from the derivation of the word saturnine but shall refrain for decorum's sake.
On the continuing hunt for life on Mars, the leading (and quite suspect) NASA scientist had this to say: "They used ammonia.... that means that none of this is any good! Even if we do get suspects we got nothing on them! FUCK!"
In other news there have been popular calls for these renegade life forms to set up colonies "on every major planet."
I can see you've never taken basic photonic physics or even and introductory EE course. Lasers are coherent radiation. Without some very inefficient, energy wasting filters, you will not be able to create a coherent laser from a non-coherent source.
Voyager or DS9 movies??? Yeah. I would pay to see those characters killed off.
Actually the prime directive is kind of bastardly. Letting species die because of incurable disease is not really nice. Think anyone on earth would be pissed after we meet our new alien overlords and they say, "Yeah. We coulda cured AIDS and cancer, but, we didn't want to bother you." The appropriate response: "...." *gunshot*
Do those plantes orbit the binary star system Gin and Juice?
That would be the planet Kashyyk. Now, the presence of wookies on Endor would not make sense. But there is Chewbacca on Endor. Therefore France must quit surrendering to the beowulf cluster of our linux alien overlords and acquit OJ.
Really though. Do teachers even need to teach the existence of more planets? Every child who has gone through fifth grade science would assume there are other planets -- a scientifically flawed induction, but oftentimes simple intuitions tend to be at least partially accurate.
You only hav 50 gigs of porn? I have a beowulf cluster of beowulf clusers of RAID 0+1 disks in order to store all of mine -- and Im about ready to upgrade.
Right... out of which approximately 4 can afford the price tag :-/
"becoming partners"...
And as everyone knows the porn industry will have this technology in widespread use 10.5 microseconds after it becomes commercially available.
Rotate 28 degrees. Engage rotor.
I agree that for most model rocketry restrictions like these are draconian and stupid. But from the article "Today, thousands of people fly model rockets that range in size from about 12 inches to more than 30 feet tall." Now. That covers quite a range there. A 30 foot tall rocket should almost certainly have some restrictions to it, no? Once you get to 2 feet it length you can start thinking of homemade RPGs. A complete stretch, but one illustrating a point that not all model rockets are squirt guns. A 1/100th model is pretty small, but a 1/10 model can be pretty fucking huge.
Of course this same argument can be made for anything. I mean making a basic gun is easy -- long tube, black powder, and a projectile. Sure, it'll be inaccurate and the range will be crap, but the same thinking goes. Ultimately nothing can be totally prevented, but it just putting up barriers.
As far as rocketry goes, if these type of regulations were put on other types of explosives (they are) there would be no fuss. It is just because it impacts something near and dear to our hearts that it seems so intolerable.
Think of the complaints people made for sport shooting and hunting when gun restrictions (something most slashdotters seem to embrace) were enacted. Same basic premise, completely different reaction from the slashdot crowd.