PCs hit top speeds in under 20 years!

[etherealrhythm]

hey all,

i was watching a program on UK TV the other day - some gadget/technology show, and heard some scary news...

modern processing power is only going to keep increasing for around another 20 years, scientists believe. after that, it is impossible to scale technology down any furhter, heat becomes a bigger issue, we hit a ceiling, and we're :banana::banana::banana::banana:ed.

arguably the human race's most rapidly evolving asset - electronic technology - stops. scary thought.

but apparently, scientists are already working on new, radically different technologies than the processors we are used to, check it...

/chemical reactions that perform calculations/!!!
i dont even want to know how that works.

drone over, just some food for thought.

[Kadaj]

they must be talking about modern CMOS processor technology. Since there are many other technologies to perform caculations that processors do. Such as fiber optic processors (acutaly have one working in australia) Molecular transistors(well.. dosent acutaly perform caculations, but is apart of sub-nano processors), and of corse, the elusive quantum computer (several simple ones in existance)

[Rukee]

with the advancements that`s been made in CPUs in just the last 3 yrs alone, it`s scary to think with growing tech helping to create the next tech what CPUs will be in 20yrs.

[Der_KHAN]

well i guess they will be as superior to the fx57 as the fx57 is superior to the 286 with 12.5MHz :D

... which was the fastest available pc cpu in '85 i believe

[angra]

Could you really get a 286 in '85? I got my first PC related computer in...1990, and it was a 386.

Anyway, the end of Moore's Law has been predicted since the "law" was first pronounced. There are always seemingly indominable roadblocks looming just over the horizon, but there always seem to be heroes just around the corner to find a way to get past them.

[Der_KHAN]

the 80286 with 8mhz was launched already in '82 and in oct '85 the 386 taped out

Intel Museum - Microprocessor Hall of Fame (http://www.intel.com/museum/online/hist_micro/hof/)

[Altieri]

Were they including quantum computation, or just modern 'as we know it' processing power? If it was relating to 'as we know it' processing power, then I agree. If it was including quantum computation, then they are completely incorrect.

[Daveb2012]

technology will never hit a wall for long I gurantee it. You can expect to look foward to new inventions for the rest of your life. Just like Kadaj said, if the CMOS processor hits a wall then it will be cycled out for some thing new. Kind of like the gasoline vs hybrid engine, in 100 years gasoline engines will be scarce im willing to bet.

[etherealrhythm]

yeah im sure it meant "as we know it" processing power. and yeah, its gonna be cycled out - as i said, scientists are already working on reactions between chemicals that can used to perform calculations, however that works. i dont want to think.

[einCe]

damn i gotta reset my bios...what was that again? .....water.....salt...bleach......and honey. wait NOOO i just fried my ram!

[[XC] leviathan18]

in 5 year we dont know what ppl is going to discover even next year....

[Northwood]

if the power of computers ever reaches a peak which it cannot pass, then the way code is understood can be changed and optimised to perform better on that hardware, simplify things in other words.