The Future of Computing Performance: Game over or next level?

Source: http://fudzilla.com/

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A new report from the US National Research Council has warned that technology growth will grind to a halt unless a new generation of hardware and software is developed. The catchy-titled “The Future of Computing Performance: Game over or next level?” is packed full of bad news for the industry.

While microprocessors improved in speed by a factor of 10,000 during the 1980s and 1990s, two obstacles could mean computing power hitting a wall in the next decade, the report said.

While transistors have become ever smaller and more tightly packed, the speed at which microchips are clocked has levelled off, reaching around 3 gigahertz in 2005. That's because such fast chips generate too much heat to be used in smartphones and personal computers.

This plateau will kill Moore's law. While manufacturers have been fabricating two, four or eight microprocessor cores on a single chip to get around this hurdle, it is not enough the report warns. This is because the power efficiency of present transistors cannot be improved much more, and performance "will become limited by power consumption within a decade". It needs a yet-to-be-invented transistor architecture to save it.

Software is still behind hardware developments with multicore chips still not properly factored into designs. Software has to be designed to execute multiple tasks in parallel, rather than serially and few programs are up to this challenge.

But the report warns that converting the vast majority of software, written for serial execution, to work efficiently in parallel mode will be exceedingly difficult. It needs new software-engineering processes and tools. Programmers will need to be retrained, it warned.

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The signs are pretty obvious, though, for a few years...

Well I think we all knew that standard transistor based chips don't have much life expectancy left. I believe its around 11 or 12nm where the electrons tend to jump lanes because the distance between itself is so small.

Kinda gathered this was happening, hope it doesnt happen in my life time though hehe, By the look of how things are moving im suprised it will hit us in the next 5 years! ... Im pretty sure with millions of transistors on a chip they can think of a new idea to be able to continue the fashion..

It's allready hit us..

There's not much 'current' computing you can't do with ease on a 5 year old dual core PC..

That was not the case in the 80s, 90s or early 00s..

hmmmmmmmmmm i will wait and see

Yes, lazy programmers free lunch is over. No more program-something-poorly-and-hope-computers-will-be-able-to-handle-it-when-its-released.
However if the code/problem is easy to parallelize there is still a free lunch but the portion will converge to a fix size with more cores according to Amdahl's law.

Parallel code might be new for software developers but its basic for electrical engineers.

Related: EE vs. CS

has anyone noticed where this doom and gloom article comes from ???

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Originally Posted by Sn0wm@n

has anyone noticed where this doom and gloom article comes from ???

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http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12980

:rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by Sn0wm@n

has anyone noticed where this doom and gloom article comes from ???

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While I cannot say I have ever heard of the organization responsible for publishing the report, I can say with certainty that many of the committee members involved are what you'd considered experts in the field. Both sides, academia (William Dally & Mark Hill are those I'm familiar with) and industry (Intel/AMD/Nvidia/Google/etc.), are represented in the group.

Despite it appearing all doom and gloom to you, the issues at hand have been known for quite some time. The report is just summarizing them and recommending what could probably be defined as a national course of action, something targeted at policy makers. Mainly it comes down to advocating a better coordinated paradigm shift to (thread) parallelism, ideally through better education/research into algorithms, hardware and (power-)efficiency at all levels. Support is mentioned for specialized/heterogeneous computing resources as well.

Like some of the others have stated, nothing new here really.

Everything has an optimum size, power or usefulness to the consumer perhaps the PC has hit its optimum at least for the mainstream?

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Originally Posted by Easybeat

Everything has an optimum size, power or usefulness to the consumer perhaps the PC has hit its optimum at least for the mainstream?

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a 600$ laptop will be able to do anything and everything quite well soon enough. gaming, htpc, portability, etc. and thats at 32nm. add in OLED, no need for more than 4 cores on the cpu, the rest of the power can go toward gpu which means a 40W total laptop package will be even more gpu based, so battery life gets better, and gaming gets better, and GPGPU makes everything feel so much smoother and faster. we really might hit the point in 4 years where the home pc is as good as we need it, and they last for a >decade instead of <5 years.

however outside of that the need for more is always going to be there.

The article refers to the limits of our technology. Within a few years, when we get to it, we will need to find another path to keep pushing it. But that will require a huuuuge investment on many sides...

@Manicdan: don't think so. A mobile gpu rated @ 50W, to be as powerful as a GTX580 these days, will require an awesome integration node. Keep in mind that nowadays we can have more or less the power of a 4870 as a mobile gpu, but not much more. If you want to double that, or even more, we will need probably less than 22nm. So...not happening within this year (2011) nor probably next.

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Originally Posted by prava

@Manicdan: don't think so. A mobile gpu rated @ 50W, to be as powerful as a GTX580 these days, will require an awesome integration node. Keep in mind that nowadays we can have more or less the power of a 4870 as a mobile gpu, but not much more. If you want to double that, or even more, we will need probably less than 22nm. So...not happening within this year (2011) nor probably next.

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i was referring to what will be available for a laptop for mainstream that can work well for 90% of the population. a desktop will still be based on a max power envelope above 1KW where people can make a real gaming PC, i never inferred that a desktop would be useless after 22nm laptops come out

You know from time to time we get this kind of article. I have great faith in human ingenuity and I am certain that we will not hit a wall. This is not something new.

As ever, new discoveries will be made, new manufacturing processes will be invented. And don't forget as was mentioned above that there is a huge performance reservoir than can be tapped simply by writing better, a little more optimized software. Hardware has made such a rapid progress that there wasn't any incentive to optimize software.

Time will tell but I doubt we'll hit a technological wall for the foreseeable future.

we will move from silicon to something else once that happens, i think that its past 15nm we begin to reach the limits of silicon.

molded diamond transistors grown in vaccum FTW!

So that means that programmers will have to code more efficiently instead of writing 600mb drivers and 4GB word processing applications.

i think the age of silicon computing is about over but the soon to be future holds so much promise. replacing silicon with gallium arsenide, then eventually maybe even graphene in a decade. if you have been following IBM's recent breakthrough with photonics then we might not even need graphene in our chips :)

I wish the software industry would drive the hardware industry instead.
Wouldnt it be nice if we had software capable of being executed in 24 threads but not yet the processor to do it?
Then we could just be counting the weeks till a 24 thread processor came out to provide all that power.
I like that world more than 'we have a 24 thread processor but we need to make each core as fast as possible so we still run those 1 threaded codes faster'

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Originally Posted by VulgarHandle

molded diamond transistors grown in vaccum FTW!

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^THIS! Carbon based circuits are cheap and durable. They'll care less about modern heat and voltage constraints if what I read about them at Science Daily is correct.

I always chuckle when I see people bring up "Moore's Law" as if it were holy grail to the industry. It isn't and like everything else there will come a point where it's irrelevant.
Don't get me wrong, Mr Moore has my utmost respect and admiration but this "law" was from a certain timeand although technology has moved forward in that timeline there will come a time when it doesn't.
As to the future of computing I wish I was 40 years younger so I could get into the design end myself.
Fascinating business to be in. Challenges the mind to see what can be done.
I look at the guts of a 32nm chip and it boggles my mind to see what is possible.

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Originally Posted by Movieman

I always chuckle when I see people bring up "Moore's Law" as if it were holy grail to the industry. It isn't and like everything else there will come a point where it's irrelevant.
Don't get me wrong, Mr Moore has my utmost respect and admiration but this "law" was from a certain timeand although technology has moved forward in that timeline there will come a time when it doesn't.

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they should call it "Moores Average" how hard is it to count transistor increases of current tech and say the last few years was X, so the next few years can also be X

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Originally Posted by Movieman

I always chuckle when I see people bring up "Moore's Law" as if it were holy grail to the industry. It isn't and like everything else there will come a point where it's irrelevant.
Don't get me wrong, Mr Moore has my utmost respect and admiration but this "law" was from a certain timeand although technology has moved forward in that timeline there will come a time when it doesn't.
As to the future of computing I wish I was 40 years younger so I could get into the design end myself.
Fascinating business to be in. Challenges the mind to see what can be done.
I look at the guts of a 32nm chip and it boggles my mind to see what is possible.

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40yrs younger eh? so that would make you like 60 right?


:p::p:

Was nice to see you around, god_43... :p:

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Originally Posted by zalbard

Was nice to see you around, god_43... :p:

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lol i forgot about the banhammer...i plead temporary insanity....

:p:

on topic:

i see the future of computing as very bright, and i think visual computing is teh future.

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Originally Posted by god_43

we will move from silicon to something else once that happens, i think that its past 15nm we begin to reach the limits of silicon.

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Technology cant go on forever,well it can just gonna be hard to replace everything which we've been using for the last decade meaning there gonna have to figure out something new... Gonna come to a hault eventually..

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Originally Posted by Johnny87au

Technology cant go on forever,well it can just gonna be hard to replace everything which we've been using for the last decade meaning there gonna have to figure out something new... Gonna come to a hault eventually..

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technology has always had to work with what's available, and what's available has always changed due to technology

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Originally Posted by VulgarHandle

technology has always had to work with what's available, and what's available has always changed due to technology

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True that, Whats left to work with is becoming very limited, Mayb they might make transistors out of uranium ? :D ... only joshing ;)

Report fails in so many respects that it isn't funny.

1) The majority of code is serial because there is nothing to gain by going parallel. [How many threads does your favorite calculator program need?]
2) The applications where parallel code is of great benefit, has already gone multi-threaded [WCG anyone?]
3) 90% of the consumer market's demand for computing power, has reached a plain of sufficient processing power
4) the rest who actually have an ever growing need for processing power, will accept any level of power as long as more processing power is generated than the amount of energy consumed.

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Originally Posted by Dimitriman

I wish the software industry would drive the hardware industry instead.
Wouldnt it be nice if we had software capable of being executed in 24 threads but not yet the processor to do it?
Then we could just be counting the weeks till a 24 thread processor came out to provide all that power.
I like that world more than 'we have a 24 thread processor but we need to make each core as fast as possible so we still run those 1 threaded codes faster'

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Sigh.

Name 3 time critical programs which aren't properly multi threaded! There aren't any. ;)

There is no NEED to go faster. Why would there be? The trend is to go smaller and more efficient. Desktop shipments will go down as usual and netbook shipments will go up. We're yet to find the optimal solution; something between a smartphone and a tablet. A personal device capable of everything. Though I believe that we're with ~10-14" netbooks/notebooks and smartphones for a long while. I don't see tablets being "the" future really.

As AMD has been preaching heterogenous computing will be the future. More and more of integration and cheaper parts benefit everyone.

The trend of desktop machines will soon be dead for great majority of Internet and computer users ;) No more huge powerhouse gaming rigs and easy parts swapping and overclocking.

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Originally Posted by Calmatory

Sigh.

Name 3 time critical programs which aren't properly multi threaded! There aren't any. ;)

There is no NEED to go faster. Why would there be? The trend is to go smaller and more efficient. Desktop shipments will go down as usual and netbook shipments will go up. We're yet to find the optimal solution; something between a smartphone and a tablet. A personal device capable of everything. Though I believe that we're with ~10-14" netbooks/notebooks and smartphones for a long while. I don't see tablets being "the" future really.

As AMD has been preaching heterogenous computing will be the future. More and more of integration and cheaper parts benefit everyone.

The trend of desktop machines will soon be dead for great majority of Internet and computer users ;) No more huge powerhouse gaming rigs and easy parts swapping and overclocking.

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i dont like your version of the future...i need my desktop rigs!

I use a laptop at work but not at home.

I want to be wrapped up in the graphics that a large monitor gives me
I want to have high frame rates and low ghosting
I want fast one click photoshop experience
I want to be able to decode/rip 3 DVDs at once and burn 2-3 at one time

I want the time savings and speed a desktop gives.

I need a computer but I want a fast one :D

A wise old man once said "I can always make more money, but I can't make more time. So Money wasted can be made back but my wasted time is gone forever"

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Originally Posted by Hannibal Lecter

You know from time to time we get this kind of article. I have great faith in human ingenuity and I am certain that we will not hit a wall. This is not something new.

As ever, new discoveries will be made, new manufacturing processes will be invented. And don't forget as was mentioned above that there is a huge performance reservoir than can be tapped simply by writing better, a little more optimized software. Hardware has made such a rapid progress that there wasn't any incentive to optimize software.

Time will tell but I doubt we'll hit a technological wall for the foreseeable future.

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Of Course we will hit a wall, hitting a wall is totally normal and happens every time with newer technology. People in the early 20th century also believed engines will get better, cars/planes faster etc. in the future you'll reach every place in a few minutes and for some time technology improved very fast. But then suddenly they hit a wall from where on the technology just improves slowly. The same will happen with chip technology in maybe 10/20 years. But other technologys will start to grow fast, maybe something like modification of humans with nanorobots etc or even something we can't imagine now.

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Originally Posted by Calmatory

The trend of desktop machines will soon be dead for great majority of Internet and computer users ;) No more huge powerhouse gaming rigs and easy parts swapping and overclocking.

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this! i can already see this happening today and the next few years.. all devices will be just like thinclients.... :shakes:

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Originally Posted by Chaserjzx100

this! i can already see this happening today and the next few years.. all devices will be just like thinclients.... :shakes:

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There's a place for thinclients, but I doubt it will be the norm. Internet connections can be flaky and connecting to a cloud service can be madness in those situations.

Not only that, but many of these "cloud" services and media storage sites are shutting down as they are replaced with other things for various reasons, financial problems, popularity and etc. The "cloud" is in chaos right now and isn't dependable for storage.

I foresee a hybrid approach. Local storage and online interaction with services. If it can be done online, and done well, it will be.

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Originally Posted by Chaserjzx100

this! i can already see this happening today and the next few years.. all devices will be just like thinclients.... :shakes:

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Poor Intel, AMD, Nvidia with their desktop CPU / GPU plans for up to 2020, then. :shakes:

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Originally Posted by rcofell

While I cannot say I have ever heard of the organization responsible for publishing the report, I can say with certainty that many of the committee members involved are what you'd considered experts in the field. Both sides, academia (William Dally & Mark Hill are those I'm familiar with) and industry (Intel/AMD/Nvidia/Google/etc.), are represented in the group.

Despite it appearing all doom and gloom to you, the issues at hand have been known for quite some time. The report is just summarizing them and recommending what could probably be defined as a national course of action, something targeted at policy makers. Mainly it comes down to advocating a better coordinated paradigm shift to (thread) parallelism, ideally through better education/research into algorithms, hardware and (power-)efficiency at all levels. Support is mentioned for specialized/heterogeneous computing resources as well.

Like some of the others have stated, nothing new here really.

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but they keep focusing on todays tech ... and even in todays tech .. isnt the reccord for smallest transistor today about .8nm .. yes .8 ... ive read about that somewhere ... so why is it all doom and gloom when its obvious the industry is trying to find new ways to shrink...and lets not even discount optical computing .. or even room temperature quantum computing ...


so why all the doom and gloom even if its people from the industry who had some sort of a say in this document ...

Now what YBMO and YBCO that show signs of superconductivity above 0k, I am guessing we will have to mix that conductor, dope it with some semi-conductor and get going then. Or do somthing with some nice material, you need a material scientist to tell you more, thats about all I learned about YBMO ceramics.

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Originally Posted by sin0822

sorry double post, please delete.

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you can delete the post yourself, if you click edit. either you see the option there, or you have to click advanced.

Graphene??

lolz

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Originally Posted by VulgarHandle

technology has always had to work with what's available, and what's available has always changed due to technology

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bingo .. and this is why i never understand those doom and gloom news ...

grapheme LOL yea right. So Bucky Balls next??? Balls of carbon atoms.

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Originally Posted by 445533

There's a place for thinclients, but I doubt it will be the norm. Internet connections can be flaky and connecting to a cloud service can be madness in those situations.

Not only that, but many of these "cloud" services and media storage sites are shutting down as they are replaced with other things for various reasons, financial problems, popularity and etc. The "cloud" is in chaos right now and isn't dependable for storage.

I foresee a hybrid approach. Local storage and online interaction with services. If it can be done online, and done well, it will be.

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The cloud hasn't even taken off yet. At some point you do not have web browsers any more. You do not have most of your programs installed on your system; rather as a web service. Your desktop will directly bring you to the web, rather than the browser. Actually most of the OS functionality can be from web too. This isn't happening today, tomorrow, next year.. But maybe in 10 years, ChromeOS is an early prototype of this.

I doubt that will take off, as then what happens if your cloud goes down, reliability issues become HUGE, as does COST. never going to work, cloud right.

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Originally Posted by zalbard

Poor Intel, AMD, Nvidia with their desktop CPU / GPU plans for up to 2020, then. :shakes:

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i don't think any of them should worry, well nvidia should... discrete video cards are going the way of the dinosaurs in the next few years..

microsoft is going on a semi-cloud based in 8, chrome is already a cloud os made in mind, apple is launching appstore on there mac's. everything is on the net including your log in name sigh.. :shakes:

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Originally Posted by sin0822

I doubt that will take off, as then what happens if your cloud goes down, reliability issues become HUGE, as does COST. never going to work, cloud right.

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Clouds won't go down. How many times has Google been down during the past 10 years? As we now get electricity from the wall, we soon get data and information from the cloud. I'm personally completely against this kind of progress, but there's no other option than to accept it without giving up privacy. Hopefully SSL will become more and more popular.

the cloud sucks ...


LOL why do these sort of threads always have to go of terrain and take the most absurd direction ...

Unfortunately we have this minor inconvenience called backwards compatibility to deal with that wasn't so much of an issue when we started using modern transistors because computers had not pervaded nearly as much as they have today. That said, more performance will keep being demanded and we're going to have to move on eventually. Power consumption is always going to be one of the primary reasons for a technological shift. It's why we're not still using vacuum tubes.

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Originally Posted by sin0822

Now what YBMO and YBCO that show signs of superconductivity above 0k, I am guessing we will have to mix that conductor, dope it with some semi-conductor and get going then. Or do somthing with some nice material, you need a material scientist to tell you more, thats about all I learned about YBMO ceramics.

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You appear to be somewhat confused, all superconductivity happens above 0k, as 0k is unreachable. YBCO has superconductivity at 90k.

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Originally Posted by VulgarHandle

molded diamond transistors grown in vaccum FTW!

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Diamond doesn't conduct. I think the lattice structure leaves no holes for electrons to pass, although it make have it's uses in other places.

Graphene is good, but forms in single atom layers, and so poses other problems.

We just need an entirely new approach, like vacuum tubes to transistors provided.