The future of technology?

[Dullstar]

So, what do you think about the future of technology?

Microchips:

[ccexplore]

If history is any guide, whatever predictions people put down here right now will most likely turn out to be wildly off the mark by the time the future actually happens.

As for the microchip thing, I can tell you right now that the existing silicon-based technologies is starting to approach fundamental limits (from the laws of physics) for how small they can shrink it.  (This is partly why recent microchips tend to be multicore--a way to increase speed without shrinking the individual transistors.)  That's not to say they might not be able to circumvene it by using some totally different, non-silicon-based (or even non-transistor-based) technologies, just that it would not be a radical prediction either to say that microchips will stop shrinking in the future.

[Yawg]

Quantum computers 

[Dullstar]

Maybe I should have said that mine was a joke...

[ccexplore]

Actually, I just realize I totally didn't read Dullstar's "joke" right (I didn't notice he was talking about the entire chip itself).  Yeah, I'm afraid at that magnification you're at the level of individual atoms.

(Then again, wouldn't it be really funny if in the really far future, Dullstar's joke somehow manages not to be a joke?  )

[GigaLem]

WoW that is tiny
LOL

[Mr. K]

Hm, the future of tech.
In computers I really hope that solid-state storage becomes affordable and wide spread soon.  This mechanical hard drive stuff just doesn't agree with me (as somebody who has one that's in the middle of fizzing out as I type this)
Another interesting thing to consider about computers is that it seems like upgrades are less and less necessary, almost like we're going to level off in terms of what is required to compute (while at the same time the ceiling still rises, for the sake of enthusiasts who will be able to get faster and faster machines without requirements catching up).  I mean, if you bought a computer in 1995 it was pretty much unusable five years later, even with upgrades, whereas my desktop is pushing 5 right now and is still completely usable and I'm not in any dire need to buy something new.  Heck, I have an 8 year old laptop and it's happily chugging along, fully up to date Windows XP, able to do everything I need in my everyday computing life.

[Dullstar]

Hmm, solid-state storage?  What's that?

[Mr. K]

You haven't heard about solid state drives??

They're basically hard drives based on flash memory instead of the old mechanical read-head+a ton of spinning platters model that we have used for so long.  The biggest advantage is that they're much more durable (nothing's going to break them short of smashing it with a hammer or an electrical shock) but they also are much faster because there is no need for the read-head to run around trying to find where the data is-- access times are near-instantaneous.

[Dullstar]

Although I must ask, how are the read/write cycles gonna work out?

I mean, you get a lot, but they aren't unlimited, right?

[Mr. K]

While technically write cycles are indeed an issue, the truth is that if you do the math you'd have to constantly write to the drive 24/7 for more than 15 years on most of the drives to wear them out.  Plus we have great advances like wear leveling that make sure all parts of the drive get an equal beating.

[GuyPerfect]

I'm still rooting for photonic equipment. Even some rather archaic designs would out-perform electronic stuff handsomely, as light is just that much more efficient.

[ccexplore]

Vast advances in battery/portable energy technologies would be great.  Imagine laptop batteries that are only the size of button cells, but only needs to be recharged, say, once every month.

[Liebatron]

"what is required to compute"

This is an interesting idea... At what point does the future get really boring because there's no further need for faster computing? At what point does the speed at which the computer works become irrelevant because it's always faster than the user is capable of responding?

Anyway, I don't really think we can rely on the past as a guide for what's to come.

In 1970... Maybe it was 1980, maybe 1960, it really doesn't matter, some guy predicted that the number of transistors humans could fit into a given area would rise by some ridiculous factor every year thereafter. He had no historical precedent for this prediction, in fact it contradicted the past, and yet he turned out to be exactly right.

[Liebatron]

"light is just that much more efficient."

Light would be nice, but it's really quite problematic as a Data Transfer method.

Basically it's too fast. It's difficult to control the flow of light because it's so fast. Electrical communications and logic is possible because it's actually pretty slow. Electricity moves actually pretty slowly, it's just that because what you're actually controlling is at the most basic level a force, not a physical object, all the electrons in circuit X start moving at once when you apply potential difference.

So sorry, but unless you can slow down light quite a bit, it's not incredibly feasible.

I think we've about reached the limits of physics' ability to provide the answers. If I'm wrong, alert the press.

Instead I think we gotta look at how we can organize what we have better.

[GuyPerfect]

So sorry, but unless you can slow down light quite a bit, it's not incredibly feasible.

Sounds like we just need some new technology to control the flow of light at its inherent speed. It's strange that your argument takes the form of "We can't make better technology because existing technology isn't good enough for it."

[Yawg]

Kind of a zen question huh? We can't improve our technology unless we improve our technology . And on a side note, you can't really "slow down" light, but you most certainly control how fast photons get from A to B, providing you have the right material between A and B. By this method, I believe our current capabilities allow minimum speeds under 100 mph. Case in point, the tech is there, it's just not widely used because it has yet to reach peak practicality and is therefore not a financially appealing alternative for all the electronic giants.

[Liebatron]

"it has yet to reach peak practicality"

Light at any speed we choose; ah...
The other thing is you'd have to slow it down all the time... Like whenever it was going anywhere it would have to be slowed down. Those would be some expensive 'wires'

Right now though each of our transistors can only store one state; 1 or 0.
A component comprised of a bit counter (without a clock component) hooked up to multiple inputs combined with another component with 4 transistors could provide 16 possible physical states with the space required to fit 4 ordinary transistors though; and it would be a pain for the software designers but you could in theory make a system X times more efficient using a non-binary method.

If you ask me that's the best way to make stuff faster. Multiple inputs, one output; it would provide for the ability to read 4 inputs at once through the reception of one output, the numerical value of which could range from 0 to 16. Of course processing would still be linear, but all data would take 1/4 as long to process due to greater compression.

[Yawg]

My money is still on quantum computers. I think thats ultimately the direction computing will take, and its just a matter of putting in the time and effort to bring our capabilities up to par.

[ccexplore]

I think at this point it might be helpful to link to a couple of Wikipedia articles as starting points for people to further explore on the topics touched by recent discussion, such as understanding the current state of research, what has been accomplished, and what challenges remain:

optical computing:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_computing
quantum computing:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computing
non-binary digital computing:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ternary_computer (closest thing I can find)

Right now though each of our transistors can only store one state; 1 or 0.<snip>

I have trouble understanding your proposal.  Are each of your input/output signal one electrical signal with 16 voltage levels, or just 4 ordinary binary bits?  If it's the latter it would seem that you're still dealing with a binary system?  If it's the former, how do you propose to use ordinary transistors to implement an input-output response that differentiates between 16 voltage levels instead of the typical "on/off" (N volts/0 volts)?

[Liebatron]

To do this now you'd use a system where four transistors are treated as a single output with some sort of output, but that might not actually bring an inherent gain in efficiency. Ideally you'd find a second state to change. Like find a way to control variable X that inhibits the flow of electrons the same way we control electrical on/off switches now.

EDIT: lol; apparently the link says that this method is ideally used in combination with optics. I don't like light though, so I vote we find another changeable state to work with.

[ccexplore]

I'm not really seeing non-binary digital systems having much potential to scale up.  Meaning that you'll probably have to completely re-invent and re-design your basic transistor and logic gates every time you go from N-ary to (N+1)-ary, for a diminishing gain of (N+1)/N in speed (assuming that your (N+1)-ary units do not themselves run slower due to increased design complexity).  And it seems that what you're gaining can also be gained simply by trying to exploit more parallelism out of a standard binary digital system (ie. doing more computations in parallel instead of sequentially).  While parallel computing is not easy either and has its own limits, at least it seems to be a more well-researched problem and has better potential to scale up.

This is in contrast with something like quantum computing which could actually provide exponential increase in speed for certain classes of computation processes.

=======================

It might also be worthwhile to take a step back from the Moore's Law paradigm of merely speeding everything up.  Note for example that in the human brain, signals travel from neuron to neuron at speeds thousands (millions?) of times slower than your modern PC, yet the human brain is capable of many tasks which are well beyond the capabilities of today's best computing hardware and AI software.  The gap of course is as much software as it is hardware, but it does show that speed, while important, isn't necessarily everything when it comes to computing.

[GuyPerfect]

Note for example that in the human brain, signals travel from neuron to neuron at speeds thousands (millions?) of times slower than your modern PC, yet the human brain is capable of many tasks which are well beyond the capabilities of today's best computing hardware and AI software.

Part of this also has to do with the physical size of the brain and the fact that it can multitask.

[ccexplore]

Correct.  This is part of what I alluded to when I said HW and SW.  The fact that the number of neurons in the brain are orders of magnitude higher than, say, the number of transistors in current computers, and that the software and hardware is architected totally differently from the typical von Neumann architecture of today's computers.

And it's good to remember that an airplane works quite differently from a bird's wing, so just because the brain works so differently doesn't mean that a superfast CPU with lots of memory and the appropriate algorithms, but still under the current architecture, can't accomplish the same thing.  (We're already starting to see that for example when it comes to chess playing.)  It's just meant to be an example of how the future might end up evolving in very different directions from current technological trends.

[Liebatron]

So sorry, but unless you can slow down light quite a bit, it's not incredibly feasible.

Sounds like we just need some new technology to control the flow of light at its inherent speed. It's strange that your argument takes the form of "We can't make better technology because existing technology isn't good enough for it."

Also; I should specifify; the difference here is between practical technology and pure science. We need an improvement in pure science technology's ability to slow down light before it can be turned into such a practical technological advance.