2.20.2007

 

Trevor Blackwell's walking robot



Description of what you are seeing is available here.

2.17.2007

 

Robot-driven cars on roads by 2030

Robot-driven cars on roads by 2030

From the article:Also:

2.14.2007

 

Intel's Tera-scale initiative

Intel has announced its path toward tera-scale computing, allowing "Teraflops of performance operating on Terabytes of data." The centerpiece of the progra right now is an 80-core demo chip with a radical architecture. Here is a great article with lots of graphics describing Intel's approach:

The Era of Tera: Intel Reveals more about 80-core CPU

Here is a shorter version: Intel pieces together 80-core processor

Power consumption for the chip is in the 60-watt range.

"The first teraflop chips are expected to reach manufacturing stage by 2010 to 2015."

As Moore's law continues, that means that we start seeing Petaflop chips in the 2030 to 2035 range, and at that point we have the processing power of the human brain on a single chip. See Robotic Nation for the implications of such a chip.

 

IBM speeds chips with DRAM memory

IBM speeds chips with DRAM memory: "In an upgrade that could improve chip performance for gamers and multimedia users, IBM plans to double the performance of its microprocessors in 2008 by using smaller, more efficient memory, according to a paper presented at the ISSCC (International Solid State Circuits Conference) trade show in San Francisco Wednesday.

IBM plans to use dynamic RAM (DRAM) instead of static RAM (SRAM) as the embedded memory cache built onto each chip. The change will allow each chip to store its data in one-third the area and use one-fifth the electricity for standby power, said Subramanian Iyer, director of 45-nanometer technology development at IBM.

The approach will vastly improve chip performance for multicore processors and for applications that need to move large amounts of graphic data, such as gaming, networking and image-intensive multimedia, he said. IBM is already using the new embedded DRAM (eDRAM) in 65nm prototype chips, and plans to roll it out commercially by 2008 for its entire range of 45nm chips, including its Power line."

"Doubling performance" is a good thing.

Archives © Copyright 2005 by Marshall Brain
Atom RSS

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?