Jonathan Standley wrote: > Dedicated purpose hardware provides task specific performance orders of > magnitude higher than that of a general purpose CPU. And task-specific > hardware need not be inordinately expensive. Look at graphics and > sound boards as an example of this.
> There is no reason you couldn't take every single deterministic, P > algorithm in the standard C++ libraries and implement it as hardware. > Most programs would then be mostly written in assembly language, with > constructions like > binarysearch[sorted_array x, search_target y] replacing add a, mov y, > etc etc. That approach went out with the introduction of the 4004. > Also, software can be written in hardware. Photoshop costs 500$, an > entry level computer from dell that will run PS quite well costs 400$. > This is kinda nutty. Put the fucker on a chip, with some flash ram to > allow patching, halve the price (who the hell pirates IC's?), and get > at least an order of magnitude increase in program speed *compared to > current top of the line Intel/AMD processors running software version > of Photoshop*. And this speed would be more or less constant if you > put the Photoshop chip in a 400$ PC or a 4000$ dollar pc. (actually, > the faster PC's could help out with math-heavy stuff such as certain > filters). > ok that was all rather off topic :) It is interesting thoguh. Computers are cost-effective because one design can be tasked to an unlimited number of problems. -- this is the concept of generality... What you really want is magical hardware which can re-wire itself when you have a new job for it to do... ;) In designing my development box I made sure it had a big fatass bus to support such custom hardware which will probably turn out to be necessary to achieve near-realtime performance on any reasonably complex AI. =) Unfortunately magical hardware is expensive as hell and I would have to get a very good job to afford it.. =(((( (the typical price range is betwene $5,000 and $10,000 for the high-end boards...) The major vendors of magical hardware are Altera and Xylinx. This system was reciently featured on Slashdot: http://www.xylinx.com/products/boards/ml300/index.htm got $5,000? The vendor, starbridge systems, produces supercomputer scale magical computers. ;) They're probably ideal for AI, They only cost $26million too! > anyway back to the topic on hand - I personally am not so much > interested in either imitating the brains architecture or designing a > mind that is highly efficient and 'smart' from the get go. I'm trying > to solve the problem of general cognition, and hence I don't care if an > AI based on my methods starts out with the smarts of a mouse :). As > long as the general conceptual basis is sound, and scaleable to > human-level cognition or higher, I would be a very, very happy person. GOOD APPROACH!! =) -- I WANT A DEC ALPHA!!! =) 21364: THE UNDISPUTED GOD OF ALL CPUS. http://users.rcn.com/alangrimes/ [if rcn.com doesn't work, try erols.com ] ------- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?[EMAIL PROTECTED]
