Nope, it means that to continue Moore's law we will need to start making our computer chips out of denser and denser matter. It won't be long[*] before we need to start using Neurton stars as source material and not long after that before we will need to use the collapsed matter at the core of black holes.
Not long galactically speaking... we are currently at appoximately 2^28 transistors. If we assume Moore's Law will continue indefinetely, we find that by 2150 we have reached 1.5E51 transistors. Now working backwards and assuming we will be running 1 Thz chips, we find that by the year 2100 we will need to be using material denser than water (Water has a density of approximately 1Kg / Liter) to surpas this limit. Wait! We already are using materials that are denser than water! Ok, Copper is about 9 times denser than water, lead is about 11 times denser than water. Ok, we will work with 10 as an easy number... hmm, this only gives us an extra 4 years. Ok, on to other materials. Iridium is 22x as dense. Another 18 months or so... Ahh, here we go, the core of the sun! 150x as dense as water... shoot, that is just another 4 years on top of iridium. Ok, lets go really dense... 100,000,000,000,000x as dense (10^14) which gives us to 2148. Better but not good enough. Black holes are next! 10^27 x as dense takes us to 2192.. Only another 50 years! So if we manage to continue Moore's law for the next 200 years we will all have a small black hole in our computer as the CPU.. Somehow I think that Moore's law will break down before then. Did I mention that I love math :-) Andy On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 9:29 AM, Jack Coats <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > That means: turn off all computers and cell phones and global warming > goes away? ;) > > Andrew Farnsworth wrote: > > I found the following quote on the wikipedia page for the ZFS file > > system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS) > > > > Quoting Jeff Bonwick (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bonwick) > > > > Although we'd all like Moore's Law > > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_Law> to continue forever, > > quantum mechanics <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mechanics> > > imposes some fundamental limits on the computation rate and > > information capacity of any physical device. In particular, it has > > been shown that 1 kilogram <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilogram> of > > matter confined to 1 litre <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litre> of > > space can perform at most 10^51 operations per second on at most 10^31 > > bits of information.^[10] > > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS#cite_note-9> A fully populated > > 128-bit storage pool would contain 2^128 blocks = 2^137 bytes = 2^140 > > bits; therefore the minimum mass required to hold the bits would be > > (2^140 bits) / (10^31 bits/kg) = 136 billion kg. To operate at the > > 10^31 bits/kg limit, however, the entire mass of the computer must be > > in the form of pure energy. By E=mc², the rest energy of 136 billion > > kg is 1.2x10^28 J <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joule>. The mass of > > the oceans is about 1.4x10^21 kg. It takes about 4,000 J to raise the > > temperature of 1 kg of water by 1 degree Celsius > > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degree_Celsius>, and thus about > > 400,000 J to heat 1 kg of water from freezing to boiling. The latent > > heat of vaporization adds another 2 million J/kg. Thus the energy > > required to boil the oceans is about 2.4x10^6 J/kg * 1.4x10^21 kg = > > 3.4x10^27 J. Thus, fully populating a 128-bit storage pool would, > > literally, require more energy than boiling the oceans.^[11] > > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS#cite_note-10> > > > > > > Nothing like imposing some hard limits on a system :-) > > > > Andy^ > > > > > > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NLUG" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nlug-talk?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
