Caporegime
- Joined
- 18 Oct 2002
- Posts
- 33,188
Why hasn't research been done, it has been, billions of pounds is pumped into research on alternatives to silicon, but silicon is FAR from dead. While 8nm in 2014 seems a tad optimistic(bullcrap in reality) seeing as 22nm has already been pushed back to later in 2012, 8nm itself isn't unrealistic, and we're talking 22nm, 14-15nm and a couple inbetween from other companies on half nodes and Intel may be forced to do a half node aswell. Basically Silicon has a long way to go yet, another half decade and the way technology goes, things that enable us to even manufacture 8nm, could end up being used in research for the next thing after silicon, thats how the industry works.
Basically you could spend 100billion coming up with the next type of CPU today, or in a decade, with half the research done for other reasons, and technology improvements, it might only cost 10billion to get to the same stage, and 1/10th of the time aswell.
Silicon is working, random research is being done in various fields, theres loads of possibilities, none are remotely close to workable, in 5 years as we might approach silicon limits, the way we use computers could have completely changed anyway. One central computer per house and several wireless screens, heavily virtualised OS's able to load balance perfectly. Computer gets hidden away and the cost and heat from a 4 socket system, with 4x 128core cpu's could be the norm.
Research into alternatives will ramp up as we get closer to silicon becoming stagnant.
Generally as a people/race need is the mother of all invention, we don't really NEED an alternative right now, so investment is relatively low, when its required, spending will go through the roof, the longer you wait, the cheaper that spending is, the cheaper the end product ends up being.
Basically you could spend 100billion coming up with the next type of CPU today, or in a decade, with half the research done for other reasons, and technology improvements, it might only cost 10billion to get to the same stage, and 1/10th of the time aswell.
Silicon is working, random research is being done in various fields, theres loads of possibilities, none are remotely close to workable, in 5 years as we might approach silicon limits, the way we use computers could have completely changed anyway. One central computer per house and several wireless screens, heavily virtualised OS's able to load balance perfectly. Computer gets hidden away and the cost and heat from a 4 socket system, with 4x 128core cpu's could be the norm.
Research into alternatives will ramp up as we get closer to silicon becoming stagnant.
Generally as a people/race need is the mother of all invention, we don't really NEED an alternative right now, so investment is relatively low, when its required, spending will go through the roof, the longer you wait, the cheaper that spending is, the cheaper the end product ends up being.