How long?

[reggie_da_man]

How long do you predict it's going to be before we reach the limit with silicon? I heard that because CPU's are getting so small now a days and crammed with transistors the electrons are getting too close to each other and effecting each other.

 

[aliasaid]

don't worry, civilization will end pretty soon, and we won't be worrying about silicon and transistors then.

 

[molsen]

well put.

in all seriousness though, when we get to the limit of normal chip process we can just start cramming more cores together. maybe a 24-core cpu will be good for gaming?

i think alternative means of computing will have developed by the time THAT is no longer feasible. efforts on quantum computing and even a computer powered by DNA are well underway.

DNA computing:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/20/175256
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/02/0224_030224_DNAcomputer.html

Quantum computing:
http://www.cs.caltech.edu/~westside/quantum-intro.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computer

 

[Apokalipse]

from what I've read, Quantum computers are not about finding the answer to a problem. they find a number of possible solutions and give the probability of each

 

[molsen]

right now, that may be the case. we don't even fully understand quantum mechanics.

 

[Waphlez]

Well look at the cell proccessor in the PS3, I think if we ever come to the point you are talking about I believe that a similar architecture like the cell will be our solution. The current cell like the one in the PS3 won't work in a pc right now but some people are saying that if you made some changes with the cell and have a OS that can support the CPU you can have it run a PC, but I'm sure that having to change the type of computer chips we use won't be happening for a while.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(microprocessor)

 

[cobalt817]

one solution might be to move devices off the CPU and onto the mainboard. This will make mainboards more expensive and controll the cost of a high end CPU. Right now , mainboards are cheap and CPUs are expensive.

 

[reggie_da_man]

That's a good idea but would thing be compatible?

 

[cobalt817]

not with anything we have now, but in the future?

 

[reggie_da_man]

Yea well not with anything now but AMD and INTEL would just probably design their chips to work with a certain amount of cache found on the motherboard.