From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Mon Apr 21 2003 - 16:52:20 MDT
Sony and Toshiba are announcing the construction of 65nm
FABs for the construction of chips that would likely
pack a teraflop of computing capacity by 2006 and end
up in consumer devices like the Playstation 3.
The so called "cell" microprocessor sounds a lot
like the chips in IBM's Blue Gene computer.
So with 1,000 you get a petaflop (would fit into
a couple of standard racks) and with 1 million
you have an exaflop (this is about 15 IBM Blue
Gene computers in terms of complexity).
Estimates of AI requirements are someplace in
the petaflop-exaflop range. So ladies and
gentlemen -- we are taxiing down the runway
and gaining speed at a fairly rapid pace.
Its worth noting that we get this before current
semiconductor technology starts having to deal
with the really hard problems that will likely
require robust nanotech. Its also worth noting
that the number of processors required is
substantially less than the number involved
in distributed computing projects (everything
from SETI@Home to the Kazaa file sharing network
so the risks of one or more AIs@Home developing
and not getting it right would seem to increase
significantly).
It might take a few more years (1-3 chip
generations) but I really don't know how people
are going to handle life when their Sony AIBO
dog is smarter than they are...
Robert
1. Sony, Toshiba disclose chip fab plans
http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/04/21/HNsonytoshiba_1.html
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