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What Would You Do With High-Speed Computing?

Posted January 06, 2011 7:20 AM

The idea that graphene will someday replace silicon in electronic products fascinates the design engineers who will implement it. Graphene promises to improve performance by more than an order of magnitude. How would you exploit the speed of a computer running at, say, 50 GHz? What tasks could you do that you can't do already? How much memory could you control and what does that add to your computing capability? Will graphene computers finally pass the Turing test demonstrating true artificial intelligence? What are the implications of that result?

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cwarner7_11
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#1

Re: What Would You Do With High-Speed Computing?

01/06/2011 11:12 PM

I have some software (FEA/CFD code) that can take upwards of 18 hours to run on a middling-sized mesh on my 2 GHz dual core processor. I can envision some similar large linear algebra problems that could possibly be time consuming as well...Yes, I can see significant advantages to a 50GHz clock...But for most of the things I do with the computer (web surfing, document preparation, etc.), 2 GHz is lightning-fast, as long as I stay with Open Source software rather than the bloated commercial options...Microsoft would love 50GHz, I am sure, because then they could add a mountain more of useless features to their already-bloated software...
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rcapper
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#2

Re: What Would You Do With High-Speed Computing?

01/07/2011 1:00 AM

I could run whatever will be the current version of Windows then and only have to wait three minutes for it to boot. Hey wait a minute...

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Lynn.Wallace
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#3

Re: What Would You Do With High-Speed Computing?

01/07/2011 10:30 AM

"640K ought to be enough for anybody." - Bill Gates, 1981

The question isn't "what are we going to do," the question is "what aren't we going to do?" - Ferris Bueler, 1986

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dbash
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#4

Re: What Would You Do With High-Speed Computing?

01/07/2011 11:18 AM

I would be able to include radiosity, in architectural and design renderings, that is now prohitively time consuming. I can't wait. BTW wasn't 64k what Bill Gates thought would be the maximum necessity?

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Re: What Would You Do With High-Speed Computing?

01/07/2011 3:49 PM

No, it was 640K. Motorolla CPUs supported 1MB or more of RAM, and all the Intel-based DOS programs were stuck segmenting. We see who won... It was a pain, especially for a green programmer like I was at the time.

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#11
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Re: What Would You Do With High-Speed Computing?

01/07/2011 8:55 PM

I've seen the radiosity switch in Moray/Povray and 3ds max... but don't understand what the difference really is... it never made much of a difference to my renderings I don't think.. maybe I am undereducated... can you shed any light? (sorry for the pun)

Chris
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Re: What Would You Do With High-Speed Computing?

01/07/2011 10:28 PM

I use Vectorworks which gives nearly photorealistic renderings in radiosity mode. Variations in shadows, absorption, and reflectivity from various sources of illumination on various textured surfaces requires a lot of processing. However, I cannot comment on your applications because they are Windows, of which I am ignorant (thankfully).

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Re: What Would You Do With High-Speed Computing?

01/07/2011 11:27 PM

Note this, Chris- better performance in non-Windows rendering packages...
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#5

Re: What Would You Do With High-Speed Computing?

01/07/2011 11:38 AM

High speed computing would be very beneficial for weather forecasting.

That way we can get a bad forecast even faster.
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#6

Re: What Would You Do With High-Speed Computing?

01/07/2011 11:56 AM

I thought Douglas Adams had already dealt with this.

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guds777
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#7

Re: What Would You Do With High-Speed Computing?

01/07/2011 1:59 PM

Virtual 3D interactive mind reading system.

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guds777
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#8
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Re: What Would You Do With High-Speed Computing?

01/07/2011 2:01 PM

Artificial intelligence

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#10

Re: What Would You Do With High-Speed Computing?

01/07/2011 7:08 PM

Yeah, but the one thing that will make the most money is the 3D porn.

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Brave Sir Robin
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Re: What Would You Do With High-Speed Computing?

01/07/2011 10:06 PM

Funny thing. Someone gave me an extra off-topic to my five. Oh, well. It is said that porn generates the most on-line revenue of any industry. It doesn't interest me personally, but there is a huge market out there and the Internet makes it easy to remain relatively anonymous for those who don't like to go downtown to the red light districts to buy/rent their material.
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#13
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Re: What Would You Do With High-Speed Computing?

01/07/2011 10:20 PM

wasn't me that marked you ot.

it always kind of made me wonder why so many people don't want to talk about (in the daylight) something that is so fundamental to everyone. I can't help but think Shame holds us all back from being who we really are.

chris
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Re: What Would You Do With High-Speed Computing?

01/08/2011 5:57 PM

I didn't think you did. Not that it's a big deal, just interesting.

Have a great weekend. Cheers !!
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#17

Re: What Would You Do With High-Speed Computing?

01/08/2011 7:03 PM

Another over-hyped bit of media fluff?

Please do your own research...

http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/nanotechnology/one-graphene-device-makes-three-amplifiers

While graphene has novel and unique properties that may enhance many applications, no one who understands this material thinks it will replace silicon anytime soon.
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Users who posted comments:

Anonymous Poster (1); BDThompson (1); Brave Sir Robin (3); chrisg288 (2); cwarner7_11 (2); dbash (2); guds777 (2); Lynn.Wallace (2); mjb1962853 (1); rcapper (1)

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