The Future of the CPU?

Hi guys, I have been briefly trying to research the future of CPU's and personal computing beyond die shrinks and I am not finding much so I wanted to stop in here and ask if any of you could point me in the right direction. We have 45nm cpu's at the moment and the laws of physics will not allow much beyond about 20nm so it becomes obvious that this cycle of die shrink fueled performance increases will be comming to an end probably around 2015-2020. What lies beyond? What current research is underway? Are Intel and AMD going to change from pioneering growth companies to benign manufacturing plants?

I have read about quantum computing but I don't yet see how that applies to personal computing. I appreciate any direction you can give me.

Thanks!

Yadge has read or heard the same thing i have read about. It was a few weeks ago, so i dont remember the link. It was about a large company, maybe IBM, working with lasers. Using them similar to fiber optics. They were getting some crazy performance, like a 250x faster. Sorry for the terrible paraphrasing, but it was before the holidays.

I don't have the link..

But yes, it's a move away from electrical and to fiber optics inside the computer. It is much faster and would generate less heat. Electricity does not move at the speed of light.

Should be interesting in the next few years where we see things headed.

^Living neural networks, quite a bit of research is going on with neurons on biochips. Just not quite sure if cells can ever replace silicon/solid state due to their length scales - the required living chips would be much larger than the processors we know today. Neurons are on the order of 10s of microns whereas their processes (axons/neurites) can be sub micron in width and 100s of microns long (even cm).

I watched a ultra nerdy nerdy show the other day regarding absolute zero (-273K)

The interesting thing is at -272.999999999K a matter is formed (Bose-Einstein condensed ) they showed Bose-Einstein condensed can slow down light without manipulating it, also they briefly mentioned the possibility of its use for processor technologies.

**to make a long story short Bose-Einstein condensed is Atoms moving very slowly as one unit apposed to individuals…. Atoms lose their identity.

Of course the use of Bose-Einstein condensed in the future is mostly speculation at this point, it surely will find its way into our processors at some point….When, who knows?

If you google Bose-Einstein condensed; processor you can find a lot of interesting things about it.

Aweseom guys! You have given me plenty of key words to keep me busy for awhile. I have hit a lull at work here and I have some time on my hands so I honestly just wanted to research for entertainment. I am an electrical engineer so this type of stuff remains interesting to me. My father also holds stock in a CPU company so I thought the research might provide direction there too.

Thanks again!

monst0r you are absolutely right... I was too lazy to look up the 0.0000000000000001K so I took a guess in Celsius... I suppose I should have put -272.999999999C(approximately)

Strictly speaking nor does light, when travelling down a fibre optic cable

technically, nothing's a vacuum

I was thinking quantum computers.

You know, instead of the usual 0 and 1 binary digits, quantum pc uses electron spin, which is either up or down.

time to start investing??

Dude, you completely missed the purpose of this thread.

Go discuss money driven objectives in the Intel vs AMD threads.

I heard about using a new material, graphene, derived from graphite instead of silicon, which could theoretically rach the Tera Hertz speed (1000 GHz!!!). I think Intel is into it... as well as IBM.

Another thing I read about is probabilistic processing, in which answers are "guessed" instead of processed completely, I think. These CPUs should consume much less and work much faster... but I don't quite like the idea of having a piece of hardware that may guess incorrectly...

http://technomindz.blogspot.com/20 [...] reach.html
http://www.electronista.com/articl [...] ity.pcmos/

Lol, I've calculated that, according to moore's law, by 2030 CPUs will have KILO-CORES!!! And by 2050, they'll have MEGA-CORES...

But you'd be close, if you lived out in the Oort cloud . Maybe 5 degrees K - a little refrigeration and you're there!

The ballistic transistors article looked interesting - sorta like the integrated vacuum devices of the 1980s which resembled vacuum tubes operating at 5 volts instead of hundreds of volts, and used electron emitters that were basically pyramids ending in a point a few mils (millionths of an inch) across so as to generate the necessary voltage gradients to operate at such low voltages. However the vacuum devices used a grid-like structure to control the electron flow to a fixed collector, not steer it to different targets. Mainly of interest to the military and space applications since these devices were inherently much more radiation-hardened than semiconductors.

Well we'll see, anything new will appear in server first.

Is nanotechnology going to assist CPU technology in the future? Or is fiber optics a more practical development right now?

Fiber optics plays a major role. It was like Intel kept on increasing their clocks until heat became an issue. But on the size issue, I just found the article I had read a long time ago! Yay! Atomic scale computing! Here you go. http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/?p=2926

On a side note: AMD fangirl, WOW!!!! That's a first. 14 yrs!! And an eternal poster. Miracles never cease.

^Hmm.. Intel can research, sure, but I can't see such CPUs in the market for years.

Most science is not that hard to understand, except maybe for the 'spooky" quantum stuff. If science or engineering is your interest, study hard and get into a good college, & you'll pick it up. And maybe start reading some science magazines, such as Scientific American, or the NZ equivalent, in the meantime .

Also, using "Oort cloud" in casual conversation is good .