Important advance: IBM nanotube chip

Discussion in 'Science and Technology' started by RAMA, Nov 1, 2012.

  1. sojourner

    sojourner Admiral In Memoriam

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    ^And yet, you could apply the same exact growth observation to personal transportation 100 years ago. By your logic we should have had personal teleporters around 1960.

    Still working on that multiqoute function I see.
     
  2. publiusr

    publiusr Admiral Admiral

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    More along that line
    http://cosmoquest.org/forum/showthr...al-structures-towards-inorganic-living-matter

    http://up-ship.com/blog/?p=12804
     
  3. RAMA

    RAMA Admiral Admiral

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    You and I both know those aren't a Singulairty, they's a different designation for them, and they certainly don't have the capability of creating such rapid change we can't predict it..that hasn't happened yet. As you know, the present technologies are built on the older ones, so the growth had to happen first to reach the point we're at now.
     
  4. sojourner

    sojourner Admiral In Memoriam

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    THAT, is exactly the point.
    Point again. thanks.
    This has to be the most oblivious statement I have seen from you yet. Can you explain why transportation technology, with it's rapid development last century, did not lead to a transportation singularity? What happened to exponential growth? Explain why for info-tech, but not for transportation?
     
  5. AlDaja

    AlDaja Ensign Newbie

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    Nice, this opens the door for storage devices able to hold vast amounts of information. 20-years from now this technology will be seen as the grandfather of nano-processors.
     
  6. Deks

    Deks Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Simple answer: money/cost.

    From a resource/technological point of view, the world could have been connected by early 1980's with mag-lev trains (for transcontinental and city to city trips with vacuumed versions reaching 6500 km/h - and for inter-city trips with standard mag-lev trains reaching 450km/h).
    More than enough resources and technology to do it had construction began in 1974 (using robotic automation and mechanization in general wherever possible).

    The monetary system however is effectively keeping us in the past for as long as possible (unless new technology is deemed 'cost efficient' and profitable).

    Mag-lev based technology would be 100x more energy efficient, and requires minimal (if any) maintenance.

    But, even in the monetary system, without using the best of what technology has to offer from the get go, it WILL reach a stage where 'new' (actually 'old') technology is becoming cheaper at a faster pace, therefore, changes will be coming at an accelerated level.

    Oh and, carbon nanotubes were patented for usage in electronics along with methods of production and implementation in 1992 (same thing was done with synthetic diamonds in 1996).
    The only reason we are seeing progress in this area only NOW, is because inefficient and outdated materials like silicon (along with means of production) are unable to cope with large die shrinks anymore (taking into consideration that heat is increasingly becoming an issue when you begin stuffing more and more transistors onto a smaller manuf. process (this is why Ivy Bridge is experiencing heat problems and overclocks worse than Sandy Bridge -among other things).

    Early prototype hybrid computer chips using carbon nanotubes could have been produced in 1993 and improve on it from there (at least by 1996 a mass market version could have been put out) - but Capitalism prefers giving you 'cheap' and 'cost efficient' first and foremost (with long term profits in mind - which is why every 24 months you see 'new' cpu's, even though they are just a rehash of what came before based on inefficient materials) instead of 'the best of what a given material is capable of and technologically possible with highest efficiency in mind from the get go'.

    But as I said, even under this socio-economic system, technological automation is implemented at a relatively decent pace (well, relative to the $$$ cost) along with new technology, leading to that much faster changes.
     
  7. sojourner

    sojourner Admiral In Memoriam

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    ^And in the end, info tech will run into the same issues, money/cost will slow down innovation. Especially in terms of actual product as opposed to research.
     
  8. publiusr

    publiusr Admiral Admiral

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    What I would really like to see is a truly binary operating system. Perhaps a savant who can think in binary could write a code so tight, it either works or there is a piece of hardware program.

    But it would make solving for Fermat look easy.
     
  9. Robert Maxwell

    Robert Maxwell memelord Premium Member

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    There is no good reason to do this.
     
  10. publiusr

    publiusr Admiral Admiral

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    I would think that programs written thusly would be more hack resistant.
     
  11. Robert Maxwell

    Robert Maxwell memelord Premium Member

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  12. RAMA

    RAMA Admiral Admiral

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    Actually, the proof we have to go on is that price-performance improves exponentially, and that is likely to occur with a 6th paradigm. Innovation is increasing, as there are more and different products than ever before coming out of infotech and people are accepting them more quickly, the "early" adopter isn't disappearing but expanding. It's not just a small range of electronics hardware out there, it's portable devices with wifi and in the cloud, digital information and associated devices, google glasses and enhanced reality. AI will seep into everyday life more and more, we had Google, then Siri, Soundhound. Innovation is going out of the corporate labs and into hands of the motivated techno-developers, and even motivated non-experts. Biotech is a good example of this (which has no become an info-tech as well).

    Its funny how the non-imaginative who believe everything is going to stay the same simply think expansion and knowledge will slow or stop, this has happened before in human history (as I have pointed out before) and of course, they were completely wrong.
     
  13. RAMA

    RAMA Admiral Admiral

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    I already answered that question, but this will describe it in detail:

    http://www.accelerationwatch.com/history_brief.html

    http://www.accelerationwatch.com/images/AdamsRuleofPhase.gif

    Happy reading! it should be quite useful to you.
     
  14. sojourner

    sojourner Admiral In Memoriam

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    Nice! That article was great! At being one sided and offering projection without proof. The author doesn't even try to go into problems/concerns. Doesn't that raise the slightest red flag for you?

    Nor does it remotely explain why we haven't had a singularity in the field of transportation by now. Tell me, what happened to exponential advancement in that field?

    And yeah, multiquote fail. You should work on that.
     
  15. publiusr

    publiusr Admiral Admiral

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  16. gturner

    gturner Admiral

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    The Analog Devices analog FFT chip might be based on this dissertation from Virginia Tech, which was pretty interesting.
     
  17. publiusr

    publiusr Admiral Admiral

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    It also may help with AI to assist with fuzzy thinking. Just nice to see anything Analog still around.
     
  18. Crazy Eddie

    Crazy Eddie Vice Admiral Admiral

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    That doesn't answer the question at all. Why would exponential growth in information technology lead to a singularity while exponential growth in transportation technologies didn't?

    Or DID it?:devil:

    I just realized that RAMA/Kurtzweil is possibly right about the singularity, that it could be just around the corner, that it could revolutionize information technology in the most annoying way possible. Like a sentient version of Facebook or something.
     
  19. gturner

    gturner Admiral

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    So everyone will be Max Headroom?
     
  20. Admiral Buzzkill

    Admiral Buzzkill Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    The whole "such rapid change we can't predict it" business is a red herring. We have never been good at predicting the future of technology (or much else). The unexpected always happens, and the "inevitable" so rarely does.