TeraFlop computing@home
So, I was in my CS class a little while back, and the prof was going over basic terms: byte, hz, RAM, flop etc (c'mon, it was the first day of an intro. course!!! 
).
He explained the difference between personal computers and supercomputers in terms of flops, which seemed to be his favorite metric. At the end of the little lesson, he said that at current rates of speed increases and architectural advances, he believed that PCs (generic term here!) would be capable of TeraFlop computing in about eight years.
Well, I wondered about that prediction. I googled around for a little while and from what I found, I think that cell (or some other multi core architecture) seems to be the only realistic and affordable way to achieve this. That said, I suspect he based his prediction on a simple expansion of Moore's Law (bearing in mind, of course, that it concerns number of transistors and thus that speed increases tend to be a by product rather than a goal...)
So what do others think? Is this an achievable goal within his predicted timescale? If not, will it arrive earlier or later? What sort of uses will such power have in a PC? Are we looking at systems that might be able to do something like real time ray-tracing? Photorealistic gaming? True speech recognition? In home Artificial Intelligence?
Would such a system require an evolutionary OS or a paradigm shift?
Or will such systems remain in the realm of science fiction for a while yet? (please be kind if you reply; I am something of a CS novice looking to learn as much as I can......)
).He explained the difference between personal computers and supercomputers in terms of flops, which seemed to be his favorite metric. At the end of the little lesson, he said that at current rates of speed increases and architectural advances, he believed that PCs (generic term here!) would be capable of TeraFlop computing in about eight years.
Well, I wondered about that prediction. I googled around for a little while and from what I found, I think that cell (or some other multi core architecture) seems to be the only realistic and affordable way to achieve this. That said, I suspect he based his prediction on a simple expansion of Moore's Law (bearing in mind, of course, that it concerns number of transistors and thus that speed increases tend to be a by product rather than a goal...)
So what do others think? Is this an achievable goal within his predicted timescale? If not, will it arrive earlier or later? What sort of uses will such power have in a PC? Are we looking at systems that might be able to do something like real time ray-tracing? Photorealistic gaming? True speech recognition? In home Artificial Intelligence?
Would such a system require an evolutionary OS or a paradigm shift?
Or will such systems remain in the realm of science fiction for a while yet? (please be kind if you reply; I am something of a CS novice looking to learn as much as I can......)
Comments
Artificial intelligence research requires A LOT of computing power.. at least if you are talking about ANN/evolutionary computation. Its one of those funny fields where in most cases you got enough RAM, 32 bit FP is good enough, but you can't get enough computing power.