Dave Wallace wrote:
>
> A few years back computer speed doubled roughly every 18 months. I
> suspect that Intel and AMD strongly wish they could still continue with
> that pattern. Sure they still double transistor gates every couple of
> years or so, but heat problems seem to have killed the raw speed doubling
> or at least have halted it for now.
Sorry for the digression into technology but your comment warrants pointing
out the latest trends. For 15 years, the industry has formally reported on
the top 500 supercomputers in the world on a semiannual basis. Graphing the
sum of the performance of all 500, the performance of the fastest, and the
performance of the slowest leads to the interesting chart in this link:
http://www.top500.org/lists/2007/11/performance_development
Interestingly, performance is increasing at 82% a year (faster than a
doubling every 18 months) and shows no sign of slowing down. (Full
disclosure: I am not objective but am strongly biased in two ways: 1. vested
interest in the winner of the last 7 rankings--my baby called Blue Gene; 2.
having published claims that Moore's Law has slowed down:
http://www.ieee.org/portal/site/sscs/menuitem.f07ee9e3b2a01d06bb9305765bac26c8/index.jsp?&pName=sscs_level1_article&TheCat=6010&path=sscs/08Winter&file=Isaac.xml )
Randy
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Received on Mon May 19 11:59:56 2008
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