Re: [asa] A Sustainable Future and Exponential growth

Randy Isaac wrote:
> 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.
>
>
>
> 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:
>
 I tried not to go too deeply into some of the nuances, thats why I said
the number of gates is still increasing. This increase results in
things like multi core processors and the ability to interconnect many
processor chips to create things like Blue Gene. However, the regular
increase in raw single core performance that used to entice people to
upgrade their PCs every few years seems at least for now to have stopped
or severly slowed down. A 2 core processor provides some apparent
performance improvement but 4 core seems pretty marginal unless one is
running something like SETI@home. Maybe some future version of Windows,
MacOS... will figure out how to effectively use the extra resources. I
agree Blue Gene is a major breakthrough. Maybe the compiler people will
figure out how to automatically create multi threading code that can
utilize the multiple cores.

And David O

> I'm getting old and cranky though, so I don't think the Lord will
> tarry a billion years.
Me neither but after all he has allowed the show to go on for roughly 13
billion years to date.

> What I can't agree with, however, is the notion that human
> over-population is the fundamental driver of these problems
I fail to understand how you justify this given limits on the amount of
food, water, air... that the biosphere can produce and the amount of
waste that it can absorb. Remember that in this thread I am not
postulating that we are at that limit now, you get to choose how many
more doublings can be sustained. It seems to me that we are getting
close to fulfilling the imperative to fill the earth.

Dave W (ASA member)

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Mon May 19 13:33:58 2008