High-speed graphene transistors

Comments

• erco Posts: 20,261

  2010-09-03 22:37 edited 2010-09-03 22:37

  Moderator Holly! My, but you're moving up in the world!
  
  Nice new avatar, your old one was a classic too.
• bill190 Posts: 769

  2010-09-03 22:40 edited 2010-09-03 22:40

  Here is a story that says a new memory chip, based on a discovery by a Rice University graduate student (Jun Yao), could store as much data as "today’s highest capacity disk drives"...
  
  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/31/science/31compute.html?_r=1&scp=3&sq=rice%20university%20memory&st=cse
• HollyMinkowski Posts: 1,398

  2010-09-03 22:41 edited 2010-09-03 22:41

  Hi erco..
  
  I was getting tired of the old avatar so I
  clipped that image from a DVD. Your avatar
  is superb!
• HollyMinkowski Posts: 1,398

  2010-09-03 22:42 edited 2010-09-03 22:42

  Thanks for the interesting link bill190.
• LoopyByteloose Posts: 12,537

  2010-09-04 08:26 edited 2010-09-04 08:26

  Excuse me, but I fail to see what 300Ghz+ will offer the average computer user. And I am beginning to wonder about Moore's Law being applicability. One might argue that faster computers might save electricity, but I have doubts. Personal computers were supposed to conserve paper, but do they really?
  
  Computers have scaled up on demand and there have been good reasons up until now. Originally we had 8 bit because of ASCII and EBDIC. Later, the appeal of 16 bit was to handle more Dram addresses. Then we got 32bit to smooth the way for Unicode. But now we are beyond the needs of the average desktop with 64 bit/Duo or Quad processors. (I must admit that I was comfortable just using DOS and a monocolor screen with a 20Mbyte hard disk.)
  
  I suppose that it would be good for video processing, but how many of us are creating and editing animation?
  
  Speed alone is not enough to drive Moore's law in the market place. You have to have customers. My netbook is an Intel Atom (32 bit) and quite adequate.
  
  @Holly
  The new avatar is great.
• ElectricAye Posts: 4,561

  2010-09-04 12:19 edited 2010-09-04 12:19

  I won't be happy with computer speeds until computers can answer my question before I even ask it.
• mctrivia Posts: 3,772

  2010-09-04 12:22 edited 2010-09-04 12:22

  true a eee tablet pc running at 1.3GHz is enough for the average user that wants to use office, web browser, and media player. However there are lots of people that want to play games and that will always push teh envelope of technology because you can always make a more realistic game. There are also a lot more people playing with video editing(youtube), panorama photos(my 3GHz, 4GB ram quad core still takes hours to render a 800MP picture), and HD Video(blue ray will not play on a slow computer). So there is a lot of demand for faster computers still.
• mctrivia Posts: 3,772

  2010-09-04 12:23 edited 2010-09-04 12:23

  ElectricAye wrote: »

  I won't be happy with computer speeds until computers can answer my question before I even ask it.

  
  I agree....
• Martin Hodge Posts: 1,246

  2010-09-04 17:28 edited 2010-09-04 17:28

  ElectricAye wrote: »

  I won't be happy with computer speeds until computers can answer my question before I even ask it.

  
  Forty two!
• Martin_H Posts: 4,051

  2010-09-04 18:46 edited 2010-09-04 18:46

  Yes, but eventually they'll end up with a brain the size of a planet and humans will ask them to take out the trash. Call that job satisfaction, 'cause I don't.
• ElectricAye Posts: 4,561

  2010-09-04 20:06 edited 2010-09-04 20:06

  Martin Hodge wrote: »

  Forty two!

  
  I guess I should have stipulated that the answer must be a correct one.
  
  Pretty close, though.
• HollyMinkowski Posts: 1,398

  2010-09-05 15:45 edited 2010-09-05 15:45

  @Loopy Byteloose
  
  It is precisely the average user who will benefit
  from faster and faster computers.
  
  Extreme speed and massive multi processing will
  someday soon allow computers to finally become
  mature. I think we are still in CompSci's infancy.
  When anyone can create software by simply describing
  what they want done.. then and only then will computers
  become mature. They are still mysterious and difficult to
  use contraptions to most people.
  
  Computers need to be everywhere, fully networked and
  able to anticipate our needs and respond to spoken language
  and interpret body language and gestures as well. We will
  get there...but it will take much more processing power
  than we have now.
• kwinn Posts: 8,697

  2010-09-07 21:23 edited 2010-09-07 21:23

  Loopy, we will always find ways to use more processing power. I remember reading about someone predicting the entire world only needed "x" computers for everything. Don't recall the exact value of "x" any longer but it was only one digit. Also remember a lot of people asking "Why anyone would want to have a computer at home and what would they possibly use it for?".
  
  Trust me, we will find a use for the extra speed.
• Cluso99 Posts: 18,069

  2010-09-13 02:56 edited 2010-09-13 02:56

  M'soft will find a way to use most of that extra speed to run the next generation OS, along with the code to use the extra memory. We will still be waiting ages for Windoze to boot.
  
  In reality, we will find ways to utilise the extra speed and memory. If you had asked me back in the early 70s before micros how we would use 1TB drives and GB RAM I would have told you that you were crazy. (10MB disc drives were washing machine size and core memory was in 10KB lots. The maximum for the mini I worked on then was 110KB core memory and 100MB of disk.)
  
  I am no longer a skeptic as what can be done and what will be achieved, having seen Maxwell Smart's phone in his shoe - why would you put a phone in your shoe? ... and Dick Tracy with his two-way wrist watch.
  
  The most interesting part of this new technology is what new applications will we see???
  
  BTW I gather the Z80 had 7,500 transistors. The Intel 80386 had 275,000 transistors (just found a poster of the die). The new Intel i7 has 1,000,000,000 transistors.