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New superconductor microprocessor yields a substantial boost in efficiency

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Re: New superconductor microprocessor yields a substantial boost in efficiency

#101

Post by Jweb_Guru »

layoutIfNeeded wrote: post #14
b0rsuk wrote: post #10

Given the cooling requirements, I suppose it would create completely impassable rift between datacenter computing and other kinds. Imagine how programming and operating systems might look in a world where processing power is 80x cheaper. Considering that "data centers alone consume 2% of world's enegy", I think it's worth it.

>Imagine how programming and operating systems might look in a world where processing power is 80x cheaper. So like 2009 compared to 2021? Based on that, I'd say even more inefficient webshit.

Processing power is not 80x cheaper now than it was in 2009 unless you can do all your computation on a GPU.

Re: New superconductor microprocessor yields a substantial boost in efficiency

#102

Post by philsnow »

carlmr wrote: post #56
xvedejas wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems likely that the more efficient our processors become, the larger share of the world's energy we'll devote to them [0]. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, if we're getting more than proportionally more utility out of the processors, but I worry about that too [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law

>Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, if we're getting more than proportionally more utility out of the processors The trend seems to be that we get only a little bit of extra utility out of a lot of extra hardware performance. When the developer upgrades their PC it's easier for them to not notice performance issues. This creates the situation where every few years you need to buy a new PC to do the things you a…

> The trend seems to be that we get only a little bit of extra utility out of a lot of extra hardware performance.

"hardware giveth, and software taketh away"

Re: New superconductor microprocessor yields a substantial boost in efficiency

#103

Post by mdturnerphys »

tedsanders wrote: post #93
juancampa wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The difference in cost of producing liquid nitrogen and liquid helium is enormous. Quick google search yields: $3.50 for 1L of He vs $0.30 for 1L of H2. So roughly 10 times more expensive.

That price is more than a decade out of date. Helium has been about 10x that the past half decade. I used to pay about $3,000 per 100L dewar a few years ago. Sounds like that price was still common in 2020: https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.2.2020060... Plus, liquid helium is produced as a byproduct of some natural gas extraction. If you needed volumes beyond that production, which seems likely if yo…

That's the cost for one-time use of the helium. If you're running a liquefier the cost is much lower, since you're recycling the helium, but it still "costs" ~400W to cool 1W at 4K.

Re: New superconductor microprocessor yields a substantial boost in efficiency

#104

Post by whatshisface »

jessriedel wrote: post #75
whatshisface wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heat conduction also scales with thermal conductivity, which is another thing that advances in solid state can bring us.

This doesn't change the fact that, for any degree of heat conductivity achieved smaller packages will be hard to keep cold than large ones.

It also doesn't change the fact that smaller devices are harder to put wires on - but they're both polynomial scaling factors that other polynomial scaling paradigms could cancel out.

Re: New superconductor microprocessor yields a substantial boost in efficiency

#105

Post by ajuc »

Enginerrrd wrote: post #80
freeqaz wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mind expanding on this a bit more? What is that that limit and how does it relate to the clock speed?

It's not about clock speed per se. It's about the lowest possible energy expenditure to erase one bit of information (or irreversibly destroy it by performing a logical operation). The principle comes about from reasoning about entropy loss in said situations. There's a hypothesized fundamental connection between information and entropy manifest in physical law. The idea is that if you destroy one possible state of a…

> IMO, The fact that it's only 38x the minimum is MIND BLOWING.

It's like if someone made a car that drives at 1/38th the light speed.

Re: New superconductor microprocessor yields a substantial boost in efficiency

#106

Post by mindvirus »

gnulinux wrote: post #58
inglor_cz wrote: post #55

Nice, but requires 10 K temperature - not very practical. Once this can be done at the temperature of liquid nitrogen, that will be a true revolution. The difference in cost of producing liquid nitrogen and liquid helium is enormous. Alternatively, such servers could be theoretically stored in the permanently shaded craters of the lunar South Pole, but at the cost of massive ping.

If the throughput is fast enough 3+3=6 seconds latency doesn't really sound that bad. There are websites with that kind of lag. You can't use to build a chat app, but you can use it as a cloud for general computing.

Fun aside I learned about recently: we don't actually know if the speed of light is the same in all directions. So it could be 5+1=6 seconds or some other split.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-way_speed_of_light

Re: New superconductor microprocessor yields a substantial boost in efficiency

#107

Post by m4rtink »

jetrink wrote: post #57
benibela wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Sundiver by David Brin they put all the heat in a laser, so they can beam it away from their craft

Is it possible to do this without violating the second law of thermodynamics?

AFAIK it is not and IIRC the author even mentioned it somewhere afterwards, possibly in the next book.

Re: New superconductor microprocessor yields a substantial boost in efficiency

#108

Post by kmeisthax »

jcims wrote: post #91
Enginerrrd wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about clock speed per se. It's about the lowest possible energy expenditure to erase one bit of information (or irreversibly destroy it by performing a logical operation). The principle comes about from reasoning about entropy loss in said situations. There's a hypothesized fundamental connection between information and entropy manifest in physical law. The idea is that if you destroy one possible state of a…

Is there an idea of entropic potential energy/gradient/pressure? Could you differentiate encrypted data from noise by testing how much energy it requires to flip a bit?

Only if you were measuring a system with access to the key material and doing something with the plaintext, in which case this would be a side-channel attack (and an already-studied one). The whole point of encryption is that the data output is indistinguishable from noise without knowing the key.

Re: New superconductor microprocessor yields a substantial boost in efficiency

#109

Post by xxpor »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #43
layoutIfNeeded wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Imagine how programming and operating systems might look in a world where processing power is 80x cheaper. So like 2009 compared to 2021? Based on that, I'd say even more inefficient webshit.

Considering that many modern interfaces are somehow less responsive than ones written over 20 years ago even when running those programs on period hardware , I feel certain that you are right.

But it probably took 80x less time to develop said software.

Re: New superconductor microprocessor yields a substantial boost in efficiency

#110

Post by Raidion »

jcims wrote: post #91
Enginerrrd wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about clock speed per se. It's about the lowest possible energy expenditure to erase one bit of information (or irreversibly destroy it by performing a logical operation). The principle comes about from reasoning about entropy loss in said situations. There's a hypothesized fundamental connection between information and entropy manifest in physical law. The idea is that if you destroy one possible state of a…

Is there an idea of entropic potential energy/gradient/pressure? Could you differentiate encrypted data from noise by testing how much energy it requires to flip a bit?

No, because the energy of the system isn't related to the order of the underlying data, it's related to the changes that happen to the underlying data. If you have 5 bits and flip 3, it takes the same energy regardless of if the 5 bits have meaning or not. This is speaking in terms of physics. There obviously could be some sort of practical side channel attack based on error checking times if this was an actual processor.
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