For Certain Tasks, the Cortex Still Beats the CPU
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Most of us assume computers make people smarter but one researcher looks at ways people make computers smarter. "Human computation" is the art of using massive groups of networked human minds to solve problems that computers cannot master.
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Most machines don't improve with use. Old pickup trucks don't gradually become Ferraris just by driving them fast, and a pocket calculator won't change into a supercomputer by crunching lots of numbers. The human body is different...
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The 64-bit chip, geared for networking applications for the time being, is at least 300% more efficient than comparable processors, its manufacturer claims.
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Race for bragging rights favors Intel again -- for now. But AMD is fighting back with a workaround it says will keep  it in the running until it can bring out its own quad core. By Dan Goodin.
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With the race for dominance in processor clock speed over, or at least waning, the pursuit for overall performance gains through architectural enhancements is officially beginning.
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U.S. scientists have, for the first time, applied a computer model of how the brain processes visual information to a complex, real world task.  People have been talking about computers imitating the brain for a long time, said Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Tomaso Poggio.
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Itâs funny how circumstances can change your perception of whatâs possible. A few months ago, key Microsoft architects were telling me that it would be impossible to decouple the Avalon presentation subsystem from the Longhorn OS.
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Virginia Tech's recently rebuilt Macintosh supercomputer flies past the 12-teraflop mark, but will the performance boost be enough to keep it in the supercomputer top 10? By Leander Kahney.
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InfoWorld - Following their march from standard processors to dual-core and quad-core designs in 2006, Intel researchers have built an 80-core chip that performs more than a teraflops (trillions of floating point operations per second) while using less electricity than a modern desktop PC chip.
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One nanotechnology researcher said supercomputers small enough to fit into the palm of your hand are only 10 or 15 years away."If things continue to go the way they have been in the past few decades, then it's 10 years," said Michael Zaiser, a professor and researcher at the University of Edinburgh School of Engineering and Electronics. "The human brain is very good at working on microprocessor problems, so I think we are close -- 10 years, maybe 15."Zaiser's research into nanowires should help move that timeline along.For the last five years, he has been studying how tiny wires -- 1,000 times thinner than a human hair -- behave when manipulated. He explained that each such miniscule wire tends to behave differently when put under the same amount of pressure. Therefore, it has been impossible to line them up close to each other in tiny microprocessors in a production atmosphere.Zaiser said he's now figured out how to make the wires behave uniformly. He separates the interior material of the wire into distinct groups so the wire can't react as a whole. That makes it much easier to control. "It's like crowd control," he added. "If they can all go one way, you have a big mess."These nanowires will go inside microprocessors that could, in turn, go inside PCs, laptops, cell phones, or even supercomputers. And the smaller the wires, the smaller the chip can be.Shrinking down the microprocessors is a big step toward shrinking down computers.Zaiser was quick to point out that his nanowire discovery won't immediately lead to the development of supercomputers that can fit in the palm of a hand or even shrink down to the size of a book of matches. In addition to smaller microprocessors, engineers will need to deal with thermal fluctuations that erupt at that size.But he does humbly admit that taming nanowires is a big step toward the goal of small supercomputers."This will enable chips to become much smaller," he said. "Think 10 years back. You could hold [a cell phone] the size of a telephone receiver and it didn't work so well. Today, you can fit what is a powerful computer onto a small device."Charles King, an analyst at Pund-IT in Hayward, Calif., said that with advances like nanowire technology continuing to come along, Zaiser's predictions for tiny supercomputers may not be so far off. And that will be a huge step for the industry, considering that not so long ago supercomputers filled up enormous rooms or even entire buildings."Actually, what he's saying is not crazy," said King. "The wire problem was an important one. Solving that particular issue, one so fundamental, needed to be done. If he can solve that, a lot of people, a lot of companies, will appreciate that. The industry is aligning in a direction where we're going to be seeing continuing improvements and developments."Jim McGregor, an analyst at In-Stat in Scottsdale, Ariz., said he definitely can see palm-size supercomputers coming out within 10 to 15 years, but he thinks they'll be based on the basic silicon technology used today. He added that the next generation of tiny supercomputers -- made with carbon nanotubes and nanowires -- may be as far off as another 30 to 40 years, though."You know, everybody says we'll get to a physical limit but every time we think we're going to hit it, we overcome it," said McGregor. "They end up being speed bumps instead of road blocks."King added that over the last 10 or 20 years, technology advancements have put smaller and more powerful computers into the hands of children and researchers alike. That leads him to believe that the shrinking of supercomputers is just ahead of us."We're at the beginning of some very exciting times in supercomputing," he said.Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate
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One's a PC brain, the other's a Mac-head--two PC World editors strongly disagree about owning this week's must-have gadget.
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AMD has proved time and time again that its processors offer better performance than the competitionâs - and better value for money too.
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Intel's new laptop dual-core chips don't match their desktop siblings' star performance.
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When the human brain mates with the computerâs, we get the automation of judgment.
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By Carilyn Shropshire, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette / Scripps Howard News Service. Natalia Rudiak of Carrick could not figure out why her trusted laptop was acting sluggish and sometimes unresponsive.
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BOSTON The jury is still out on whether a computer can ever truly be intelligent, but there is no question that it can have multiple personalities. It&#39;s just a matter of software. We usually think of the processor chip as the brains of a computer. The ...
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US researchers show that a computer can be controlled by the brain without the need for implants.