back to article Supercomputers in 2030: Lots of exaflops and LOTS of DRAM

Supercomputers will overcome the predicted crumbling of Moore’s Law over the next few years to show massive leaps in performance between now and 2030 – but will still look pretty familiar to today’s compute power junkies. In a series of sessions at ISC this morning covering exascale architectures, speakers predicted a rapid …

  1. jms222

    Perhaps if the writer understood what Moore's law was actually about.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      What do you presume he doesn't know about Moore's law?

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

  2. dch0ar

    Misunderstood Moore's Law

    Moore's Law is no law. It only tells you about past performance, just like the health warnings in advertisements about future performance. It gives no guidance whatsoever about how to improve performance.

    1. Fungus Bob

      Re: Misunderstood Moore's Law

      "no guidance whatsoever about how to improve performance"

      boner pills, 'nuff said.

  3. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Unhappy

    What's the current estimate of the computing power of the human brain?

    Maybe 10 Pefaflops?

    In a 2Kg package dissipating about 400W?

    The end point for Moore Observation is a 1 atom wide gate with a 1 atom thick insulator on top.

    And that's it.

    You want more processing power per unit area? Start stacking wafers.

    Not impressed.

    1. Nigel 11

      Re: What's the current estimate of the computing power of the human brain?

      The end point for Moore Observation is a 1 atom wide gate with a 1 atom thick insulator on top.

      Actually it's several atoms thick. Below that quantum effects come into play and your insulator becomes intolerably leaky. Alternatively, you might be able to work with the quantum effects, but the result will not be a field-effect transistor as we know it, nor (AFAIK) is anything of this nature working at the VLSI level in R&D labs.

    2. annodomini2

      Re: What's the current estimate of the computing power of the human brain?

      Current estimates are 100PFlop equivalent (brain is mostly analogue with digital elements), and 20-40w.

  4. Charlie Clark Silver badge

    Your crystal ball is cloudy

    Both Intel and Micron are heavily invested in a DRAM world and it's clouding their ideas.

    As systems get larger the power draw directly attributable to DRAM gets more important and should encourage research into less power hungry alternatives. It's not my field but I can imagine that people might start mulling over alternatives like a 2 ExaFlops DRAM system drawing 100 MW versus a 1.5 ExaFlops xRAM system drawing 10 MW and opting for the slower but cooler and cheaper to run system. MRAM looks good but Flash is also getting faster and faster.

    Time to throw some dollars at that kind of research rather than yet another Silicon Valley service of minimal utility.

  5. luis river

    next tech

    The new in development tech in IT how photonics, new NVM, ect... to arrive next, (max 5 years) to bring elect. consumptions very slow, for this I dont believe what never in Exa scale era to overcome too much megawatts

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