Re: Welcome to 'tool' confusion

From: JTS - MCDLXXXVI (jts7@duke.edu)
Date: Tue May 01 2001 - 22:55:41 PDT


On Sat, 28 Apr 2001, Rohit Khare wrote:
> It would be interesting to imagine what happens when chips get fast
> enough that *RAM* is "a few weeks away by stagecoach".

blah blah won't happen unless you want it to. there's always a way to
get the memory closer, as long as you don't cling to the idea of RAM as
chips that plug into slots. All aboard; no, all achip. Designing it on
the die kills modularity (for commercial sale/upgrading) and makes power
issues even more nightmarish wrt the layout, but at .05 and lower
(biotech or whatever your latest personal ultrabips wet dream is), who's
gonna have a board fast enough in relative terms to do it otherwise?

Allegro and the like are going to run out of steam, yes. There's only so
much you can do on a board. The interfaces are always brutal. Even when
we get biocomps they have to have I/O that's detectable on some mechanical
level and then translated up to where we can see the output. I don't care
about the speed if the bio-flash output to fiber from your ganglion takes
1 million cycle's time to recharge.

        JTS
(life would be easier if timing didn't
matter and packaging was a formality)



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