More engineers who aren't afraid to dream.

October 5, 2000 9:09 PM

More engineers who aren't afraid to dream. This is like that humongous telescope I posted about a few weeks ago, only in a different area. Of course, the question is "If you get it working, what do you do with it?" What would you do with a 100 GHz petaflop CPU?
posted by Steven Den Beste (9 comments total)

Maybe they can use all that computing power to find a way to clean up the nuclear pollution generated by the reactors at Brookheaven, which is only a few miles away from SUNY SB.


posted by tamim at 9:51 PM on October 5, 2000

>What would you do with a 100 GHz petaflop CPU?

Nest as many emulators as possible. I'd have to do that once, at least.
posted by holloway at 4:20 AM on October 6, 2000

Isn't it disturbing enough that when computer clocks are well into the GHz range they're in the same range as microwave ovens (2.45GHz)?

posted by plinth at 5:50 AM on October 6, 2000

They make cordless phones that broadcast at 2.4GHz don't they? Does that worry you, plinth? I never thought about it.
posted by daveadams at 6:59 AM on October 6, 2000

First, holloway is correct -- nesting emulators (preferably obscure emulators like the VIC-20) is the only acceptable use of computers like this. Anything else is merely a waste of electrical power.

Second, I thought plinth meant "disturbing" in the sense of "odd/interesting" rather than "scary"....

...but I could be wrong. Of course, in that event I'll simply rewrite history and have the lot of you dragged away to the copper smelters in antarctica...
posted by aramaic at 7:19 AM on October 6, 2000

Well, obviously microwave phones are scary in that they are transmitting microwaves through your head! But that's cool with me.
posted by daveadams at 8:51 AM on October 6, 2000

I'd rather not have my head treated like a convenience store burrito (yes, I know that it's amplitude and not just frequency, but frankly I don't trust phone or computer manufacturers to not screw up shielding etc).
posted by plinth at 10:46 AM on October 6, 2000

i couldn't really follow all of the tech stuff, but i get the impression that it would be really really fast, right?
so my answer is that i would do the same things, but with higher resolution images and with no lag if the other hardware would keep up.
you can't have a fast-enough system doing graphics, video-compositing/editing etc....

and if it Could act as a microwave and cook my frozen burrito-lunch i wouldn't even have to leave my desk.

thats a Bad thing?
posted by th3ph17 at 11:31 AM on October 6, 2000

Up 'til your skin melts and you can't leave your desk. [grin]

regarding the other hardware keeping up, for the most part your other hardware will be able to, except my archnemisis - bandwidth - will rear it's ugly head. 'Course, once processors start being capable of opening apps in < 1 second but can't because the data can't get to the processor to be processed.

Then people will start clamoring for bigger pipes in a BIG way, and then, finally, my archnemisis - bandwidth - shall finally be overcome.

(yes, theoretically speaking bandwidth will become big and huge and superpowerful, and not overcome, but still. I'm enjoying myself.)
posted by cCranium at 2:10 PM on October 6, 2000