The End Of The Silicon Age?

Friday, June 15, 2012 Computing's 'Anti-Visionary' Predicts The End Of The Silicon Age We have become used to the idea that every year computers get faster, chips get smaller and... well, our iPads get cooler. But now we may be approaching a physical barrier to progress - and if it happens, the age of silicon might be come to a grinding halt. According to the winner of this year's Millennium Technology Prize, Linux creator Linus Torvalds, the physical barrier beyond which transistors cannot get smaller, and chips cannot improve in the same way, is approaching faster than ever. And that could have huge ramifications for computing. The rule of thumb known as Moore's law posited in 1965 that the number of transistors able to be placed inexpensively on a circuit doubles every two years. For about the last four decades that law has held roughly true, and the speed of computers progressed in a roughly equivalent way. But now Torvalds, in an interview with the Huffington Post, says that we could soon reach "a completely new point" when computers cannot improve in the same way. "I believe that within 10 to 20 years we'll hit a completely new point in computers which is when Moore's Law really stops working," he told HuffPost. "What happens when we hit the wall of physics?" PEACE AT LAST Government Data Website Swamped By 'Monumental' Spam Attack Voyager Deep-Space Probe May Be About To Leave The Solar System The Robot Dog Of Your Dreams? City-Sized Asteroid Discovered Just Days Ago Misses Earth BLOG POSTS Hannah Ellison: The Book Burning That Wasn't: Thousands of Works of Fiction Destroyed and No One Pays Attention In the wake of 50 Shades of Grey by E.L. James, a current bestselling novel that started life as Twilight fanfiction, questions about are being asked. If the only difference between a piece of fanfiction and a bestselling novel is the changing of character names and places, then is the deletion stories without warning something that should be bigger news? Chris DeVito: The Other Story About Iran and the Internet The role that the Internet and social media played in both organizing and publicizing the events of 2009 was certainly not lost on the regime. This is clearly evidenced by the intense crackdown on Internet freedom that the regime has pursued since then. Mark Morford: Facebook in Sweet Decline Facebook is like auto-tune. It's like Starbucks. It's like the Honda Civic. It's like the thing no one really loves at any substantial depth, but millions are addicted to and don't really know why. Vashi Dominguez: Can You Make Money by Buying From Facebook's IPO? The answer is simple. Only if they can turn their organically grown database into a revenue stream channel the $100 billion valuation makes sense and one can make money out of it. If you think this is a good answer, think again? Norman Shaw: The Theft of Government Laptops Provides a Lesson for Us All Whilst the rest of us enjoyed an extended bank holiday weekend to celebrate the Queen's Jubilee, MP Harriet Baldwin was dealing with the consequences of having two laptops containing 'sensitive information' stolen from her parliamentary office.

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