Direct Correlation Between Computing Power and Doom?

February 13th, 2007

An 80 core CPU? Massively parallel home computers? I don’t know whether this news is more absurd or obscene.

Oh sure, better games, HDTV, AI. Notice how none of this crap has anything to do clean air, food and water? How many cores will a CPU need in order to provide people with clean air, food and water?

Does that sound silly?

Not half as silly as the fact that the avatars in that creepy Second Life thing use up as much electricity as Brazilians living their real lives.

But this is a low power chip!

Ahh, so the Matrix will be powered by wave, wind and solar power, and the terminator robots can have more juice allocated to biomechanics because their brains will be Energy Star Compliant! Slap a Green Peace sticker on the ass end of that thing and bow down before it!

We’ll be a broke, chipped, surveilled and controlled in ways we probably can’t even imagine yet, but the desert of the real won’t seem so bad because our TVs and computers will have all those cores, and our Second Lives in the machine will melt away the bothersome issues with our real lives…

Or so Intel would have you believe.

Via: BBC:

A chip with 80 processing cores and capable of more than a trillion calculations per second (teraflops) has been unveiled by Intel.

The Teraflops chip is not a commercial release but could point the way to more powerful processors, said the firm.

The chip achieves performance on a piece of silicon no bigger than a fingernail that 11 years ago required a machine with 10,000 chips inside it.

The challenge is to find a way to program the many cores simultaneously.

There are already specialist chips with multiple cores – such as those used in router hardware and graphics cards – but Dr Mark Bull, at the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre, said multi-core chips were forcing a sea-change in the programming of desktop applications.

“It’s not too difficult to find two or four independent things you can do concurrently, finding 80 or more things is more difficult, especially for desktop applications.

“It is going to require quite a revolution in software programming.

“Massive parallelism has been the preserve of the minority – a few people doing high-performance scientific computing.

“But that sort of thing is going to have to find its way into the mainstream.”

Related: All Electric Vehicles and the Concept of Enough

8 Responses to “Direct Correlation Between Computing Power and Doom?”

  1. TT says:

    As has been pointed out in the comments section of the linked page, the actual *energy usage* of Brazilians is not limited to electricity only – there is also heating oil, gas, etc. In reality the Second Life avatars use perhaps 5-10% the energy of a Real Person. Nevertheless I think your comments on the societal choice of increased computing power over increased quality of life are quite apropos. Very anarcho-primitivist.

  2. Kevin says:

    >>>Very anarcho-primitivist.

    Being against high efficiency terminator robots doesn’t make me anarcho-primitivist. Besides, I live a much less energy intensive lifestyle than any of the so-called “anarcho-primitivists” that I know of. Those hypocrites are earth murdering psychopaths, compared to me, in terms of energy usage.

    My wife and I do, however, use a refrigerator. Do I still get the silly anarcho-primitivist badge? HA

    P.S. the word “energy” in my post was changed to “electricity” to accurately reflect the point of the Rough Type post.

  3. George Kenney says:

    Check out these gaming pods. Pump in a little food, water and oxygen (for a price), pump out a little CO2 and waste (for another small fee) and we have voluntary drivers for the first generation of terminator robots until they become autonomous (V2.0) and then sentient (V3.0).

    I wonder if the amped up teenage meat inside will even know that they are terminating real people on the outside. Probably not.

    Anyone doubt this? Give you kids a Gameboy and a sunny lawn and see which one they choose.

    http://www.vgcorps.com/

    “The Virtual Worldâ„¢ simulators are some of the most advanced around. With primary and secondary displays combined with Multi-Functional Displays (MFDs), a ground-pounding audio system, and countless controls these cockpit systems will make you sweat as you try to fight your way through the heat of battle! Our set of eight machines will grant you the opportunity to stomp your friends in three furious games of strategic, reflexive, and piloting prowess.”

  4. David says:

    A very sad realization:

    There will be no place for those of us

    (namely, a significant majority of the readers of this magnificent blog, the only one of any intellectual fortitude pertaining to the subjects discussed herein on the entire web)

    who recognize that Humanity is at its best when it relies on the innovative intelligence of its members, predicated on positive synergistic, symbiotic relationships with the natural world AND equal energy-value exchanges among the interacting entities

    in Their re-ordered world; or to state it another way, we will practice our responsible, intelligent, sustainable living on Their communes, according to Their dictates, eating Their wholly-owned & patented, genetically-engineered foodstuffs, while simultaneously being disallowed to produce any form of sustenance not patented or corporate-owned, or we will be killed, for independence anywhere will be a threat to forced dependence everywhere.

    And why would independence in Their re-ordered world be such a threat??

    It would trigger envy and jealousy among those manipulatively and forcibly made dependent; these emotions would then manifest themselves in behavior that is categorically inimical to control and order, namely

    1. rebellion against Them and Their re-ordered world and

    2. wars by the dependent against the independent;

    therefore, no catalysts of such behavior will be allowed.

    On a happier note: more evidence that global warming is a fraud–

    http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1363818.ece

  5. fallout11 says:

    Intel’s much-touted multi-core chipsets are, actually, an admission of diminishing marginal returns on a technological dead end.

    Unable to develop a significantly better core architecture, chip manufacturers first resorted to simply increasing clock speed (and power requirements, and cooling requirements), and as even that has run up against a brick wall recently, the only solution left is to simply pack more and more processor cores onto the mobo, with all the problems associated with parallelism.

  6. Nameless US Reader says:

    Even if TT is right that games like Second Life consume 5-10% of the energy of what a ‘Real Person’ uses (and I’m assuming TT is using an American person to mean real…if I’m wrong please correct me) that’s still an energy hogging activity that produces what in terms of productivity and usefulness and value for the rest of the world?

    At 10% usage it’s like doubling your electrical lighting usage and getting what in return? Some entertainment? Some virtual goodies (virtual money, virtual social status, virtual fame, or what?)

    I’d rather put that energy towards something that is more societally useful and productive.

    Heaven help us if all the increases in computing power go towards increasingly marginal activites like playing Second Life while we waste our natural resources.

  7. ender wiggin says:

    >> I wonder if the amped up teenage meat inside will even know that they are terminating real people on the outside. Probably not.

    Its quite an old idea – the mildly disturbed Orson Scott Card described this in “Enders Game” a long time ago …

  8. David says:

    TT: It seems you would enjoy life on one of Their communes, eating your own shit and drinking your own urine, thus allowing Them to reallocate the resources you fail to consume (by recycling your food and water) to carry out a false-flag op that results in the death of one of your closest family members.

    Very anarcho-primitivist.

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