Intel announced a major breakthrough in CPU core density with its 48-core “Single Chip Cloud Computing CPU”, an experimental concept chip at this point that promises to reshape how computers are built and consumers interact with their PCs someday soon.
The chip consumes about as much power as existing processors do today and promises to bring super-computer power to everyday PCs – just a few years from now. 48 CPU’s on a piece of silicon the size of a postage stamp is an amazing accomplishment, indeed.
I remember 20 years or so ago saying “someday, we’ll have 10 CPUs on a single chip”. Well, that day is here now, with 8-core CPU’s now readily available, and 48 core chips now visible on the horizon.
Intel claims this new integrated processor cluster could become smart enough to allow PCs to use “vision” to interact with its users.
I will go a step further and say that with this level of compute power available, we’re closer than ever to being able to power the “Digital Being”.
With the ability to power massive semantic networks, interconnected via high-speed Internet access, the gaps to achieving artificial intelligence continue to narrow.
If only we had the various existing, disparate software components organized, integrated and orchestrated properly…then computers would carry on an intelligent conversation with us – and us with them – learning and growing with us. This is within mankind’s grasp in the not so distant future…
We have the speech recognition and speech synthesis technology readily available, as well as the natural language processing required – it’s the integrated AI “brain” that’s still missing. Now the processing platform needed as the power plant for the Digital Being is coming soon.
We now have the knowledge base pieces of the AI brain; e.g., turning WikiPedia into a massive semantic knowledge network, along with using Google and Bing in real-time to quickly look up answers to fuel the learning process.
The semantic networks to represent and navigate this knowledge base is also readily available, but all this technology exists today in non-integrated “islands” of research and prototypes. Nobody has integrated it all into a cohesive Digital Being.
We haven’t yet figured out (or adequately funded) the integration of all the available technology.
Instead, we’re too busy fighting with one another over the control of small pieces of land and killing each other over relatively minor differences in our belief systems. This is costing us hundreds of billions in resources every year, while more worthy advances in technology and quality of life continues to evade us unfunded.
I remain convinced, though, that some group of enterprising people will, within the next couple of decades and (hopefully) our lifetimes, find a way to put all the pieces together. When we do, the “Digital Being” will be born and become reality.
Oh yeah. Back to the cool Intel chip… Check out this video with more details on the new chip and what Intel thinks it means for near-term personal computing:
Unfortunately, most software today doesn’t take full advantage of multiple processors, so adding more processors may prove fruitless and face diminishing returns, unless the software side of the equation catches up – and quickly.
Server software like databases, web servers and application servers can clearly benefit greatly from these advances in computer power right away, but relatively few desktop PC apps and browser-based applications can truly benefit from so many added processors – at least today. Heck, my 4 CPU machine loafs along most of the time (unless I’m crunching a Camtasia video into an MP4).
Advances in parallel processing/compiler technology and multi-threaded application architectures promise to enable us to tap into these computing advances better, but have yet to find their way into the majority of client-side applications.
Of course, compute-bound applications like video-processing, audio-processing, CAD/CAM and other CPU-intensive apps will benefit greatly from these advances. It will be interesting to see what else Intel has up its sleeve to help us take full advantage of these CPUs on our PCs. Sounds like fun!
Anyway, I applaud Intel for these advances (among others who are also pushing the core-density envelope).
At some point (perhaps in the next 10 to 20 years time), these kinds of compute power advances will enable someone on this planet to actually create an artificial intelligence capability, where computers can learn and grow, and then keep up with mankind’s ability to develop faster hardware and interconnect all this compute power via the Internet.
Hmmm. Wasn’t there a movie about that? (several, as I recall) That future may be here sooner than we realize…
We’re clearly in the early days preceding those kinds of major breakthroughs, since this kind of compute power will be in enough people’s hands to enable major software breakthroughs to happen organically and collectively via the Web at some point.
Once a Digital Being based on artificial intelligence emerges, it will change things on a scale as massive as the invention of the World Wide Web did in the 1990′s with the original Netscape browser. With so many powerful computers interconnected worldwide via massive bandwidth connections, along with most of our human knowledge available to the the Digital Being’s virtual fingertips, amazing things will begin to happen.
For the first time in human history, Digital Beings will know more than any single human possibly can in their lifetime. This will make for a very interesting companion, teacher, student, friend and potential enemy – all rolled into one.
Let’s hope we learn to tame and control our primitive, feudal tendencies soon. Our technology does sometimes seem to be outpacing our ability to evolve and grow as civil beings, doesn’t it?
All this too far-fetched? Perhaps. It would be interesting to hear your opinions.
I remember watching The Jetsons on TV as a child – 45 years later, virtually everything depicted in those TV shows is reality today in one way or another.
Finally, I hope I live long enough to experience the Digital Being era for a time. I’m certain that my children and yours will.
Meanwhile, we’ll have to be satisfied Being the bridge to our Digital world.
D I G I T A L B E I N G
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