Computing - the next twenty years

[andrewducker]

This is a writeup of a presentation on where computing is going.  It's both entertaining and fascinating.

I have no clue about what high-performance computing will look like 20 years from now.

So, I asked a few of my colleagues. The answers can be summarized simply, since there were only three, really:

A blank stare. This was the most common reaction. Like “Look, I have a deadline tomorrow.”

Laughter. I understand that response completely.

And, finally, someone said: What an incredible opportunity! You get to make totally outrageous statements that you’ll never be held accountable for! How about offshore data centers, powered by wave motion, continuously serviced by autonomous robots with salamander-level consciousness, spidering around replacing chicklet-sized compute units, all made by the world’s largest computer vendor – Haier! [They make refrigerators.] And lots of graphs, all going up to the right!
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Moore’s Law won’t end with a bang; it will end with a whimper. It will gradually fade out in a period stretching over at least two decades.
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Computing will in general become cheaper – but not necessarily that much faster.
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There will be TeraFLOPS on everybody’s lap, at least for some values of “lap”; lap may really be pocket or purse.
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Computing will be done either on one’s laptop / cellphone / whatever; or out in a bloody huge mist/fog/cloud -like thing somewhere. There may be a hierarchy of such cloud resources, but I don’t think anybody will get charged up about what level they happen to be using at the moment.

Absolutely worth a look if you're interested in the future of computing.

Comments

[pisica.livejournal.com]

My next novel is set about a hundred years in the future, though the world has taken a nosedive in the meantime. I'm including some virtual reality but I really have no idea what to do about the computing infrastructure. Which is kind of essential. *panics*

[broin.livejournal.com]

cf modern Africa and India?

[andrewducker]

If there's a crash followed by a rise then you can have whatever level of technology suits your story best. Just make sure it's coherent!

If you want to run anything past me I'd be glad to help out.