Scientists have unveiled a new initiative, dubbed the Institute for Advanced Architecture, to lay the groundwork for a supercomputer that would be more than 1,000 times faster than any current offering.
Commercial supercomputer makers have recently begun to flirt with petaflop performance, meaning computers capable of completing 1,000 trillion floating-point calculations (flops) per second. The Sandia and Oak Ridge national lab scientists aim to leapfrog that benchmark by several orders of magnitude and are targeting one million trillion calculations per second, known as exascale computing.
(Exa is the metric prefix for quintillion, or 1018.)
"Both the [Department of Energy's] Office of Science and the National Nuclear Security Administration have identified exascale computing as a critical need in roughly the 2018 timeframe," said Sudip Dosanjh, the project's head. "We certainly think that there is a national competitiveness issue."
Ultrafast computers are integral to simulating complex systems, like the Earth's climate, nuclear warhead explosions or the protein interactions inside cells. They continue to progress, thanks to the well-known -- though often questioned -- Moore's Law, which has allowed chip makers to pack twice as much power into the same amount of space about every two years. More power has meant more so-called flops, a common measurement of computing speed. Ten years ago, Sandia's ASCI Red became the first teraflop computer, and in December 2000, Wired called 100-teraflop performance "unheard of."
Now, though, new challenges have presented themselves. The researchers say that moving data from the supercomputer's thousands of processors into its memory will require them to design new architectures that reduce the need to move data around.
"Some people say that flops are almost free, that really what you are paying for is moving the data," Dosanjh said.
In addition, power and reliability require new solutions when you've got thousands or millions of processors.
"The power budget for all computers seems to be going up rapidly. We need a machine you can afford to run," Dosanjh said, and one that actually works. With a million computing nodes working together, the odds are high that one of them will break, over the course of even a small calculation.
With current technologies, "an exascale computer might only stay running for a few minutes," said Dosanjh.
The Sandia-Oak Ridge collaboration has $7.4 million in fiscal year 2008 funding from the National Nuclear Security Administration and the Department of Energy, but it's not just nuclear weapons research that is driving the push for faster supercomputers. Researchers of many stripes have come to depend on the inexorable upward scaling of computing power.
Gavin Schmidt, a climate modeler at NASA Goddard, said that he's built the regularity of computational upgrades into the way he designs his climate simulations, which are so computing-intensive they can take several months of processing to complete.
"Generally speaking we don't do experiments that last more than three months," Schmidt said. "If you want to do an experiment that would last for six months, it's best to just wait a few months, and then [with faster computers] it only takes two months to run."
According to a semiannual list of the world's top 500 supercomputers, compiled in November 2007, IBM's BlueGene/L System is the fastest computer in the world, with benchmark performance of about 480 teraflops per second, or almost half a petaflop. That rig is a joint development of IBM and the National Nuclear Security Administration, and is housed in California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
With the research team trying to vault several orders of magnitude over any current system, Dosanjh said the new institute would need $20 to $30 million a year to accomplish its goals.
Even as individual supercomputers have grown in speed, distributed-computing initiatives, like the Folding@Home program, have enabled researchers to tap into thousands of users' computers and PS3s to solve some types of scientific problems.
Showing posts with label Future Computer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Future Computer. Show all posts
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Monday, February 18, 2008
Time travel could be possible ... in the future
Roger Highfield, Science Editor
It may take more than a nuclear-powered De Lorean or a spinning police box, but time travel could actually be a possibility for future generations, according to an eminent professor of physics.
Prof Stephen Hawking refutes the possibility of time travel
The way the machine would work rests on Einstein’s theory of general relativity, a theory of gravity that shows how time can be warped by the gravitational pull of objects.
Bend time enough and you can create a loop and the possibility of temporal travel.
Prof Ori’s theory, set out in the prestigious science journal Physical Review, rests on a set of mathematical equations describing hypothetical conditions that, if established, could lead to the formation of a time machine, technically known as “closed time-like curves.”
In the blends of space and time, or spacetime, in his equations, time would be able to curve back on itself, so that a person travelling around the loop might be able to go further back in time with each lap.
In the past, one of the major challenges has been the alleged need for an exotic material with strange properties - what physicists call negative density - to create these time loops.
“This is no longer an issue,” he told The Daily Telegraph.
“You can construct a time machine without exotic matter,” he said.
It is now possible to use any material, even dust, so long as there is enough of it to bend spacetime into a loop.
Even though Prof Ori, of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, believes his new work strengthens the possibility of a real Tardis, he would not speculate on when a time machine would be built, or even if it would ever be possible.
“There are still some open questions.”
The main remaining issue is the stability of space time, the very fabric of the cosmos, in time travel scenarios.
But overcoming this obstacle may require the next generation of theory under development, called quantum gravity, which attempts to blend general relativity with the ideas of the quantum theory, the mathematical ideas that rule the atomic world.
Time travel has long been a fascination, HG Wells grappled with the scientific issues in his 1895 science fiction classic, The Time Machine, Dr Who is still fighting the time war and Hollywood insisted all that was needed for time travel was a De Lorean and a good flash of lightning.
But more serious work on general relativity first raised the astonishing possibility of time travel in the 1940s.
In the half century since, many eminent physicists have argued against time travel because it undermines ideas of cause and effect to create paradoxes so that a time traveller could go back to kill his grandfather so that she is never born in the first place.
In 1990, the world’s best known scientist, Prof Stephen Hawking proposed a “chronology protection conjecture”, which flatly says the laws of physics disallow time machines.
Three years later, Prof Ori concluded that the possibility of constructing a time machine from conventional materials could not be ruled out.
Prof Hawking then fought back with his Cambridge University colleague Michael Cassidy and they concluded that time loops are extremely unlikely.
Tongue in cheek, Prof Hawking added that there is experimental evidence that time travel doesn’t exist: “We have no reliable evidence of visitors from the future. (I’m discounting the conspiracy theory that UFOs are from the future and that the government knows and is covering it up. Its record of cover-ups is not that good.)”
But now, in Physical Review, Prof Ori has provided some more advanced solutions to the problems of time travel outlined by the likes of Prof Hawking, helping to realise an idea that dates back millennia and appears in 18th century literature, Harry Potter, Dickens, sci-fi movies and much more besides.
It may take more than a nuclear-powered De Lorean or a spinning police box, but time travel could actually be a possibility for future generations, according to an eminent professor of physics.
Prof Stephen Hawking refutes the possibility of time travel
The way the machine would work rests on Einstein’s theory of general relativity, a theory of gravity that shows how time can be warped by the gravitational pull of objects.
Bend time enough and you can create a loop and the possibility of temporal travel.
Prof Ori’s theory, set out in the prestigious science journal Physical Review, rests on a set of mathematical equations describing hypothetical conditions that, if established, could lead to the formation of a time machine, technically known as “closed time-like curves.”
In the blends of space and time, or spacetime, in his equations, time would be able to curve back on itself, so that a person travelling around the loop might be able to go further back in time with each lap.
In the past, one of the major challenges has been the alleged need for an exotic material with strange properties - what physicists call negative density - to create these time loops.
“This is no longer an issue,” he told The Daily Telegraph.
“You can construct a time machine without exotic matter,” he said.
It is now possible to use any material, even dust, so long as there is enough of it to bend spacetime into a loop.
Even though Prof Ori, of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, believes his new work strengthens the possibility of a real Tardis, he would not speculate on when a time machine would be built, or even if it would ever be possible.
“There are still some open questions.”
The main remaining issue is the stability of space time, the very fabric of the cosmos, in time travel scenarios.
But overcoming this obstacle may require the next generation of theory under development, called quantum gravity, which attempts to blend general relativity with the ideas of the quantum theory, the mathematical ideas that rule the atomic world.
Time travel has long been a fascination, HG Wells grappled with the scientific issues in his 1895 science fiction classic, The Time Machine, Dr Who is still fighting the time war and Hollywood insisted all that was needed for time travel was a De Lorean and a good flash of lightning.
But more serious work on general relativity first raised the astonishing possibility of time travel in the 1940s.
In the half century since, many eminent physicists have argued against time travel because it undermines ideas of cause and effect to create paradoxes so that a time traveller could go back to kill his grandfather so that she is never born in the first place.
In 1990, the world’s best known scientist, Prof Stephen Hawking proposed a “chronology protection conjecture”, which flatly says the laws of physics disallow time machines.
Three years later, Prof Ori concluded that the possibility of constructing a time machine from conventional materials could not be ruled out.
Prof Hawking then fought back with his Cambridge University colleague Michael Cassidy and they concluded that time loops are extremely unlikely.
Tongue in cheek, Prof Hawking added that there is experimental evidence that time travel doesn’t exist: “We have no reliable evidence of visitors from the future. (I’m discounting the conspiracy theory that UFOs are from the future and that the government knows and is covering it up. Its record of cover-ups is not that good.)”
But now, in Physical Review, Prof Ori has provided some more advanced solutions to the problems of time travel outlined by the likes of Prof Hawking, helping to realise an idea that dates back millennia and appears in 18th century literature, Harry Potter, Dickens, sci-fi movies and much more besides.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
And the 14 Grand Engineering Challenges of the 21st Century Are..
.
By Chuck Squatriglia February 15, 2008
Before you can save the world, you'd better write a to-do list so nothing gets overlooked. Some of the world's brightest minds have done just that by laying out this century's greatest engineering challenges.
The panel of 18 engineers, technologists and futurists included Google co-founder Larry Page and genomics pioneer J. Craig Venter. They spent more than a year pondering how best to improve life on Earth and came up with 14 Grand Engineering Challenges, a list the National Academy of Engineering deemed so momentous it should be capitalized.
The list, announced this afternoon, addresses four themes the committee considered "essential for humanity to flourish" - environmental sustainability, health, reducing our vulnerability and adding to the joy of living.
"We chose engineering challenges that we feel can, through creativity and committment, be realistically met, most of them early in this century," said committee chair William J. Perry, the former Secretary of Defense who teaches engineering at Stanford University. "Some can be, and should be, achieved as soon as possible."
What are they?
Make solar energy affordable.
Provide energy from fusion.
Develop carbon sequestration methods.
Manage the nitrogen cycle.
Provide access to clean water.
Restore and improve urban infrastructure.
Advance health informatics.
Engineer better medicines.
Reverse-engineer the brain.
Prevent nuclear terror.
Secure cyberspace.
Enhance virtual reality.
Advance personalized learning.
Engineer the tools for scientific discovery.
The committee, which also included such luminaries as futurist Ray Kurzweil and robotics guru Dean Kamen, decided not to make any predictions or focus on gee-whiz gadgets. They felt it more important to outline broad objectives that might influence research funding and governmental policy.
The 14 challenges they laid out were culled from hundreds of suggestions from engineers, scientists, policymakers and ordinary people around the world.
"Meeting these challenges would be game changing," said Charles M. Vest, president of the NAE. "Success with any of them could dramatically improve life for everyone."
So... what should we check off first?
By Chuck Squatriglia February 15, 2008
Before you can save the world, you'd better write a to-do list so nothing gets overlooked. Some of the world's brightest minds have done just that by laying out this century's greatest engineering challenges.
The panel of 18 engineers, technologists and futurists included Google co-founder Larry Page and genomics pioneer J. Craig Venter. They spent more than a year pondering how best to improve life on Earth and came up with 14 Grand Engineering Challenges, a list the National Academy of Engineering deemed so momentous it should be capitalized.
The list, announced this afternoon, addresses four themes the committee considered "essential for humanity to flourish" - environmental sustainability, health, reducing our vulnerability and adding to the joy of living.
"We chose engineering challenges that we feel can, through creativity and committment, be realistically met, most of them early in this century," said committee chair William J. Perry, the former Secretary of Defense who teaches engineering at Stanford University. "Some can be, and should be, achieved as soon as possible."
What are they?
Make solar energy affordable.
Provide energy from fusion.
Develop carbon sequestration methods.
Manage the nitrogen cycle.
Provide access to clean water.
Restore and improve urban infrastructure.
Advance health informatics.
Engineer better medicines.
Reverse-engineer the brain.
Prevent nuclear terror.
Secure cyberspace.
Enhance virtual reality.
Advance personalized learning.
Engineer the tools for scientific discovery.
The committee, which also included such luminaries as futurist Ray Kurzweil and robotics guru Dean Kamen, decided not to make any predictions or focus on gee-whiz gadgets. They felt it more important to outline broad objectives that might influence research funding and governmental policy.
The 14 challenges they laid out were culled from hundreds of suggestions from engineers, scientists, policymakers and ordinary people around the world.
"Meeting these challenges would be game changing," said Charles M. Vest, president of the NAE. "Success with any of them could dramatically improve life for everyone."
So... what should we check off first?
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Computing That’s Light Years Ahead
A new year brings new trends: in American sports, soccer looks poised to become the new basketball; in health and lifestyle features, fifty is touted as the new thirty; NYC hipsters have been alerted that Brooklyn is the new Manhattan; and, this year's fashion runways suggest that green is the new black.
In the world of technology, however, similar analogies are less ephemeral, and can come to mark quantum leaps forward in the realm of human progress. Just think: photographs vs. still-life paintings; phones vs. telegraphs; cars vs. horse and buggies; television vs. movie theaters; the computer vs. calculators. . .
What if plastic was about to become the new silicon,
and computing was on the verge of becoming fast and fluid as light?
The development of a viable electro-optic polymer has been in the sights of the fiber optic communications industry for decades, because it has been viewed as holding the key to unleashing waves of inexpensive bandwidth. Billions of dollars have been spent by thousands of researchers at large and small companies alike in this pursuit, all to no avail.
After fifty years of competitive research, a small nanotech company from Wilmington, Delaware, named Third-Order Nanotechnologies, has developed a materials breakthrough that could be suitable for making commercially viable photonic chips—chips that hold the promise to be the "silicon" of a new era in computing. In fact, Third-Order's inexpensive plastic photonic chips have shown the potential to be a thousand times more powerful than silicon chips.
In the same fashion that silicon was the material that shaped the twentieth century, Third-Order's third-generation materials just might mold the twenty-first. The company's patented electro-optic plastics would broadly replace more expensive, lower-performance materials that are currently used in fiber-optic ground, wireless, and satellite communication networks, bringing low-cost universal bandwidth along with it.
With this new all-optical platform, the potential exists for Promethean growth in a myriad of different markets. If the first iteration of the Internet created e-mail and Web pages, and the Megabit Internet gave birth to killer applications such as VoIP and streaming music and video, imagine what Third-Order's Gigabit Internet might be like. A billion instantly available television channels. . . ? Lifelike, super-high definition video conferencing with dozens of people at once. . . ? Photorealistic virtual reality role-playing games experienced with thousands of people from around the world. . . ?
One dramatic application for optical computing that may be crucial for national security purposes is instantaneous, "Where's Waldo?"-style facial recognition. With optical computing, faces of suspected wrongdoers may be distinguished with a higher degree of accuracy and one thousand to one million times faster than silicon. With optical computers the size of sticks of butter able to be inserted into traffic lights and security cameras (replacing rooms filled with dozens of bulky desktops), this nimble security application would be both more rigorous and cost-effective than existing solutions.
Third-Order's CEO, Hal Bennett, is both an inventor and a visionary. He would welcome the opportunity to discuss with you Third-Order's technological breakthrough to bring the Gigbit Internet to the home. In the meantime, we would be happy to provide you with a company media kit as well, and encourage you to visit www.Third-Order.com for more information.
In the world of technology, however, similar analogies are less ephemeral, and can come to mark quantum leaps forward in the realm of human progress. Just think: photographs vs. still-life paintings; phones vs. telegraphs; cars vs. horse and buggies; television vs. movie theaters; the computer vs. calculators. . .
What if plastic was about to become the new silicon,
and computing was on the verge of becoming fast and fluid as light?
The development of a viable electro-optic polymer has been in the sights of the fiber optic communications industry for decades, because it has been viewed as holding the key to unleashing waves of inexpensive bandwidth. Billions of dollars have been spent by thousands of researchers at large and small companies alike in this pursuit, all to no avail.
After fifty years of competitive research, a small nanotech company from Wilmington, Delaware, named Third-Order Nanotechnologies, has developed a materials breakthrough that could be suitable for making commercially viable photonic chips—chips that hold the promise to be the "silicon" of a new era in computing. In fact, Third-Order's inexpensive plastic photonic chips have shown the potential to be a thousand times more powerful than silicon chips.
In the same fashion that silicon was the material that shaped the twentieth century, Third-Order's third-generation materials just might mold the twenty-first. The company's patented electro-optic plastics would broadly replace more expensive, lower-performance materials that are currently used in fiber-optic ground, wireless, and satellite communication networks, bringing low-cost universal bandwidth along with it.
With this new all-optical platform, the potential exists for Promethean growth in a myriad of different markets. If the first iteration of the Internet created e-mail and Web pages, and the Megabit Internet gave birth to killer applications such as VoIP and streaming music and video, imagine what Third-Order's Gigabit Internet might be like. A billion instantly available television channels. . . ? Lifelike, super-high definition video conferencing with dozens of people at once. . . ? Photorealistic virtual reality role-playing games experienced with thousands of people from around the world. . . ?
One dramatic application for optical computing that may be crucial for national security purposes is instantaneous, "Where's Waldo?"-style facial recognition. With optical computing, faces of suspected wrongdoers may be distinguished with a higher degree of accuracy and one thousand to one million times faster than silicon. With optical computers the size of sticks of butter able to be inserted into traffic lights and security cameras (replacing rooms filled with dozens of bulky desktops), this nimble security application would be both more rigorous and cost-effective than existing solutions.
Third-Order's CEO, Hal Bennett, is both an inventor and a visionary. He would welcome the opportunity to discuss with you Third-Order's technological breakthrough to bring the Gigbit Internet to the home. In the meantime, we would be happy to provide you with a company media kit as well, and encourage you to visit www.Third-Order.com for more information.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Mobile Biz Stone Co-founder, Twitter
As we increasingly realise the web as a vital social utility and important marketplace we cannot ignore an even bigger potential. The power of the internet is not limited to the PC. Twitter has emerged to create a seamless layer of social connectivity across SMS, IM, and the web. Operating on the simple concept of status, Twitter asks one question: "What are you doing?" Friends, family and colleagues stay connected through short responses.
The potential for this simple form of hybrid communication technology is strong. For example, a person in India may text "Follow Biz" and get online via Twitter over SMS in a matter of seconds. Biz might be updating from the US on a PC. Nevertheless, the updates are exchanged instantly.
Our future holds in store the promise of increased connectivity to a powerful social internet which truly extends to every little spot on our Planet Earth. We're all affected by and defined by each other's actions. What are you doing?
The potential for this simple form of hybrid communication technology is strong. For example, a person in India may text "Follow Biz" and get online via Twitter over SMS in a matter of seconds. Biz might be updating from the US on a PC. Nevertheless, the updates are exchanged instantly.
Our future holds in store the promise of increased connectivity to a powerful social internet which truly extends to every little spot on our Planet Earth. We're all affected by and defined by each other's actions. What are you doing?
Advertising Maurice Lévy Chairman and CEO, Publicis Groupe
Five years is an eternity in technology, but from our vantage point a few things are clear about what the internet and internet advertising will look like in 2012. One, virtually all media will be digital, and digital will enable almost all kinds of advertising. Two, online advertising will depend more than ever on the one element which has always been at the heart of impactful advertising, both analogue and digital: creativity. The explosion of media channels means this is a glorious time to think and act creatively. In art history terms, we are at the dawn of the Renaissance after the Dark Ages.
Just as the Renaissance broke down the distinctions between sacred and profane art forms and between individual and community, so we are seeing a similar exciting blurring today - and this will only intensify. Linear media is fast giving way to liquid media, where you can move seamlessly in and out of different settings. Prescribed time - the 7 o'clock news, the Friday night out at the cinema, etc - is now becoming multitasking time. People are no longer willing to put up with interruptions for a commercial break during their entertainment experience, and so we have to find incredibly creative solutions to interact with them and engage them in genuine and honest ways. This implies a brave new world of engagement and involvement between marketers and consumers and will also mean co-production between marketers and media owners. Scale will be critical: in five years' time, around 2 billion people will be constant internet users and mobile internet computing will be ubiquitous. What a great time to be in the business!
Just as the Renaissance broke down the distinctions between sacred and profane art forms and between individual and community, so we are seeing a similar exciting blurring today - and this will only intensify. Linear media is fast giving way to liquid media, where you can move seamlessly in and out of different settings. Prescribed time - the 7 o'clock news, the Friday night out at the cinema, etc - is now becoming multitasking time. People are no longer willing to put up with interruptions for a commercial break during their entertainment experience, and so we have to find incredibly creative solutions to interact with them and engage them in genuine and honest ways. This implies a brave new world of engagement and involvement between marketers and consumers and will also mean co-production between marketers and media owners. Scale will be critical: in five years' time, around 2 billion people will be constant internet users and mobile internet computing will be ubiquitous. What a great time to be in the business!
Video By Chad Hurley CEO, co-founder YouTub
In five years, video broadcasting will be the most ubiquitous and accessible form of communication. The tools for video recording will continue to become smaller and more affordable. Personal media devices will be universal and interconnected. People will have the opportunity to record and share video with a small group of friends or everyone around the world.
Today, eight hours of new video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. This will grow exponentially over the next five years. Our goal is to allow every person on the planet to participate by making the upload process as simple as placing a phone call. This new video content will be available on any screen - in your living room or in your pocket - and will bring together all the diverse media which matters to you, from videos of family and friends to news, music, sports, cooking and more.
In the next five years, users will be at the centre of their video experience, you will have more access to more information, and the world will be a smaller place
Today, eight hours of new video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. This will grow exponentially over the next five years. Our goal is to allow every person on the planet to participate by making the upload process as simple as placing a phone call. This new video content will be available on any screen - in your living room or in your pocket - and will bring together all the diverse media which matters to you, from videos of family and friends to news, music, sports, cooking and more.
In the next five years, users will be at the centre of their video experience, you will have more access to more information, and the world will be a smaller place
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
The Phone Glove
There is a rational argument to be made for the Bluetooth glove phone, a reassemblage of parts from a Bluetooth head set into a driving glove that was constructed by British gadget guy and television personality Jason Bradbury. This glove integrates our telecommunications devices into a stylish and functional clothing accessory while keeping the bulky phone out of the way. OK, maybe a glove phone isn't a great leap forward in technology or ergonomics, but it's hard to deny the goofy fun of answering a call with your thumb and pinky finger. In fact, Bradbury's tinkering hints at a trend that has received a lot of academic attention: wearable computing. Many futurists believe that our communications devices will eventually become cheap and ubiquitous enough to simply be integrated into the elements of our everyday attire. And it's already happening. Several Bluetooth helmets have been developed for skiing and motorcycling from companies such as Marker and Motorola, and jackets that plug into all of your gear and create a personal area network are available from ScotteVest (www.scottevest.com).
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
The best forecasters will be computers
PAUL SAFFO
Technology Forecaster
When I began my career as a forecaster over two decades ago, it was a given that the core of futures research lay beyond the reach of traditional quantitative forecasting and it's mathematical tools. This meant that futures researchers would not enjoy the full labor-saving benefits of number-crunching computers, but at least it guaranteed job security. Economists and financial analysts might one day wake up to discover that their computer tools were stealing their jobs, but futurists would not see machines muscling their way into the world of qualitative forecasting anytime soon.
I was mistaken. I now believe that in the not too distant future, the best forecasters will not be people, but machines: ever more capable "prediction engines" probing ever deeper into stochastic spaces. Indicators of this trend are everywhere from the rise of quantitative analysis in the financial sector, to the emergence of computer-based horizon scanning systems in use by governments around the world, and of course the relentless advance of computer systems along the upward-sweeping curve of Moore's Law.
We already have human-computer hybrids at work in the discovery/forecasting space, from Amazon's Mechanical Turk, to the myriad online prediction markets. In time, we will recognize that these systems are an intermediate step towards prediction engines in much the same way that human "computers" who once performed the mathematical calculations on complex projects were replaced by general-purpose electronic digital computers.
The eventual appearance of prediction engines will also be enabled by the steady uploading of reality into cyberspace, from the growth of web-based social activities to the steady accretion of sensor data sucked up by an exponentially growing number of devices observing and increasingly, manipulating the physical world. The result is an unimaginably vast corpus of raw material, grist for the prediction engines as they sift and sort and peer ahead. These prediction engines won't ever exhibit perfect foresight, but as they and the underlying data they work on co-evolve, it is a sure bet that they will do far better then mere humans
Technology Forecaster
When I began my career as a forecaster over two decades ago, it was a given that the core of futures research lay beyond the reach of traditional quantitative forecasting and it's mathematical tools. This meant that futures researchers would not enjoy the full labor-saving benefits of number-crunching computers, but at least it guaranteed job security. Economists and financial analysts might one day wake up to discover that their computer tools were stealing their jobs, but futurists would not see machines muscling their way into the world of qualitative forecasting anytime soon.
I was mistaken. I now believe that in the not too distant future, the best forecasters will not be people, but machines: ever more capable "prediction engines" probing ever deeper into stochastic spaces. Indicators of this trend are everywhere from the rise of quantitative analysis in the financial sector, to the emergence of computer-based horizon scanning systems in use by governments around the world, and of course the relentless advance of computer systems along the upward-sweeping curve of Moore's Law.
We already have human-computer hybrids at work in the discovery/forecasting space, from Amazon's Mechanical Turk, to the myriad online prediction markets. In time, we will recognize that these systems are an intermediate step towards prediction engines in much the same way that human "computers" who once performed the mathematical calculations on complex projects were replaced by general-purpose electronic digital computers.
The eventual appearance of prediction engines will also be enabled by the steady uploading of reality into cyberspace, from the growth of web-based social activities to the steady accretion of sensor data sucked up by an exponentially growing number of devices observing and increasingly, manipulating the physical world. The result is an unimaginably vast corpus of raw material, grist for the prediction engines as they sift and sort and peer ahead. These prediction engines won't ever exhibit perfect foresight, but as they and the underlying data they work on co-evolve, it is a sure bet that they will do far better then mere humans
Friday, February 1, 2008
Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo! For $ 44.6 billion
The proposed US $ 31 per share represents a premium of 62% on the current price.
Microsoft already has plans for integrating the officials of the two companies.
Microsoft has made a proposal to purchase the Yahoo! This Friday (1) valued at $ 44.6 billion. The objective of the company is to increase its competitiveness in the market for online services, and, especially, from search engines.
The proposed US $ 31 per share represents a premium of 62% on the close of yesterday''''s action of Yahoo! On the New York Stock Exchange, to $ 19.18. With the news, from around 10am (Brasilia), the shares of Yahoo! Disparavam 54% in the pre-market on Wall Street, listed at $ 29.70, while Microsoft recuava 2%, to $ 31.95.
On release, the giant of the software industry, said the agreement would create a company more efficient, with a synergy total of $ 1 billion a year, with the generation of more value to advertisers and operating efficiencies.
Microsoft also revealed that already have developed a plan to integrate the officials of the two companies.
The expectation of Microsoft is to obtain regulatory approval for the agreement, with its completion planned for the second half of 2008.
"We have a great respect for Yahoo, and together we can offer a range of solutions increasingly attractive to consumers, publishers and advertisers, while posicionamos best in the competition in the market for online services," said Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft .
Revitalising the company
The announcement was made before the opening of markets in the United States, one day after the ex-chief executive of Yahoo! Terry Semel left the board of the company.
The departure of Semel happens after that Yahoo! Announced a project to reduce staff by 1,000 employees as part of an effort to revitalize the company.
The co-founder of Yahoo! Jerry Yang Semel replaced as chief executive to enhance the profits of the Californian firm and the price of the shares.
Yahoo! Suffered a drop in its profits in the fourth quarter of 2007 and throughout the year, and warned that 2008 would also be difficult, as enfernta uam reorganization to increase its main source of incomes, sales of advertising.
The company recorded a net profit in the fourth quarter of $ 205.7 million, a decline of 23.5%, and for the whole year low in a profit of 12.1%, to $ 660 million.
Currently, its competitor, Google, embolsa more than 32% of their income from advertising on the Internet worldwide, compared with less than 20% for Yahoo, after just two years the two groups registering positions very close.
Yahoo! Was founded in 1994 by students Jerry Yang and David Filo at Stanford University. The company is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California (USA).
Http://g1.globo.com/Noticias/Economia_Negocios/0,, MUL283125-9356 ,00-MICROSOFT + + BUY OR YAHOO + O + + + PO + US BILHOES.html
Microsoft already has plans for integrating the officials of the two companies.
Microsoft has made a proposal to purchase the Yahoo! This Friday (1) valued at $ 44.6 billion. The objective of the company is to increase its competitiveness in the market for online services, and, especially, from search engines.
The proposed US $ 31 per share represents a premium of 62% on the close of yesterday''''s action of Yahoo! On the New York Stock Exchange, to $ 19.18. With the news, from around 10am (Brasilia), the shares of Yahoo! Disparavam 54% in the pre-market on Wall Street, listed at $ 29.70, while Microsoft recuava 2%, to $ 31.95.
On release, the giant of the software industry, said the agreement would create a company more efficient, with a synergy total of $ 1 billion a year, with the generation of more value to advertisers and operating efficiencies.
Microsoft also revealed that already have developed a plan to integrate the officials of the two companies.
The expectation of Microsoft is to obtain regulatory approval for the agreement, with its completion planned for the second half of 2008.
"We have a great respect for Yahoo, and together we can offer a range of solutions increasingly attractive to consumers, publishers and advertisers, while posicionamos best in the competition in the market for online services," said Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft .
Revitalising the company
The announcement was made before the opening of markets in the United States, one day after the ex-chief executive of Yahoo! Terry Semel left the board of the company.
The departure of Semel happens after that Yahoo! Announced a project to reduce staff by 1,000 employees as part of an effort to revitalize the company.
The co-founder of Yahoo! Jerry Yang Semel replaced as chief executive to enhance the profits of the Californian firm and the price of the shares.
Yahoo! Suffered a drop in its profits in the fourth quarter of 2007 and throughout the year, and warned that 2008 would also be difficult, as enfernta uam reorganization to increase its main source of incomes, sales of advertising.
The company recorded a net profit in the fourth quarter of $ 205.7 million, a decline of 23.5%, and for the whole year low in a profit of 12.1%, to $ 660 million.
Currently, its competitor, Google, embolsa more than 32% of their income from advertising on the Internet worldwide, compared with less than 20% for Yahoo, after just two years the two groups registering positions very close.
Yahoo! Was founded in 1994 by students Jerry Yang and David Filo at Stanford University. The company is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California (USA).
Http://g1.globo.com/Noticias/Economia_Negocios/0,, MUL283125-9356 ,00-MICROSOFT + + BUY OR YAHOO + O + + + PO + US BILHOES.html
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
FUTURE COMPUTER: ATOMS PACKED IN AN “EGG CARTON” OF LIGHT?
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Scientists at Ohio State University have taken a step toward the development of powerful new computers -- by making tiny holes that contain nothing at all.
The holes -- dark spots in an egg carton-shaped surface of laser light -- could one day cradle atoms for quantum computing.
Worldwide, scientists are racing to develop computers that exploit the quantum mechanical properties of atoms, explained Greg Lafyatis, associate professor of physics at Ohio State . These so-called quantum computers could enable much faster computing than is possible today. One strategy for making quantum computers involves packaging individual atoms on a chip so that laser beams can read quantum data.
Lafyatis and doctoral student Katharina Christandl recently designed a chip with a top surface of laser light that functions as an array of tiny traps, each of which could potentially hold a single atom. The design could enable quantum data to be read the same way CDs are read today.
They've been able to form about a billion gaseous rubidium atoms into a pea-sized cloud with magnetic fields. Now they are working to move that cloud into position above a chip supporting the optical lattice. Theoretically, if they release the atoms above the chip in just the right way, the atoms will fall into the traps.
They described their work in the journal Physical Review A.
Other research teams have created similar arrays, called optical lattices, but those designs present problems that could make them hard to use in practice. Other lattices lock atoms into a multi-layered cube floating in free space. But manipulating atoms in the center of the cube would be difficult.
The Ohio State lattice has a more practical design, with a single layer of atoms grounded just above a glass chip. Each atom could be manipulated directly with a single laser beam.
The lattice forms where two sets of laser beams cross inside a thin transparent coating on the chip. The beams interfere with each other to create a grid of peaks and valleys -- the egg carton-shaped pattern of light.
The physicists expected to see that much when they first modeled their lattice design on computer. But to their surprise, the simulations showed that each valley contained a dark spot, a tiny empty sphere surrounded by electric fields that seemed ideally suited for trapping single atoms and holding them in place, Lafyatis said.
In the laboratory, he and Christandl were able to create an optical lattice of light, though the traps are too tiny to see with the naked eye. The next step is to see if the traps actually work as the model predicts.
“We're pretty sure we can trap atoms -- the first step towards making a quantum memory chip,” Lafyatis said. A working computer based on the design is many years away, though, he cautioned.
In fact, Christandl suspects that they are at least two years away from being able to isolate one atom per trap -- the physical arrangement required for a true quantum memory device.
“Right now, we're just trying to get atoms into the traps, period,” she said.
So far, they've been able to form about a billion gaseous rubidium atoms into a pea-sized cloud with magnetic fields. Now they are working to move that cloud into position above a chip supporting the optical lattice.
Theoretically, if they release the atoms above the chip in just the right way, the atoms will fall into the traps. They hope to be able to perform that final test before Christandl graduates in August.
Should they succeed, the payoff is potentially huge.
Both the government and industry are interested in quantum computing because traditional chips are expected to reach a kind of technological speed limit in a decade or so. When that happens, faster, more powerful computers will require a new kind of hardware.
A “bit” in normal computer chips can only encode data as one of two possibilities: either a one or a zero -- the numbers that make up binary code. But if quantum theorists are correct, quantum bits, or qubits, will enable more efficient problem solving because a qubit can simultaneously encode both a zero and a one. This allows the quantum computer to efficiently carry out a large number of calculations simultaneously.
“In principle, quantum computers would need only 10,000 qubits to outperform today's state-of-the-art computers with billions and billions of regular bits,” Lafyatis said.
Scientists have speculated that qubits could enable long-distance communication and code breaking. But Christandl thinks that the technology could serve an even larger purpose for science in general, by powering computer simulations.
Quantum mechanics tries to explain how atoms and molecules behave at a fundamental level, so simulations of quantum systems could advance research in areas as diverse as astrophysics, genetics, and materials science.
“The quantum computer is the ideal tool for those simulations, because it is a quantum system itself,” Christandl said.
The holes -- dark spots in an egg carton-shaped surface of laser light -- could one day cradle atoms for quantum computing.
Worldwide, scientists are racing to develop computers that exploit the quantum mechanical properties of atoms, explained Greg Lafyatis, associate professor of physics at Ohio State . These so-called quantum computers could enable much faster computing than is possible today. One strategy for making quantum computers involves packaging individual atoms on a chip so that laser beams can read quantum data.
Lafyatis and doctoral student Katharina Christandl recently designed a chip with a top surface of laser light that functions as an array of tiny traps, each of which could potentially hold a single atom. The design could enable quantum data to be read the same way CDs are read today.
They've been able to form about a billion gaseous rubidium atoms into a pea-sized cloud with magnetic fields. Now they are working to move that cloud into position above a chip supporting the optical lattice. Theoretically, if they release the atoms above the chip in just the right way, the atoms will fall into the traps.
They described their work in the journal Physical Review A.
Other research teams have created similar arrays, called optical lattices, but those designs present problems that could make them hard to use in practice. Other lattices lock atoms into a multi-layered cube floating in free space. But manipulating atoms in the center of the cube would be difficult.
The Ohio State lattice has a more practical design, with a single layer of atoms grounded just above a glass chip. Each atom could be manipulated directly with a single laser beam.
The lattice forms where two sets of laser beams cross inside a thin transparent coating on the chip. The beams interfere with each other to create a grid of peaks and valleys -- the egg carton-shaped pattern of light.
The physicists expected to see that much when they first modeled their lattice design on computer. But to their surprise, the simulations showed that each valley contained a dark spot, a tiny empty sphere surrounded by electric fields that seemed ideally suited for trapping single atoms and holding them in place, Lafyatis said.
In the laboratory, he and Christandl were able to create an optical lattice of light, though the traps are too tiny to see with the naked eye. The next step is to see if the traps actually work as the model predicts.
“We're pretty sure we can trap atoms -- the first step towards making a quantum memory chip,” Lafyatis said. A working computer based on the design is many years away, though, he cautioned.
In fact, Christandl suspects that they are at least two years away from being able to isolate one atom per trap -- the physical arrangement required for a true quantum memory device.
“Right now, we're just trying to get atoms into the traps, period,” she said.
So far, they've been able to form about a billion gaseous rubidium atoms into a pea-sized cloud with magnetic fields. Now they are working to move that cloud into position above a chip supporting the optical lattice.
Theoretically, if they release the atoms above the chip in just the right way, the atoms will fall into the traps. They hope to be able to perform that final test before Christandl graduates in August.
Should they succeed, the payoff is potentially huge.
Both the government and industry are interested in quantum computing because traditional chips are expected to reach a kind of technological speed limit in a decade or so. When that happens, faster, more powerful computers will require a new kind of hardware.
A “bit” in normal computer chips can only encode data as one of two possibilities: either a one or a zero -- the numbers that make up binary code. But if quantum theorists are correct, quantum bits, or qubits, will enable more efficient problem solving because a qubit can simultaneously encode both a zero and a one. This allows the quantum computer to efficiently carry out a large number of calculations simultaneously.
“In principle, quantum computers would need only 10,000 qubits to outperform today's state-of-the-art computers with billions and billions of regular bits,” Lafyatis said.
Scientists have speculated that qubits could enable long-distance communication and code breaking. But Christandl thinks that the technology could serve an even larger purpose for science in general, by powering computer simulations.
Quantum mechanics tries to explain how atoms and molecules behave at a fundamental level, so simulations of quantum systems could advance research in areas as diverse as astrophysics, genetics, and materials science.
“The quantum computer is the ideal tool for those simulations, because it is a quantum system itself,” Christandl said.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Brian Wang predicts:
"There will be a quantum computer with over 100 qubits of processing capability sold either as a hardware system or whose use is made available as a commercial service by Dec 31, 2010"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qubit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qubit
Monday, January 28, 2008
The Truth ( From The Algebraist By Iain M Banks)
I recently read a fantastically well-written book, written by Iain M. Banks and published in 2004 by Orbit. The book is titled, ‘The Algebraist’.
Set more than two thousand years in the future it is a gripping and complicated tale. One of the sub plots that winds gently through the book is a fictional religion that has become the established religion of the period called ‘The Truth’.
This religion is more or less accepted as the most popular religion, with adherents through out this future galaxy. The simple premise of ‘The Truth’ is that their entire reality is held within a huge computer simulation. Ridiculous, I know, but it made me think. Computers are getting insanely powerful. Our entire lifestyle is possible only because of our reliance on our computer power.
It is certain that we will continue with our progress in making more and more powerful computers? Is it possible that we will create a computer program that gives its creations (characters) a sentience that we can only try to imagine? I am not talking about the Turing Test. I am postulating that the characters will be alive in a sense we can fully understand. We have all read books and had the characters come alive. This would be so much more within a huge supercomputer.
To these guys locked in our computers of the future, their reality would be ‘The Truth’. Has Iain Banks stumbled upon a religion that will be needed in the future? Has Mr. Banks given our simulation characters a religion that will give them comfort?
Every society has religion of some sort, why would a society created within a computer simulation not have a religion? These creations would actually have a creation story that could be confirmed, which is a lot more than other religions.
It might be that as our computers start to compile code for themselves that this decision will be taken out of our hands.
You can discuss topics like this at www.flee-into-the-future.blogspot.com
What is your opinion?
Set more than two thousand years in the future it is a gripping and complicated tale. One of the sub plots that winds gently through the book is a fictional religion that has become the established religion of the period called ‘The Truth’.
This religion is more or less accepted as the most popular religion, with adherents through out this future galaxy. The simple premise of ‘The Truth’ is that their entire reality is held within a huge computer simulation. Ridiculous, I know, but it made me think. Computers are getting insanely powerful. Our entire lifestyle is possible only because of our reliance on our computer power.
It is certain that we will continue with our progress in making more and more powerful computers? Is it possible that we will create a computer program that gives its creations (characters) a sentience that we can only try to imagine? I am not talking about the Turing Test. I am postulating that the characters will be alive in a sense we can fully understand. We have all read books and had the characters come alive. This would be so much more within a huge supercomputer.
To these guys locked in our computers of the future, their reality would be ‘The Truth’. Has Iain Banks stumbled upon a religion that will be needed in the future? Has Mr. Banks given our simulation characters a religion that will give them comfort?
Every society has religion of some sort, why would a society created within a computer simulation not have a religion? These creations would actually have a creation story that could be confirmed, which is a lot more than other religions.
It might be that as our computers start to compile code for themselves that this decision will be taken out of our hands.
You can discuss topics like this at www.flee-into-the-future.blogspot.com
What is your opinion?
Sunday, January 27, 2008
The future of computing
Brain prosthetics. Telepathy. Punctual flights. A futurist's vision of where quantum computers will take us.
FORTUNE Magazine
By Peter Schwartz, Chris Taylor and Rita Koselka
August 2 2006:
(FORTUNE Magazine) -- She awakes early on the morning of April 10, 2030, in the capable hands of her suburban Chicago apartment. All night, microscopic sensors in her bedside tables have monitored her breathing, heart rate, and brain activity.
The tiny blood sample she gave her bathroom sink last night has been analyzed for free radicals and precancerous cells; the appropriate preventative drugs will be delivered to her hotel in Atlanta this evening. It's an expensive service, but as a gene therapist, Sharon Oja knows it's worth it.
University of Virginia physicist Stuart Wolf has an out-there vision: No laptop. No cellphone. Just a headband - with direct coupling into the right side of the brain.
She steps into the shower. The tiles inside detect her presence and start displaying the day's top headlines. The manned mission to Mars is going to launch ahead of schedule. U.S. military drones have destroyed another terrorist training camp using smart dust. A top Manhattan banker has been found guilty of fraud and sentenced to 10 years of low tech.
And today is the 20th anniversary of the very first quantum computer.
Sharon laughs. It is her 24th birthday, and she has little idea what the world was like before the qubits - the smallest pieces of quantum information - took over.
She dresses and picks out a stylish straw fedora. Quantum computing has brought an unexpected revival in haberdashery: Inside the hatband is Sharon's communication center and intelligent assistant, which has scanned and sorted the 500,000 e-mails she received overnight. By the time she reaches the car, it has beamed the 10 most urgent ones and her travel schedule to her visual cortex. The text scrolls down in the bottom of her field of vision.
The Hydrogen Honda knows it is going to be an unseasonably warm day - indeed, thanks to quantum computer simulations it has known today's temperature for five years - and rolls the top down for her. Sharon drives to the freeway, steers into the Smart Lane, then relinquishes the wheel. The hatband screens a birthday video from her parents and a super-encrypted memo from her boss.
At the airport there is no ticket check-in or security line. Sharon simply walks through the revolving door, which scans her for dangerous items, picks up her identity, confirms her reservation, and delivers her gate number, all in the space of a second. She doesn't even bother to check whether the plane is on time - since flight patterns are as computable as the weather, O'Hare hasn't had a late departure in five years.
At the bag drop-off, she sees a familiar man in a yarmulke-like brain cap. The hatband is already on the case and flashes his virtual business card alongside his top 10 Google results. "Dr. Horton," she calls out. "So nice to see you again. How was the diabetes conference?" Only the slightest flicker of Horton's eyes betrays that he is Googling her details too. "Hello, Ms. Oja," he says. "Many happy returns of the day." Sharon grins and gives silent thanks to the quantum computer's creators.
Closer than you think
Science fiction, right? Sure - just like satellites, moon shots, and the original microprocessor once were. To scientists on the quantum computing frontier, this scenario is conservative.
"The age of computing has not even begun," says Stan Williams, a research scientist at Hewlett-Packard. "What we have today are tiny toys not much better than an abacus. The challenge is to approach the fundamental laws of physics as closely as we can."
Traditional computing, with its ever more microscopic circuitry etched in silicon, can take us only so far: Moore's law, which dictates that the amount of computing power you can squeeze into the same space will double every 18 months, is set to run into a silicon wall by 2015. (The chief culprit is overheating, caused by electrical charges running through ever more tightly packed circuits.)
If we want to keep computer progress on track after that and be able to do all the amazing things in Sharon's life, we have to figure out how to manipulate the brain-bending rules of the quantum realm - an Alice in Wonderland world of subatomic particles that can be in two places at once.
Luckily some of the world's leading research agencies and technology companies are on the case. Single electrons have been made to adjust their spin. Subatomic circuitry is within our grasp. But because the breakthroughs are hidden in esoteric journals and described in language that can give even today's savviest computer users headaches, it is easy to miss the significance of what is going on.
Tangible evidence of the quantum revolution hit the market in July, when Freescale Semiconductor (Charts), a Motorola spinoff, began commercial shipments of magnetic random-access memory (MRAM) chips. You'll probably notice MRAM first when you buy a digital camera that doesn't take any time to store a picture. Within a matter of years, your new laptop will switch on like a light.
MRAM gets its speed from something called the giant magnetoresistive effect, or GMR. Although it sounds like something out of an X-Men film, GMR has to do with the fact that if you place layers of ultrathin magnetic film on top of one another and alternate their polarity, you get resistance. That is, the electrons can be spun in one direction or the other. Electrons spin like a top or a billiard ball in some direction relative to a magnetic field. Flip the direction of the field, and the electron flips the direction of its spin. This very basic quantum effect can be used like a binary bit, its direction labeled "0" or "1" and employed to store digital information.
In conventional computing these zeroes and ones are created by switching an electric current on and off. Spins are less affected by the environment than electric charges and take longer to decay. Also, keeping an electric charge in position requires continuous power; when computers lose power, the charge goes away. With a magnetic device the memory stays put when the power shuts off.
As a bonus - and it's a fairly major bonus - if you take electricity out of the equation, you get rid of the overheating problem that is undercutting Moore's law.
This memory breakthrough was in large part the doing of DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency - the same Pentagon gang that gave us the Internet. In particular, it's due to a 62-year-old physicist named Stuart Wolf, who recently left DARPA for the University of Virginia. Since 1993 the agency has invested more than $200 million in Wolf-created quantum research programs.
While MRAM is just about memory, the ability to control spin in a computational device - "spintronics" is the word Wolf has coined to describe this work - has huge implications.
The next step: putting spin to work in actual computation. A team at the University of California at Santa Barbara, led by David Awschalom, has made big progress in this direction by controlling electron spins in semiconductors and other materials a few nanometers in size. This could mean not just an end to overheating worries but the possibility of moving computer technology into the molecular realm. With molecular-level chips, a laptop could have more computing power than trillions of today's supercomputers.
And even molecular-level computers could soon be outmoded behemoths. In 2004, Dan Rugar of IBM performed what the American Institute of Physics dubbed the most important experiment of the year by using a magnet to control the spin of a single electron. In theory, that means we could have subatomic-scale circuitry. At that level the behavior of particles is more complicated and can - again, in theory - do even more powerful things.
Down in the subatomic world, the same magnetic spin can be up and down and everything in between - all at the same time. It's a strange piece of quantum mechanics known as superposition, made possible because electrons sometimes behave more like waves than particles.
Try picturing a piece of string, fixed at both ends and vibrating. If you get the vibration right, the string will be moving up at one end and down at the other. And as a wave, it will have every value in between.
In the binary math of today's computers, each bit is either a zero or a one. But if each electron in a row of atoms can be in two or more places at once, and we can use these positions for computing, the power of exponential math kicks in.
Consider a quantum bit, or qubit, that can represent two values simultaneously. Two qubits linked together could represent four values at once, three could represent eight, and so on. Twenty qubits could represent almost a million numbers (two to the power of 20) simultaneously.
Harnessing the power of this exponential growth means you can tackle any problem that gets exponentially larger, and there are lots of important ones. We can't reliably predict weather or traffic or the mutation of viruses today because the number of variables and possible interactions is too massive for current computers. Qubits would change that.
Another potential advance involves something called entanglement - what Einstein famously described as "spooky action at a distance." It is a sort of particle love: Once they have become entangled, two subatomic particles move in lockstep, even at a distance.
Harnessing this capability could enable completely secure communications, because tampering with one particle will destroy the communications value of its partner. This is crucial, since quantum computers would be capable of breaking any cryptological code now used.
Bold predictions
Granted, changing the spin of an electron is a long way from building a circuit out of the same, and history is littered with promising technologies that didn't pan out. Intel CEO Paul Otellini is one major quantum skeptic, increasingly reluctant to fund R&D for it. Reports of the death of silicon have been greatly exaggerated, he says.
But quantum computing scientists are surprisingly bullish, for scientists. "This is the most exciting time of my life, and I'm not young," says Eli Yablonovitch, professor of electrical engineering at UCLA. "We're looking forward to a direct impact on everybody in the world."
Quantum computing "is tantalizingly possible, just on the edge of being too difficult, with remarkable progress every year," says Harvard's Charles Marcus. "As time goes by we'll be saying to ourselves, 'I can't believe this was so hard.' We'll have undergraduates doing it. That's just the nature of science."
Ask scientists to predict how quantum technology will change the world over the next 20 years or so, and their imaginations go wild.
Computers everywhere Their most common prediction is that we will see - or rather, we won't see - computers everywhere, painted onto walls, in chairs, in your body, communicating with one another constantly and requiring no more power than that which they can glean from radio frequencies in the air.
'I won't have to remember anything' Exponentially smarter computers also raise the possibility of achieving a couple of computer science's long-held goals: a human-brain-imitating neural network and true (or near-true) artificial intelligence. "This is going to be my mental prosthesis," says UCLA's Yablonovitch. "Everything I want to know, I can look up. Everything I can forget, I can find. I'm going to get old, but it won't matter. I won't have to remember anything."
Computers in your headband Of all the scientists' visions of the quantum future, Wolf's may be the most out-there. "The vision is that we don't have a laptop anymore," Wolf says. "We don't have a cellphone. We wear it. It's a headband. And instead of having a screen, we have direct coupling into the right side of the brain."
Recent experiments suggest it's actually quite easy to send information to the brain in a precisely targeted manner using ultrasound. Sony filed a patent earlier this year for ultrasonic technology that will beam videogames into our brains.
But these won't be like any videogames we know today. Having your brain surrounded by a thin band of ultrasonic transducers controlled by hypersmart quantum computers, all linked up to a global network with infinite bandwidth, means that any sense can be stimulated in any way. You can be made to see, hear, touch, taste, or smell anything.
Getting instructions back from the brain - mind-reading computers, in other words - is harder but not impossible (neuroscientists have already developed communication devices for the disabled that read brain waves).
Wolf anticipates that within 20 years, instead of cellphone conversations we will have "network-enabled telepathy." Imagine you're on a busy street, and a small percentage of the people in the crowd around you have decided to let their headbands transmit their field of vision - you could literally see around corners. A vehicle could be driven by thought. Dreams could be recorded and passed around online as easily as we share photos on Flickr.
A creepy future?
Yes, some people will find it unsettling, which happens with almost every new technology. But while the contours of how quantum computing will apply to society are unclear, the map for how we get there isn't.
"The amazing thing is there's nothing I can see as a big roadblock to this," says Wolf. It's a question of when, not if; exactly when (and where) will be determined by the amount of research dollars available. The U.S. certainly isn't alone in this race; the Europeans and Japanese are funding huge research efforts. India and China are getting onboard as well.
Beyond the actual creation of a quantum computer, our chief limitations are the imaginations of software engineers. This will be the major challenge of the Google geniuses of tomorrow: to take computing and networking power that is effectively infinite and create interfaces that are simple enough for mere mortals to understand.
But what about that headband? Won't it creep us out? "What people will not like is having it implanted," Wolf believes. "But if you're just wearing it and it's ultrasonically connected, I mean, you could always take it off."
As with all previous disruptive technologies - radio, television, the Internet - it will probably take a new generation raised to think of quantum headbands as normal for its potential to be truly realized. Sharon Oja, born in 2006, will barely realize the good fortune she, and the world, have inherited.
FORTUNE Magazine
By Peter Schwartz, Chris Taylor and Rita Koselka
August 2 2006:
(FORTUNE Magazine) -- She awakes early on the morning of April 10, 2030, in the capable hands of her suburban Chicago apartment. All night, microscopic sensors in her bedside tables have monitored her breathing, heart rate, and brain activity.
The tiny blood sample she gave her bathroom sink last night has been analyzed for free radicals and precancerous cells; the appropriate preventative drugs will be delivered to her hotel in Atlanta this evening. It's an expensive service, but as a gene therapist, Sharon Oja knows it's worth it.
University of Virginia physicist Stuart Wolf has an out-there vision: No laptop. No cellphone. Just a headband - with direct coupling into the right side of the brain.
She steps into the shower. The tiles inside detect her presence and start displaying the day's top headlines. The manned mission to Mars is going to launch ahead of schedule. U.S. military drones have destroyed another terrorist training camp using smart dust. A top Manhattan banker has been found guilty of fraud and sentenced to 10 years of low tech.
And today is the 20th anniversary of the very first quantum computer.
Sharon laughs. It is her 24th birthday, and she has little idea what the world was like before the qubits - the smallest pieces of quantum information - took over.
She dresses and picks out a stylish straw fedora. Quantum computing has brought an unexpected revival in haberdashery: Inside the hatband is Sharon's communication center and intelligent assistant, which has scanned and sorted the 500,000 e-mails she received overnight. By the time she reaches the car, it has beamed the 10 most urgent ones and her travel schedule to her visual cortex. The text scrolls down in the bottom of her field of vision.
The Hydrogen Honda knows it is going to be an unseasonably warm day - indeed, thanks to quantum computer simulations it has known today's temperature for five years - and rolls the top down for her. Sharon drives to the freeway, steers into the Smart Lane, then relinquishes the wheel. The hatband screens a birthday video from her parents and a super-encrypted memo from her boss.
At the airport there is no ticket check-in or security line. Sharon simply walks through the revolving door, which scans her for dangerous items, picks up her identity, confirms her reservation, and delivers her gate number, all in the space of a second. She doesn't even bother to check whether the plane is on time - since flight patterns are as computable as the weather, O'Hare hasn't had a late departure in five years.
At the bag drop-off, she sees a familiar man in a yarmulke-like brain cap. The hatband is already on the case and flashes his virtual business card alongside his top 10 Google results. "Dr. Horton," she calls out. "So nice to see you again. How was the diabetes conference?" Only the slightest flicker of Horton's eyes betrays that he is Googling her details too. "Hello, Ms. Oja," he says. "Many happy returns of the day." Sharon grins and gives silent thanks to the quantum computer's creators.
Closer than you think
Science fiction, right? Sure - just like satellites, moon shots, and the original microprocessor once were. To scientists on the quantum computing frontier, this scenario is conservative.
"The age of computing has not even begun," says Stan Williams, a research scientist at Hewlett-Packard. "What we have today are tiny toys not much better than an abacus. The challenge is to approach the fundamental laws of physics as closely as we can."
Traditional computing, with its ever more microscopic circuitry etched in silicon, can take us only so far: Moore's law, which dictates that the amount of computing power you can squeeze into the same space will double every 18 months, is set to run into a silicon wall by 2015. (The chief culprit is overheating, caused by electrical charges running through ever more tightly packed circuits.)
If we want to keep computer progress on track after that and be able to do all the amazing things in Sharon's life, we have to figure out how to manipulate the brain-bending rules of the quantum realm - an Alice in Wonderland world of subatomic particles that can be in two places at once.
Luckily some of the world's leading research agencies and technology companies are on the case. Single electrons have been made to adjust their spin. Subatomic circuitry is within our grasp. But because the breakthroughs are hidden in esoteric journals and described in language that can give even today's savviest computer users headaches, it is easy to miss the significance of what is going on.
Tangible evidence of the quantum revolution hit the market in July, when Freescale Semiconductor (Charts), a Motorola spinoff, began commercial shipments of magnetic random-access memory (MRAM) chips. You'll probably notice MRAM first when you buy a digital camera that doesn't take any time to store a picture. Within a matter of years, your new laptop will switch on like a light.
MRAM gets its speed from something called the giant magnetoresistive effect, or GMR. Although it sounds like something out of an X-Men film, GMR has to do with the fact that if you place layers of ultrathin magnetic film on top of one another and alternate their polarity, you get resistance. That is, the electrons can be spun in one direction or the other. Electrons spin like a top or a billiard ball in some direction relative to a magnetic field. Flip the direction of the field, and the electron flips the direction of its spin. This very basic quantum effect can be used like a binary bit, its direction labeled "0" or "1" and employed to store digital information.
In conventional computing these zeroes and ones are created by switching an electric current on and off. Spins are less affected by the environment than electric charges and take longer to decay. Also, keeping an electric charge in position requires continuous power; when computers lose power, the charge goes away. With a magnetic device the memory stays put when the power shuts off.
As a bonus - and it's a fairly major bonus - if you take electricity out of the equation, you get rid of the overheating problem that is undercutting Moore's law.
This memory breakthrough was in large part the doing of DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency - the same Pentagon gang that gave us the Internet. In particular, it's due to a 62-year-old physicist named Stuart Wolf, who recently left DARPA for the University of Virginia. Since 1993 the agency has invested more than $200 million in Wolf-created quantum research programs.
While MRAM is just about memory, the ability to control spin in a computational device - "spintronics" is the word Wolf has coined to describe this work - has huge implications.
The next step: putting spin to work in actual computation. A team at the University of California at Santa Barbara, led by David Awschalom, has made big progress in this direction by controlling electron spins in semiconductors and other materials a few nanometers in size. This could mean not just an end to overheating worries but the possibility of moving computer technology into the molecular realm. With molecular-level chips, a laptop could have more computing power than trillions of today's supercomputers.
And even molecular-level computers could soon be outmoded behemoths. In 2004, Dan Rugar of IBM performed what the American Institute of Physics dubbed the most important experiment of the year by using a magnet to control the spin of a single electron. In theory, that means we could have subatomic-scale circuitry. At that level the behavior of particles is more complicated and can - again, in theory - do even more powerful things.
Down in the subatomic world, the same magnetic spin can be up and down and everything in between - all at the same time. It's a strange piece of quantum mechanics known as superposition, made possible because electrons sometimes behave more like waves than particles.
Try picturing a piece of string, fixed at both ends and vibrating. If you get the vibration right, the string will be moving up at one end and down at the other. And as a wave, it will have every value in between.
In the binary math of today's computers, each bit is either a zero or a one. But if each electron in a row of atoms can be in two or more places at once, and we can use these positions for computing, the power of exponential math kicks in.
Consider a quantum bit, or qubit, that can represent two values simultaneously. Two qubits linked together could represent four values at once, three could represent eight, and so on. Twenty qubits could represent almost a million numbers (two to the power of 20) simultaneously.
Harnessing the power of this exponential growth means you can tackle any problem that gets exponentially larger, and there are lots of important ones. We can't reliably predict weather or traffic or the mutation of viruses today because the number of variables and possible interactions is too massive for current computers. Qubits would change that.
Another potential advance involves something called entanglement - what Einstein famously described as "spooky action at a distance." It is a sort of particle love: Once they have become entangled, two subatomic particles move in lockstep, even at a distance.
Harnessing this capability could enable completely secure communications, because tampering with one particle will destroy the communications value of its partner. This is crucial, since quantum computers would be capable of breaking any cryptological code now used.
Bold predictions
Granted, changing the spin of an electron is a long way from building a circuit out of the same, and history is littered with promising technologies that didn't pan out. Intel CEO Paul Otellini is one major quantum skeptic, increasingly reluctant to fund R&D for it. Reports of the death of silicon have been greatly exaggerated, he says.
But quantum computing scientists are surprisingly bullish, for scientists. "This is the most exciting time of my life, and I'm not young," says Eli Yablonovitch, professor of electrical engineering at UCLA. "We're looking forward to a direct impact on everybody in the world."
Quantum computing "is tantalizingly possible, just on the edge of being too difficult, with remarkable progress every year," says Harvard's Charles Marcus. "As time goes by we'll be saying to ourselves, 'I can't believe this was so hard.' We'll have undergraduates doing it. That's just the nature of science."
Ask scientists to predict how quantum technology will change the world over the next 20 years or so, and their imaginations go wild.
Computers everywhere Their most common prediction is that we will see - or rather, we won't see - computers everywhere, painted onto walls, in chairs, in your body, communicating with one another constantly and requiring no more power than that which they can glean from radio frequencies in the air.
'I won't have to remember anything' Exponentially smarter computers also raise the possibility of achieving a couple of computer science's long-held goals: a human-brain-imitating neural network and true (or near-true) artificial intelligence. "This is going to be my mental prosthesis," says UCLA's Yablonovitch. "Everything I want to know, I can look up. Everything I can forget, I can find. I'm going to get old, but it won't matter. I won't have to remember anything."
Computers in your headband Of all the scientists' visions of the quantum future, Wolf's may be the most out-there. "The vision is that we don't have a laptop anymore," Wolf says. "We don't have a cellphone. We wear it. It's a headband. And instead of having a screen, we have direct coupling into the right side of the brain."
Recent experiments suggest it's actually quite easy to send information to the brain in a precisely targeted manner using ultrasound. Sony filed a patent earlier this year for ultrasonic technology that will beam videogames into our brains.
But these won't be like any videogames we know today. Having your brain surrounded by a thin band of ultrasonic transducers controlled by hypersmart quantum computers, all linked up to a global network with infinite bandwidth, means that any sense can be stimulated in any way. You can be made to see, hear, touch, taste, or smell anything.
Getting instructions back from the brain - mind-reading computers, in other words - is harder but not impossible (neuroscientists have already developed communication devices for the disabled that read brain waves).
Wolf anticipates that within 20 years, instead of cellphone conversations we will have "network-enabled telepathy." Imagine you're on a busy street, and a small percentage of the people in the crowd around you have decided to let their headbands transmit their field of vision - you could literally see around corners. A vehicle could be driven by thought. Dreams could be recorded and passed around online as easily as we share photos on Flickr.
A creepy future?
Yes, some people will find it unsettling, which happens with almost every new technology. But while the contours of how quantum computing will apply to society are unclear, the map for how we get there isn't.
"The amazing thing is there's nothing I can see as a big roadblock to this," says Wolf. It's a question of when, not if; exactly when (and where) will be determined by the amount of research dollars available. The U.S. certainly isn't alone in this race; the Europeans and Japanese are funding huge research efforts. India and China are getting onboard as well.
Beyond the actual creation of a quantum computer, our chief limitations are the imaginations of software engineers. This will be the major challenge of the Google geniuses of tomorrow: to take computing and networking power that is effectively infinite and create interfaces that are simple enough for mere mortals to understand.
But what about that headband? Won't it creep us out? "What people will not like is having it implanted," Wolf believes. "But if you're just wearing it and it's ultrasonically connected, I mean, you could always take it off."
As with all previous disruptive technologies - radio, television, the Internet - it will probably take a new generation raised to think of quantum headbands as normal for its potential to be truly realized. Sharon Oja, born in 2006, will barely realize the good fortune she, and the world, have inherited.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Michael Calore interviews Paul Saffo
I just got off the phone with Paul Saffo, one of Silicon Valley's leading technology forecasters.
I presented to Paul the same premise that I discussed with Opera's Jon von Tetzchner earlier today: Apple's iPhone as the first shot in the "invisible computer" revolution.
Wired News: The iPhone has the potential to run real applications, and it has a browser that can run web-based software. In a few years, it's likely you'll be able to just carry one of these around as a replacement for the traditional PC. When you sit at your desk, it will connect wirelessly to your keyboard, mouse, display and speakers. All of your data and files will be stored within a web service, retrievable from everywhere. At that point, who needs the computer?
Paul Saffo: I think this is a very big deal. Cyberspace was a wonderful thing, but the only place you could enter cyberspace from was your desktop. We've had some brain damaged ways of accessing it from the places that we actually live our lives, but until now, they've all been compromised. If the iPhone works as advertised, it's a no compromises node, and that's a huge deal.
It not only means that we get to do more on the web while moving around, but it means that the nature of the web is going to change because of what people can do when they're not at their desks.
With his usual élan, Jobs is breaking the tyranny of the keyboard and trying to break the tyranny of the cursor as well. We've been able to get computers into our pockets for a very long time, but the issue has always been, 'what do you do with it?' You don't have a keyboard, you don't have a stylus and your thumbs are too big to type. This is the first serious attempt to break the tyranny of input. Until now, everybody's always focused on output -- is the screen big enough or sharp enough -- and the screens are high-resolution and bright. We've conquered that. Now the limiting factor is input.
Over time, what has been the limiting piece that has kept us from doing this? It used to be processor speeds and energy demands, then it was screens. Now, the only limitation on the size of the computer is the input device.
WN: Still, there are some significant limitations we still need to overcome before this becomes reality. Namely, bandwidth and processing power.
PS: Yeah, well those are constants -- You can never be too thin or too rich. But they're more of a soft wall than a barrier in the sense that they're always getting better. Our expectations are always one step ahead.
Apple's sister product may actually play a key role here. I thought it was no coincidence that three things happened at the same time: The iPhone was announced, Apple TV was released and Apple changed its name. Apple started as a really good computer company, then it was a really good computer company that also made really neat consumer electronics. They dropped "Computer" from the name and the timing's perfect, because now they're a consumer electronics company that also makes killer computers.
The scale of the market in consumer electronics dwarfs the computer market, and not just in the number of potential customers. The essence of consumer electronics is not devices, it's fashion.
One major consumer electronics company I know very well has over 300 engineers whose full-time job is to sit around and figure out new kinds of material science to get a new kind of finish on cell phone skins. That's fashion! They're as much of a fashion house as Pierre Cardin, or who ever the hot fashion designer is these days.
WN: I think that was also reflected on the Macworld Expo floor. It seemed like every other booth this year was selling a skin or a case or some sort of accessory for your iPod. Accessories for your accessories.
PS: Yeah, and in that sense, this isn't the next computer. This is the next home for the mind. Computers have had a nice long run, and laptops will always play at least some role. But the center of gravity is now slowly shifting from the desk to the device in your pocket.
WN: Today we got confirmation that Apple is not allowing third-party developers to build software for the device. Any software that appears on the iPhone that wasn't created by Apple is only going to be the result of a partnership. There's some heavy criticism here, and some are even saying that closing the device will kill it. Do you agree?
PS: Absolutely not. They have no choice. When you constrain things in one dimension, you get freedom in another. The freedom the iPhone gets from that relationship is the freedom from crashes. Let's face it: Microsoft can't solve its Windows problem. There are too many third parties. Apple can solve it by keeping tight control.
The difference between the device that sits on your desk and the device that sits in your pocket is your expectation of reliability. If the computer on your desk crashes, you roll your eyes and go, "Goddamn it," and you try to solve it or call tech support or take it down to the Genius Bar. If your phone crashes, you're going to be ripping mad. You're going to throw it out of a window. That's another reason why that thing in your pocket isn't quite the next computer, because our expectations of our computers are too low to put them in our pockets.
The moment a device goes in your pocket, connectivity is like oxygen. After 30 seconds without it, you're feeling dizzy. After 60 seconds you're unconscious and after 2 and a half minutes, you're brain dead.
WN: So if the iPhone is not the next computer, what is it?
PS: Well, your premise is still absolutely right. This really is the next computer in that it's the next home for our minds. It's the next indispensable tool.
I'm old enough to remember when personal computers were a revolution. Suddenly, the fact that processors were so cheap we could put one on everyone's desk was a sign of abundance. Today, that desktop machine is a hangover from the days when computers were so scarce, you could only have them on your desk. Now, computers are so abundant that they are absolutely everywhere.
So the iPhone... this is your device in the age of computing abundance. It's your personal diplomat into cyberspace, it's all the things that your desktop computer wished it could be. But since your desktop could never leave the desk, it just couldn't do it.
I presented to Paul the same premise that I discussed with Opera's Jon von Tetzchner earlier today: Apple's iPhone as the first shot in the "invisible computer" revolution.
Wired News: The iPhone has the potential to run real applications, and it has a browser that can run web-based software. In a few years, it's likely you'll be able to just carry one of these around as a replacement for the traditional PC. When you sit at your desk, it will connect wirelessly to your keyboard, mouse, display and speakers. All of your data and files will be stored within a web service, retrievable from everywhere. At that point, who needs the computer?
Paul Saffo: I think this is a very big deal. Cyberspace was a wonderful thing, but the only place you could enter cyberspace from was your desktop. We've had some brain damaged ways of accessing it from the places that we actually live our lives, but until now, they've all been compromised. If the iPhone works as advertised, it's a no compromises node, and that's a huge deal.
It not only means that we get to do more on the web while moving around, but it means that the nature of the web is going to change because of what people can do when they're not at their desks.
With his usual élan, Jobs is breaking the tyranny of the keyboard and trying to break the tyranny of the cursor as well. We've been able to get computers into our pockets for a very long time, but the issue has always been, 'what do you do with it?' You don't have a keyboard, you don't have a stylus and your thumbs are too big to type. This is the first serious attempt to break the tyranny of input. Until now, everybody's always focused on output -- is the screen big enough or sharp enough -- and the screens are high-resolution and bright. We've conquered that. Now the limiting factor is input.
Over time, what has been the limiting piece that has kept us from doing this? It used to be processor speeds and energy demands, then it was screens. Now, the only limitation on the size of the computer is the input device.
WN: Still, there are some significant limitations we still need to overcome before this becomes reality. Namely, bandwidth and processing power.
PS: Yeah, well those are constants -- You can never be too thin or too rich. But they're more of a soft wall than a barrier in the sense that they're always getting better. Our expectations are always one step ahead.
Apple's sister product may actually play a key role here. I thought it was no coincidence that three things happened at the same time: The iPhone was announced, Apple TV was released and Apple changed its name. Apple started as a really good computer company, then it was a really good computer company that also made really neat consumer electronics. They dropped "Computer" from the name and the timing's perfect, because now they're a consumer electronics company that also makes killer computers.
The scale of the market in consumer electronics dwarfs the computer market, and not just in the number of potential customers. The essence of consumer electronics is not devices, it's fashion.
One major consumer electronics company I know very well has over 300 engineers whose full-time job is to sit around and figure out new kinds of material science to get a new kind of finish on cell phone skins. That's fashion! They're as much of a fashion house as Pierre Cardin, or who ever the hot fashion designer is these days.
WN: I think that was also reflected on the Macworld Expo floor. It seemed like every other booth this year was selling a skin or a case or some sort of accessory for your iPod. Accessories for your accessories.
PS: Yeah, and in that sense, this isn't the next computer. This is the next home for the mind. Computers have had a nice long run, and laptops will always play at least some role. But the center of gravity is now slowly shifting from the desk to the device in your pocket.
WN: Today we got confirmation that Apple is not allowing third-party developers to build software for the device. Any software that appears on the iPhone that wasn't created by Apple is only going to be the result of a partnership. There's some heavy criticism here, and some are even saying that closing the device will kill it. Do you agree?
PS: Absolutely not. They have no choice. When you constrain things in one dimension, you get freedom in another. The freedom the iPhone gets from that relationship is the freedom from crashes. Let's face it: Microsoft can't solve its Windows problem. There are too many third parties. Apple can solve it by keeping tight control.
The difference between the device that sits on your desk and the device that sits in your pocket is your expectation of reliability. If the computer on your desk crashes, you roll your eyes and go, "Goddamn it," and you try to solve it or call tech support or take it down to the Genius Bar. If your phone crashes, you're going to be ripping mad. You're going to throw it out of a window. That's another reason why that thing in your pocket isn't quite the next computer, because our expectations of our computers are too low to put them in our pockets.
The moment a device goes in your pocket, connectivity is like oxygen. After 30 seconds without it, you're feeling dizzy. After 60 seconds you're unconscious and after 2 and a half minutes, you're brain dead.
WN: So if the iPhone is not the next computer, what is it?
PS: Well, your premise is still absolutely right. This really is the next computer in that it's the next home for our minds. It's the next indispensable tool.
I'm old enough to remember when personal computers were a revolution. Suddenly, the fact that processors were so cheap we could put one on everyone's desk was a sign of abundance. Today, that desktop machine is a hangover from the days when computers were so scarce, you could only have them on your desk. Now, computers are so abundant that they are absolutely everywhere.
So the iPhone... this is your device in the age of computing abundance. It's your personal diplomat into cyberspace, it's all the things that your desktop computer wished it could be. But since your desktop could never leave the desk, it just couldn't do it.
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