The elder generations always warn us how fast time seems to move when you get old. As kids we don’t listen, we’re infinite and invincible. The bill always comes due though.
The accelerating rate of returns (Moore’s Law), compound interest in banking or the doubling rate of processor capability in computation has allowed those industries to bloom through the second half of the 1900’s. Nearly a fifth of the way through the 21st century, we are watching central processing units plateau in regards to speed due to engineering limitations.
Kurzweil published “The Age of Spiritual Machines” in January of 1999 - that’s nearly 20 years since it was written and the clock has finished counting down. The predictions regarding Moore’s law and processors was very accurate. The science of CPU development has reliable calculations, as it turns out!
We even know what “new” processing technologies are seeking to accelerate the pace again for a bit. If you could soundly ride waves toward bankable future outcomes, which would you consider right now?
Below are a few directives seeking to pick up the torch for the CPU in no particular ranked order. Please feel free to drop additional links into the comments of this article as well.
Google is promoting the tensor processing unit (TPU) as a service-accessible product for machine learning, only available as a lease. These processors are considered to be application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC). It’s fairly impressive how little is known about the architecture of the TPU given that Google has been promoting them since 2016 though.
For additional insights on the design of TPUs, this article is a fairly detailed breakdown of their current state and progress based on promotional images.
Microsoft & IBM
A few different companies like Microsoft & IBM are working on field programmable gate array (FGPA) software/hardware releases. However, these are considered to be similar ASICs that are popularly used by cryptoasset miners. The engineering and production costs are actively being debated and assessed in the community in regards to benefits and trade-offs.
Nvidia
Companies like Nvidia & Nyriad are focused on graphical processing units’ (GPU) ability to be a viable solution for the limits imposed by Moore’s law.
As the dominant player in the GPU industry, Nvidia has strong incentives to show that their technology can be versatile in its versatility and increase their value to users and stockholders alike.
Just watching the trends...
