From: Charles Hixson (charleshixsn@earthlink.net)
Date: Thu Aug 16 2001 - 08:16:23 MDT
Just a few data points.
1) Yesterday I reread Staring into the Singularity, and did a bit of
arithmetic. Assuming that in March the computer speed was, indeed,
doubling every 18 mos. And assuming, as indicated, that each successive
doubling takes half the time of the previous one, then in March 2004 the
curve goes vertical.
2) Yesterday in the news there was released an announcement of a 2GHz
chip from a company that I had never heard of.
3) I'm told that for not too much one can fit a modern PC with a board
that supports 8 way processing.
4) This morning I read in an old InfoWorld (2 weeks ago?) that IEEE
1594b products will be released this fall, and that one implementation
of it (using fiber optic cables) permits a 3.2 Gb (that's bit)
connection over distances of 100 M. These are expected to be boards
that can be fitted into an ordinary PC.
5) Beowulf clustering is now becoming common.
6) I think it was in C Friendly AI that the projection was made that a
minimum system needed by a seed AI would be 32 processors running at 2 GHz.
7) So by the end of the year it should be possible to put together a
system about twice the minimum strength for around $10,000.
8) So by the early part of next year it should be possible to put
together a rack-mount system containing 64 1U boxes linked with cheap
hot-pluggagle connectors that are interlinked at high speed (ehternet or
IEEE 1594b, depending on what's available) with each node at least a
2GHz cpu (though the rack mount system would drive the price up a bit).
That fits in a one wide rack. For less than, O, $20,000.
Projection 8 can be done with currently available on the shelf hardware,
except for the cpu speed. The new stuff just makes it cheaper and
faster (and slower, if you need to wait to get it and debug the setup).
9) These rack mounts could easily be connected with a fast interchange.
Take one computer from each rack and devote it to managing task and
information sharing between and withing racks. You could fit an awful
lot of racks along 100M of wall space. And since they are lined up
along a wall, they'd still all be easy to get into to fix.
As always, software is the sticky point. Unless someone has some
intelligent code writing software...
10) The assertion has been made that the more computing power you have,
the easier it is to end up with an AI (though not necessarily a friendly
one). So by the middle of next year any reasonably profitable business
should be able to put together enough computing power, if it chooses to.
--
Charles Hixson
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