Re: Sir Clive's chip

["Michael and Anne Losh" <mlosh@xxxxxxx>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Fox <jfox@dnai.com>
To: MISC@pisa.rockefeller.edu <MISC@pisa.rockefeller.edu>
Date: Wednesday, September 23, 1998 5:15 PM
Subject: Sir Clive's chip

>It reminds me that the first thing that attracted me to the Forth engines
>way back when was the idea that the design was so small that it might
>be reaonable to implement it on new emerging technologies.  I figured
>if you were experimenting with Josephson Junctions or single electron
>transistors or quantum tunneling transistors or optical transistors
>or whatever that it made more sense to consider implementing a
>processor with a few thousand transistors than one requiring millions
>of transistors.

I agree completely.  That's why I said almost two years ago:
"I know that Jeff Fox and Chuck Moore have training in physics.  Chuck is
acting as a nano-scale [handcraftsman], in how he designs the MISC
chips.... As far as Quantum Computers are concerned, due to the newness
and strangeness of the technology, it seems that the MISC approach will be
required - at least at first.  It is the only approach to computing that is
simple
enough to be translated into Quantum Mechanics.  Maybe today's MISC
designers will be in the best position to design the ultra-high
technology computers of the future -- Or at least make them practical."

>In fact Chuck has been involved in some of those kinds of discussions.
>People get upset when we talk about 2ns in .8u and we like to think
>about where we would be if we had a .15u fab to play with or could
>ride on some special semiconductor process.  People have looked into
>implmenting MISC stuff in things that make .15u silicon look very slow
>by comparison.  When Chuck mentioned the difference between
>silicon and diamond in regard to the micro thermodynamics the other
>day in a staff meeting I recalled the discussions he had about doing
>a MISC processor on diamond.  Lots of pie in the sky ideas, some
>make you think.

I hope Chuck and others continue to make us think.  There is such a lack of
innovation right now in the general computer industry that it is really
depressing.  The iMac phenomenon shows how hungry people are for something
that even SEEMS remotely new... even if most of the newness is styling and
debatable packaging.
--
Michael Losh