home .. forth .. misc mail list archive ..

Re: future computers




On 21 Jun 2000, at 20:27, sagalore wrote:

> Anybody here a fan of Star Trek?
> 
> I know this question sounds silly, if not juvenile.  How do you think the Enterprises (or Voyagers) computer system processes?  Is it trillions of MISC type optical processors, or it is one giant Pentium XVII?  Has there ever been an episode where the 
captain says "hail them", and at a push of 
the console the view screen gets a fatal protection fault and the whole ship self destructs?
> 
> I think that is a legitimate, however comical question.  The ship's computer core is no larger than some of the super computers we have today, everything else is just terminals, subsystems, and storage.  Maybe in a few decades Forth will not reign supr
eme, maybe another language that is even 
faster and smaller... but the minimal approach is not a limitation - it's powerful.
> 


Maybe you watch a different Star Trek to me. It is all done with neural gel-packs or is it jel-paks ;-)

        Regards,
            Graeme

------------------------------------------------------------
 Graeme Dunbar   
 School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering   
 The Robert Gordon University   
 Schoolhill, Aberdeen AB10 1FR, Scotland, U.K.   
 Tel. +44 1224 262415   
 Fax  +44 1224 262444   
 email  g.r.a.dunbar@rgu.ac.uk
 www    http://www.eee.rgu.ac.uk/staff/esgrad/ 
------------------------------------------------------------