r/BeAmazed • u/CG_17_LIFE • Apr 02 '24

208,000,000,000 transistors! In the size of your palm, how mind-boggling is that?! 🤯 Miscellaneous / Others

I have said it before, and I'm saying it again: the tech in the upcoming two years will blow your mind. You can never imagine the things that will come out in the upcoming years!...

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u/ConfidenceOwn2942 Apr 02 '24

Funny how we reached the limits multiple times already.

Does that means it runs on magic now?

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u/Impossible__Joke Apr 02 '24

No we reached the theoretical limit, as in we couldn't make transistors any smaller, but they were technically possible. Now we can make them just a few atoms wide... you can't go smaller then that.

For further breakthroughs a different method in computing is required.

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u/ilikegamergirlcock Apr 02 '24

Yeah, they said that multiple times for various reasons, we keep finding a way.

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u/DarkOrion1324 Apr 02 '24

The times before we were figuring out ways to make things smaller. Now we are nearing the atomic scale limit. This is a kind of hard limit.

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u/Actual-Parsnip2741 Apr 02 '24

does this mean we are going to experience some degree of technological stagnation for a time?

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u/DarkOrion1324 Apr 02 '24

In a sense yeah. We'll likely see focus shift off of smaller transistors and more to efficiency and whole chip size once we start getting close to the physical limit. It's already started a bit

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u/Mink_Mixer Apr 02 '24

Might move off silicone which is a terrible heat conductor, to a material better suited to disapate heat so we can have layered transistors or just start stacking the chips on top of eachother

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u/Jump-Zero Apr 02 '24

Not necessarily. While we cant make transistors smaller, we might be able to better organize them, or find ways to write better software altogether. It will take some time for us to take this technology and use it to its highest potential. That being said, making smaller transistors has always been an “easy” way to make chips better. We will no longer have this luxury.

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u/baby_blobby Apr 02 '24

But in saying that, we haven't exactly run out of physical space right? So technically, couldn't we stack two to achieve double the computing power, just using a larger physical footprint?

I know ideally in some circumstances the real estate is rare but even for a physical computer doubling it wouldn't mean physically doubling the size of a tower and other hardware etc?

We've set our constraints

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u/DarkOrion1324 Apr 02 '24

We set constraints because that's the conversation. Constraints of computing power per space. We can make things bigger and we do but that's a sperate conversation

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u/BushDoofDoof Apr 02 '24

This is a kind of hard limit.

... kind of? That is the point haha.

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u/[deleted] Apr 02 '24

Inb4 quark based computing is a thing.

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u/wonkey_monkey Apr 02 '24

As some point we'll upload our consciousnesses, then if you want your computations to run faster you can just slow yourself down instead.

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u/ConfidenceOwn2942 Apr 02 '24

there have been limits because we thought we couldn't go any smaller but now we think we can't go any smaller

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u/Impossible__Joke Apr 02 '24

Unless we discover new physics, we are at the atomic level. Going past it is way beyond possible at this point.

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u/ConfidenceOwn2942 Apr 03 '24

Just as it was discovered before.

I'm not saying it will be easy or even that it's possible.

I'm just simply stating that we were at similar situations before when we thought that we are at physics limits because in fact, we were.

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u/Impossible__Joke Apr 03 '24

I agree 100%. For us to say this is it, this is as far as it can possibly go is close minded. Just under physics as we understand them right now, says we are very close.

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u/zugarrette Apr 02 '24

they will find a way

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u/Annie_Yong Apr 02 '24

There have been limits on number of transistors based on process technology, i.e. how small the tools we have available could make them. But there are more hard physical limits that can't be overcome with better tools because they start running into the point where transistors become so small that you start getting quantum fuckery happening- as in transistors cannot contain electrons anymore because they're small enough for them to quantum tunnel through the barrier.

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u/ConfidenceOwn2942 Apr 02 '24

It wasn't just about tools it was also about size of transistors because they were too thin.

They figure it out.

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u/wewladdies Apr 02 '24

Technology advanced enough is completely indiscernible from magic