Intel Aims For Exaflops Supercomputer By 2018 66
siliconbits writes "Intel has laid down its roadmap in terms of computing performance for the next seven years in a press release; in addition, it revealed its expectations until 2027 in one deck of slides shown last week. The semiconductor chip maker wants a supercomputer capable of reaching 1000 petaflops (or one exaflops) to be unveiled by the end of 2018 (just in time for the company's 50th anniversary) with four exaflops being the upper end target by the end of the decade. The slide that was shared also shows that Intel wants to smash the zettaflops barrier — that's one million petaflops — sometime before 2030. This, Intel expects, will allow for significant strides in the field of genomics research, as well as much more accurate weather prediction (assuming Skynet or the Matrix hasn't taken over the world)."
There is, but it is far off (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically a computer needs to be able to do anything a human can ask of it. Well we can ask an awful lot. I want a computer that can understand natural language and respond in kind. I want a computer that can render 3D graphics that look perfectly real. I want a computer that can accurately model the weather system of the entire planet, and so on.
We are still a long, LONG way from computing power not mattering anymore. Particularly at the high end where this is targeted. While the weather system modeling might be silly for a home user to say, it is something that we'd very much like a computer to do. However right now all the systems are crude models, very much is simplified because there just isn't the power to truly model everything down to, say, the molecular level.
However with enough power, such a thing could be done. How much I don't know, way more than we've got now, but it is perfectly possible.
So we really don't yet know what the upper bounds on what we might want in terms of processing power is. We won't really know until we start reaching it. We'll start having systems and any time we think up something new for them to do, they'll be able to do it with power to spare. Then we'll know "This is it, there really isn't a need for more processing power."
We may well hit physical limits before that though.