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From: gcwilliams@watdragon.waterloo.edu (Graeme Williams)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: EFLOP architectures: when and for how much?
Message-ID: <1990Oct28.031706.25768@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
Date: 28 Oct 90 03:17:06 GMT
References: <2581@ux.acs.umn.edu>
Sender: gcwilliams@watdragon.waterloo.edu
Organization: University of Waterloo
Lines: 28

In article <2581@ux.acs.umn.edu> dhoyt@vx.acs.umn.edu writes:
>In article <1990Oct26.191032.9099@watdragon.waterloo.edu>, gcwilliams@watdragon.waterloo.edu (Graeme Williams) writes...
>>In article <1990Oct2.190020.15214@mdbs.uucp> zed@mdbs.uucp (Bill Smith) writes:
>>An instruction cannot be executed in a time shorter than the time
>>it takes for a light beam to traverse the processing device.
>
>  This may or may not be true.  It is certianly possible for an 'electron'
>to pass from once side of a gap to the other side, with no elapsed time.
>(Actually the electron is on both sides of the gap, until it is measured--meow.)

True the electron has an uncertainty in it's position courtesy of Quantum
Physics, unfortunately Mother Nature prohibits one from making
use of this fact to transmit information faster than light - so my
original statement stands. (This is closely related to Bell's paradox)

>I've not seen anything to make me think that zero momentum computing devices
>are impossible.  Of course I'm not offering any venture capital either.

It occurs to me that perhaps one could construct the heart of a
processor, *purely* out of interacting photons - it could be very
tiny and everything would be done at light speed. Elegant.

Still, "more" is never enough, and "much more" only suffices for a
wee while, given a few months with such a device I'd soon want a
faster one :-).

Graeme Williams
gcwilliams@watdragon.waterloo.edu