Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!ukma!psuvax1!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!planchet.rutgers.edu!nanotech From: Howard.Landman@eng.sun.com (Howard A. Landman) Newsgroups: sci.nanotech Subject: Re: Drexler's talk at NASA AMES Keywords: error rate Message-ID: Date: 30 Apr 91 19:15:58 GMT Sender: nanotech@planchet.rutgers.edu Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca. Lines: 24 Approved: nanotech@aramis.rutgers.edu In article markv@pixar.com (Mark VandeWettering) writes: >By manufacturing "mechanical" computers, he estimated that >he could obtain a staggering 10^15 MIPS per cm^3 of matter. >He found that >you could implement a unit with 16 knobs on it, with an error rate which >was on the order of 10^-12 or so. So assuming each unit executes one instruction (a very generous assumption), we get 10^21 IPS * 10^-12 errors/I = 10^9 errors per second for a cm^3 size supercomputer. Really reliable. :-) -- Howard A. Landman landman@eng.sun.com -or- sun!landman [Giga-EPS, a new computational measuring stick. Seriously, though, 10^-12 is a perfectly usable error rate for even the simplest error detecting and correcting codes. A SECDED code would give you an average of more than Avogadro's number of correct operations between detected but uncorrected errors, and something like a million years between undetected errors. --JoSH]