Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!amdcad!sun!pitstop!sundc!seismo!uunet!portal!cup.portal.com!mmm From: mmm@cup.portal.com (Mark Robert Thorson) Newsgroups: sci.space Subject: Re: Soviet Semiconductor Manufacturing Message-ID: <14178@cup.portal.com> Date: 1 Feb 89 08:28:17 GMT References: <8901260516.AA04149@crash.cts.com>, <14016@cup.portal.com> Organization: The Portal System (TM) Lines: 32 >(AI is very processer intensive) and weight/power are pretty critical in these >situations. Still I doubt that the soviets will make a major industry out of >micrograv. crystals, but if they make a few super applications with them it For super-performance, we can use parallel processing. Granted, some problems cannot be parallelized (such as compiling a program). Bear in mind that the super-computer built from microgravity silicon and meteoric iron will be surpassed in performance by conventional technology in 2 to 5 years. (Of course, the new technology 2 to 5 years from now could also benefit from super-perfect crystals; perhaps this suggests stockpiling these crystals, and only turning them into IC's in the last months before war.) An inaccuracy in my previous statement on this topic is the idea you would use low-defect silicon to make tight-geometry chips. Actually, you would make larger chips. A more advanced silicon technology would be used to tighten geometries. Larger chips might be linear extensions of conventional technology chips. For example, you could take the standard CPU+cache chip and make it with a cache 10X larger. I once toyed with the idea of a burst computer. This would be a machine which would provide 100X or 1000X performance for, say, 10 or 100 milliseconds. I figured it would mostly be useful for compiling programs and refreshing raster-graphics displays. A friend of mine suggested using it for solving complex pattern recognition problems during a missile attack. Because a missile attack could take several minutes, I imagined a long row of burst computers being gobbled up one-at-a-time. (BTW, I was just kidding about using meteoric iron. But you should consider microgravity silicon a similarly scarce resource.)