the hot new programming language

[M Philbrook]

In article <5598070F.6040202@electrooptical.net>,
hobbs@electrooptical.net says...

That assumes a constant in process technology which we all know advances
steadily at least if not at the same exponential rates it has been
achieving.

No, it doesn't. There are fundamental physical limits involved, like
the size of atoms and the conductivity of pure copper. Just the random
variations in the local density of dopant atoms causes huge
threshold-voltage shifts. Process improvements can help lots of things,
but you can't make smaller atoms.

Now wait a moment, I've been catching the commercials of the upcoming
movie "Ant-Man", I wonder how they shrink his atoms down just by a turn
of a knob! )

Jamie

 

[DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUn]

On Sat, 04 Jul 2015 11:24:44 -0400, Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> Gave us:

The switches have to be at least a few wavelengths in size in order to
be able to confine the fields, and you can pack a _lot_ of transistors
into that space.

The size won't matter. The speed will outpace all hard electron
movement. Eventually.

So even if it is an order of magnitude (or more) smaller in size as it
relates to element count, it will still blaze past.

 

[DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUn]

On Sat, 04 Jul 2015 12:38:07 -0400, rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> Gave us:

> The "law" has remained at that state since.

Pace, not state.

 

[DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUn]

On Sat, 4 Jul 2015 13:16:53 -0400, M Philbrook
<jamie_ka1lpa@charter.net> Gave us:

One day I may need to melt them down for the gold

Oh boy! One nanogram for each one! You'll NOT be rich, man!

Bwuahahahahahaha
1

 

[DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUn]

On Sat, 04 Jul 2015 13:55:14 -0400, DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno
<DLU1@DecadentLinuxUser.org> Gave us:

On Sat, 04 Jul 2015 11:24:44 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> Gave us:

The switches have to be at least a few wavelengths in size in order to
be able to confine the fields, and you can pack a _lot_ of transistors
into that space.


The size won't matter. The speed will outpace all hard electron
movement. Eventually.

So even if it is an order of magnitude (or more) smaller in size as it
relates to element count, it will still blaze past.

I meant larger, actually. Less parts and bigger size in optical
iteration, but it won't matter.

So, the smaller reference was about silicon transistor elements, and
"it" was about the optical *still* beating it.

Not yet, but hey... it's only "ten years off", just like fusion
reactors!

 

[Tauno Voipio]

On 1.7.15 22:13, John Larkin wrote:

http://www.itworld.com/article/2694378/college-students-learning-cobol-make-more-money.html

The revival of Basic is next.

The only subject where COBOL is good, is writing 'Goldilocks and the
three bears', as published in Datamation of late 1960's (or early 70's).

It seems to be findable by Google.

--

-TV

 

[Phil Hobbs]

On 7/4/2015 1:55 PM, DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno wrote:

On Sat, 04 Jul 2015 11:24:44 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> Gave us:

The switches have to be at least a few wavelengths in size in order
to be able to confine the fields, and you can pack a _lot_ of
transistors into that space.


The size won't matter. The speed will outpace all hard electron
movement. Eventually.

How?

So even if it is an order of magnitude (or more) smaller in size as
it relates to element count, it will still blaze past.

Nope, sorry. The speed limits for light are the same as for wire, and
the cooling requirements for optical computing are completely
intractable, even if we had enough distributed optical gain available,
which we don't. (And all that optical gain has to come from electronic
transitions anyway.)

Practical all-optical computers are science fantasy only. (Which is too
bad, because as you know I'm primarily an optics person.)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics

160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net

 

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Wed, 01 Jul 2015 12:13:44 -0700, John Larkin
<jlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:

>http://www.itworld.com/article/2694378/college-students-learning-cobol-make-more-money.html

One of my former customers has a brother that has been doing COBOL
programming for most of his career. He's highly in demand and has
been bribed multiple times into coming out of retirement to do some
more COBOL work. He has apparently done very well financially.

The way it works is that the C++ or whatever programmers write the
front ends that the users see, while he deals with the legacy COBOL
back ends that actually do the heavy lifting. He also handles the
very important interface layer between the front and back ends. While
in most modern systems, the back end is an SQL or DB2 database, in
these systems, the database manager is written in COBOL. Data
validation is done at the interface, so that the front end programmers
and users don't accidentally throw garbage into the database. The
prime directive is that nobody will ever change the existing database
structure but additional fields are possible. In other words, the
database can grow, but never shrink. The resemblance to duct tape and
baling wire is not a coincidence.

I'm not sure how much work is available in COBOL programming. Probably
not much and all of it maintenance work. My guess(tm) is the reason
that carnal knowledge of COBOL produces higher salaries is that the
employers can now either replace an expensive COBOL consultant, or
have a programmer that can do the job formerly performed by two
programmers.

Disclaimer: I am not a programmer and know nothing of COBOL.

--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

 

[DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUn]

On Sat, 04 Jul 2015 14:05:35 -0400, Phil Hobbs
<hobbs@electrooptical.net> Gave us:

Practical all-optical computers are science fantasy only. (Which is too
bad, because as you know I'm primarily an optics person.)

And given that, I should take what you have to say about it more than
others here (especially here).

But... but... but... The aliens do it so well!

Or is that Ale-ions? hic!

 

[Joe Gwinn]

In article <0h8gpatdi8g9h1fofs0gf3dup4bt7cjqpm@4ax.com>, Jeff
Liebermann <jeffl@cruzio.com> wrote:

On Wed, 01 Jul 2015 12:13:44 -0700, John Larkin
jlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:


http://www.itworld.com/article/2694378/college-students-learning-cobol-make-
more-money.html

One of my former customers has a brother that has been doing COBOL
programming for most of his career. He's highly in demand and has
been bribed multiple times into coming out of retirement to do some
more COBOL work. He has apparently done very well financially.

The way it works is that the C++ or whatever programmers write the
front ends that the users see, while he deals with the legacy COBOL
back ends that actually do the heavy lifting. He also handles the
very important interface layer between the front and back ends. While
in most modern systems, the back end is an SQL or DB2 database, in
these systems, the database manager is written in COBOL. Data
validation is done at the interface, so that the front end programmers
and users don't accidentally throw garbage into the database. The
prime directive is that nobody will ever change the existing database
structure but additional fields are possible. In other words, the
database can grow, but never shrink. The resemblance to duct tape and
baling wire is not a coincidence.

I'm not sure how much work is available in COBOL programming. Probably
not much and all of it maintenance work. My guess(tm) is the reason
that carnal knowledge of COBOL produces higher salaries is that the
employers can now either replace an expensive COBOL consultant, or
have a programmer that can do the job formerly performed by two
programmers.

Disclaimer: I am not a programmer and know nothing of COBOL.

The core reason is the cost of replacing the huge COBOL infrastructure
is completely intractable, so it's cheaper to pay up for old
programmers.

In the run-up to Y2K, many companies needed to update their
infrastructure, and that most of the available COBOL programmers were
Russian immigrants - the advantage of being at the trailing edge.

If you read only the computer (versus data processing) magazines of
today, you will not have any idea that CORBA and Java et al are just
pretty decorations on the big iron. Back when CORBA was the new fad, I
spent a lot of time swatting zealots with that. They had no idea that
any such thing existed.

Joe Gwinn

 

[Tom Del Rosso]

Phil Hobbs wrote:

Nope, sorry. The speed limits for light are the same as for wire, and
the cooling requirements for optical computing are completely
intractable, even if we had enough distributed optical gain available,
which we don't. (And all that optical gain has to come from
electronic transitions anyway.)

Why is cooling harder?

Practical all-optical computers are science fantasy only. (Which is
too bad, because as you know I'm primarily an optics person.)

Assuming they are not purely optical but use electronic gain, can they at
least provide EMP hardness?

 

[Tom Del Rosso]

Phil Hobbs wrote:

There are all kinds of 3D structures. The problem is cooling them. For
instance, say you're stacking a processor and several planes of
memory. The processor generates a lot of heat, so it has to go next
to the heat sink, i.e. at the top of the stack. but then all its I/O has
to
go through the memory chips, so you lose all your area to
through-silicon vias (TSVs). Same problem as very tall buildings.

That's not really 3D. There are a relatively very small number of vertical
connections. You can't connect each element to hundreds of other elements
that way.

Low-dissipation components that don't melt down is part of the requirement
for the breakthrough I was refering to.

 

[Jasen Betts]

On 2015-07-04, John Larkin <jlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:

On Fri, 03 Jul 2015 20:00:08 -0400, krw <krw@nowhere.com> wrote:

On Fri, 03 Jul 2015 09:04:03 -0700, John Larkin
jlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:

On Fri, 3 Jul 2015 07:29:00 -0700 (PDT), Lasse Langwadt Christensen
langwadt@fonz.dk> wrote:

Den fredag den 3. juli 2015 kl. 12.52.52 UTC+2 skrev Martin Brown:
If you want to sell your soul for maximum financial gain then
destabilising the global stock trading systems with sophisticated high
frequency trading algorithms is definitely the way to go.

One guy in the UK in his parents bedroom can allegedly do this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-32415664

People seem to get upset if you are too good at it!


yeh, you have to be a member of "the money sucking parasite club" to
manipulate prices and steal money like that


-Lasse

A small tax on transactions, like 0.1%, would have a remarkable
damping effect. Maybe we can get that soon, after the next monster
worldwide crash.

Nah. They'll just bail out the culprets. As usual.

The problem with a small tax is that it won't stay small. How about a
1sec delay in reporting sale prices? Perhaps even dithering the
delay.

The tax could be inverse on holding time, tapering to zero after, say,
5 years. That would change a lot.

such complexity is unneeded, inflation already does that, and faster.

--
umop apisdn

 

[krw]

On Sat, 04 Jul 2015 11:09:33 -0400, DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno
<DLU1@DecadentLinuxUser.org> wrote:

On Sat, 04 Jul 2015 07:22:22 -0700, John Larkin
jlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> Gave us:

On Sat, 4 Jul 2015 09:18:18 -0400, "Tom Del Rosso"
fizzbintuesday@that.google.email.domain.com> wrote:


John Larkin wrote:

What I want is a 1000x speed improvement, so I can move sliders and
see waveforms change instantly, just like a breadboard with pots and a
scope. N-dimensional iteration at 5 minutes per trial is not
intuitive, but then 1 minute isn't either.

Build an analog computer.


I do, often, and call them "breadboards." But Spice has advantages of
its own.

A breadboard is not an analog computer. The operator of the
breadboard who characterizes its behavior is.

Was that last sentence English, AlwaysWrong?

You obviously have never actually used an analog computer,
AlwaysWrong. Patchboard ~= breadboard. If complicated enough, both
look like spaghetti.

 

[krw]

On Sat, 4 Jul 2015 13:28:16 -0400, M Philbrook
<jamie_ka1lpa@charter.net> wrote:

In article <5598070F.6040202@electrooptical.net>,
hobbs@electrooptical.net says...
That assumes a constant in process technology which we all know advances
steadily at least if not at the same exponential rates it has been
achieving.

No, it doesn't. There are fundamental physical limits involved, like
the size of atoms and the conductivity of pure copper. Just the random
variations in the local density of dopant atoms causes huge
threshold-voltage shifts. Process improvements can help lots of things,
but you can't make smaller atoms.
Now wait a moment, I've been catching the commercials of the upcoming
movie "Ant-Man", I wonder how they shrink his atoms down just by a turn
of a knob! )

Changing physics is easier than that. It's just a few words in the
script (see: Star Trek).

 

[Phil Hobbs]

On 7/4/2015 5:27 PM, Tom Del Rosso wrote:

Phil Hobbs wrote:

Nope, sorry. The speed limits for light are the same as for wire, and
the cooling requirements for optical computing are completely
intractable, even if we had enough distributed optical gain available,
which we don't. (And all that optical gain has to come from
electronic transitions anyway.)

Why is cooling harder?

Because you have to keep regenerating all those control photons every
picosecond or three in an inefficient process, whereas in CMOS,
electrons are free--they just hang around till you move them. That
makes optical logic more like ECL, except worse. Plus all those optical
waveguide modulators have much more capacitance than a CMOS gate.

Optical ICs need external lasers to provide optical "power supplies",
and then have to get rid of all that optical power somehow. One of the
more difficult problems is that there's so much scattered light rattling
round inside the chip that it's hard to make sure that you can't get
errors due to interference between the scatter and the desired signal.
Ten watts of laser power going into a 1 cm**2 chip can upset a _lot_ of
photodiodes.

Practical all-optical computers are science fantasy only. (Which is
too bad, because as you know I'm primarily an optics person.)

Assuming they are not purely optical but use electronic gain, can they at
least provide EMP hardness?

Maybe, if there's a way to protect the lasers, and if the I/O is purely
optical.

Some years ago, when I was at IBM, my experimental program was aimed at
solving some of these problems, using waveguide-coupled optical antennas
coupled to metal-insulator-metal (MIM) tunnel junctions. It's a hard
technical problem, and the resource allocation problem is also very
difficult (as we discovered).

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics

160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net

 

[Phil Hobbs]

On 7/4/2015 5:32 PM, Tom Del Rosso wrote:

Phil Hobbs wrote:

There are all kinds of 3D structures. The problem is cooling them. For
instance, say you're stacking a processor and several planes of
memory. The processor generates a lot of heat, so it has to go next
to the heat sink, i.e. at the top of the stack. but then all its I/O has
to
go through the memory chips, so you lose all your area to
through-silicon vias (TSVs). Same problem as very tall buildings.

That's not really 3D. There are a relatively very small number of vertical
connections. You can't connect each element to hundreds of other elements
that way.

Low-dissipation components that don't melt down is part of the requirement
for the breakthrough I was refering to.

Well, if you know how to do that, more power to you.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs



--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics

160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net

 

[John Larkin]

On Sat, 04 Jul 2015 11:08:15 -0400, DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno
<DLU1@DecadentLinuxUser.org> wrote:

On Sat, 04 Jul 2015 07:20:38 -0700, John Larkin
jlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> Gave us:

The 4004 was slow enough!

It was also false high-false low error prone slow TTL too.

4004 was enhancement-load silicon-gate PMOS, way slower than TTL!

 

[DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUn]

On Sat, 04 Jul 2015 17:56:39 -0400, krw <krw@nowhere.com> Gave us:

On Sat, 04 Jul 2015 11:09:33 -0400, DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno
DLU1@DecadentLinuxUser.org> wrote:

On Sat, 04 Jul 2015 07:22:22 -0700, John Larkin
jlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> Gave us:

On Sat, 4 Jul 2015 09:18:18 -0400, "Tom Del Rosso"
fizzbintuesday@that.google.email.domain.com> wrote:


John Larkin wrote:

What I want is a 1000x speed improvement, so I can move sliders and
see waveforms change instantly, just like a breadboard with pots and a
scope. N-dimensional iteration at 5 minutes per trial is not
intuitive, but then 1 minute isn't either.

Build an analog computer.


I do, often, and call them "breadboards." But Spice has advantages of
its own.

A breadboard is not an analog computer. The operator of the
breadboard who characterizes its behavior is.

Was that last sentence English, AlwaysWrong?

You obviously have never actually used an analog computer,
AlwaysWrong. Patchboard ~= breadboard. If complicated enough, both
look like spaghetti.

You're an idiot.

 

[krw]

On 4 Jul 2015 21:47:03 GMT, Jasen Betts <jasen@xnet.co.nz> wrote:

On 2015-07-04, John Larkin <jlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:
On Fri, 03 Jul 2015 20:00:08 -0400, krw <krw@nowhere.com> wrote:

On Fri, 03 Jul 2015 09:04:03 -0700, John Larkin
jlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:

On Fri, 3 Jul 2015 07:29:00 -0700 (PDT), Lasse Langwadt Christensen
langwadt@fonz.dk> wrote:

Den fredag den 3. juli 2015 kl. 12.52.52 UTC+2 skrev Martin Brown:
If you want to sell your soul for maximum financial gain then
destabilising the global stock trading systems with sophisticated high
frequency trading algorithms is definitely the way to go.

One guy in the UK in his parents bedroom can allegedly do this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-32415664

People seem to get upset if you are too good at it!


yeh, you have to be a member of "the money sucking parasite club" to
manipulate prices and steal money like that


-Lasse

A small tax on transactions, like 0.1%, would have a remarkable
damping effect. Maybe we can get that soon, after the next monster
worldwide crash.

Nah. They'll just bail out the culprets. As usual.

The problem with a small tax is that it won't stay small. How about a
1sec delay in reporting sale prices? Perhaps even dithering the
delay.

The tax could be inverse on holding time, tapering to zero after, say,
5 years. That would change a lot.

such complexity is unneeded, inflation already does that, and faster.

Inflation does the opposite. It's a tax that is proportional to the
holding time.