[extropy-chat] Taiwan

[Dirk Bruere]

Eugen Leitl wrote:

>On Thu, Mar 31, 2005 at 01:55:32PM +0100, Dirk Bruere wrote:
>
>  
>
>>>Do you have a specific scenario, suggesting how exactly Moore (assuming, it
>>>will hold up for the next 15 years) will result in the Singularity?
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>Looking at what's being cooked up in the labs now leads me to believe 
>>that Moore's Law (approximately) will continue beyond 15yrs.
>>    
>>
>
>Ok, it *does* look good; I wouldn't bet on it, though. There are some
>unresolved issues (e.g. leak currents and power dissipation density), and 
>Moore *will* have a discontinuity around 2012..2015, 
>unless molecular electronics is there just in time to take the torch. Right
>now (2005) molecular electronics is just a lab curiosity, so naturally it's
>not obvious a decade is enough to make ready for the fab.
>
>  
>
>>Anyway, at its crudest one could take a Human brain, slice it submicron 
>>thin, map all its neurons/axions etc and use that in a simulation. That 
>>would take quite a bit of computer power.
>>    
>>
>
>Yes, with current methods that would take quite a lot of computing power. Way
>more computing power than we have by 2015 in a large installation. 
>
>  
>
Well, we are already at 10^14 FLOPS and at a guess a FLOP takes more 
processing than a dendrite/axon. By 2015 we may well be up to 10^17 
FLOPS in top of the range supercomputers.
Neural sim does assume specialist h/w though.
With such simulating 10^10 neurons each with 10^4 axons doesn't seem all 
that difficult from a computational POV.

>Even if we knew, how to extract the relevant information (we don't), and had
>a system able to simulate the relevant aspects (we don't).
>
>  
>
I'm a bit more optimistic than that.
I would be suprised if more than 10% of the brain was actually involved 
in interesting stuff, such as consciousness.

-- 
Dirk

The Consensus:-
The political party for the new millenium
http://www.theconsensus.org



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