[ExI] cyprus banks

[Tomasz Rola]

On Wed, 20 Mar 2013, Eugen Leitl wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 05:52:28PM +0100, Tomasz Rola wrote:
> 
> > Oh. I think hardware was a king in 1940-s, after that software became a 
> 
> Hard tasks remain computation-limited, and hardware limits the amount
> of computation. This is the reason why http://top500.org sees
> to much attention (even though LINPACK is a crappy, biased
> benchmark -- the only way to make sure is run your own problem).

The top500 is all about (clockspeed * cores) and MIPS/FLOPS, not new 
functionality. Some parts of software may be helped by functionality 
encoded in hardware (plus recompilation/patching), but those parts of 
hardware become obsoleted by introduction of another software - like new 
a/v codecs.

Software rules. Software dictates what functionality will be introduced in 
new hardware. Windows is implemented in software. Not even in rom. (Patent 
hyenas - there is prior art, new os could have been introduced to Amiga 
computers by changing rom chips on a mainboard).

Even when there are changes introduced into hardware, they are always 
trying to minimize negative (like noncompatibility) impact on software.

> > king. I mean, doing new functionality was relegated to software, and 
> > hardware was more and more expected to just execute software fast(er) and 
> > reliable(r).
> 
> This might have happened in some alternative universe, but not in
> this universe.

Actually, the way I see it, exactly this happens in our universe.

As far as I would like, we don't live in my version of alternative 
universe. This one is acceptable (barely, at least if we stick to 
technical side). But if we were in my version, there would have been 
software-defined cpus and other elements, gpu would have been a piece of 
fpga or something similar. Things like this are, perhaps, in the labs. But 
I don't see them in my shops. Yes I know current fpgas are slow and so on, 
but certainly they could have been sped up a little and made more 
practical, if there was enough demand. A computer built on 
software-definable elements is not technical impossibility, but the state 
of business is such that I may not see it before I am all grey and 
indifferent. Alternatively, I may ecke out some money and build it myself.

(So vote for Rola Universe :-), or even better, give me loads of money to 
build universal reconstructor and I promise to fraud as much as I can).

> > Therefore exciting oneself with great developments in hardware domain 
> > (true, there is amazing amount of Nobel-level thinking, I admit) is kind 
> > of like boasting about faster and faster cars, not telling there is not so 
> > many places to drive them to.
> 
> If you want to reach the stars in nogeological times you need
> to do better than chemical rockets.

We are not going to have even this, I'm afraid. But this is a different 
subject from computing hardware. And I agree on this one.

> > When one looks at software, I might be biased but if there is any kind of 
> > amazingly steady curve, I wouldn't say it is upwards.
> 
> There is no fundamental progress in software. The progress in hardware has
> recently been limited, especially since Moore has ended.

Exactly. And it should be progress in software, not in hardware, that 
should receive some positive stimulation, rather than promotion of trash 
programming languages whose names start on "J", team work and other BS.

> > So unless you, predictators reading my words :-), want to build 
> > Singularity out of transistors (doomed by design, too many elements, 
> 
> Transistors would do fine, but we've ran into scale limits.

One can make a cpu with some transistors and some microcode. Or one can 
make a cpu with many more transistors, and nonflexible. Building 
Singularity out of transistors only is to me not wiser than building 
all-mechanical 64-bit Pentium with all-mechanical gigabyte of ram.

Truly, there is problem of scaling.

> There is no fundamental difference between hardware and software.
> At the hight end there's no software, only hardware, and its state.

Hardware is fixed, AFAIK. Changing state can help a bit, to some degree. 
The more software, the more flexibility. I am not so much concerned about 
"height" and the like - I am just happy if I can change ways of my machine 
by typing in some text and calling gcc or sbcl on it. I could have 
experimented a bit, like building PDP-10/Lisp Machine (they are two _very_ 
different and not connected designs) clone out of soft-computer, if I had 
one. And it would do me safer browsing and safer banking, with attention 
of script kiddas turned toward screwing Pentium owners (soon to be ARM 
owners). As I said, this universe can do, I can emulate whatever machine I 
can fit on my box.

I am not sure if we should dispute much about it all. I wanted just to 
point out, that some comments about incredible hardware progress, while 
true, do not touch a clue of the problem at all. What is great hardware 
good for, if all we run on it is Windows, sometimes Linux? The Singularity 
is not going to be hardware based, it will be software run on some off the 
shelf cpu(s). So, there is no such software, we only boast about 
unprecedented hardware. We could as well boast about unprecedented colors 
of computer chassis. Irrelevant, without software, which nobody seems to 
say or aknowledge, AFAIK.

It doesn't matter if hardware is 10e3 or 10e6 times faster than x years 
ago. Building any prophecies on such facts is useless. And clueless. 
Singularity will be software. It may, some time later, choose to make it's 
own hardware, possibly soft-definable. But it will not come to existence 
just because someone pushes the clock up to petahertz and memory to 
exabyte.

Now, I imagine someone arguing that with such great hardware, certainly 
somebody will write a software in no blink time. However, I disagree.

Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.      **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home    **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...      **
**                                                                 **
** Tomasz Rola          mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com             **