Craig Wright, who has recently revealed himself to be Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto, has a discussion on his website about Moore's Law.
In the article, he states that in certain ways Moore's Law is dead. Most interesting, he also comments that computational power will be held back more significantly by software programming.
"Software does not scale near any rate that hardware does," Wright states. "For all the advances we have made, the one that we have not made (to any great extent) is in software. Software is slower now and becoming bloated...
"Perhaps it is not technology as much as it is economics that allows the downward slide. Market forces dictate much of this effect. The uptake of newer types of architecture has been delayed, although by consumers more than by manufacturers."
This flies in the face of the argument made by Ray Kurzweil that there is a steady almost magical exponential growth in the world at all times. He calls it the Law of Accelerating Returns.
I have argued against Kurzweil's view (SEE: A Comment on Kurzweillian Exponential Growth).
Wright's comment appears to support my view from two different directions. First, growth can not be said to be exponential at all times from all directions.Wright's declaration that in a certain way Moore's Law is dead makes this case, as does his contention that software growth is currently sluggish and bloated.
Second, and this is a point Kurzweil completely fails to take into account, Wright correctly states that there is an economic component to how fast various systems grow.
-RW
If I understand what Mr. Wright is getting at I am could be part of slowing down technology. I often do not upgrade both sofware and hardware because I don't want the hassle of learning to use something new. I also do not upgrade because I don't want to spend the time researching products.
ReplyDelete"I don't want the hassle of learning to use something new. I also do not upgrade because I don't want to spend the time researching products."
DeleteSame here, I think there's another issue at hand, which is that programmers get lazy as CPU power grows and they create bloated programs without thinking about conserving "cycles" as highly as back in the days when memory was at a premium and CPU cycles had to be conserved more readily for a decent functioning program given CPU speed.
I run a lot of different's OS's for different reasons on multiple laptops(and I've got machines running DOS in some cases & a few running Japanese DOS)- but of course when running XP for example on a new computer it blazes and it's hard for a variety of reasons to justify the small increase in features under newer window OS's when you compare it's running speed to good ol' XP.(setting aside the lack of support/updates)
Even Ubuntu has become a victim to said mentality, just to a lesser degree.
Early on when it was suggested that "cloud computing" would be a "big thing" I really had trouble believing it....I was wrong for the most part. I mention this as well because cloud computing can also reduce the consumer demand for better hardware. (though then demand just gets switched to a server hardware)
I find I'm at my most efficient running a laptop that boots off a SSD with minimal background apps and doing most of my work via the gmail/google apps packages via browser.
I do use CAD & CAD/CAM from time to time and have to have a laptop with the balls to run it decently...but that's a different form of productivity than my 90% daily needs.(and I dare say that a few times I've pulled up some CAD files via a google app on a browser and it was lightening fast...faster that running it native on my higher powered laptop-meaning their super fast cloud computer could open and send a file to my browser faster than me doing it on the same computer natively, amazing)
I would never put anything on the "cloud" that I didn't want seen by anybody else...but that's not most of my daily work and I have special laptops for those times where I need truly secure information and productivity is not as much a concern as security.
If anyone perused my cloud files, which are copious, they would quickly die/succumb from boredom-lol
All that being said, "Moore's Law" was traditionally referenced just in relation to hardware more than software from my understanding.
Boy is that Wright guy smart. He absolutely gets it. I'm a witness to the problem. If you want to blow your mind, load DOS onto a current Pentium machine. Then run a DOS based benchmark. Or run an old DOS based application. LIGHTSPEED.
ReplyDeleteWhat's happened is "code bloat". Cut and paste GUI apps written by Paki-bots. Diminishing returns on steroids.