• Question: Can computers keep getting faster?

    Asked by to Mark, Matthew, Mike, Paul, Sabina on 13 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Sabina Hatch

      Sabina Hatch answered on 13 Mar 2014:


      There is a limit to how fast we can make them, at the moment this is determined by the physical size of the components that are getting smaller all the time. However we are soon reaching the point where changing the physical size will not make a difference. Instead quantum computing is gaining a lot of interest and is the future of more complex and advanced computing.

      Quantum computing will use the “spin” of an electron to transfer information, and the speed at which this happens is instantaneous. This is a very hot topic at the moment for research, because we are soon reaching the limit of what we can do with current methods and will need to explore other avenues like quantum computing.

    • Photo: Mike Lee

      Mike Lee answered on 13 Mar 2014:


      If people keep wanting faster computers, then someone will be working on making a faster computer.

    • Photo: Matthew Malek

      Matthew Malek answered on 14 Mar 2014:


      When it comes to computers, their overall power — not speed — is the most important thing. Sometimes, the two are the same, with a faster computer being a more powerful computer, but this is not always the case.

      In the 1960s, Gordon Moore published a paper postulating that the number of transistors on a circuit would double about every two years. One interpretation of this is that computers will become twice as powerful every two years. In the 1990s and early 2000s, a large part of this increase in power came from faster computers. Computer “clock speed” (the rate it which a computer performs operations) was doubling every two years — or sometimes faster! We quickly saw computers go from a CPU speed of about 25 MHz to hundreds of MHz to GHz, in just a decade or so!

      After that, the increase in clock speed leveled off, but doesn’t mean that computers stopped getting more powerful. Rather than have faster CPU cycles, computer engineers figured out how to get more out of each CPU cycle. Computers continued to get more powerful, even if their CPU speed didn’t increase.

      Here’s a thought for you: If computers continue to get more powerful every two years, we may soon hit the point where computers are as smart as humans. If so, then two years later, we could have computers that are twice as smart as humans! Those super-smart computers could then design the next generation of computers in about half the time it takes us, maybe they would need only a year before developing computers four times as smart as us! Then those computers — now artificial intelligences — could develop even smarter machines quicker and quicker!

      The result might be that, a few years after the first artificial intelligences are created, we have super-computers far smarter than we are. This scenario is much studied in many areas, and has been termed the “Singularity”. Some people believe it is impossible, whilst others believe that it is inevitable, given our current push to develop more and more advanced computing technology.

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