The Future of Computing

choi

The following appears today (Dec 6, 2011) in the weekly Science section (also known as section D), in the order of page number in that section. Usually this section does not have a title, but today's has (as today's theme): The Future of Computing. The front page of the section has a summary for the following articles.

(1) NEW FRONTIER  China looks to set the pace.
(2) WORLD VIEW  Map: The rapidly changing face of computing.
(3) LIMITS  Replacing Silicon as it wears out its welcome.

(1) David Barboza and John Markoff, Powers in Numbers: China Aims for High-Tech Primacy. page D2
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/0 ... amp;ref=johnmarkoff

Quote:

"Probably the most serious challenge to the Valley’s dominance came in the late 1980s from Japan, which seemed on the brink of taking command of the semiconductor and computer industries until its economy foundered.

John Seeley Brown, who directed the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in the 1980s, "observed true innovation at companies like Foxconn, the Taiwanese manufacturing firm with extensive operations in mainland China * * * 'There is the deep embedding of the research and design culture driving a place like Foxconn to do things that they [Chinese] would never have done on their own,' he said. 'We’ve now combined the best thinkers in the U.S. sitting side by side with the people who are best at manufacturing in the world.'



Note:
(a) For toggle switch (n), see switch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switch
(a "toggle" (flip switch for continuous "on" or "off"); photos 1 and 2)
(b) WU Jianping/ Chinese Educational and Research Network (CERNET)  吴 建平/ 中国教育和科研计算机网
http://www.edu.cn/

The Network issued a press release: 清华大学吴建平教授领衔研发IPv6网络. Apr 24, 2011.
(c) ENIAC
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC
(the first general-purpose electronic computer; designed to calculate artillery firing tables for the United States Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory; ENIAC was conceived and designed by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert of the University of Pennsylvania; 1943-1946)
(d) ARPANET
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET
(e) For the "exa" in "exascale," see exa-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exa-
(f) HU Weiwu  胡 伟武 (龙芯 Loongson)
(g) DCM has three offices: Menlo Park, California, Beijing and Tokyo.
http://www.dcm.com/
(h) Andrew Chi-Chih YAO  姚 期智
(i) Marguerite Gong Hancock, Associate Director, SPRIE
http://sprie.gsb.stanford.edu/people/marguerite%20gonghancock/

* SPRIE stands for Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entreneurship.
* As this web page says, she is "A Silicon Valley native." So she does not have a Chinese name.
(j) Anne Stevenson-Yang, Co-founder and Research Director, J Capital Research (founded in 2007)
美奇金（北京）投资咨询有限公司 杨 思安
http://jcapitalresearch.com/

Her photo:
http://www.chinatelecomconference.com/bio/05IL_bio_yang.htm


(2) State of the Art. p D5
http://www.nytimes.com/interacti ... he%20Art&st=cse

(3) John Markoff, A High-Stake Search Continues for Silicon's Succesor. p D10.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/0 ... tml?ref=johnmarkoff

Quote:

But with each new generation of technology, the obstacles have grown more imposing, and the cost of surmounting them is going up, not down. For example, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, one of the world’s largest chip makers, expects to spend almost $10 billion on its next factory.

"At the annual supercomputing conference in Seattle last month, Jen-Hsun Huang, chief executive of Nvidia, a maker of graphics accelerator chips used in game machines and computers, warned that while supercomputing performance had improved one million times in the last two decades, the power needed to run a computer had increased just 40 times. This rate of increase had been predicted by Robert H. Dennard, the I.B.M. electrical engineer who invented the dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, chip. However, in the face of the growing problem of current leakage, the huge benefit, which had offered a constant eight times performance increase per watt, has reached its limit.

Note: Douglas Engelbart
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart
(1925- ; American)