Making light work of AI

• Autores: Hal Hodson
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 3088, 2016, pág. 20
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Silicon has been making the computers work for almost half a century. Whether designed for graphics or number crunching, all information processing is done using a million-strong horde of tiny logic gates made from element number 14. But silicon's time may soon be up. Moore's law--the prophecy which dictates that the number of silicon transistors on microprocessors doubles every two years--is grinding to a halt because there is a limit to how many can be squeezed on a chip. The machine-learning boom is another problem. The amount of energy silicon-based computers use is set to soar as they crunch more of the massive data sets that algorithms in this field require. The Semiconductor Industry Association estimates that, on current trends, computing's energy demands will outstrip the world's total energy supply by 2040. So research groups all over the world are building alternative systems that can handle large amounts of data without using silicon. All of them strive to be smaller and more power efficient than existing chips. Here, Hodson discusses the rise of AI, the impending end of Moore's law which means silicon chips are nearing the end of the line, and some alternatives.