Unsurprisingly, Intel CTO Justin Rattner believes that accelerating computation will soon transform our everyday lives and experiences, perhaps enabling a not-too-distant Singularity.
In this exclusive Future Blogger interview, shot at the Singularity Summit, Rattner lays out his core near-term predictions for the field of computing:
Rattner's core prognostications include Massively Multi-Core Processing, and Evolving Memory Hierarcy and Infinite Battery Life.
Multi-Multi Core Processing: "Certainly systems based on processors with large numbers of individual processing elements are a major part of what we're going to see in the middle of the next decade."
The latest in the foresighted line-up of Singularity Summit speakers, Justin Rattner, VP and CTO of Intel, just spoke about achieving programmable matter. The possibility is there, especially when you consider where he sees the processor in the next decade.
“We think several terrabytes/second per chip is well within our possibility within 4-5 years,” said Rattner. The example he cited was in the vehicle design field. Model cars, real physical ones, could be interactive as well as modified.
Intel CTOJustin Rattner acknowledges that “the Singularity is a nice organizing principle” and that Intel will be critical to any future scenario in which runaway technology enables massive intelligence. He says Intel is “responsible for the trench warfare that drives these technologies.”
The preceding video was captured atSS08shortly after Justin’s presentation.
Rattner argues that other Moore’s Law enabled advances in other fields such as Silicon Photonics, Digitial Multi-Radio, Silicon Bio-sensors and Programmable Matter will be instrumental in a possible Singularity.
But could exponentially advancing technologies hit a wall?
“We did hit a wall,” says Rattner, “We reached the point where we could not thin the gate material any more. So, in essence, Silicon Gate CMOS ended last year.”
But engineers were able to develop a work-around: metal gate technology, and they’re also planning subsequent generations that will enable computer speeds to continue their astronomical growth.
This prompts the Rattner’s next question, “How do you define Moore’s Law?”
Indeed. Is Moore’s Law still relevant, or is a broader law of accelerating computation in effect.
Intel CTOJustin Rattner paints a scenario in which humans have access to “computers, and cameras, and phones that run infinitely”, relating that the feasibility and demand for such devices has spurred Intel to seriously research the underlying technologies that could spawn such a future reality.
Rattner says Intel has been coming at wireless power “in a number of ways”, first from this notion of “scavenging free energy … from the environment to power all sorts of sensing devices” that broadcast data as they filled up with sufficient energy, but more recently through “injecting energy into the environment … particularly at this idea of coupled magnetic resonance circuits as a way to transmit power in a perfectly safe way.”
With such a heavyweight company devoting real-deal R&D dollars to wireless power one has got to wonder when well start seeing some serious breakthroughs and if, eventually, pervasive power that enables always-on pervasive computing, sensing, and production could become a human reality.
