Intel and Microsoft fund $20M grant to reinvent computing: where do you want to go tomorrow?
By Nilay Patel 
posted March 25th 2008 8:02PM
posted March 25th 2008 8:02PM
Although both Microsoft and Intel's R&D departments have been responsible for some nifty futuristic tech, the two companies got together last week and announced a $20M grant to two universities to "start over" and develop next-gen computing systems based around parallel processing. The grant will fund Universal Parallel Computing Research Centers at UC -Berkeley, which is kicking in another $7M, and the University of Illinois at Champaign / Urbana, which is donating $8M of its own. According to Mark Snir, head of the UIUC lab, the goal is to find a way to make "parallelism so easy to use that parallel programming becomes synonymous with programming" -- an increasingly important priority as current multi-core processors aren't necessarily being fully utilized, and 100-core processors aren't far off. That leads us to wonder: what to do with all that newly-unlocked processing power? Virtual-reality Facebook? Real-time visual augmentation? Finally being able to run Crysis? We know you've got ideas -- sound off in comments![Thanks, Luke]
we need to be able to run crysis 2. cuz when that comes out for sure no one will be able to play it
Slow down. We still have Crysis 1 to deal with...
What does Crysis have anything to do with Intel? That's the stupid game and video card problem.
Wow, man... James, it seems as if no one agrees with you... Oh well.
That computer in Minority Report is a good start.
@ James Cameron
You realize that Intel (not nVidia or ATI) is the largest provider of GPUs worldwide?
Seriously... go around and you will see that most PCs have onboard video cards from Intel.
Go ahead, I'll wait right here.
Man, screw Crysis! I have been waiting for a processor that will allow me to play Tron in virtual reality since 1982.
I think all this newly unlocked processor power should be used to make the Internet like how they showed it in Futurama. That would be awesome.
My god... It's full of ads!
RUN!
Folding protein and save life
Pfff... Thats not fun- I wanna' play a holographic version of DooM!
Indeed, run folding@home and help stanford's cancer research and other research projects related to protein folding.
http://folding.stanford.edu
Unlock the mysteries of the Universe!!!
how about play holographic doom, holographic crysis, fold proteins at the same time, and play other high-end games at holographic level at the same time?
Unlock the secrets of my pants? :O
Yeah, figured that one wouldn't work- worth the shot though...
FASTER PORN!
You mean Virtual Sex. If I can't have Jessica Alba in real life, virtual Alba would do just fine. Jack me into the MATRIX...
Remember,if you use too much CPU power for porn, Kelly LeBrock comes out of your closet and fucks up your parent's house.
Thats great. Hopefully we won't end up in a situation with multicores like with 64bit processors where they rarely get fully utilized despite having been around quite awhile now.
Definitely gotta cast my vote for VR. The promise of a truly interactive computing experience is what I would define as a "reinvention."
VR windows?
viewing folders in 3d would actually be pretty cool. (but M$ would limit it to windows $currentversion ultimate)
VR Viruses?
That would be awesome!
@Andune - I refer you to Tom Clancy's Net Force series.
i cant even imagine what would happen to your mind and body when you get a BSOD
I would love a totally SOLID STATE computing. No moving parts.
What's hard about that? Get a standard motherboard, CPU, a SSD, SD card reader for removable media, and peltier coolers/heatsinks. Unless I'm forgetting something.
Yeah but you still needs all those fancy fans/heatsinks to keep it cool right? It need to be a top of the line computing not a low end solid state computing that doesn't need a good cooling to keep cool.
James... You said *I'M* dumb... Computers use electricity. This electricity flows through the electronics of the computer; that alone creates heat due to resistance, but when you get CPUs and other chips drawing quite a bit of energy to process and whatnot, then you're going to get even more heat. In theory having a system that DOESN'T require cooling is impossible and in reality, even more so. Sorry, but that day will NEVER come unless you go with passive cooling (ie: heatsinks).
In response to Zeus,
You're wrong that computers will always generate heat. Transistor based computing will always generate heat but optical computing may not. Remember, there's more than one way to flip a switch.
In response to Zeus,
You're wrong that computers will always generate heat. Transistor based computing will always generate heat but optical computing may not. Remember, there's more than one way to flip a switch.
Ok... Sorry- didn't think about that, but as of right now, that won't happen; the best you can do is passive cooling...
But even with optical computing, it still uses electricity, and last time I noticed, light generates heat as well so there will be some level of heat dissipation.
in response to Linuxamp:
The second law of thermodynamics would mean that anytime you're using energy to do work it can not be 100% efficient. Any computer would generate heat. The amount of heat may be minimal but it will always be there.
no way.. someone's going to patent anything I have to say here on the subject
:P
I am going to patent internet matrix, that way when its finally made, I'll be able to sue. Its such a fool proof idea.
Statistically we already exist in The Matrix.
http://www.simulation-argument.com/matrix.html
ShiroEd
I clicked you're link. It's hard to take anything seriously that misspells "civilization" in the second paragraph.
English use an "s" instead of the "z" that is used in American English.
jack into the Matrix.
Thats the idea, make a massively parallel interface that can directly interact with you brain. Then we wont need processors to run software.
You could use the spare 98 cores to run a program to patch Vista SP1 on the fly. So 2 cores to run vista, 98 cores to keep it stable.
I dunno whats goin on with your Vista machine, but mine works perfectly. Even better after SP1....
@JMMGoalster:
He doesn't have one. Thus the reason for his inaccurate comment; He just follows the popular bash Microsoft mentality.
with the amount of trash talk on this site you guys get bent out of shape over one funny M$ joke... wow little touchy aren't we. (btw Vista is the worst OS ever, I know because I use it)
You know I've found that, most of the time, the problem isn't the software, the user is. Don't blame vista for your short comings. My Vista box has worked w/out a hitch for several months.
Technological singularity ftw
Virtual reality eh.... we'll finally be able to punch people over the internet.
I am with you with that one.
its no longer can you see me or can you hear me, it will be can you feel me me now.
optimized operating systems and no preinstalled bloatware.
i went to circuit city today and fiddled with demo systems.
all of them had over 75, sometimes over 85 processes going.
using up over a gig of memory.
come on. i don't care how hard it is, make the operating system use a few resources as possible.
if microsoft released a minimalistic vista that looked exactly like '95 but had support for the latest games and hardware while using >250mb RAM, it would sell like opium in old china.
what?
that wasn't supposed to be a reply....
dammit.