Intel and Microsoft fund $20M grant to reinvent computing: where do you want to go tomorrow?
By Nilay Patel 
posted Mar 25th 2008 8:02PM
posted Mar 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.
punching people over the internet, finally, a solution for all those doom and blend comments
Minority Report much people?
Launch the damn Q9450. That's where I want to go tomorrow.
All I want is to be able to download a sandwich.
yes me to
thats wonka vision!
yeah, can someone email me a bag of doritos?
smaller computers built into flexible, foldable screens. the real question is... how are you going to solve the heat problems with all that power?
Protein folding is the only answer!
lol @ crysis
I just want to play Doom on my blackberry.
That's fine, but I'd rather see components shrinking, not getting bigger (i.e. graphic cards).
I just wanna be able to slap bitches over the internet!
I want all of my walls to turn into Ultra High Def TV screens, so I can imagine I'm around serene mountains of Vail, Colorado instead of smog clouded views of my neighbor's apartments.... or play Halo 5 in surround vision.
You know... like that breakfast scene in Total Recall.
Yes, I want walls that are just huge flat panel monitors that can create any list of scenes at the touch of the menu on-screen / on-wall. Then there would have to be holographic imagery in the room as well. It would be every bit possible with that much processing capability. sweet
Or like the TV walls in Fahrenheit 451...
Read this short story by Keith Laumer called The Four Walls.
http://www.webscription.net/10.1125/Baen/0743436067/0743436067.htm
The last time the holo-shed broke, I got slapped with 4 paternity suits.
Open Source is already doing this(kinda) for free(as in freedom & beer): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThreadWeaver
it took a long time for a 64bit os to emerge, imagine the wait for one that supports the potential 100 core cpu. we'll all be dead and everyone will still be running xp 32 bit.
Crysis, without having to shut everything down and still get lag.
maybe someone will invent smudge proof glass (using 100 cores) and then everything in the world will be touch screen (using 2 cores).
Render the 300 in 5 minutes. Home made 3d effects that will rival studio movies. Youtube at 4K resolution. Figure out were my socks keep on going.
Heh.
www.bigbuckbunny.org
We're on our way :)
Format a floppy disk and play solitaire at the same time.
AisleRiot has like 120 rule sets built into it and all anyone knows is klondike. *sniff*
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 over a gig of RAM.
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.
*cough* codeweavers *cough*
There's a reason MS is getting into funding research into the next generation of hardware. They need to ensure that the long-haired smellies that are coding the Linux kernel and other Open-source software can't take advantage of the hardware before or better than MS does.
MS still doesn't have a decent 64 bit OS out. I've been running a rock-solid 64-bit install of Linux on my AMD64 for years. The open source software community arguably implements things faster, especially on openly-documented hardware.
So look for nifty "features" on the new platform like Trusted Computing, DRM being embedded in the harware or just proprietary interfaces protected with patents or some nonsense that has not technical purpose besides locking out hackers and/or criminalizing their efforts to make the hardware work in "unapproved ways". (Like at all without a license of Windows)
I'm not saying that I'm certain that that's the way it's gonna be. Intel might not play along. I'm just saying that it's a darned good idea to keep an eye on them.
There is a different, well-proven, consistently-preferred way to picture all (even many willions of) foreseen valid and invalid user sequences in even very complex systems. Content chunks of information can be in any form, any language while their user logic connections and paths are represented without words, symbols, formula-forms. Happy to handle questions from large corporations.
1. Touchscreens FTW. But not all touchscreen-keep the standard keyboard/mouse input, but enable finger poking as well.
2. Bigger stuff (as in beastlier, not necessarily more space-hogging) for cheaper. IDK how viable that is, but whatever. I want to be able to get a GeForce 10800 (yes, a 10800. I'm looking forward.) for like $100.
3. Modular computers w/hubs. That way you can go as crazy powerful as you want. Like, PCI slot expanders. Or something like that.
4. Wireless connections with speeds in gb/s widely available. And no, not 0.054 gbps.
5. Wireless USB. God, how i want this. And while you're at it, why not make all cables nonexistent? I'm sick of not being able to put my desk against the wall because there's a mess of wires back there. I swear, they're reproducing or something.
Aaaand that's about all i have so far.
TERMINATOR ... HERE WE COME!
While we need more speed or power to run the large programs that are made at the moment, what we need to expand on is the interface and "way" we compute. I am talking AI. Even the smallest computers require your hands and most of your attention, which uses up most of our time. Not including games or interactive content.
Until computers, fast and "smart" enough to run REAL Voice control without errors and Identity, having the computer know who it is dealing with and concept inputs, understanding human reactions and such. This is just one area to change or computing will go on to be the same also ran machine.
I feel that computers should be androids, with visual displays (holograms VR),
there should not be a need touch.
As with
Computers that can detect when you've been behind the screen for too long...
I want a PAM module that knows when it's /you/ behind the screen and logs you in. Perhaps by Intrepid...
There had been numerous attempts to make graphic processing units general purpose.. (GPGPU projects) but with the abundant of CPU cores that we are having now... can we make graphic processing cores out of general purposed ones? I mean.. of course you can do it right now with a CPU but it's just awfully slow and not practical but is it possible with some hardware + software modification that a general purpose CPU can be modified to work with .. say vector math much better?
I'd really like to see a highly dynamic architecture. Like you have 100 cores, some totally amazing memory (if hard drives aren't fast enough by then to suffice for memory), and storage space. I would be amazing to have a computer that would allocate like 75 of 100 cores to video when necessary (for games) or could crunch some serious numbers or firefox could steal a core for each tab so they were all super fast. Maybe you could have a hyper-visor type of environment where programs would ask for X many cores and you could just kinda stack them until your computer said that you couldn't.
We could all install BOINC and solve entire protein folding projects in a couple hours.
"start over"? architecturally what really needs to change? cant this be worked out on the programming level and/or the compiler level
I say we come up with this computer control mational defense and then we make it play Tic Tac Toe against itself until it comes to a sad realization.
More bloatware from Microsoft? No thanks. The only reason to throw in more cores is to get an OS to work some 3D magic AND make software run as slow as molasses. Next up they'll be putting money towards 100 terabyte hard drives to fit their new OS.
Put that 20 mil towards proper 64bit support.
No. We have it. Put it towards a DirectX 10 gallium frontend.
had apple done something like this? fund $10M for next gen one button mouse, maybe?
I want to read maps on a bigass table.
Use 98 cores to run Vista in Fusion the way its meant to be. Use the other 2 cores to run Leopard at the same speed as vista with the 98 cores. Blah who am I kidding vista supporting that type of hardware.
/agree
But just wait for the hate replies to come... lol
And use the idle time from any of the cores to run linux.
What! But .. ahh .. uhhMicrosoft Rocks!
The only inherently parallel programming environment I know of is called Labview. They have done multicore processing for years. Too bad it's only used as a science and engineering tool. Microsoft & Intel or someone similar should buy them out and go widespread with the tool.
If the tool alread exists, why don't they just buy it???
Definitely more intelligent computer that learn how I want HIM to do rather than I learn how to use it. Also it would be great if it can digest information from the WEB and formulate his intelligent and update his POWER (information and intelligence).