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 $8M of its own. According to Mark Snir, head of the UIUC lab, the goal is to find a way to make "parallelism so easy to use that parallel programming becomes synonymous with programming" -- an increasingly important priority as current multi-core processors aren't necessarily being fully utilized, and 100-core processors aren't far off. That leads us to wonder: what to do with all that newly-unlocked processing power? Virtual-reality Facebook? Real-time visual augmentation? Finally being able to run Crysis? We know you've got ideas -- sound off in comments![Thanks, Luke]
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Meh. 20 million is nothing...
We'll use 1 core for computing and the other 99 to check if it blends.
Try to process the answer to life the universe and everything. And after that, well, I'll use that same computer to design yet another computer that will compute the ultimate question.
Yes, wireless. Visor technology offers the most promise and having data stored elsewhere is freedom. Bandwidth being the issue in the past but no longer. Open port to the net, fly free and when you need an interactive engagement then instant IP tunnel. wifi for peripherals but can execute from away like a text message. dot dash dot dash. lol. When you can see color in daylight through a virtual 3d image floating in space or hi def 3d like the holodeck maybe. then there will be a freedom. Increase the humanity in computers. Anonymity has created a lot of rude, lude, jerks who feel they can say and show whatever they want with no regard to people. accountability in chat environs but privacy for business and banking etc. OK, I'm straying here. Platforms the like of Facebook, stickam, vois, succeed because of the human connection. YouTube was close but too many bulky applications per page that slow the download and patience wears thin. tick tock, oh they have a music player, and uh Video, and uh, and uh, graphics this and that, and uh spamaramadingdong@#$%^&. Can't wait to see what's next. Loved the solid state comment. Coldputing is the answer when they find it. Optilogic is the key to voice when they find it, and Corealell is the ultimate when data-sync-map is perfected.
holodeck
Why does this matter, won't we just use it for porn anyways?
Bigger prime numbers! Oh, primes...
i remember hearing a programmer talking about quake 3 a while back say that he could program an incredibly realistic physical environment, it just would get about 1 frame per hour. 10 years from now i wouldn't doubt it if games rendered better quality graphics than the CG in movies like beowolf.
Lag-free Doom 2?
Wants:
- Lower power usage, less heat output.
- Better form factors (including wireless tech, touchscreen etc)
- In many places with low web bandwidth, use processing power so you don't need to download or upload every kb of data - code the web differently so that you can download only a fraction of the data & use processing power to generate the rest. Kind of like downloading a recipe instead of the whole cake.
(i.e. better compression for everything?)
- Better anti-spam and anti-virus (& any malware), harness that processing power for protection
Sure it can play Crysis...but can it play Doom?
Hmm... VR, nano computing and storage, bio computing... Then we can really kick it with food replicators and star ships. :) In reality, I would be more then happy with a decent fiber line to my house, Q9450 and lower DDR3 prices.
How about using some of that money to find a date ... nerds
Calculate Pi.
Did someone say Virtual Alba? when?
"parallelism so easy to use that parallel programming becomes synonymous with programming"
LabVIEW has been around for many years and can already take advantage of multi-core processors with very little effort. Read more here:
http://thinkinging.com/2007/09/19/labview-and-the-multicore-crisis/
The Matrix, with no 'dying in it means you're dead in real world' garbage.
This sounds pretty incredible. The future looks bright. Actually this is just a bogus comment. I'm trying to access my comment profile page, and I need to leave a comment first.
Sweet! looks like I'll finally be able to become 'the Lawnmowerman'
Sweet! looks like I'll finally be able to become 'the Lawnmowerman'
Build Skynet.
Wow...it takes $30M in funding to build a computer so that people can play Crysis. Gey
Where's Zues...oh there he is...defending Crysis and all things gey...
If you are interested in contributing to the Folding @ Home project, join Engadget's folding team:
Team Engadget # 39227
So they are giving this grant to Apple, right?
- Xidius
Frankly, I'm a little weary of watching M$ and Intel shape the future of computing
Finally, real-time super intelligence!! A car that can drive by itself, accident prediction systems, smarter homes, more capable mobile devices. More processing power means that you can save more time in almost everything computing is involved.
I would be very interested in Parallel Jennifer Alba's. Great minds. One day the secrets of the universe will be clear thanks to the surplus hormones of nerds. :) Motivation is Caye. hee hee. Somebody explain to me how BTL, the Monopoly for Internet in Belize can not only block VOIP but VPN's and now Macs and anyone running Vista can't even access Google pages. I officially rename BTL as Interferenet. Ignorant Nazi's. Here I am living in paradise and my Internet acts like it's locked in AOL. Help!!!! I'm tempted to set up towers at the boarders and provide wireless country wide and watch them go Dohhhh!!!! What have we done? Oh yeah, Parallel rocks!! On topic.
Btw, for more info, our CTO at Intel posted a blog about why we made this academic investment here: http://blogs.intel.com/research/2008/03/upcrc.php
And what about a biologic or chemical learning CPU/memory?
Proteins offer infinite possibilities because they interact and reconfigure themselves in 3D where actual ICs look like a flat road map engraved in rigid silicon. A molecule itself would be a program just like ADN.
They could interact directly with the body without controls and interfaces.
Well I've been working on this one thing. I haven't patented it yet, but it'll definitely change the way we use our computers forever. See, all you would have to do is.....wait a second, almost caught me there. You sneaky bastards.
@ClaudeNap
If you bothered to check the word civilisation you would see that it is an actual word. The writer of the theory is British. By the way, speaking of spelling, it's your not you're.
matrix anyone? except without all the robotic suppression of course.
It seems to me that if intel was able to increase processing power by a couple of orders of magnitude, then they could grant some intelligence to the morons that are commenting on this blog.
Oh, by the way, Dear Intel and Microsoft: Google is already doing this....multicore processing that is. The Googleplex is what, a 100,000 core processor?
The fundamental problem with the argument is that it assumes the probability of their being species that have the capabilities and interests such as ourselves is statistically plausible enough to not affect any following predicates. We have an observable difficulty here though; because to date, no such species has been observed... just a thought.