Moore’s Law Could Be No More

Moore’s law is already slowing down and will collapse within a decade according to Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist. He believes physical limitations are already beginning to come into play.

Exactly what “Moore’s law” means is a somewhat vague term, and the definition has varied over the years since Gordon E Moore wrote in a 1965 issue of Electronics Magazine ” The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year… Certainly over the short term this rate can be expected to continue, if not to increase.”

In other versions, including later tweaking by Moore himself, the general theme is that computing power will double roughly every two years, based on the idea of being able to fit twice as many transistors on a same-sized circuit. Intel has tweaked that further to an 18-month period based on the transistors getting further.

Whatever the details, it’s been more of a principle than a law, though certainly one that seems to have held up over the past 50 years or so. (See above, via Wikipedia)

Now Kaku says that as things stand, Moore’s law will “flatten out completely” over the next 10 years. That’s based on the idea that we are beginning to hit the physical limits of silicon. Specifically, if transistors get any smaller, the inherent problems of overheating and leakage will eventually outweigh any gains.

Kaku believes we’ll be able to stave off the decline with workaround for a while yet, including parallel processing and even three-dimensional chips. Ultimately he believes we’ll have to switch to completely different concepts of computer processing, such as molecular computing (effectively using molecules to create a valve to replicate silicon transistor switches at a smaller scale) and even quantum computing. However, the latter option likely won’t be viable until near the end of the century according to Kaku.

Boston Comic Con 2012 in Pictures [Cosplay]

[GAS] reader Bill Hinsee attended Boston Comic Con 2012 a little more than a week ago and sent me some pretty good pictures of various cosplayer he immortalized via his digital camera. I invite you to check some of our favorites in the picture gallery below. Note: All these pictures were released under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license.

Thanks Bill!



Open Access vs. Paid Access: A Problem Even in the Academic World

Anyone who’s participated in a Google vs. Apple debate (or cat fight) would be quite intimately aware of the open access vs. paid access arguments when it comes to technology.

Well it seems Ivy League schools are coming across a similar tension in academic journals. Harvard University writes that they simply cannot continue subscriptions to many of the major periodicals as it has becoming “financially untenable”. It would seem the Faculty Advisory Council to the Library, in consultation with Harvard Library leadership, are going to rejig their subscriptions and are appealing to researchers to “consider submitting articles to open-access journals, or to ones that have reasonable, sustainable subscription costs; move prestige to open access.” (my bolding).

While this sounds like a noble effort, it would seem librarians at Yale are less confident about the viability of this shift in thinking and claim there are more complicated issues to be considered. From the interview with Yale University Librarian Susan Gibbons, we can observe her opinion on the matter:

(Skip to 5.00 to get to the bit about open access journals.)

Junior academics are striving for tenure. One of the major ways to get tenure is to have articles published in reputable journals. Thus, junior academics don’t particularly desire their articles to be published in open access journals, which are the opposite of exclusive and, therefore, considered non-prestigious (which, of course, is an elitist attitude, but the whole concept of tenure is itself rather entwined with that, is it not?).

On the other hand, once academics get tenure, they (perhaps) feel more compelled to publish in open access, maximizing the audience for the discovery they have worked long and hard to bring to the world’s attention.

Yale, therefore, maintains support for both open and closed access journals because they want to be able to sustain younger professors’ chances to attain their tenure, while also maximizing the accessibility of research that is granted through open access journals.

What do you think? Is it better that Harvard is trying to crush the increased costs of ‘reputable’ journals by encouraging academics to publish in open access journals in order to move the prestige away from the closed access ones? Or is Yale’s model of maintaining support for both types of journal a more realistic and logical move due to the nature of the academic world?

[Via The Atlantic | Photo Credit: Anna Creech]

New Trailer for Batman: The Dark Knight Rises is Out!

There was a collective moment of internet silence when the latest trailer for the epic conclusion of Christopher Nolan’s Batman franchise hit the web. Then, you may have noticed your Facebook, Twitter and other social media feeds blow up with links to the two and a half minute clip. I know mine did.

Anyone else get chills when Batman said, “Not everything. Not Yet.”

Fans were able to unlock the trailer after a viral campaign launched earlier in the day.

The Dark Knight Rises debuts on July 20, 2012 in the United States.

[Via Super Hero Hype]

Alberta Aurora – Prairie Light [Video]

On April 23/24, 2012 Earth experienced a G=3 geomagnetic storm. The Kp index, a measure of magnetic field, peaked at 6.33 out of a maximum of 9. The result of this disturbance created this Aurora event.

It was a beautiful spring night on the Alberta prairies. Temperatures were steady at 16 deg C with very light winds. As you can see there was some cloud cover, but I was able to get far enough away from it to still get a great view of the show.

[InFocus Imagery Inc.]

Arya Stark and Nymeria’s Birthday Cake [A Song of Ice and Fire]

A totally awesome Game of Thones-themed cake by my pal JB Cada and Stephanie Santos from Quezon City, Philippines-based bakery, The Regali Kitchen.

We’re huge fans of George R. R. Martin’s book series “A Song of Ice and Fire” and Arya Stark is one of our favorite characters, so when Maya asked us to make this cake and cupcake set for her daughter, Arya, we jumped at the chance!

Dark Chocolate Cake with Light Caramel Frosting and edible sugarpaste toppers Strawberry Lemonade Cupcakes and hand-painted edible toppers . By Chef JB Cada and Stephanie Santos.

[The Regali Kitchen]