06-02-2022, 09:09 AM | #11 |
Join Date: Oct 2007
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Re: TL 9 microchips?
And BTW, what does "microtech" mean in the listing? We have had 1 micron chips since 1984 or so. Or does that mean the whole system is micron-sized or smaller?
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06-02-2022, 09:17 AM | #12 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ronkonkoma, NY
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Re: TL 9 microchips?
Unless you're buying separate microchips, there isn't really much to do between them and TLs. I mean, what are the GURPS stats of a 2 nm microchip? The question doesn't even have much meaning. What effect would introducing 2 nm microchips to otherwise TL8 computers have? Maybe adding Compact or Fast features, but upgrading to a whole new TL?
At best, you could draw a line and say "this is when chip X is introduced, and this is where TL9 computers start, so chip X is a TL9 technology," but it doesn't really have any effect on the game. It is, at best, fluff. |
06-02-2022, 09:46 AM | #13 |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: TL 9 microchips?
The best I can say is that we'll be TL9 when voice controlled smartwatches with 1 tB storage and laptops with 10 TB are the commercial standard.
Right now we're just barely flirting wiuth voice controlled smartwatches and lap tops with _1_TB storage only became standard a few years ago. We may not be that far past full maturity for TL8. Of course, this does mean we may have achieved TL9 when software bloat has reached the point where lap tops _need_ 10 TB. :)
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Fred Brackin |
06-02-2022, 09:56 AM | #14 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: TL 9 microchips?
Quote:
Complexity is coarsely scaled, with +1 to Complexity roughly equating to 10x CPU size. So just going from 3 nm to 2 nm may not cross the boundary from one Complexity level to another. But at some point that crossing will happen. Standard GURPS tends to assume that you only get +1 or +2 to Complexity per TL. But in actual history, over the roughly four decades of TL8, we've seen an improvement in chip size by several orders of magnitude. That's why I suggested in GURPS High-Tech: Electricity and Electronics that TL8 have four steps.
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Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
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06-02-2022, 12:07 PM | #15 | ||
Join Date: Feb 2007
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Re: TL 9 microchips?
Quote:
The trick in SF is not to predict how it works but what it does. Quote:
In SF, there's a tendency to 'read the present forward', whether the present means rocketry or information tech. For a while, SF was dominated by info tech, the obsession was 'when will we upload ourselves', or cyberpunk, or whatever iteration of Vinge's Singularity was in vogue. Stories that didn't assume a Singularity often felt the need to explain why. But times change, and yesterday's tomorrow ages quickly, as one SF writer observed. Rocketry climbed the S curve quickly from the 1930s to the 1960s...and stalled. A story written in 1930 predicting human travel to the Moon in 2000 would have been undercut when in happened in 1969. A chastened SF 2writer writing in 1970 about permanent manned bases on Mars and Mercury by 2000...well, we haven't even been back to the Moon yet after over half a century. Cyberpunk is already deeply dated, and transhumanism is looking like following that path.
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HMS Overflow-For conversations off topic here. |
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06-02-2022, 12:09 PM | #16 | |
Join Date: Feb 2007
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Re: TL 9 microchips?
Quote:
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HMS Overflow-For conversations off topic here. |
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06-02-2022, 12:43 PM | #17 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: TL 9 microchips?
Quote:
The GURPS treatment of computers had two questionable points. On one hand, it assumed that progress would continue into higher TLs at approximately the current rate. On the other, it underestimated the current rate, perhaps partly to avoid having future TLs have (seemingly) insane levels of computer power. In effect, it treated computers as following a straight line rather than a logistic curve.
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Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
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06-02-2022, 12:48 PM | #18 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: TL 9 microchips?
Quote:
I keep getting told that 'laptops are replacing desktops', and for general business use they do seem to be, insofar as they're replacing the desktop computer but are still plugging into a desktop's worth of screens, keyboards, mice, etc. so really they're using up a desktop's footprint, but you have the option of using them away from your deck (with a little screen, cramped keyboard, etc.). As I have no need for that portability, I'm sticking with my desktop, which is much cheaper for the performance I'm getting and has far more storage space (and plenty of room for more drives if I need them).
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Rupert Boleyn "A pessimist is an optimist with a sense of history." |
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06-02-2022, 01:00 PM | #19 |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: TL 9 microchips?
I use a desktop myself but i was using "lap top"as shoprthand for personal computer. since a lap top is what most people seem to have.
This is also why I was focusing on the "voice controlled smart watch" since that was much more mature TL9 than "people with good eyesight who get by with a 6 inch smartphone".
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Fred Brackin |
06-02-2022, 01:06 PM | #20 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: TL 9 microchips?
Agreed. And my phone's screen is losing resolution year by year, I swear.
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Rupert Boleyn "A pessimist is an optimist with a sense of history." |
Tags |
computers, ultra-tech |
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