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Old 06-02-2022, 09:09 AM   #11
Tom Mazanec
 
Join Date: Oct 2007
Default 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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Old 06-02-2022, 09:17 AM   #12
Stormcrow
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ronkonkoma, NY
Default 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.
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Old 06-02-2022, 09:46 AM   #13
Fred Brackin
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Default 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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Old 06-02-2022, 09:56 AM   #14
whswhs
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
Default Re: TL 9 microchips?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Stormcrow View Post
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?
The progressive shrinking of microchips does map to a GURPS statistic: if you make it smaller, you reduce the weight required for a computer of a given Complexity, or, conversely, you increase the possible Complexity for a computer of a given weight. And since power requirements are scaled to weight, you also decrease the power consumption that supports a given Complexity.

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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Old 06-02-2022, 12:07 PM   #15
Johnny1A.2
 
Join Date: Feb 2007
Default Re: TL 9 microchips?

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Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
If you're going to write science fiction set in the future, though, you probably have to predict technological progress—and accept the risk of getting it wrong.
In either direction. For a while data storage and processing speeds in computers outraced all expectations, to the point that it started to define what people meant by 'technological progress' (just as improvements in air travel and rocketry did in the early 20C). But the Tyranny of the S curve always wins in the end.

The trick in SF is not to predict how it works but what it does.


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Originally Posted by Opellulo View Post
As the Wikipedia page clearly explains those 2nm microchips are just another iteration of the same MOSFET technology that's rocking around since the '60. If the question is about reaching TL9 electronics capabilities (and the discussion about "what is TL9?" is in itself another can of worms) then I think a more likely candidate would be quantum computing.
This^^^. It's not revolutionary new tech, it's an extreme refinement of old tech, the last gasps of Moore's Law. Granted, past a certain point a difference of degree can become a difference in kind, compare a Saturn V to a V-2, both basically the same thing, but extremely refined (and over a very short period, the V-2 was only 25 years before the S5). But in both cases it was a familiar tech being taken to extremes.

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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Old 06-02-2022, 12:09 PM   #16
Johnny1A.2
 
Join Date: Feb 2007
Default Re: TL 9 microchips?

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Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
The progressive shrinking of microchips does map to a GURPS statistic: if you make it smaller, you reduce the weight required for a computer of a given Complexity, or, conversely, you increase the possible Complexity for a computer of a given weight. And since power requirements are scaled to weight, you also decrease the power consumption that supports a given Complexity.

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.
Yeah, but past performance is no guarantee of future profits.
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Old 06-02-2022, 12:43 PM   #17
whswhs
 
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Default Re: TL 9 microchips?

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Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2 View Post
Yeah, but past performance is no guarantee of future profits.
Yes, and you will find exactly that point made, explicitly, in a text box on page 38 of GURPS High-Tech: Electricity and Electronics.

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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Old 06-02-2022, 12:48 PM   #18
Rupert
 
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Default Re: TL 9 microchips?

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Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
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.
From what I can see, the trend in low-mid range laptops is to make them smaller and cheaper (so they're tablets with cruddy keyboards) rather than to increase memory (both storage and RAM).

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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Old 06-02-2022, 01:00 PM   #19
Fred Brackin
 
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Default Re: TL 9 microchips?

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, I'm sticking with my desktop, ).
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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Old 06-02-2022, 01:06 PM   #20
Rupert
 
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Default Re: TL 9 microchips?

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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".
Agreed. And my phone's screen is losing resolution year by year, I swear.
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