TL 9 microchips?

[Tom Mazanec]

Could the microprocessors of the upcoming 2 nm node be considered TL 9?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_nm_process

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Tom Mazanec

Could the microprocessors of the upcoming 2 nm node be considered TL 9?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_nm_process

<shrug>Gurps provides no microchip data on what TL9 proper uses. The only measurement we get in UT is "storage size".

[Willy]

I think earlier post said we are at the end of TL 8 venturing into TL 9 in some parts.

From what GURPS says about TL 9 Ultratech, we have some computerstuff already in that legue. Sadly GURPS hasn´t much about the nm or the needed computing power for certain TLs. I gives a bit about expert systems and from that and the accuracy of some new weapons systems using that expert systems we are in that part TL 9.

So yes I would say a real 2 nm node is good enough for early TL 9.

[jackcelso]

gurps ultra tech was printed 15 years ago. In tech time this is a century!!!

the books will never be updated in this part, it would be necessary to make a revision every year... minimum.

[whswhs]

There is relevant material in Chapter 5 of GURPS High-Tech: Electricity and Electronics.

[Opellulo]

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.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Tom Mazanec

Could the microprocessors of the upcoming 2 nm node be considered TL 9?

This will only become clear in retrospect. It's a serious mistake for RPGs to try to predict technological progress. Classic Traveller attempted to do this, and there's a Murphy's Rules cartoon from 1981, pointing out that some then-current computers exceeded the capabilities of Traveller ones.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by johndallman

This will only become clear in retrospect. It's a serious mistake for RPGs to try to predict technological progress. Classic Traveller attempted to do this, and there's a Murphy's Rules cartoon from 1981, pointing out that some then-current computers exceeded the capabilities of Traveller ones.

Don't forget Gibson's "three megabytes of hot ram"

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by johndallman

This will only become clear in retrospect. It's a serious mistake for RPGs to try to predict technological progress. Classic Traveller attempted to do this, and there's a Murphy's Rules cartoon from 1981, pointing out that some then-current computers exceeded the capabilities of Traveller ones.

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.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by whswhs

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.

Originally Posted by Opellulo

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.