🚀 go-pugleaf

One of the newsbytes groups (clari.nb.trends) has an article
that says the Japanese are claiming to have built a working
Josephson computer. 

They say it's got 26,000 Josephson devices (in 4 chips)
on a 10*10 cm board cooled to -268.8 degrees Celsius,
and it executes a BILLION (note the B) instructions
a second.  Consuming 6.2 milliwatts.

I'd guess that's for a small in-Josephson-memory program!


Hmmm...


So I wonder, are we going to switch to bytecoded stack
machine uniprocessors?  (Or nybblecoded, even?)

Locality of reference could be the most important research
topic of the next decade.  The speed difference between
RAM and these CPUs could be like the difference between
disks and RAMs.

How about centralized cold computer rooms with timeshared
barrel processors fed by gigabyte RAIDS (redundant
arrays of inexpensive DRAMS :-).

Then again, maybe it's cold fusion all over again...
even so, it's fun to consider the implications.  The
return of reference counting?  The death of shared
memory?  Lots of fine-grained optimistic computing
to avoid waiting for memory?

Any comments on this alleged Japanese breakthrough?  Is
it true?  If so, what does it really mean?


Paul R. Wilson
Software Systems Laboratory               lab ph.: (312) 996-9216
U. of Illin. at C. EECS Dept. (M/C 154)   wilson@bert.eecs.uic.edu
Box 4348   Chicago,IL 60680 
Paul R. Wilson                         
Software Systems Laboratory               lab ph.: (312) 996-9216
U. of Illin. at C. EECS Dept. (M/C 154)   wilson@carcoar.stanford.edu
Box 4348   Chicago,IL 60680