On the Cusp

This is possibly the most important speckle of dots in a line that you'll see today. It's an updated version of Ray Kurzweil's plot of calculations per second per $1000 of equipment for the past century or so. And what it shows is an exponential increase in processing power. An oft cited example of this kind of increase is that a cheap wristwatch has more processing power than the moon lander.

Kurzweil's predictions vary from Moore's Law in that Moore was concerned with the number of transistor on an integrated circuit. Kurzweil, however, looks at the much simpler statistic of how many calculations can be done and at what cost. This allows for trends to be plotted much further into the past. Further, it allows for the trend to increase independent of the restrictions of integrated circuits.

It has be speculated that Moore's Law will come to an end because of the physical limitations for the miniaturization of transistors. However, while the trend of transistor size will eventually cease, the overall trend of computational power can continue through other mediums.

As you can see on the graph, computation has gone through several stages of technological dependence: electromechanical, relay, vacuum tube, transistor, and now integrated circuits. (technically there were mechanical calculation machines well before all of this, but they were more often merely theoretical) But because the upper limit of integrated circuits is within sight, we're going to have to leap yet again to a new technology.

And it's here, the first electronic quantum processor. Booyah. If you thought computers were mysterious before, then get ready for something that may as well be magic.

JetSetArnett Out.

It's poetry in motion.