Comments on: The Roads To Zettascale And Quantum Computing Are Long And Winding https://www.nextplatform.com/2023/05/12/the-roads-to-zettascale-and-quantum-computing-are-long-and-winding/ In-depth coverage of high-end computing at large enterprises, supercomputing centers, hyperscale data centers, and public clouds. Wed, 24 May 2023 14:18:42 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.1 By: Timothy Prickett Morgan https://www.nextplatform.com/2023/05/12/the-roads-to-zettascale-and-quantum-computing-are-long-and-winding/#comment-208523 Mon, 15 May 2023 17:24:13 +0000 https://www.nextplatform.com/?p=142367#comment-208523 In reply to 8^b.

Well said, and thank you.

]]> By: 8^b https://www.nextplatform.com/2023/05/12/the-roads-to-zettascale-and-quantum-computing-are-long-and-winding/#comment-208434 Sun, 14 May 2023 02:54:40 +0000 https://www.nextplatform.com/?p=142367#comment-208434 It’s hard to argue against this plan for Argonne, given Rick Stevens’ superb credentials (automated reasoning and high-performance symbolic computation — Genesereth and Nilsson on steroids), and with JDACS4C and CANDLE (biomimetic AI) being developed for problems that are challenging to humans, and expected to run at Exascale on Aurora, and on Cerebras wafer-scale units. An underlying target (not at all apparent) may be the development of exocortices, that might do for our brains what exoskeleta do for our limbs (or not).

When it comes to locomotion, we found early on that the evolutive design of our limbs was not necessarily the best suited for the job, and developed a much more effective, non-biomimetic, alternative: the wheel. We also developed very efficient non-biomimetic washing machines (without arms), and plenty of other non-bio-inspired devices to free us from the limitations of our “unfortunate” limb+brain biodesign (rotary motors being an example of something seldom found in nature, except maybe in dinoflagellates).

Our brain is terrible at computations. It is excellent at recognizing hot-dogs in a crowd, great at speech-recognition in noisy-ish environments, and good at controlling our flailing limbs on uneven ground, but crap at logic and math — they require the longest training time to properly master, even approximately. Why on earth then, do we want to build bio-inspired machines, that mimic brain functioning (to some rough extent) to help us with math and logic? We’ve developed very successful (accurate, fast, and efficient) non-biobased tools to help us with this already (slide rules, electronic calculators, CPUs+RAM, predicate calculus, normal calculus, numerical algorithms, Fortran, LISP, Prolog, …) and it is not entirely clear (to me) what additional benefit a bio-inspired exocortical helmet could bring to this field, beyond fashionable headgear (with a huge powerpack?). It may, however, help deal with ALS, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, … maybe.

That a biomimetic AI can be made so large, and trained so expensively, that it can correctly add two small integers, is an impressive feat, to be sure. But, as the grand voodoo priest of the horror-backpropagation plague nearly said, I doubt that an approach that makes this particular hammer ever bigger, represents the best use of potentially scarce resources, GPUs, and PhDs (but it is great fun, in a nerdy, mostly workaholic, kind of way!). Indoor decoration, EDA floorplanning, and the Argonne projects, are probably good application areas though, along with stockmarket crystal ball fortune telling (which remains the killer app).

Still, it’s best to keep an open mind on this long road to the Zettascale (just a Saturday opinion, between Pina Coladas … 8^b)!

]]> By: HuMo https://www.nextplatform.com/2023/05/12/the-roads-to-zettascale-and-quantum-computing-are-long-and-winding/#comment-208386 Sat, 13 May 2023 04:12:59 +0000 https://www.nextplatform.com/?p=142367#comment-208386 Superluminal quantum teleportation, to/from orbiting geostationary datacenters, should solve the bulk of these AI challenges (a similar approach was demonstrated in the prescient 1990 documentary “Terminal City Ricochet”, where casting selected kitchen appliances to play the role of computational hardware — in those early, near-modern, but not quite, days). The drag that gravity is, along with reality, did bring them crashing down to earth, eventually, every now and then, much unlike AI hallucinations. But, as Rick James said, in Dave Chappelle’s True Hollywood Stories, starring Charles Murphy: “[AI]’s one hell of a [hallucinogenic]!” (or justabout). Which brings me to my main tangential point: if Mark Zuckerberg got gold medals, this Spring, in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ), as a white belt, which is the lowest level, starting belt, was he, as Rick James thought of Charles Murphy, “practicing karate with them little kids!”? Don’t drink the frog soup (in excess) … and … exhale …

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