Your electric car or your computer not both..PANIC NOW

[burfordTjustice]

Computers will use more electricity than the entire world can generate by 2040, tech experts claim

Nightmare scenario means humanity will be simply unable to power the systems which keep us alive

But the current digital big bang could end with a disappointing whimper bec ause humanity may be unable to produce enough power to keep computers runni ng, experts have warned.

A leading technical organised called the Semiconductor Industry Association has produced a study which said that computer-crazy society will be runnin g short of electricity by 2040

It wrote: ?Computing will not be sustainable by 2040, when the ener gy required for computing will exceed the estimated world?s energy production.?

The Semiconductor Industry Association meets every year to discuss how elec tronic components called transistors ? which power computer circuit s ? can be made ever smaller.

Now the organisation is conceding that they probably won?t get any tinier, heralding the end of an era where computers got faster and faster a s transistors shrunk to every tinier sizes.

This means tech firms will have to think of new ways to make computers powe rful enough to keep up with demands.

?Driverless cars and personalised medicine along with countless oth er applications of intelligent systems are on the horizon, the Semiconducto r Industry Association added.

The year 2040 carries a huge resonance in the tech world, because some peop le believe that?s when artificial intelligence will become as cleve r as us humans ? a moment known as the singularity.

This is unlikely to happen if we keep suffering power cuts because our comp uters are taking up too much energy.

What?s the best way to make sure a malign computer doesn?t wipe us all out? Make sure it?s not plugged in.

[gfretwell]

I call bullshit on this. You just have to look what happened in the last 25 years. Computing power skyrocketed and the electrical power used plummeted. Your smart phone that can take a whole day's worth of charge from a 5v

1 amp USB port in less than an hour, has the power of a mainframe that had a 208v 100a plug on it.

[clare]

Anything from Buford T Justice is totally unadulterated BS. You can bet on it.

[gfretwell]

Those 100 amp mainframes used switchers. Huge ones obviously. IBM stopped using shunt regulators, and pass regulators by the mid 60s. We did have at least one machine (3705 communication controller) that used a strange SCR supply that took the 208vac and made the DC voltages directly by using PWM and a buttload of big capacitors. They were scary noisy on the power line side tho.

[Ollie]

One word: SOLAR POWER

[Scott Lurndal]

Did you read the industry report instead of the idiots spam post?

Read it, then comment.

[Scott Lurndal]

Three words: Do the Math:

[FromTheRafters]

burfordTjustice brought next idea :

Yes, and they always have been.

[gfretwell]

The bottom line of all of this, energy, global warming, water shortage and just about every other projected calamity, is population. There are just too damned many people on the planet and they all want a home with inside plumbing, electricity, heat and a car parked in the driveway. One data point to ponder, global CO2 concentration tracks population as closely as any other metric for the last 8000 years. Farming is as big a contributor as SUVs.

[gfretwell]

Go to bed early huh?

[Scott Lurndal]

Electricity can be stored via several mechanisms such as batteries, flywheels or pumped storage to cover times when direct solar is insufficient. But I'm sure you're aware of that, so why the snarky reply?

It was not unusual 60 years ago for one to rise with the sun and set with the sun (perhaps augmented by candles or oil lamps).

[gfretwell]

I know there are a number of schemes but they are not really practical. Solar starts at around 15% efficiency and mechanical storage cuts that by at least half making the collector price very un attractive. Batteries are very expensive with a relatively short life. The only viable option these days is "grid storage" that still depends on the utility and only works because you are being subsidized by your neighbors. It is basically welfare for the rich.

... and they went to bed early.

[FromTheRafters]

Actually, for snarky, it was quite funny.

Solar power covers more than just photovoltaic systems too. It also covers the heat energy which can be stored and later converted to electricity by thermocouples. I extended this idea somewhat in a reply to an 'I'll bite' response in another group. If you're interested, the post is in the scorched-earth group. I'll warn you though, you might think it is a bit of a stretch.

Message-ID:

[gfretwell]

Yikes, talk about inefficiency! Solar has good uses. It may be a good alternative for modest users of electricity off the grid but don't plan on having much at night unless you are a millionaire. Heating water is am excellent use as long as you can store it for that morning shower and pool/spa heaters are great (what I do). It starts going down hill fast from there unless you are in a special spot. Out in the western deserts, heating up the thermal mass of a home during the day to get you through a cold night has been around for 10,000 years although trombe walls and such are 20th century technologies. I have been studying this since the Carter administration but I still can't get the numbers to work out for most of it. I was close to a PV system a couple years ago but Florida ran out of incentive money. It was really going to make sense with a $4 a watt subsidy plus 30% from the feds, even if I was stealing from my neighbors.

[notbob]

Priced either, lately?

Alladin usta make the best kerosene mantle lamps. A top-of-the-line Alladin lamp could put out the equivalent of a 100W electric light bulb. Then kerosene went thru the roof and has never come down.

I usta get no. 1 kerosene from local gas stations fer about $1.57 gal. Last time I went to a local feed store, they wanted $8.50 gal! I ended up throwing a 35K BTU kerosene heater away. It was a nearly new $225 htr. I couln't give it away! 8|

Candles? Beeswax candles are about $5 ea fer a 6" finger-sized candle! I've never lit them, so do not know their burn time, but it's gotta be waaaay less $$$$ than a 75W CFL/LED.

nb

[FromTheRafters]

It happens that [e-mail] formulated :

On another note, I had seen a news story some time ago about Hawaii after having offered incentives for homeowners to embrace Solar Power Systems for homes, the power utility (grid) started to suffer from a lack of money for the upkeep of the infrastructure the homeowners relied on to sell or buy the energy they didn't or did need during local solar feast or famine times and ended up having to charge them for it. I never did follow up to see how they eventually worked that out. The law of unintended consequences strikes again.

[gfretwell]

Grid tie systems really only work well when there are only a few tied in. If you get a significant number of people feeding the system and demanding money back all day, it is hard to maintain the infrastructure for them at night without raising prices for everyone.

[gfretwell]

The mod 50 used a 208 3p 60 amp plug. That was a switcher PS machine too. I had a couple in my territory

Yup, They actually assembled a special s/360 just for NASA that was a multiprocessor M/95. I saw a lot of Univac 1108s that the Navy used but I never messed with them.

[gfretwell]

The 360 line was all SLT card on board technology. The logic was all on cards with silver cans over the TTL silicon. It was similar to 74xx but different packaging. The boards were about 13" x

10" and only contained interconnects, either printed on two layers of the board or discrete wire wraps. There were a few controllers that used older 1401 type technology that had SMS card on board. (discrete components AKA STDTL) All of them had core storage and an assortment of capacitive ROM using punched mylar sheets in various configurations for the firmware.

The 370 series introduced reloadable storage for the firmware but it was first introduced in the crossover M25 and M85 systems. The 370 was also the first time the world saw the 8" floppy to load that code.

[Scott Lurndal]

Discrete computer: