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Foil 17 Superconducting Technology -- Problems

From CPS615-Lecture on Performance(end) and Computer Technologies(start) Delivered Lectures of CPS615 Basic Simulation Track for Computational Science -- 5 September 96. by Geoffrey C. Fox *
Secs 292.3
1 At least two major problems:
2 Semiconductor industry will invest some some $40B in CMOS "plants" and infrastructure
  • Currently perhaps $100M a year going into superconducting circuit area!
  • How do we "bootstrap" superconducting industry?
3 Cannot build memory to match CPU speed and current designs have superconducting CPU's (with perhaps 256 Kbytes superconducting memory per processor) but conventional CMOS memory
  • So compared with current computers have a thousand times faster CPU, factor of four smaller cache of CPU speed and same speed basic memory as now
  • Can such machines perform well -- need new algorithms?
  • Can one design new superconducting memories?
4 Superconducting technology also has a bad "name" due to IBM termination!
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