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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
At least two major problems:
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?
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?
Superconducting technology also has a bad "name" due to IBM termination!

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