What the Future Holds

The new year has arrived and with that, new dreams, hopes and of course tech innovations. The past year has been extremely fruitful in terms of the tech industry. 2007 ushered in the era of multi-core processing, it saw the ripening of the dual core processors and the introduction of the newer quad core chips.

So as we journey into 2008 and beyond, we would like to ponder on what the future holds. What new breakthroughs and trends we can expect to see for the next 10-25 years. Within the short time frame of 5 years, we can expect to see changes in terms of the way processors and memory chips are made. Currently, much research by chipmakers such as Intel has been done into making 3-Dimensional(3D) Processors.

What do I mean by 3D processors. To put it simply, 3D processors are processors which are made of many smaller processors stacked vertically. Presently, processors are made 2-Dimensionally. This poses a tremendous problem as in order to pack in more transistors (the most basic component of a computer chip) into one processor, each transistor has to be made smaller. By shrinking processor components such as transistors, we cause a major problem, which is the production of excessive amounts of heat.

When transistors become smaller, the pathways for electricity to flow to the transistors also proportionately become smaller, creating more electrical resistance. For those of us that study physics, we will know that thinner wires have more resistance and thereby cause more energy wastage, in this case in the form of heat.

When we stack processors one on top another to form a single processor, we are able to increase the number of transistors in a single processor but avoid the problems of heat production. Therein lies the benefits of 3D processors.

Moving on, quantum computing. For those of us that do not know, Quantum Mechanics (the science Quantum Computing is based on) is about the study of sub atomic particles. Within the next 10-20 years, Quantum Computers should be making their way into our homes, revolutionising the way we work, play and ultimately live.

Quantum computing surpasses the current digital computers in that they do not use transistors or silicon, what they use are quantum logic gates. These quantum logic gates are simply devices which are used to observe the properties of atoms and thereby perform calculations based on the observable properties of the atoms.

Another thing which is so special about quantum computing is the Qubit. We all know that the bit is the most simple unit of data which digital computers use. It can either be 0 or 1, off or on. Quantum mechanics is different from classical computers in that it makes use of Qubits. The Qubit is a third state and is the superposition of 0 and 1. Put simply, it means that 1 and 0 both happen at the same time.

The promise of Quantum Computing is that complex computing tasks such as the cracking of encrypted data using encryption protocols such as RSA and Diffie Huffman will be made easier. Today, even supercomputers can take decades to crack a document encrypted using the RSA encryption protocol with a 128bit strength key. With quantum computing this task will be able to be done much quicker. Quantum Computing will also promise to make weather forecasting and climate modelling more accurate than ever.

And that's all for now!

The future awaits you,
Bryan