[Haskell-cafe] Specialized Computer Architecture - A Question

[OWP]

If I may ask, I'm not quite sure what O(2^n) and O(1) are?

"Besides Moore's Law, digital computing also benefits from mature
tools and expertise for optimizing performance at all levels of the
system: process technology,
fundamental circuits, layout and algorithms. Many engineers are
simultaneously working to improve every aspect of digital technology,
while alternative technologies like analog computing do not have the
same kind of industry juggernaut pushing them forward."

I'm curious, were not all these built on the foundation of Moore's
Law?  Everything Vigoda lists has Moore's Law in mind.  If Moore's Law
were to suddenly disappear, could these survive on their own merit?

Let me rephrase that, of course they will survive politically.  People
built these tools and if built, they will be use but will they survive
efficiently?   In the future, if a particular specialized architecture
is somewhat better than the rest on it's own merit for a particular
need while the stock architecture is reaching a
point of low returns for all the energy put into it - could the
specialized architecture reach a point where it becomes useful?  Could
there be a competitive advantage to specialized architecture if
Moore's Law were to go away?

On 3/17/13, Gwern Branwen <gwern at gwern.net> wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 17, 2013 at 5:56 PM, OWP <owpmailact at gmail.com> wrote:
>> These "stock architectures", were they really so good that they out
>> performed the specialized ones on it's own merits or was this mainly due
>> to
>> Moore's Law on transistors?  In other words, suppose we separate Moore's
>> Law
>> from the stock architecture, would it still outperform the specialized
>> ones?
>
> It's not really meaningful to separate them. Any time you use a custom
> architecture, you are forfeiting all sorts of network effects - and
> sooner or later, the custom architecture falls behind. If you want to
> make an analogy, when you go with a custom architecture, you are
> trading a process where your computing power increases O(2^n) for one
> with a big constant factor but where computing power increases O(1)...
>
>> "In practice replacing digital computers with an alternative computing
>> paradigm is a risky proposition.
> Alternative computing architectures, such as parallel digital
> computers have not tended to be commercially viable, because Moore's
> Law has consistently enabled conventional von Neumann architectures to
> render alternatives unnecessary. Besides Moore's Law, digital
> computing also benefits from mature tools and expertise for optimizing
> performance at all levels of the system: process technology,
> fundamental circuits, layout and algorithms. Many engineers are
> simultaneously working to improve every aspect of digital technology,
> while alternative technologies like analog computing do not have the
> same kind of industry juggernaut pushing them forward."
>
> from Benjamin Vigoda, "Analog Logic: Continuous-Time Analog Circuits
> for Statistical Signal Processing" (2003 PhD thesis)
>
> --
> gwern
> http://www.gwern.net
>
> _______________________________________________
> Haskell-Cafe mailing list
> Haskell-Cafe at haskell.org
> http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
>