Building data with modern tech

[The Andrewtopian Republic]

Data's specs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4377HhZ_NSM
AMD's best GPU does 11.5 teraflops: http://www.amd.com/en-us/products/graphics/desktop/r9#

That's 11.5 trillion calculations per second (the R9 295X2). It would take about 5 of those to equal data's brain power of 60 trillion calculations.

Now Data has 100000 terabytes of storage. That's 12500 8 terabyte hard drives (the largest size available today). Could put 16 inside a robot to use locally (or 58 TB of RAM, 8 TB cache, 64 TB for basic functions) and the rest in a data center which the robot accesses via wifi or a cellular network. Obviously we're pushing the limits of modern consumer technology here but it is possible, especially since the world's most powerful supercomputer is 33.86 QUADRILLION calculations per second http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercomputer

the computer portion alone would use ~3 kw, a tesla car battery can provide 215 kilowatts which should be enough for the mechanical parts as well I think. http://www.teslamotors.com/roadster/technology/battery

what do you think?

[Shnercropolis]

Data's specs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4377HhZ_NSM
AMD's best GPU does 11.5 teraflops: http://www.amd.com/en-us/products/graphics/desktop/r9#

That's 11.5 trillion calculations per second (the R9 295X2). It would take about 5 of those to equal data's brain power of 60 trillion calculations.

Now Data has 100000 terabytes of storage. That's 12500 8 terabyte hard drives (the largest size available today). Could put 16 inside a robot to use locally (or 58 TB of RAM, 8 TB cache, 64 TB for basic functions) and the rest in a data center which the robot accesses via wifi or a cellular network. Obviously we're pushing the limits of modern consumer technology here but it is possible, especially since the world's most powerful supercomputer is 33.86 QUADRILLION calculations per second http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercomputer

the computer portion alone would use ~3 kw, a tesla car battery can provide 215 kilowatts which should be enough for the mechanical parts as well I think. http://www.teslamotors.com/roadster/technology/battery

what do you think?

GPU's are optimized for Graphics. 90% of the teraflops in that GPU are probably for exlusively shader calculations, and useless for anything else. Try harder.

[Scomagia]

Data's specs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4377HhZ_NSM
AMD's best GPU does 11.5 teraflops: http://www.amd.com/en-us/products/graphics/desktop/r9#

That's 11.5 trillion calculations per second (the R9 295X2). It would take about 5 of those to equal data's brain power of 60 trillion calculations.

Now Data has 100000 terabytes of storage. That's 12500 8 terabyte hard drives (the largest size available today). Could put 16 inside a robot to use locally (or 58 TB of RAM, 8 TB cache, 64 TB for basic functions) and the rest in a data center which the robot accesses via wifi or a cellular network. Obviously we're pushing the limits of modern consumer technology here but it is possible, especially since the world's most powerful supercomputer is 33.86 QUADRILLION calculations per second http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercomputer

the computer portion alone would use ~3 kw, a tesla car battery can provide 215 kilowatts which should be enough for the mechanical parts as well I think. http://www.teslamotors.com/roadster/technology/battery

what do you think?

GPU's are optimized for Graphics. 90% of the teraflops in that GPU are probably for exlusively shader calculations, and useless for anything else. Try harder.

Aside from that, wouldn't the whole rig be prohibitively hot? I'm not really tech savvy, so I could be wrong, but that's what jumped to my mind.

[Shilya]

GPU's are optimized for Graphics. 90% of the teraflops in that GPU are probably for exlusively shader calculations, and useless for anything else. Try harder.

Aside from that, wouldn't the whole rig be prohibitively hot? I'm not really tech savvy, so I could be wrong, but that's what jumped to my mind.

You'd still be able to cool it, 3kW is a lot, but nothing we can't solve. What you really shouldn't do, however, is using wifi or any other non-cable network to connect them. The latency would be horrid for synchronized calculations and the bandwidth likely also not enough.

Still, it's only shaders. Very useful for some applications, useless for others, and not comparable to the full ALU/FPU of the processor.

[Risottia]

On the robotics side, I think this bit of news is far more interesting than speculations about a totally fictional android.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-new ... 99/?no-ist

The "mind" (aka neural processes) of a simple worm - 320 neurons - has been copied into a LEGO robot. Ain't that cool?

What you really shouldn't do, however, is using wifi or any other non-cable network to connect them. The latency would be horrid for synchronized calculations and the bandwidth likely also not enough.

Not to mention the power consumption required for such a broadband connection and the whole networking architecture behind it.

[Risottia]

Aside from that, wouldn't the whole rig be prohibitively hot? I'm not really tech savvy, so I could be wrong, but that's what jumped to my mind.

We would have to lose 3 kW (3 J/s) through a surface of about 2 m² (1). Hmm.

Let's assume the surface of Data emits like a perfect black body: by the Stefan-Boltzmann law (2), this means the radiated power is

eq.1 W = A σ T⁴

where A is the surface, σ is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant ( 5.67*10^-8 W m^-2 K^-4 ) and T is the blackbody temperature.

Solving eq.1 by T, it yields an equilibrium temperature equal to

eq.2 T = ( W A^-1 σ^-1)^1/4

That's 404 K aka 131 °C (check my calculations please). Too hot to touch, and current CPUs would have some problems handling that temperature. Some other kind of cooling other than simple thermal radiation must be provided.

[The Andrewtopian Republic]

It's actually not unheard of for graphic designers to have pcs with 5 high-end graphics cards, and a liquid cooling solution could make the cooling issue easier. As for the power issue, again, the batteries used in Tesla's electric cars should provide plenty of electricity for everything. Also, I've seen GPUs used for conversion acceleration and crypto mining, so why not this?

[Lordieth]

Modern mobile phones look more high-tech, and in some cases outperform tricorders.

[The Andrewtopian Republic]

Modern mobile phones look more high-tech, and in some cases outperform tricorders.

A smartphone has nothing more than a basic camera and sometimes gps, I don't see how that comes close to the scanning abilities of a tricorder. Sure a smartphone is a multifunction device though.