Whats The Name... sun microsystems credit card size computer

[mustra 0]

ok, there are ignorant people in this world, im one of them, but i have friends much more dumber then me : D, ok i was having a discussion with a friend and i told him there was a new processor smaller then an inch and with a thick of a milimiter that was 9x times faster then those dual core fancy stuff right now, but that processor was only for mobile hardware, (small stuff), i was also telling him that sun microsystems has built a new computer with a size of a credit card and that there are already computer screens with the dimensions (size, thickness and height) of a regular sheet of paper (A4), but they are not comercialized because they are really expensive, i also told him that they fold like a normal sheet of paper, then i even told him that americans have laser wepons projects and some prototypes, they have a laser that cuts 6 inches of steel in 1 millesium of a second,he asked me for proof....i searched google for an hour...i didnt found ANYTHING !google suxBUT these things are all reall, im not making them up !!! i swere !!!and then he says that he knows where bin laden is hidding, and that santa claus is chinese and that big foot was that guy from starwars that was spending some vacations in hearth and lost his "space ship", ("note: he did that thing with his voice when he said space ship")i know all this things are real, can someone back me up plz ?

[nightfox1405241487 0]

From my point of view, you got BSed if someone told that to you and you BSed your friend. Let me explain:1) Currently, processors are maxed at 3 GHz in speed (of course these are really expensive and mostly used in high-end servers currently. Smaller devices run slower. I don't think there is a hand held computer that doesn't go faster than 500 MHz (correct me if I'm wrong)2) Though it is possible, I don't think Sun has a computer the size of a credit card. 3) There are NO monitors the size & thickness of a 8"x11.5" sheet of paper. Bendable monitors would be out of the question and are science fiction due to the fact that they could easily break. Not to mention, they'd cost more money than Bill Gates has.4) Those kind of lasers don't exist for one reason: highly dangerous. That's a lot of radiation...None of this stuff is real. Don't BS. Use your head and ask "could this REALLY exist TODAY?" The answer is no it could not.[N]F

[seec77 0]

I actually heard something about recent developments in bendable monitors. I might be hallucinating, or mis-remembering, but I think I recall something of a prototype of such a technology. Other than those things, the original poster sounds like my friend from the 3rd grade that told us that his dad is buying him a watch that comes equipped with scuba gear. Whatever...

 

Edit: Woohoo! This seems very cool.

Edited June 29, 2006 by seec77 (see edit history)

[finaldesign1405241487 0]

oh man, they really gave you some BS info.

 

Do you really think there is a laser that could cut trough 6 inches of steel in 1 ms? damn man! that kind of laser would eat up energy from 1 nuclear power plant. Ok, lets clarify something. Here we go:

 

Laser cutting

- laser cutting is in industry bussiness called "CNC"

- one CNC maschine could cut trough almost any material, from various range of plastics to metals, wood, rubber, glass, nylon and other.

- did you know that you need more powerfull laser to cut trough aluminium than stainless steel??

- maximum depth of steel cutting is around 20 mm, and you heard it's 6 inches that equals 152 mm!! no way!!

- on this page you can find more info about laser cutting

 

Again, search trough Google before you claim something, all is there, you just need to know what to look for.

[Houdini 0]

There are in fact lasers that can be used as weapons, however the stage of development right now make them too large and power consuming. There is however in Research and Development some interesting projects with Companies like Raytheon TRW Lookheed Martin and Grumman. Here is a link to some information about lasers weapons. Keep in mind that projects like this are in fact classified, so it is entirely possible that there already are such weapons but you will never find out about them because the security of our country would be at stake.

Part of my job in the U.S. Navy was to train pilots and air crews for the delivery of a nuclear weapon, we conducted these session once a month. My clearance was Secret which means that I had access to 'Need to know' classified information. We had systems that at the time I was in the service that are just now being introduced to the commercial market like the HUD (or heads up display) one of our firing systems for an attack aircraft or fighter jet allowed the pilot to merely look at the target and when ready he just hit the 'pickle' (our name for the firing button) and kaboom went the target, this was in the mid 1970s.

You can be sure that there are Defence contractors that are working on all sorts of things that you will never ever hear about or see, unless perhaps you might be trying to attack the US and become the unlucky recipient of a classified weapon or weapons system.

[kaputnik 0]

Well here's a credit card sized computer, and it packs quite a fair bit into the card sized space. link is here. A bit of reading some like this interesting article, will instantly point to the fact that technology as we know it is boutnd to undertake a mammoth leap towards stuff like utilizing atomic restructuring for data storage and computational power, as well as drawing energy from thin air by somehow tapping into atoms at the very basic quantum foam level.

What we do know is that computers will reach their physical limits in miniturization in about 10 years - and by this time, all the basic physics of computing would have shifted onto new platforms. This page outlines historically how the thought towards quantum computing came about and this Caltech page outlines what quantum computers are all about. A more detailed understanding can be found here where the mechanics of quantum computing are looked into and various theories for actually programming a quantum computer are talked about. Its very interesting to see that a quantum computer would be able to perform the regular tasks currently undertalen by normal physical transistor based computing systems from today as well as to provide additional information on the probability of an answer being different.

Other than this, I have yet to come across any other form of computing that would be immediately viable to our world in the near future.

[wutske 0]

e-paper: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/07/13/fujitsu_epaper/

sun credit card pc: https://blogs.oracle.com/roller-ui/errors/404.jsp (this is fake, read the update)

the 9x fast cpu's: this might be true, but ... I doubt for mobile applications. There are cpu's that are very fast, but only at doing one kind of calculation (nowaydays they have like 96 cores too ). A GPU is 100x faster (not exactly okay, it's just a number ) at calculation 3D stuff then a CPU.
I think you're talking about the Pentium-M, the Conroe, yeah, in the beginning everybody tought it was superfast, but it isn't. It has a huge L2 cache, larger than most benchmarks require (like superpi), so these benchmarks only have to rely on the CPU's superfast L2 cache. For realy life performance it's anywhere as fast as the benchmarks let you believe, faster, yes, superfast, no way.

[Grafitti 0]

I suppose it's possible that that's what they're aiming to make, but i wonder if they are at that stage yet. I did know someone who used to work at "the beast" --- that supercomputer in Holland. Obviously military, of course. But yeah, just backing up what Houdini said about the military being way ahead of the commercial sector, those guys had P4's and XP professional back in 98. so since that's what they had then, figure what they're using now.

[Logan Deathbringer 0]

Alright, I'm an Electronic Engineer by trade and have worked with lasers in multiple applications. As for the laser being able to cut through 6 inches of steel in such a short period of time, possible yes, practical no. As stated before it would require such a massive power source and super cooling so as not to burn out the optics that its not currently feasible. Although the USA military is currently developing and soon will be deploying the first airborn laser based Anti-missile platform (it was shown on the Discovery Channel awhile back).The Display you mentioned, while not practical for use as a monitor, at this point in time, but as a medium for advertising the e-paper mentioned in previous posts is probably what you were thinking of.Now the processor, now thats probably a joke, as stated previously. This is due to the fact that with current tech we have just about reached the wall in speed, per single processor, due to the heat generation of the CPU. While I could very well be wrong here, unless we come up with better ways of dissapating heat, or lowering the amout of heat generated by the CPU. The current Dual Core processors are by passing this problem, a bit but they are still generating massive amounts of heat and due to this we might not see another drastic jump in CPU power unless we develop new tech.

[saggi 0]

Hey Logan Deathbringer i wana to ask that is ther any laser gun and how much away the laser beam gone and how much power is required for it and is there and it is chance that this technology will be avaliable in future...

[Logan Deathbringer 0]

the exact specs on the laser platform that the US is testing for miltary use, I don't have. However from what I have been able to learn is that its rumored that the aircraft carries a small nuclear reactor to power it, but thats just rumor. As for a laser gun, the size of a side arm like a Barreta 9MM, lol, keep dreaming, thats still just for Sci-Fi.

[`Cunning Linguist´ ©® 0]

Although Laser guns sound very intresting and probably quite fun 2 own.I don't see this ever being avaiable to the public.As much as I'd like to have 1 the likelyness(sp) of this is near impossilble.I'd also like 2 have a transporter much like the 1 from Star Trek.As 4 this monitor that's paper thin & as flexible as the Chinese Cirrcus.I've seen something that closely resembles this monitor.I think it was also on the Discovery Channel.They didn't get into the detail of this monitor but it was in fact very flexible.They also did fold it up & put in in a bag/carrier.No price was given.My guess woulb be that it would cost an arm & a leg 2 get 1 of these.

[vizskywalker 0]

I can't beleive no one caught this sooner:

1) Currently, processors are maxed at 3 GHz in speed (of course these are really expensive and mostly used in high-end servers currently. Smaller devices run slower. I don't think there is a hand held computer that doesn't go faster than 500 MHz (correct me if I'm wrong)

Current processors are and were at the time this thread was started, maxxed at around 4GHz. It is very easy to find 3.2GHz processors, though not in dual cores because of the heat issue. Intel actually makes commercially a 3.9GHz processor, but it is very expensive and the efficiency of slower processors makes them a better choice. It is possible in mostly labe scenarios to go beyond 4GHz, but the amount of cooling required pretty much limits these chips to lab scenarios. In addition, processor companies are not working on faster processors. It is pointless to do so. On average in an application, at worst (from the processor's perspective) every 3rd instruction and at best (again from the processor's perspective) every 20th instruction requires data to be read from RAM or worse, and actual port. Because the fastest RAM at the moment runs at 667MHz, under 1GHz so at best 1/2 of most new processors, a faster processor would not have any noticeable difference. However, processor companies are working on more efficient processors that can retrieve and handle more data faster and can skip some data required steps until later.

~Viz