Hacker News Reader

Comment by colinthompson | Hacker News Reader

Are ferroelectric diodes more sensitive to external tampering than a “typical” memory circuit? As in, could a device like this be more easily “jammed” by a strong external electromagnetic source? That’s where my head went when reading about this circuit, but maybe it’s no less sensitive than “typical” circuitry?

View on HN

Compute-in-memory can increase computation performance by many orders of magnitude.

The fact that most people just immediately try to find ways that these advancements can't work rather than trying to actually make them work is the reason that these things take so long to go from research to product.

And it's also an example of the type of weak cognition that will mean un-augmented humans will be irrelevant within the next quarter century.

Cybernetics isn't even close to bringing any decent advantage to a healthy human physiology over the next 25 years wtf

It doesn't need to be close because these changes don't happen linearly. Look at for example computing in 1950 vs 1975 or 1975 vs 2000.

With a new computing paradigm we should anticipate at least a 500X increase in compute per dollar over a period of 25 years. We also should anticipate quite a lot of progress in AI and brain-computer interfaces.

Obviously what I suggested is speculation, but sensible speculation in these areas based on historical trends anticipates changes that are just as radical as the ones we have seen.

"Moore's Law" came close to a wall a long time ago and has been braking hard. Compute-in-memory will allow us to speed up again.

Isn't identifying flaws an important part of getting things to work?

Sure when you get to that stage. But instead of trying to make things work, people always try to shut down ideas just because they are new. Actually the bigger the advance, the harder people try to discount the ideas.

Realistic optimists are required to effect change.

Finding negatives is easy. Working through them to a positive result is gold.

> Are ferroelectric diodes more sensitive to external tampering than a “typical” memory circuit?

Possibly? But the solution would be to put a Faraday cage around the memory. Something that effectively already happens when you have a heat sink on your memory. But further, you also have steal case surrounding your memory that helps there.

Although high permeability materials can route field lines around things to a certain extent, you can't get the kind of total magnetic shielding you'd want to say, protect a floppy disk from a strong magnet, without superconductors.

Why is this?

Conductors shield against electric fields and also catch EM radiation because it involves both E and M fields, but magnetic shielding relies on something analogous to electric polarization and consequently is more difficult.

A metal case is not an obstruction for a static magnetic field.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com