Why does Intel favor thin rectangular CPUs?
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From: Robert Myers on 20 Mar 2010 23:39 On Mar 20, 11:25 pm, wclod...(a)lost-alamos.pet (William Clodius) wrote: > Bernd Paysan <bernd.pay...(a)gmx.de> wrote: > > <snip> > > Why do you think you need to test a nuklear bomb if it explodes? The > > first few bombs made exploded as predicted, and all that was available > > to calculate them was some pencil and paper > > They also used quite a few mechanical calcultors and IBM punched card > machines. > <http://www.lanl.gov/history/atomicbomb/computers.shtml> > > >- the electronic computers > > of that time were used to crack encryption > > The firs non-programmable US machines (Atansoff-Berry) solved linear > equations. The first programmable US machines were initially used for > ballistics tables (ENIAC), but was almost immediately diverted to > implosion calculations. While the use followed the initial versions of > the Fat Man design, I suspect every implosion and fusion design in the > US stockpiles since about 1947 has relied on such calculations. > > The Collosus machines for breaking encryptions slightly followed > Attanxoff-Berry, but preceded ENIAC. Electro-mechanical sytems > comparable in capability to the electronic systems (Z3) and Harvard Mark > 1) were use for trajectory, hydrodymnamic, and aerodynamic calculations. > > > (the Manhatten project had > > quite a number of computers. Most of them were female, as they were > > better with summing up tons of numbers following simple rules - the term > > "computer" back then referred to a person doing calculations by hand > > ;-). > > > So if you are really worried if your bombs work, just make them big > > enough - this stuff is too dangerous to not explode ;-). > > On this I won't comment. > If you're talking about experience with the Manhattan Project, you are so far out of touch with what's happening that it's not funny. Some of the details have been discussed in this forum with sufficient detail that anyone who is following the discussion should know that. There is a twist to the W76 warheads and something that apparently dawned on the wizards at the national labs only after testing was stopped. All this good old days of computing stuff is wonderful, but irrelevant. At least some of the problematical aspects are publicly known. One assumption that makes a lot of engineering analysis work is that the most important things happen at large scales. That works often enough that you can be tricked into thinking that it always works, but it doesn't. Sometimes the most important things are happening at the smallest scales or, in the case of turbulent flow, the worst case of all, in the nonlocal interaction of the smallest and largest scales. Robert. Robert. |