Chip cost by 2020

[glorybound]

By 2020, a chip with today’s processing power will cost about a penny,” CUNY theoretical physicist Michio Kaku explained in a recent article for Big Think,23 “which is the cost of scrap paper. . . . Children are going to look back and wonder how we could have possibly lived in such a meager world, much as when we think about how our own parents lacked the luxuries—cell phone, Internet—that we all seem to take for granted. Peter H. Diamandis, Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World

[vlado]

I'm somewhat more sceptical - after all this is only five years from now.

Best regards,
Vlado

[super gnu]

me too. intel have precious little incentive to bump their cpu speeds at the moment, and high-end prices are actually going up.

[Joelaff]

Yeah, in 2020 all we will have is 2048 cores.... running at 10Hz.

[Richard7666]

I have great respect for Michio as a physicist/science educator, but a chip with the power of my 4-year-old 3930k still costs not a whole lot less than what I paid for it in 2011.
That's why I haven't bothered to upgrade my workstation.

Unless the quote is from 1995, or he is talking about some sort of very specific application, I call BS on this one.

[super gnu]

he could be talking about mobile processors. not the beefy monsters we know and love. thre is still some serious competition and advancement happening there.. i mean, my phone has a 2.3ghz quad core ffs.

-having said that its still a ridiculously optimistic prediction.. and as far as i can tell even the mobile processor's rate of improvement seems to be slowing.

[JeffG2]

Seriously, 640K of memory ought to be enough for anybody.

[vlado]

Oh but we *want* things to be faster and cheaper Only, CPU speeds or prices haven't changed significantly in the last several years.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Richard7666]

Actually it looks like the penny-by-2020 quote is from this Peter Diamandis guy, who is some sort of science entrepreneur (he's the guy behind X-prize). So not Michio at all