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Why do ants need so many transistors? |
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Dec 12, 2006 at 04:38 PM |
One factoid from Stanford professor and self-described "silicon bigot" Tom Lee's entertaining IEDM lunch-time talk on the history of ICs provoked much guffawing.
He noted that biologist Edmund Wilson has estimated that there are about 100 quadrillion ants on Earth, and Lee calculates that somewhere between 10 and 100 transistors are produced annually for each of those busy insects---and the trend is accelerating.
Pondering that statistical absurdity, Lee worried aloud about "what the ants will do with all that capability." Of course, many question---including some involved in designing and making electronic devices---what humankind will do with all those transistors, or whether we even need all that capability. But that is not a popular view within the chipmaking world, especially on the sales side or in the corner offices.
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