why is heat bad for hardware

Corran · Post by **Corran** » Thu Jul 01, 2004 6:56 pm

Scintilla wrote:And while I'm at it, congrats to Corran for finally getting your SN changed.

Thanks.

It feels a little awkward though.

the Black Monarch · Post by **the Black Monarch** » Tue Jul 13, 2004 2:57 pm

With a Peltier unit, you don't need all them fans...

TaranT · Post by **TaranT** » Wed Jul 14, 2004 12:05 am

Well, if you're going to wake this thread up, I might as well point people to this monstrosity.
It goes for about $250.

SS5_Majin_Bebi · Post by **SS5_Majin_Bebi** » Wed Jul 14, 2004 1:59 am

TaranT wrote:I have to laugh at myself for writing that a processor would run at c. That makes no sense at all.

C being the speed of light in a vacuum, right? Well, as an optical computer would use optics, that is, light, if it doesnt run at C then it would run close to it, a high percentage of it. Or sorry, it would be a speed equivalent to C or something, considering that processor clock speed and C are two different scales...

I dont know, so I'll shut up now.

TaranT · Post by **TaranT** » Wed Jul 14, 2004 2:48 am

All I meant was that you can't measure the speed of a processor in feet per second, miles per hour, or anything like that (c = 299,792,458 meters/second = 186,000 miles/second).

Instructions per second, floating point ops per second, etc. - those make sense.

Like you said...different scales.

SS5_Majin_Bebi · Post by **SS5_Majin_Bebi** » Wed Jul 14, 2004 3:42 am

Although light does have a vibrational frequency, thats what gives it colours, etc. So maybe it will be asessed in terms of that. Red is something like 650 - 700-something angstroms, and blue is somewhere around 400... so technically blue is "faster" because it has less distance between wavetops (not sure if that is the right word, but blue has a higher frequency than red, hence a smaller number of angstroms.)

So a computer running on blue light would kick the ass of a computer running on red light... maybe thats how computers will be graded in the future.. on colour instead of chip speed... interesting...

the Black Monarch · Post by **the Black Monarch** » Fri Jul 16, 2004 4:47 pm

If the clock speed had anything to do with the frequency of light being used, then you might have actually had a point

SS5_Majin_Bebi · Post by **SS5_Majin_Bebi** » Fri Jul 16, 2004 7:02 pm

the Black Monarch wrote:If the clock speed had anything to do with the frequency of light being used, then you might have actually had a point

I'm just saying that in a generation of oprical computers, clock speed may have everything to do with light frequency. You cant say either way, really. I'm thinking at some point in the future, so...

Kalium · Post by **Kalium** » Fri Jul 16, 2004 7:36 pm

No, the Black Monarch is more or less correct on this one. With the exceotion of extremely long wavelengths, the frequency of the light has little to do with it. The bigger issue is how rapidly the light can be blinked on an off.