Re: How to develop a random number generation device

On Sep 17, 7:55 pm, John Larkin
<jjlar...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
[....]
Programmers have pretty much proven that they cannot write bug-free
large systems.

In every other area, humans make mistakes and yet we seem surprised
that programmers do too.

Unless there's some serious breakthrough - which is
really prohibited by the culture

I think there really is a fundamental limitation that makes it such
that the programming effort becomes infinite to make a bug free large
system. We do seem to be able to make bug free small systems,
however.

This suggests a rephrasing of your point as "it is better to use
multiple simple systems" connected in some way rather than just
calling it multiple cores or CPUs.

- the answer is to have the hardware,
which people *do* routinely get right, take over most of the functions
that an OS now performs.

Very complex hardware is likely to have the same problems as very
complex software. We need to link of ways to use many copies of a
much simpler hardware.

One simple way to do that is to have a CPU
per process. It's going to happen.

This is exactly the path or perhaps even N CPUs per process, where N
=1.


When I was just a sprout, my old mentor Melvin Goldstein told me "in
these integrated circuit things, one day transistors could cost a
penny each." I thought he was crazy. OK, one day CPUs will cost 5
cents each, and Windows is not the ultimate destiny of computing.

Hey, he wrote a book!

http://www.amazon.com/Physics-Foibles-physics-computer-students/dp/15...

John


.

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