Data Centers May Ride on ASICs

Research Targets 2020 System

Rick Merritt, EETimes
8/28/2014 06:00 AM EDT

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Big data centers will eventually run on custom ASICs, according to UC Berkeley Professor David A. Patterson, who is building a research system to show the way. Patterson described Firebox, a warehouse-scale computer targeted at 2020 in a keynote at Hot Interconnects here.

As Moore's law slows down, ASICs will get easier and cheaper, Patterson forecasted. It is already talking about three years instead of the usual 18 months to pack twice as many transistors in the same space, and the time span will stretch to more than five years in the future, he said.

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