I've just got the T3 novelisation (the film isn't out here till August) and was confronted with this interesting bit on Skynet
Skynet's AI was an absolute marvel of human-machine science and engineering. First stumbled on by Cyberdyne's Miles Bennet Dyson, the computer's main processing units used Quantum Effects chips. Until then computers were powered by chips composed of millions of transistors. Computing the old way was done in the binary system - ones and zeros, ons and offs. With the QE brain in which 10^54 computations could be made each second, quadrillions of switching positions were possible, many of them simultaneously at each quantum level. All this happened around the Planck length - theoretically the smallest measurement possible, so infitesmally small that superstrings were the major league players; strange ten dimenstional building blocks that were more than one thousand billion billion times smaller than a single proton in the nucleus of a hydrogen atom.
And the hydrogen fuel cells were inserted by the resistance, the T-X is powered by a small fusion reactor.
Oh, and a T-800 has radar. Weights are also given for the terminators, more to come when I finish the book.
Last edited by NecronLord on 2003-07-12 11:35am, edited 1 time in total.
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T-850 rather, and I have no idea, but he's got a whole host of new EW addons in this, including the ability to detect cellphone emissions. It's not completely a surprise, we've known for a while their onboard radios can reach orbit. I'll look it up and get back to you.
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"We believe in the systematic understanding of the physical world through observation and experimentation, argument and debate and most of all freedom of will." ~ Stargate: The Ark of Truth
Terminator's infared, optical, elecromagnetic emissions, and directed audio sensors continued to pick up a melange of data: heat signitures from dozens of ground conveyances - cars, trucks, and motorcycles - electronic noise from what he computed as excited neon gas, sixty Hz common electrical circuitry, some high-frequency broadcasts to to and from portable communications devices called cellphones, donzens of human body heat sources mixed in ever changing blocking and addictive patterns, and combinations of sounds of mixed frequenciesat varying rhythmic speeds that he understood to be music.
With his onboard electronic emissions detectors (which included radar) he pushed the truck to speeds in excess of one hundred miles per hour.
My mistake, seems to be a passive sensor.
Yeah, the time machines now suck. However, on the plus side, we're given a rough estimate of the power required.
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"We believe in the systematic understanding of the physical world through observation and experimentation, argument and debate and most of all freedom of will." ~ Stargate: The Ark of Truth
Apparently so, including nude Arnie walking into 'ladies night' before stealing the clothes from a male stripper...
And T-X cam.
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This novelization blows. It doesn't hold a candle to the William Wisher ones. When it said Crystal Peak was built 25 years ago, at about the SAME TIME the first Terminator was sent, I nearly threw it away.
"Brian, if I parked a supertanker in Central Park, painted it neon orange, and set it on fire, it would be less obvious than your stupidity." --RedImperator
10^54 computations could be made each second, quadrillions of switching positions were possible, many of them simultaneously at each quantum level. All this happened around the Planck length
Hmm
Sounds like a contender of beating the pants off a Culture Mind.
"Okay, I'll have the truth with a side order of clarity." ~ Dr. Daniel Jackson.
"Reality has a well-known liberal bias." ~ Stephen Colbert
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Vympel wrote:Ah cool- a kind of RWR, I'll buy that.
Do we see any 'Arnie-cam' in T3?
Yes, it looks similar to the T1 and T2 shots, which themselves had differences.
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10^54 computations could be made each second, quadrillions of switching positions were possible, many of them simultaneously at each quantum level. All this happened around the Planck length
Hmm
Sounds like a contender of beating the pants off a Culture Mind.
Yes, though we've never been given an exact number of FLOPS for a culture mind, considering the one in CP had a total memory capacity of something under 1e24 bytes IIRC, it is probably slower and less sophisticated. And though they've grown since, there is nothing to suggest they they're now trillions of times more sophisticated.
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"We believe in the systematic understanding of the physical world through observation and experimentation, argument and debate and most of all freedom of will." ~ Stargate: The Ark of Truth
10^54 computations could be made each second, quadrillions of switching positions were possible, many of them simultaneously at each quantum level. All this happened around the Planck length
Hmm
Sounds like a contender of beating the pants off a Culture Mind.
Yes, though we've never been given an exact number of FLOPS for a culture mind, considering the one in CP had a total memory capacity of something under 1e24 bytes IIRC, it is probably slower and less sophisticated. And though they've grown since, there is nothing to suggest they they're now trillions of times more sophisticated.
The disparity is worse than that.
Even if they were a trillion (10^12 OR 10^18) times more sophisticated, thats is still only 10^36 (or 10^42) bytes there is still a marked difference.
"Okay, I'll have the truth with a side order of clarity." ~ Dr. Daniel Jackson.
"Reality has a well-known liberal bias." ~ Stephen Colbert
"One Drive, One Partition, the One True Path" ~ ars technica forums - warrens - on hhd partitioning schemes.
"Okay, I'll have the truth with a side order of clarity." ~ Dr. Daniel Jackson.
"Reality has a well-known liberal bias." ~ Stephen Colbert
"One Drive, One Partition, the One True Path" ~ ars technica forums - warrens - on hhd partitioning schemes.
Im surprised that technology is the way it is given the computational power and AI that Skynet has. It should be such a dominating force that a resistance would be irrelevant.
kojikun wrote:Im surprised that technology is the way it is given the computational power and AI that Skynet has. It should be such a dominating force that a resistance would be irrelevant.
Simple number of computations doesn't mean that much. It's pretty clear that Skynet sucked at strategy and wasn't much better at tactics.
Stormbringer wrote:Simple number of computations doesn't mean that much. It's pretty clear that Skynet sucked at strategy and wasn't much better at tactics.
True enough, but the technological achievements they should have made,
especially given that they have time travel, which is ridiculously high tech,
means that they have better technology then even the culture. The energy
requirements alone for timetravel are so phenomenally high.. then theres
the actual physics of it, which at this point say its impossible, means they've
got some major technologies.
Stormbringer wrote:Simple number of computations doesn't mean that much. It's pretty clear that Skynet sucked at strategy and wasn't much better at tactics.
True enough, but the technological achievements they should have made,
especially given that they have time travel, which is ridiculously high tech,
means that they have better technology then even the culture. The energy
requirements alone for timetravel are so phenomenally high.. then theres
the actual physics of it, which at this point say its impossible, means they've
got some major technologies.
Who say's that all the technicals come easy? It could have been concentrating on Time Travel and supporting tech nearly exclusively. It isn't easy to defy the laws of physics after all.
And we don't know how much energy it'd take to travel through time since it's impossible.
And as to parity with The Culture. It might (and that's a pretty bigmight) be superior to one Mind but the Culture has thousands of Minds to one Skynet. Sheer numbers tell.
Stormbringer wrote:
And as to parity with The Culture. It might (and that's a pretty bigmight) be superior to one Mind but the Culture has thousands of Minds to one Skynet. Sheer numbers tell.
Nope.
If a Culture Mind is a trillion times more memory storage than the baseline we do know (10^18 as a trillion), thats only 10^42 bytes of memory storage. Now if the mind can iterate over its total memory storage in a reasonable time span (lets say 1 second) this gives us a rough order of magnitude (+- 5 orders of magnitude ).
So lets say that its 5 orders of magnitudes to low. So it then should be able to roughly 10^47 memory operations a second (memory operations are a useful metric of how 'fast' the overall system is).
Thats still 7 orders of magnitude different between them. You would need 10 million Culture Minds. A few thousand just isnt going to cut it.
"Okay, I'll have the truth with a side order of clarity." ~ Dr. Daniel Jackson.
"Reality has a well-known liberal bias." ~ Stephen Colbert
"One Drive, One Partition, the One True Path" ~ ars technica forums - warrens - on hhd partitioning schemes.
Stormbringer wrote:
Who say's that all the technicals come easy? It could have been concentrating on Time Travel and supporting tech nearly exclusively. It isn't easy to defy the laws of physics after all.
Personally thats the only explanation I can see which is viable.
However, I would say it was working on an FTL method, and that time travel was an inherit spin off.
Since staying on a single planet in a single star system is not the best long term stratagy.
"Okay, I'll have the truth with a side order of clarity." ~ Dr. Daniel Jackson.
"Reality has a well-known liberal bias." ~ Stephen Colbert
"One Drive, One Partition, the One True Path" ~ ars technica forums - warrens - on hhd partitioning schemes.
Stormbringer wrote:
Who say's that all the technicals come easy? It could have been concentrating on Time Travel and supporting tech nearly exclusively. It isn't easy to defy the laws of physics after all.
Time travel in itself doesn't break the laws of physics, and as terminator generally goes with multiple timelines (T2, Dark Futures), no laws are broken.
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It's also worrth noting that in this timeline Skynet is winning. Its defence grid isn't smashed.
Superior Moderator - BotB - HAB [Drill Instructor]-Writer- Stardestroyer.net's resident Star-God.
"We believe in the systematic understanding of the physical world through observation and experimentation, argument and debate and most of all freedom of will." ~ Stargate: The Ark of Truth
NecronLord wrote:Time travel in itself doesn't break the laws of physics, and as terminator generally goes with multiple timelines (T2, Dark Futures), no laws are broken.
No, but modern theories on how to do time travel require situations would would destroy the link. And it would also be pointless if you've got multiple timelines.
NecronLord wrote:It's also worrth noting that in this timeline Skynet is winning. Its defence grid isn't smashed.
Is it? The impression I got from T3 was that the war was taking much longer and was costing the resistance more lives than in the previous timeline. That in fact the T-850's killing of John was because the tide was turning.
