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The world's distribution of computation (initial findings) - Machine Intelligence Research Institute

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To investigate these questions, MIRI recently contracted Vipul Naik to gather data on the world’s current distribution of computation, including current trends. This blog post summarizes our initial findings by briefly responding to a few questions. Naik’s complete research notes are available here (22 pages). This work is meant to provide a “quick and dirty” launchpad for future, more thorough research into the topic. Q: How much of the world’s computation is in high-performance computing clusters vs. normal clusters vs. desktop computers vs. other sources? A: Computation is split between application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) and general purpose computing: According to Hilbert & Lopez (2011a, 2012a, 2012b), the fraction of computation done by general-purpose computing declined from 40% in 1986 to 3% in 2007. The trend line suggests further decline. Within general-purpose computing, the split for the year 2007 is as follows: For more detailed data, see Section 2.2 of Naik’s

The world's distribution of computation (initial findings) - Machine Intelligence Research Institute Skip to content The world’s distribution of computation (initial findings) February 28, 2014 Luke Muehlhauser What is the world’s current distribution of computation, and what will it be in the future? This question is relevant to several issues in AGI safety strategy. To name just three examples: If a large government or corporation wanted to quickly and massively upgrade its computing capacity so as to make a push for AGI or WBE, how quickly could it do so? If a government th

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