Prologue

One of humanity’s greatest strengths is our ability to think about abstract concepts. People generally do this by naming entities and examining their relationships. In this article, we will explore the differences between parallel and serial computing. By naming various concepts, we will gain a better understanding of the subject. In other words, we will make abstract concepts tangible.

Here are the names:

Rules: The simplest feature.
Logic: What combines the rules and determines the relationship between them.
Product: A complex product resulting from the combination of a certain number of rules.

The Two Paths of Computation: Serial vs. Parallel

There are two main types of computation: serial and parallel. In serial computation, a task is performed sequentially, one step at a time. In parallel computation, however, you examine the amount of work done simultaneously in a given time. In today’s processors, each core performs serial computations internally, while several cores work together to perform parallel computations.

The concept of time is fundamental. If you want to produce a product, the key is the amount of work multiplied by time. If we want to accomplish a lot in a short amount of time, then we need high serial or parallel speed.

However, serial speed is not always efficient because it completes a task within a certain time frame. Consider the human brain, for example. It is not just a single processor. Billions of neurons work simultaneously and in parallel to establish connections at incredible speeds. This enables us to solve complex problems, recognize faces, and generate creative ideas in seconds. The difference lies in performing a single task at incredible speed versus performing millions of interrelated tasks simultaneously. Today’s greatest challenges, such as climate modeling, artificial intelligence, and subatomic particle simulation, are not solved by how quickly you complete a task, but by how many connections you can establish in a given amount of time.

The Physical Limits of Speed: Why Parallelism is Necessary

We want computing power that can test logic across a multitude of rules in parallel. By linking many small rules together, incredible things can be achieved. The structure of the rules, how they are linked logically, and how much you can test in a given time—that is, your parallel computing speed—determines how quickly you can reach a solution.

In theory, very high serial computing power could replace parallel computing. However, although infinite serial speed is possible in theory, it presents an obstacle in the physical world. The serial computing speed a product can achieve in our universe is limited by heat and other factors. Today’s technology is limited by obstacles such as increased heat resulting from increased serial computing power and reaching the atomic limits of silicon.

Therefore, we use multiple devices with a certain serial speed and obtain parallel speed through them. Technically, if we think of these devices working together as one device, they are also performing serial computing. Nevertheless, the concepts of serial and parallel computing are simply terms used to make things easier to understand.

A Cosmic Analogy: The Universe as a Parallel Computer

The simplest particles in our universe are subatomic particles. They are basic energy particles that interact through simple logic, such as repulsion and attraction. If our universe were operating inside a machine whose purpose was to ensure subatomic particles interacted at the highest possible parallel speed, that would be its function. At a low level, the most fundamental energy particles interact to form highly developed products, such as atoms and molecules.

The Ultimate Product: Redefining Reality

With access to extremely high computing power, humans could create their own universe with just 10 lines of code, for example. You don’t need a lot of code to create a universe. Establish the basic rules and allow the parallel computing device to build the entire system with its ultra-computing power. If the speed is sufficient, you can obtain a universe with living beings in it in a matter of seconds. Or you could discover immortality in a few seconds. Or any other unimaginable, incredible thing.

That’s how important computing power is. If we develop a device with high parallel computing power — and if that power is truly very high — our world and the universe will change permanently. Everyone could have their own universe on their desk as a decoration, and things could become absurd. Everyone could become immortal, and life could turn into paradise. There would be infinite resources.

Beyond Silicon: The Future of Computing Hardware

Today’s processors, impressive as they are, are approaching their physical limits. Due to the slowdown of Moore’s Law and the shrinking of transistors to atomic dimensions, increasing serial computing speed is becoming more difficult. Rather than thinking of processors as a highway, we need to view each lane as a speed machine in its own right. This means increasing the number of processor cores to boost parallel computing power. This is where the quest to go beyond traditional processor architectures begins. Experimental architectures, such as the “Signal Processing Unit (SPU),” focus on processing large data streams in parallel, particularly in areas such as signal processing and artificial intelligence, to solve this problem.

The Power of the Future: Quantum and Beyond

However, the real revolution lies far beyond silicon-based architectures. Quantum computing uses “qubits” (quantum bits) that can represent multiple states simultaneously, employing the strange and complex principles of quantum mechanics. This offers incredible potential for parallel computing.

Future processors can be designed from a wide variety of materials and objects. For instance, rather than using silicon as the basis of a processor, electromagnetic waves themselves could carry information. Traveling at the speed of light, these waves could process information many times faster than traditional processors. This will redefine not only processor architectures, but also the concept of computation itself.

Epilogue: The Power to Reshape Our World

Initially, we approached the concepts of “rules and logic” as abstract ideas, but they took us on a journey from the most fundamental particles to the universes we created ourselves. In a world where serial computing is insufficient for increasing speed, parallel computing is a necessity, not a luxury. This power enables us to build faster computers and mimic nature’s operating principle.

Whether it’s the complex dance of subatomic particles or the learning process of artificial intelligence, what matters most is the number of connections established per unit of time. Future processors will surpass traditional silicon technology, relying on entirely new physical principles, such as quantum mechanics and electromagnetic waves.

This development has the potential to solve all of humanity’s problems. Not only will high parallel computing power accelerate the pace of scientific discovery, it will also make everything that challenges the limits of our imagination possible, from immortality to infinite resources. Perhaps one day, a small sphere sitting on your desk will contain a universe that you created and will serve merely as a decorative item.

Computing power is everything.