Technology:Hardware Hackers Create a Modular Motherboard | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

• Hardware Hackers Create a Modular Motherboard | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

• An ambitious group of hardware hackers have taken the fundamental building blocks of computing and turned them inside out in an attempt to make PCs significantly more efficient.
• The group has created a motherboard prototype that uses separate modules, each of which has its own processor, memory and storage.
• Each square cell in this design serves as a mini-motherboard and network node; the cells can allocate power and decide to accept or reject incoming transmissions and programs independently.
• A modular architecture designed for parallel and distributed processing could help take computing to the next level, say its designers.
• “We are at a point where each computer processor maxes out at 3Ghz (clock speed) so you have to add more cores, but you are still sharing the resource within the system,” says Justin Huynh, one of the key members of the project. “Adding cores the way we are doing now will last about a decade.”
• Computing today is based on the von Neumann architecture: a central processor, and separate memory and data storage. But that design poses a significant problem known as the von Neumann bottleneck. Though processors can get faster, the connection between the memory and the processor can get overloaded.That limits the speed of the computer to the pace at which it can transfer data between the two.