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Dual splinter core with 128KB of Copper Access Memory


Ixthos

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The latest technology in 1980's Scadrial, a dual splinter processor well in advance of the equivalent technology we had in the 1980's :-P

I think that computers will become a major force in the future Cosmere novels, as they will allow for mechanical systems to use investiture in predictable and programmable ways. Now it is possible that some cultures, especially Scadrial, will develop the technology that we have well in advance of finding out how to use the metallic arts, I think that at least some of it will involve using the arts to make computers more easily or with greater capacities than what we currently have now - I think that might even be a twist in one of the 1980's stories.

So, ignoring the possibilities of them developing computers as we have, how can the different systems be used to produce computers, both by themselves and by interacting with other systems?

 

Sel

Spoiler

Sel has the most direct options, as the investiture they use is designed as a programming language - the only issue of course is getting the API right :-P Lets focus on only using AonDor.

Any principle of an ALU or control system can be implemented by writing the correct connected symbols - indeed, all you need are symbols for NAND and a method of connecting them together. It draws its power from the remains of Devotion and Dominion, and, most importantly, once set up anyone can use it by pressing the right control panels. Using AonDor, it is naturally possible to connect existing Aons together, so it likewise can be made to affect certain effects complete - slotting in cards to the side of an area with Elantrian drawn symbols, for example, and the machine programmed to activate certain slots in certain conditions, could allow the machine to be customised.

The main limitation would be in trying to miniaturise the technology. It could be that the correct Aons could allow for the system to draw Aons itself without requiring Elantrians, in which case it could achieve its own abilities to mass produce symbols and make them smaller while keeping their accuracy - the original origin in the draft versions for the slime in Elantris was because of a self replicating Aon like a Seon.

I also think - and this applies to Threnody and Roshar just as much as it does to Sel - that Seons and Skaze could also be used as a type of artificial intelligence, finding a way to connect them to the Aona of the machine.

 

Roshar

Spoiler

Spren connected to one another, or the right type of spren in the right type and shape of gemstone. Classic look for advanced magical computers, with crystals handling everything, metal wires wrapped around them. The question is would it require a simple spren or a surgebinding one? A Logic spren? Multiple types of logic spren each in their own area, receiving input? As before, connecting these elements together, especially to other fabrials, would allow the machine to control the surges directly.

Power with stormlight and program by either talking to the true spren or training / using the right configuration of lesser spren.

 

Scadrial

Spoiler

Focusing just on using the metallic arts, each adds its own method, and can be connected together. I will be making some assumptions about the machines needs for shard metal alloys as well as basic metals and their basic alloys, and also ignoring the very real possibility of using actual computer archetecture combined with the metallic arts.

Using allomancy, ferucemy could be compounded to continue providing the stored trait. It could boost or reduce its performance with aluminium alloys, use gold alloys to perform branch prediction or perform operations of other possible inputs, transmit data wirelessly with zinc alloys, and reduce its allomantic noise or search for other computers using copper alloys. Cadmium alloys could let it increase its time performance, and iron alloys could let it likewise remotely send information. Tin alloys could mainly be used to increase the durability or sensitivity of its casing and inputs respectively.

Using feruchemy, iron alloys could increase its processor speed, as could zinc alloys, with zinc alloys also allowing it to run cooler. Copper alloys could store data, and copper wires would allow it to send data along wires to another system, or allow parts of the same machine to communicate by supplementing or without needing to use zinc alloys for allomancy. Chromium alloys could assist in predictive functions or using its more exotic alloys, aluminium alloys could be used as another method of transmitting information, and cadmium alloys could store energy as a battery.

Most horrifyingly, hemalurgy could be used in the same was as splinters above.

 

Threnody

Spoiler

Nazh used a gun that fired shades or something like shades, so it is possible on Threnody they will trap and use shades at some point as technology, so in short they will have a type of spren with no surgebinding. The same rules then could apply, but using runes rather than gems to trap them.

 

Nalthis

Spoiler

A simple command with a complex mental idea of what a computer can do. They could be pared up with other systems, simplifying the mental image, and again provision for input and output.

 

I also think that anyone who has read the unpublished novels would have some theories as well, but I think it is best to keep those speculations out of this thread.

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Biggest problems to overcome on Scadrial are that you need humans to tap or fill a metalmind, I don't know how a machine could use them. You also couldn't place a spike into a machine so it could make use of the Hemalurgic ability. IF they overcame these obstacles somehow, Scadrial is the first to use supercomputers.

Nalthis seems like the fastest to be able to do this, as long as someone could visualize what a computer is. It would take a large amount of breath though, because it's not replicating life.

Sixth of the Dusk Spoilers:

Spoiler

The Ones Above has a machine that emulates burning Bronze. This provided them a map of where all the Aviar are.

 

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About computers/machines and spikes... If it's sentient, it could probably be spiked. 

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NeedsAdjustment

You've said before that if a sentient computer were developed, it would call a soul into itself. Could it be Hemalurgically spiked?

Brandon Sanderson

Theoretically, yes, but I have no idea yet how the logistics of that would work.

source

 

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3 hours ago, Calderis said:

About computers/machines and spikes... If it's sentient, it could probably be spiked. 

 

Could it, though? A lot of recent questions about Hemalurgy has been RAFO'd, but we do have a couple answers regarding this. https://wob.coppermind.net/events/202/#e5969

Quote

Chaos2651

Is there a rationale to how Hemalurgic powers are distributed? I tried to look for a system, but they seem rather randomly distributed. For example, the spike which steals Allomantic powers for a particular quadrant is not always in one particular spot.

Brandon Sanderson

That is correct, it's not always in one particular spot. None of them are. I used as my model on this magic system the concept of acupuncture and pressure points. Placing a Hemalurgic spike is a very delicate and specific art. Imagine there being a different overlay on a human body, like a new network of nerves, representing lines, points, and 'veins' of the soul's spiritual makeup.

What is happening with Hemalurgy, essentially, is that you're driving a spike through a specific point on a person's body and ripping off a piece of their soul. It sticks to the spike on the Spiritual Realm. Then, you place that spike on someone else in a specific place (not exactly the same place, but on the right spiritual pressure point) and 'hot wire' the spirit to give it Hemalurgy or Feruchemy. It's like you're fooling the spiritual DNA, creating a work-around. Or, in some cases, changing the spirit to look like something else, which has the immediate effect of distorting the body and transforming it into a new creature.

Hemalurgy is a very brutal way of making changes like this, though, so it often has monstrous effects. (Like with the koloss.) And in most cases, it leaves a kind of 'hole' in the spirit's natural defenses, which is how Ruin was able to touch the souls of Hemalurgists directly.

Brandon seems to be talking mostly about humans, Koloss and then blessings for Kandra (which is sentient). So if it could be placed into a computer, wouldn't you pretty much be putting a clock on until what you placed in the computer having essentially a corrupted BIOS? Because the spike would no longer be stored in blood and would lose its charge.

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I like the idea of an aluminium casing :-)

On the topic of hemalurgically spiking the machine, I definitely think it would be possible, but I also think it might be a little more convoluted than that. Putting aside that I think feruchemy and hemalurgy might be used to store a portion of stolen traits in a way that doesn't decay, a spike will still retain at least a minimum charge indefinitely - something which raises questions about if you take a single spike, break it, and then spike someone with both parts would the hole be bigger, and thus let a soother control them?

I think it would be a little like what happened in Secret History with Kelsier getting the campfire to burn. A spike with the trait from the mental region might be able to manifest that idea, if the part in the spike thinks of itself as something that thinks. Make it work in the cognitive realm like the camp fire or the fortresses walls, and maybe wire it up to the other component, and the spike will function as a processor, not having to be spiked in, but simply sitting attached by wires to the other components. Feed it power, make it think of itself as something that thinks, and wire it to the rest.

On the topic of the Cognitive realm, I also wonder if it might be possible to lay down cognitive cables, so you can wire to machines together in the cognitive realm and achieve a form of wireless communication while still using wires.

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On 5/24/2018 at 9:31 AM, Ixthos said:

I like the idea of an aluminium casing :-)

On the topic of hemalurgically spiking the machine, I definitely think it would be possible, but I also think it might be a little more convoluted than that. Putting aside that I think feruchemy and hemalurgy might be used to store a portion of stolen traits in a way that doesn't decay, a spike will still retain at least a minimum charge indefinitely - something which raises questions about if you take a single spike, break it, and then spike someone with both parts would the hole be bigger, and thus let a soother control them?

To spike something it would need a spirit web. We've had it confirmed that you could not spike a tree. A level of sapience is required. So to spike a computer it would have to have to be an AI. I do think that if a spike was in a sentient computer it would not be subject to hemalurgic decay. I'd guess it isn't the blood itself stopping the hemalurgic decay but the connection to the spiritweb. 

Quote

Questioner [PENDING REVIEW]

Can plants have Hemalurgic properties?

Brandon Sanderson [PENDING REVIEW]

...As I have it in the notes right now, no. I could change that, but for right now, no. There's just not a way to get it to work, right now.

 

On 5/24/2018 at 9:31 AM, Ixthos said:

I think it would be a little like what happened in Secret History with Kelsier getting the campfire to burn. A spike with the trait from the mental region might be able to manifest that idea, if the part in the spike thinks of itself as something that thinks. Make it work in the cognitive realm like the camp fire or the fortresses walls, and maybe wire it up to the other component, and the spike will function as a processor, not having to be spiked in, but simply sitting attached by wires to the other components. Feed it power, make it think of itself as something that thinks, and wire it to the rest.

I think a route similar to this may work. Essentially feed a spike or a metalmind enough investiture enough to develop limited sapience then using that metalmind or spike to create a computer in the physical realm. 

On 5/24/2018 at 9:31 AM, Ixthos said:

On the topic of the Cognitive realm, I also wonder if it might be possible to lay down cognitive cables, so you can wire to machines together in the cognitive realm and achieve a form of wireless communication while still using wires.

I'm sure this would work. It isn't really wireless then. It is just wired in the cognitive realm. Seems like just a more complicated than wiring in the physical realm or just using normal wireless technology.

Edited by Fatikis
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@Fatikis Agreed. I think the main advantage of Cognitive cables would be letting a computer being completely surrounded by aluminium but still send signals out without needing an aerial. Overkill, but I like the idea of the Scadrian version of the internet being entirely maintained in the Cognitive realm.

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How do the Scadrians access the Cognitive Realm? We do not know how to access Harmony's Perpendicularly right now and they do not have access to the surge of transportation, so they need to find a way jump between realms for maintenance of the systems.  

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@Gasper True, but we also don't have computers in Scadrial yet, or any advanced modern technology. We don't know what shard metal alloys are possible and what they can do, but we do know that Sel and Roshar have powers that let one travel in the physical realm without perpendicularities, and Threnody has perpendicularities that are somehow random and creepy or terrifying in some way. I think it might be that one or more shard metals or their alloys let you enter the Cognitive realm, perhaps an iron alloy letting feruchemists decrease how real they are and enter the Cognitive realm. Or they might find a way to make perpendicularities on command. I stretch, true, but I don't think it is too unreasonable. Basically, we know other systems let one teleport, and it is possible one of the other metals lets one do so as well. 

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