聽力原文:
The future of computing
計算機技術的未來
The era of predictable improvement in computer hardware is ending. What comes next?
對電腦硬件進步的可確定性的推算正在終結，那么下一步是什么？
IN 1971 the fastest car in the world was the Ferrari Daytona, capable of 280kph (174mph). The world's tallest buildings were New York's twin towers, at 415 metres (1,362 feet). In November that year Intel launched the first commercial microprocessor chip, the 4004, containing 2,300 tiny transistors, each the size of a red blood cell.
重點詞匯：
1 daytona n. 代托納（美國汽車品牌，是早期一款法拉利汽車）ferrari 法拉利
2 mile 英里=1609米
3 transistor 晶體管
聽力原文:
Since then chips have improved in line with the prediction of Gordon Moore, Intel's co-founder. According to his rule of thumb, known as Moore's law, processing power doubles roughly every two years as smaller transistors are packed ever more tightly onto silicon wafers, boosting performance and reducing costs. A modern Intel Skylake processor contains around 1.75 billion transistors-half a million of them would fit on a single transistor from the 4004-and collectively they deliver about 400,000 times as much computing muscle. This exponential progress is difficult to relate to the physical world. If cars and skyscrapers had improved at such rates since 1971, the fastest car would now be capable of a tenth of the speed of light; the tallest building would reach half way to the Moon.
重點詞匯：
1 in line with 與…相似（或緊密相連）
2 a rule of thumb 實用的估算方法，經驗工作法（常依據經驗而非準確測量）
3 silicon <化>硅; 硅元素
4 wafer 圓片，晶片; 薄脆餅; [電]薄片; [宗]圣餅;
5 exponential指數的；冪的；由指數表示的
6 skyscraper 摩天大樓
7 transistor 晶體管; 晶體管收音機，半導體收音機;
聽力原文:
The impact of Moore's law is visible all around us. Today 3 billion people carry smartphones in their pockets: each one is more powerful than a room-sized supercomputer from the 1980s. Countless industries have been upended by digital disruption. Abundant computing power has even slowed nuclear tests, because atomic weapons are more easily tested using simulated explosions rather than real ones. Moore's law has become a cultural trope: people inside and outside Silicon Valley expect technology to get better every year.
重點詞匯：
1 upend 翻倒；倒放；使顛倒
2 disrupt 擾亂；使中斷；打亂
3 abundant 大量的；豐盛的；充裕的
4 triope 比喻，隱喻
聽力原文:
But now, after five decades, the end of Moore's law is in sight . Making transistors smaller no longer guarantees that they will be cheaper or faster. This does not mean progress in computing will suddenly stall, but the nature of that progress is changing. Chips will still get better, but at a slower pace (number-crunching power is now doubling only every 2.5 years, says Intel). And the future of computing will be defined by improvements in three other areas, beyond raw hardware performance.
重點詞匯：
1 stall 熄火，拋錨
2 number-crunching <非正>（用計算機進行的）特大數量的數字計算;
3 未經加工的;天然狀態的 （食物）生的，生食的，未熟的 露肉的;擦破皮的
聽力原文:
Faith no Moore The first is software. This week AlphaGo, a program which plays the ancient game of Go, beat Lee Sedol, one of the best human players, in the first two of five games scheduled in Seoul. Go is of particular interest to computer scientists because of its complexity: there are more possible board positions than there are particles in the universe (see article). As a result, a Go-playing system cannot simply rely on computational brute force, provided by Moore's law, to prevail. AlphaGo relies instead on "deep learning" technology, modelled partly on the way the human brain works. Its success this week shows that huge performance gains can be achieved through new algorithms. Indeed, slowing progress in hardware will provide stronger incentives to develop cleverer software.
重點詞匯：

1 go: 圍棋
2 particle顆粒；微粒
3 brute 蠻干不動腦筋的 brute force/strength 蠻力
4 prevail被接受；戰勝；壓倒
5 algorithm算法；計算程序 incentive 激勵；刺激；鼓勵
聽力原文:
The second area of progress is in the "cloud", the networks of data centers that deliver services over the internet. When computers were stand-alone devices, whether mainframes or desktop PCs, their performance depended above all on the speed of their processor chips. Today computers become more powerful without changes to their hardware. They can draw upon the vast (and flexible) number-crunching resources of the cloud when doing things like searching through e-mails or calculating the best route for a road trip. And interconnectedness adds to their capabilities: smartphone features such as satellite positioning, motion sensors and wireless-payment support now matter as much as processor speed.
重點詞匯：

1 draw upon憑借；利用；動用
2 interconnected（使類似的事物）相聯系，相互聯系，相互連接

聽力原文:
The third area of improvement lies in new computing architectures-specialised chips optimised for particular jobs, say, and even exotic techniques that exploit quantum-mechanical weirdness to crunch multiple data sets simultaneously. There was less need to pursue these sorts of approaches when generic microprocessors were improving so rapidly, but chips are now being designed specifically for cloud computing, neural-network processing, computer vision and other tasks. Such specialised hardware will be embedded in the cloud, to be called upon when needed. Once again, that suggests the raw performance of end-user devices matters less than it did, because the heavy lifting is done elsewhere.
重點詞匯：

1 optimised 優化的，最佳的;
2 exotic具有異國情調的;外來的;奇異的 3 exploit 利用，發揮
4 quantum-mechanical量子力學的
5 weridness 古怪，命運
6 crunch（快速大量地）處理信息；數字搗弄
7 embed 把…牢牢地嵌入（或插入、埋入）
8 simultaneously 同時發生（或進行）的；同步的
9 neural神經的；神經系統的neural-network 神經網絡
10 raw（情感）不加掩飾的，原始的，樸實的
Her grief was still raw and he did not know how to help her ...the raw passions of nationalism..
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