[aseipp]

I'd also just like to add on one fun bit here:

As a software programmer, my mind is blown by the idea of a 3GHz CPU. That's 3,000,000,000 cycles per second. The speed of light c = 299,792,458 meters per second. Which means that, in the time it takes to execute 1 cycle, 1/3,000,000,000 seconds -- light has moved approximately 0.0999m ~= 4 inches. Unbelievable. Computers are fast!

On the other hand... Once you begin to deal with FPGAs, you often run into "timing constraints" where your design cannot physically be mapped onto a board, because it would take too long for a clock signal (read: light) to traverse the silicon, along the path of the gates chosen by the tool. You figure this out after your tool took a long amount of time to synthesize. You suddenly wish the speed of light wasn't so goddamn slow.

In one aspect of life, the speed of light, and computers, are very fast, and I hate inefficiency. In another, the speed of light is just way too slow for me sometimes, and it's irritating beyond belief because my design would just look nicer if it weren't for those timing requirements requiring extra work.

How to reconcile this kind of bizarre self-realization is an exercise left to the reader.

[krupan]

It's not the speed of light that's the long pole in the timing constraint, it's the "switching" time of the circuits that make up the digital logic. You can't switch from zero to one or one to zero instantaneously. It's modeled (or at least it was when I went to college) as a simple RC circuit. Your clock can't tick any faster than the time it takes to charge the slowest capacitor in your system. That's why chips have gotten faster and faster over the years, we've reduced that charge/discharge time (not because we've sped up light).