We aren't talking about simulated humans as artificial intelligences yet. But a guy at Brookhaven thinks at least for real time rendering of objects with realistic lighting we might be a few years away.

Are supercomputers on the verge of creating Matrix-style simulated realities? Michael McGuigan at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, thinks so. He says that virtual worlds realistic enough to be mistaken for the real thing are just a few years away.

A petaflop bopper might be able to render realistic simulations of light in a virtual world.

Although Blue Gene/L can model the path of light in a virtual world both rapidly and realistically, the speed with which it renders high-resolution images still falls short of that required to pass the Graphics Turing Test.

But supercomputers capable of passing the test may be just years away, thinks McGuigan. "You never know for sure until you can actually do it," he says. "But a back-of-the-envelope calculation would suggest it should be possible in the next few years, once supercomputers enter the petaflop range – that's 1000 teraflops."

Expect some people to become addicted to time spent in simulated environments. Throw in some AIs to interact with and the simulated worlds will become enjoyable to a lot more people.