Computers are amazing
Computers are getting fast. Really fast. Cast your mind back over the years and think about the computers you've owned.
My first was a Commodore Vic-20 when I was about 5, or maybe a little older. It had something like 4k of RAM. My first PC was about 12 years ago. It was 60Mhz, had 512MB of hard-drive, 8MB of RAM and 1MB of video memory. My current PC, ten years later (it's two years old now) is 3500Mhz (58 times as fast - ok in Mhz it's not 3500 but it's the equivalent of), 500GB of hard-drive (1000 times as much), 1GB of RAM (125 times as much) and 256MB of video memory (256 times as much). It also cost about a quarter of the price.
This is in a mere ten years.
A few years ago there was a race to see who could build the first computer that could do a Teraflop - a trillion floating point operations per second. Later this year will see a computer capable of 1000 Teraflops - a thousand trillian calculations per second. Incredible.
And this will be eclipsed by the arrival of quantum computing and spintronics. Rather than shuffling electrons around a processor, spintronics uses the natural spin of electrons to compute and store multiple (almost infinite) values at the same time. This will make 1000 Teraflops look like the Vic-20 of old.
It's not here yet, but it will be, and it will be amazing.
My first was a Commodore Vic-20 when I was about 5, or maybe a little older. It had something like 4k of RAM. My first PC was about 12 years ago. It was 60Mhz, had 512MB of hard-drive, 8MB of RAM and 1MB of video memory. My current PC, ten years later (it's two years old now) is 3500Mhz (58 times as fast - ok in Mhz it's not 3500 but it's the equivalent of), 500GB of hard-drive (1000 times as much), 1GB of RAM (125 times as much) and 256MB of video memory (256 times as much). It also cost about a quarter of the price.
This is in a mere ten years.
A few years ago there was a race to see who could build the first computer that could do a Teraflop - a trillion floating point operations per second. Later this year will see a computer capable of 1000 Teraflops - a thousand trillian calculations per second. Incredible.
And this will be eclipsed by the arrival of quantum computing and spintronics. Rather than shuffling electrons around a processor, spintronics uses the natural spin of electrons to compute and store multiple (almost infinite) values at the same time. This will make 1000 Teraflops look like the Vic-20 of old.
It's not here yet, but it will be, and it will be amazing.
posted by Nej at
11:22 am
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