Basis for claim: smartphone has more cmp power than all NASA's in 1969 1

[electricpete]

http://forwardthinking.pcmag.com/ces/292745-intel-enters-smartphone-chip-race-for-real

To put smartphone progress into perspective, Otellini said a smartphone today has more computing power than all of NASA did when it put a man on the moon in 1969.

To me, that's an astounding claim (even though I realize a lot more of the work depended on individuals than on computers back then).

Otellini is Intel CEO, so I'm sure this is not a frivolous claim.

Does anyone know specifically what partiular parameter was compared here? Maybe FLOPS?

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(2B)+(2B)' ?

 

[IRstuff]

There may be an element of hyperbole, but it's relatively defendable. The typical processor of the time was on the order of a COSMAC 1602 (8-bit processor with maybe about 100 KIPS and maybe 4kB of core memory). That was about the level of processing in the nav computer on Apollo 13.

A smartphone would be running over 500 MIPS with 64 GB of flash, and a couple of GB of RAM. However, its graphics processor can probably do about 10x that throughput, albeit, more narrowly focused on pixel processing, rather than general purpose processing.

In 1982, 3 years after the first moon landing, our corporate timeshared CRAY-1 was rated around 80 MFLOPS. This was for a company with about $1 billion annual sales. One would have expected NASA to have a few CRAY-1s around, but the typical graphics processor alone blows a CRAY-1 out of the water just displaying a complex splash screen.

TTFN
faq731-376

 

[IRstuff]

One thing that may put things in a different perspective is that prior to that last 100 yrs, it might have taken several human generations for technology to change. However, in the last 60 years, technology has changed a number of times.

Just consider nonvolatile storage, when in 1982, a hard drive disk would be about 5MB, and now you can't even buy that SMALL a memory unit of any sort. We've had:
> Core
> SRAM
> CCD
> DRAM
> EPROM
> EEPROM
> MNOS
> bubble
> 8" floppy
> 5" floppy
> 3.5" floppy
> Zip disk
> Jaz drive
> Thumb drive
> CD
> DVD
> Blue-ray
> Magneto-optical
> Holographic

As a devotee of history, it boggles the mind how many different storage methods have been developed in a scant 60 yrs. As long as my list is, I'm positive I've missed a bunch.

TTFN
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[zelgar]

Noticed one slight error in dates. The moon landing was in 1969, so 3 years later was in 1972.

 

[JohnRBaker]

As long as my list is, I'm positive I've missed a bunch.

Yep, you completely missed TAPE, both 'punched' and 'magnetic', not to mention Hollerith Cards (AKA 'IBM cards').

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

UG/NX Museum:

http://www.plmworld.org/p/cm/ld/fid=209

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[KENAT]

No, IRstuff is clearly alluding to one of the many moon landing conspiracies - this time one involving time travel.

Posting guidelines faq731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

(probably not aimed specifically at you)
What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484​

 

[IRstuff]

That's me; aluminum foil and all. If you get the low-E glass, which is metallized, no one will even know you've shielded your house with aluminum...

TTFN
faq731-376

 

[swertel]

I was actually going to paint my roof (the plywood substrate) with aluminized paint. It supposed to be energy efficient, but the real reason is to keep spy satellites from looking down into my house. It's a tinfoil hat for the home!

--Scott

http://www.wertel.pro

 

[IRstuff]

On my last house, we installed an aluminum roof. In additional to protection against "them," the aluminum comes in at 0.5 lb/sq. ft. compared to about 5 lb/sq. ft. for something like EagleLite.

Interestingly, it's absurdly difficult to duplicate the look of aged cedar shake.

TTFN
faq731-376

 

[BrunoPuntzJones]

IRStuff,

Except that all low-E glass uses silver. Or fluorinated tin oxide. But no aluminum.

Don't worry though, the silver still keeps the mindrays out.

 

[IRstuff]

But you don't know where I got mine... ;-)

TTFN
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