Despite the lack of shiny clothes or jetpacks, many of us have come to take what some would call "the future" with a heaping dose of "meh." Sure, smartphone this, Bluetooth that, but sometimes we don't appreciate how far we've come. Luckily. the New York Times is on hand to offer some perspective …
It’s common wisdom that the computer you can hold in the palm of your hand today is as powerful as a computer from years ago that filled an entire room.
But now Jack Dongarra, one of the computer scientists who keeps track of the world’s 500 fastest computers, has figured out just how fast that computer in your palm really is.
Dr. Dongarra, who is on the computer science faculty at the University of Tennessee and a researcher at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is one of the keepers of the Linpack computing benchmark, a linear algebra test that measures the mathematical capabilities of computers.
His research group has run the test on Apple’s new iPad 2, and it turns out that the legal-pad-size tablet would be a rival for a four-processor version of the Cray 2 supercomputer, which, with eight processors, was the world’s fastest computer in 1985.
What sorts of things were Crays running in the 80s? You know, the basics. Banks. University research. Nuclear weapon targeting arrays. Stuff we'd take for granted now.
It's noted that Doc Dongarra only tested one of the iPad 2's dual processor cores. They believe those tests will show the machine can stand up to supercomputers as recent as 1994. You can as much power as rooms full of silicon madness from not even twenty years ago.
Maybe the future has something to offer after all …
[Source: The New York Times, Gizmodo]
