Computers continue to increase in power while dropping in cost
At a dinner speech in Anchorage, Alaska a few years ago I heard Alan Kay (then a Fellow at Apple Computer) talk about how wonderful it is for students he works with to have access to a Cray supercomputer. A teacher sitting next to me said, "I don't even know why I am here -- I'll never have that much computing power in my classroom." I cautioned him: "Watch out for words like 'never'."
A 1980 model Cray supercomputer was the fastest machine of its day. It cost $12 million, weighed 10,000 lbs, consumed 150 kW of electricity -- and had only 8 MB of RAM and operated at a speed of 80 MHz.
You can't find personal computers that poorly equipped on the market now. A typical personal computer today has about twice the raw power of this $12 million Cray, and can be purchased for $2,500. This trend of increased power at lower cost is likely to continue well into the next century. The driving force for this change is the continued advancement in silicon chip technology.
The constant increase of chip power and decrase of cost is known as Moore's Law. It's interesting to see how long the prediction can last. If I remember correctly, Moore, made the prediction in the 60s and said the pattern would last 50 years. So if hes right, we might actually see a slow down of progress sometime soon.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with Stan. Moore's theory is that similarly priced computers will double in speed every 18-24 months. I believe at the time he didn't realize how true he was. Computer continue to increase in power and decrease in price. There is a laptop available with nearly all the power as my laptop now, but with not quite as much memory, and it costs $199.99. As always, specialized computers will always cost a bit more than those that are not, but I can only imagine what will happen in the next ten twenty years, but I imagine that technological advances will begin to wane for a bit.
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