Advancements in technology
TomsHardware.com has posted an article aimed squarely at those of us who aren’t offended when called a ‘geek’. The Mother of All CPU Charts 2005/2006 delves into some pretty techie stuff, but the first four pages offer some interesting flashbacks to the pre-Order-Pizza-Over-The-Internet days.
Some of the more eye-opening excerpts:
Intel’s first processor, the 4004, debuted in 1971, consisted of 2,300 transistors, and didn’t even require a heatsink. Compare that to the 230 million transistors found in today’s Pentium Extreme Edition 840. That’s an increase by a factor of 100,000. Let’s try that again using a different measure. The space that used to be occupied by a single transistor now houses 5,845 of them.
The evolution of processors between 1993 and 2005 has been nothing short of dizzying. Clock speed has skyrocketed from 60 MHz to 3,800 MHz – that’s a 63-fold increase. Simultaneously, the computer’s main memory evolved as well. Today, even entry-level computers have a memory size equivalent to the capacity of high-end hard drives in 1993.
The floppy is the only component that still remains in use today, practically unchanged in its 18 years of service, running at 360 rpm and offering a transfer rate of 34 kB/s. Once again, let’s put that in perspective with regard to today’s world: Transferring a file to your computer from a server that is 10,000 miles away on another continent is three times or even faster than getting it from your floppy disk drive.
I sent an email to some friends a few weeks back with a similar point. I saw an old advert posted on OhGizmo.com which got me thinking. I can’t say when this was printed, but 15 megabytes for $3,000??? For reference, about the smallest hard disk you can buy now is 4gigs (265 times larger) for a whopping $7.00. Most PC’s have at least 80gigs. What will $3,000 buy you these days? Well, how about 4.5 terabytes?. Yes, that’s 4.5 million megabytes. I’m not even going to do the math.
Where do you think we’ll be in 10 years? Do you foresee yourself being continually bombarded with ever-increasing technology, or do you think our technology will become so integrated and ubiquitous that you’ll just stop noticing it?
How awe-inspiring was the telephone? Radio? Television? These were amazing advancements in technology, which are now all but invisible. For us younger folks, it was a wondrous day when Intel broke the 1GHz barrier, which seems super-lame when compared to the locomotive.
Sure, we did build a space shuttle and put robots on Mars, which are pretty darn cool, but do you feel sufficiently “wowed” by these events, or “ho-hummed?”