Back in the 80s, my first computer was a Tandy from Radio Shack. As a teenager, let me tell ya’ I was thrilled with this computer. While there were certainly limitations with its use, to have had a personal computer back then was fantastic. Now, just to give some perspective, its memory ranged from 4k – 8k, my TV was used as the monitor, BASIC was the programming language and I believe the retail price was about $400-$500 (even though I was able to get a discount because my aunt worked for Radio Shack at the time). I also remember the 5.25 inch floppy disk drive and the tape cassette storage, just to name a couple of peripherals.
Ok, as you laugh, just keep in mind that even that was a vast improvement from the first computer at the University of Pennsylvania, which about 60 years prior, took up almost 2000 square feet, weighed three tons, had 19,000 vacuum tubes and cost a whopping $500,000.
Of course today, your handy laptop is very affordable, most costing under $1000, coming in a rainbow of colors, roughly the size of a book, with about 1000 times the power of that bulky computer mentioned above.
But of course, the evolution of computers would get more interesting. By 1996, Intel informed the world that there was a computer, using its chips, that processed more than 1 trillion calculations per second. Then, in 2006, a supercomputer was on the horizon capable of 70 trillion calculations per second. And it’s predicated that by 2010, IBM will produce a computer capable of 10 quadrillion calculations per second. Translation? As a human, it would take you about 8 billion years to do what this computer can do in one second. So, wrap your head around that for a minute.
But soon it won’t only be universities and research centers that will have these super computers. Just recently, the world’s first personal supercomputer was unveiled. Called the Tesla, this supercomputer, while very similar to your PC, will be able to process information 1000 times faster. This means that if you have programs that take a long time to process your information, with this computer, those processes will be greatly accelerated. And while this personal supercomputer will initially be sold to universities, scientific and research centers, Dell has already announced that it will mass produce these computers for the general public.
GEEZ – at this rate, as I look into my crystal ball I predict that supercomputers will surpass human intelligence by 2015. Oooops silly me - that prediction has already been made. So much for my psychic abilities.
