is your computer too slow??

so, uh, does your browser load too slowly?
does your word processor sometimes lag a bit?
is your newsreader sometimes slow in refreshing headers?

well, maybe it's that we demand a lot... :)) I worked with major
computers from 1965 to 2006 and my most memorable event was the
announcement in mid-70's of the Cray supercomputer... and I found this
info on the web... fun to read... :)

" In the mid-to-late 1970's, the Cray-1 was the fastest computer in
the world, with a clock speed of 12.5 ns (80 MHz), computational rates of
138 million floating-point operations per second (MFLOPS) during
sustained periods, and 250 MFLOPS in short bursts. Up until that time,
there has been no other computer like it. The Cray-1 had spawned a new
class of computers called the "supercomputer," a computer highly
optimized for computational speed, and is typically used for its mega
number-crunching capabilities. Considered to be the first supercomputer,
Cray Research�s Cray-1 was unveiled in 1976 by Seymour R. Cray, its
inventor and chief design architect. Early versions weighed over five
tons, featured the equivalent of 8 MB of RAM, and cost about $9 million.

" In 1985 the Cray-2 was introduced, which could do 1.9 gigaflops (1.9
billion flops), operated at 244 MHz, had the equivalent of 2GB of RAM,
and cost about $12 million.

" For comparison, a typical PC bought in 2000 or 2001 uses a Pentium 4
processor with a clock speed of 1.5 GHz, benchmarks at around 1.8 Gflops,
probably cost under $2,000, and fits under your desk. In short, it's the
rough equivalent of a 1985 supercomputer for one-six thousandth the
cost."

....
so, when you're frustrated at how slow your computer is, please remember
that the computing power sitting in front of you exceeds the world's
total computing capacity of 1960, probably exceeding the power that
launched the first trip to the moon... and easily exceeds what we called
supercomputers just 20 years ago... :) i remember my first PC had a
processing speed of 4.7 mhz... and a narrower bandwidth.

oh, one other thing... that electronic watch on your wrist... exceeds the
world's computing capacity of 1950... just that one watch... :)

Crusher...

In 1960 I was as White Sands working for Bell Labs on the Nike Zeus- the
nations first anti-missile missile. There was the Zeus tracking computer
and the incoming missile tracking computer, both tied to the
over-the-horizon acquisition radar system, plotting the intercept
trajectory. The computers were in several rows of refrigerator sized racks
and the acq radar was charged by several rows of barrel sized capacitors.
Somehow I kinda doubt a current PC could do all that.

david...

well, the truth is, bob, that those big computers didn't do that much by
today's standards... for example, the world's largest (physically)
computer was the IBM AN/FSQ-7 - here's a website of some info:
it weighed approx 250 tons and took up 1/2 acre of space and godonlyknows
how many technicians to keep it running. that was in late 50's. i
believe it was the fastest of its time, used by the Air Force (the
building is still in Syracuse, a huge multistory monolith...)

later, IBM produced a transistorized version, the 7090, in 1962ish. it
had 32k memory and a faster cpu speed of 0.167 mhz and was considered a
powerhouse for almost a decade and required several thousand sq feet of
space.

Crusher...

We had an IBM 1620 engineering computer about 1963 that had an iron core
memory bank about the size of a two drawer lateral file cabinet, another cpu
cabinet about the size of a desk with an IBM Selectric for a printer and a
freestanding card reader. Separate from the computer was a card punch
machine. All of it was in one normal sized room. We ran Fortran 1 programs
for bridge and highway design with a Spartan printout containing only the
numbers and a cryptic identifier. I think it had 64KB of memory.

david...

hi, bob,
i remember the 1620 well... :) I was with carrier air conditioning at
the time and we had installed a new burroughs b5500 for business
processing and mgt was trying to convince the engineers to switch from
their 1620 -- was a long polite battle... :) the 1620 was used to drive
a large plotter for drawings... I didn't understand the stuff, but i was
the systems engineer assigned to work with them on their fortran
conversions.... nice memories... thank you...

P.S. the 1620 had a cpu speed of 0.1 mhz... seems slow now, doesn't it?
but was considered a good number-cruncher at the time... :)

Crusher...

Moving ahead a bit, I had a TI59 programmable calculator in 1980 or
thereabouts with a printer dock which could be programmed with a cryptic
programming language on as many as four little magnetic cards- 1000 steps, I
think. Wrote some good engineering stuff for that thing- and so did a lot
of other engineers.

Wrote a clever little subroutine for each programs that printed answers as
feet inches and sixteenths directly--15.0913= 15' 9-13/16" and angles as
bevels with inches and fractions on one side and assumed base 12 as the
other to conform with structural detailing practices.

today, the Intel Pentium has over 30 million transistors and a speed of
2.6 gigahertz - i think that's 2,600 mhz - (and some are much faster...)
and memory capacity of several gigabytes. that's a tremendous difference
and reduction in size. I know those early computers were impressive - i
worked with them. but their speed can't come close to new computers.

Mikals11...

Hell.... now throw in the "duel cores" from Intel and AMD running at over 4
gigahertz (AMD's 4.4 or 4.8 duel core) Thats more power then anyone even
imagined in the 50's and 60's.... and these things fit in a little box under
your desk to help keep your feet warm in winter.... ;-)

Lou...

My first computer job was on an IBM 7080 in 1964.

Paco...

Must have been very slow.

80,000 6 bit memory capacity. Took 6 cabinets each 6 feet high 30 inches
wide and 7 feet deep. Ours had 11 tape drives. No disk.