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One day, a computer will fit on a desk 1974
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Mr. Scram:

--- Quote from: CatalinaWOW on April 30, 2020, 04:14:58 am ---The really sad thing is that 20 years ago those 5.5 TFlops were doing things like advanced weather modelling, nuclear physics modelling, major economic models and the like.  Now they generate emojis and cleverly make cartoons out of pictures.  Can you imagine that futurists of twenty and more years ago were scratching their heads and saying if we can just get enough computer power we can do a lot of really mundane things.

--- End quote ---
That's a very negative view on things. Sure, we piss away ridiculous amounts of computing power and many washing machines and coffee makers have computers on board they would have killed for 50 years ago. Yet we also do a lot of amazing things with what we have. Right now the biggest supercomputer ever has been constructed out of many thousands of distributed nodes by people volunteering their computing power to fighting Covid. People also do amazing things on a much smaller scale. CNC manufacturing at home has become a possibility and people are doing things that were flat out scifi not too long ago from the comfort of their own home. It's absolutely amazing what one person or a small group can achieve.
daqq:

--- Quote ---A TFLOPS is not a TFLOPS is not a TFLOPS/
--- End quote ---
I know - it's not exactly an accurate metric for comparison :)

As I have said: Yes, I know it's not an accurate comparison, but still, it's interesting.
NiHaoMike:

--- Quote from: blueskull on April 30, 2020, 04:05:44 pm ---A more consumer friendly version of this is the RTX tensor cores, which does exactly the same, that's how they can claim so much better TFLOPS number while not significantly increasing die size.

--- End quote ---
This chart shows the Tensor FLOPS separately:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_20_series#Chipset_table
Alex Eisenhut:
That's silly, they should have just made bigger desks.
CatalinaWOW:

--- Quote from: Mr. Scram on April 30, 2020, 03:30:14 pm ---
--- Quote from: CatalinaWOW on April 30, 2020, 04:14:58 am ---The really sad thing is that 20 years ago those 5.5 TFlops were doing things like advanced weather modelling, nuclear physics modelling, major economic models and the like.  Now they generate emojis and cleverly make cartoons out of pictures.  Can you imagine that futurists of twenty and more years ago were scratching their heads and saying if we can just get enough computer power we can do a lot of really mundane things.

--- End quote ---
That's a very negative view on things. Sure, we piss away ridiculous amounts of computing power and many washing machines and coffee makers have computers on board they would have killed for 50 years ago. Yet we also do a lot of amazing things with what we have. Right now the biggest supercomputer ever has been constructed out of many thousands of distributed nodes by people volunteering their computing power to fighting Covid. People also do amazing things on a much smaller scale. CNC manufacturing at home has become a possibility and people are doing things that were flat out scifi not too long ago from the comfort of their own home. It's absolutely amazing what one person or a small group can achieve.

--- End quote ---

I actually agree with your comment.  But still find it sad that of the billions of processors shipped each year only a fraction of a percent (which is still a huge number) do all of the good things you are talking about.  Include Google in the mix and you get over the percentage point level.  A somewhat larger number makes the reports we write prettier than the typewriter generated things of 50 years ago, and maybe saves a few man-hours in the process.  And that the bulk of them do the silly things I was talking about.
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