How Fast
Computers
Process
Information
We are ‘E’
Dependent
Thanks to ‘e’ we can now deliver a
message to the other side of the
globe in under a second. We can,
just as fast, pay someone who
may be thousands of miles away
thanks again to ‘e’.
‘E’ stands for electronic and
thanks to it dogs in Britain will
never get lost again. On April
6th, 2016 British law made it
compulsory for dogs to be
chipped. (We believe human
beings will be next)
Did you know the computer
systems that guided astronauts
to the moon on the Apollo
II Mission were no more
powerful than a present day
pocket calculator. If ‘calculator’
technology can guide men
to the moon and back what
could our present day desktop
PC technology do? Yet, this
amazingly powerful technology
is sitting on thousands of
desks growing dust or terribly
underutilized being used to only
output letters etc.
Old 1971 PC technology could
handle 92 kIPS (Thousand
Instructions per Second)
the average present day PC
technology can handle over
100,000 MIPS (over one hundred
thousand Million Instructions per
Second) (Wikipedia).
“The K computer — which will
be available for shared use by
researchers in November — is
named after the Japanese
numerical unit (kei), meaning
10 quadrillion, or 10,000 trillion.
By achieving the targeted
10 petaflops, a measure of
computer performance equaling
10 quadrillion calculations — or
floating-point operations, to be
precise — per second, K lived up
to its name in November.
If humans were to perform the
same number of calculations as
K does in a second, it would take
the world’s entire population of
7 billion people — each tackling
one problem per second — 17
consecutive days.” [1]
To help your understanding
consider that if you counted
very fast you may to ten within
a second. In comparison the
Japanese K computer can count
to 10,000 trillion in one second.
Mind blowing isn’t it? p
[1] www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2012/02/12/general/10000000000000000-calculations-per-
second/#.WcLoUrKGOM8
26
|
SHARE | MAGAZINE
October - December 2017
A chip is a very basic computer
that more complexed computers
rely on. It is a very small electronic
circuitry that’s built into material
like silicon and programmed
to open and close ‘logic gates’
i.e. to turn electrical current into
bits (1s and 0s). A break in the
electrical flow represents a zero
(0).
Such mini computers or
microchips are keys to the
functionality of the electronic
gadgets our modern world
depend on. They include our...
Cars, TV, microwave, washing
machine, refrigerator, stove,
dishwasher, computers, printers,
router, mobile and landline phone
not to mention the many types
of equipment used in our health
services etc.
Most of the world’s
communication takes place over
‘e’ while over 90% of the world’s
money exist in ‘e’ format. Can you
imagine a world without ‘e’? p