5 ms·
There's a quote I heard somewhere: "A given speed of computer is available from Cray in 1980 for $10,000,000, from Sun in 1990 for $100,000, from Dell in 2000 f
by captaincrowbar 11y ago
There's a quote I heard somewhere: "A given speed of computer is available from Cray in 1980 for $10,000,000, from Sun in 1990 for $100,000, from Dell in 2000 for $1000, and from Oxfam in 2010 for $10."
- donatj 11y agoI feel like the thousand dollar Dell was actually profoundly more powerful.
- rbanffy 11y agoNot really. It probably spent most of the CPU cycles waiting for IO and a little less time waiting for memory. Also, its SIMD units were probably limited in comparison with what Cray was doing 20 years prior. As for the Sun, using SCSI disks and a decent OS more or less compensated for limitations similar to Dell's circa 2000 PC.