4 ms·
> 472 gigaflops Whenever I hear a number of gigaflops or terraflops, I like to look up the history of super computers [0]. This $99 computer is faster (on pape
by piinbinary 8y ago
> 472 gigaflops
Whenever I hear a number of gigaflops or terraflops, I like to look up the history of super computers [0]. This $99 computer is faster (on paper) than the world's fastest supercomputer in 1996, or a bit over 20 years ago. That's pretty cool.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_supercomputing#Massive_processing:_the_1990s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_supercomputing#Mass...
- tyingq 8y agoA Pentium 90 was probably fairly common in the mid 90s. Delivered a whopping 0.09 GFLOPS :)
- lostlogin 8y agoThe Power Mac G4 was was briefly a restricted export due to its power (late 90s). This, obviously, gave ultimate childhood bragging rights. https://www.google.co.nz/amp/s/www.wired.com/2002/01/thats-a-whole-lot-of-power-mac/amp https://www.google.co.nz/amp/s/www.wired.com/2002/01/thats-a...
- classichasclass 8y agoApple's ad on that was maximum snark. As tanks surround a graphite G4, the announcer deadpans, "Pentium PCs? Well ... they're harmless."
- kevin_thibedeau 8y agoThe 386 was also export controlled for a time.
- martinpw 8y agoNot quite. This is FP16, supercomputers are typically benchmarked using double precision flops, so FP64. So roll in a factor of ~4 there, or a couple of years.
- johndough 8y agoFP16 has 11 bit mantiassa, whereas FP64 has 53 bits. Integer multiplication scales quadratically with the number of bits, so a factor of ~23 might be more accurate.
- MattGrommes 8y agoNot to mention the size of those machines. I visited ASCI RED before they turned it on in 1997 or so and it was multiple long lines of refrigerator sized units. According to the guy who showed it to me, it also required an air conditioner that could have comfortably cooled the local college basketball arena.