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Apollo 11 Guidance Computer vs. USB-C Chargers
- informatimago 7y agoAnd that's nothing. Wait for AI in power sockets! For now, they only have simple processors in USB-C charger, but soon there will be more intelligence in there, than you can imagine! :-)
- astrodust 7y agoWhen your charger becomes self-aware because someone put a TPU in it by accident...
- jonplackett 7y agoI think this is the thing we'll be looking back on like this. AI in EVERYTHING. because it'll be so cheap in 20 years. Like maybe those useless automatic taps or hand dryers will finally actually know if hands are under them properly because they'll have the equivalent of a modern day supercomputer of AI power trying to figure it out.
- kragen 7y agoMaybe. 20 years ago Moore's Law was in effect. We've become accustomed to "it'll be so cheap in 20 years" because, from 1947 to 2010, transistors dropped in price by a factor of two every 2 years, while getting faster starting in 1975 due to Dennard scaling. Roughly, for ten thousand transistors or so, the prices (in inflation-adjusted US dollars) and response times varied very roughly as follows: 1950: $1'048'576 (1 μs) 1960: $32'768 (100 ns) 1970: $1024 (100 ns) 1980: $32 (20 ns) 1990: $1 (3 ns) 2000: $0.033 (0.5 ns) 2010: $0.001 (0.2 ns) 2020: $0.0005 (0.1 ns) This is pretty inaccurate, but close enough to explain my point, which is that most of the humans have lived their entire lives and their parents' entire lives in this Moore's-Law regime, and it's coming to an end. But their cultural expectations, formed by three human generations of Moore's Law, have not yet adjusted; that will take another generation. But who knows? Maybe some other similar exponential economic trend will come along and make AI cheap. But it isn't going to happen just by virtue of Moore's Law the way it would have in the 1980s or 1990s.
- jonplackett 7y ago20 years is a long time to work some stuff out though. I think it’s a bill gates quote (badly paraphrased probably) - “people overestimate what can be achieved in a year and underestimate why can be done in a decade.” So 2 decades ought to be something well outside our current expectations. I hope it will be at least!
- kragen 7y agoImagine being in 1925 and predicting what the future would be like in 1945, now that the Great War was over so that nobody would even think of starting another major war. You might predict cities built almost entirely underground with kilometer-high skyscrapers http://www.popsci.com/archive-viewer?id=YScDAAAAMBAJ&pg=40 http://www.popsci.com/archive-viewer?id=YScDAAAAMBAJ&pg=40 https://futurelapse.blogspot.com/2015/05/underground-living-in-city-of-tomorrow.html https://futurelapse.blogspot.com/2015/05/underground-living-... since skyscrapers had been rising dramatically in height. Pneumatic tube systems would probably make most deliveries https://www.fastcompany.com/3049647/what-the-city-of-the-future-looked-like-in-1925 https://www.fastcompany.com/3049647/what-the-city-of-the-fut... since they were already in service in large cities, and it was clear that cities would get denser and denser. Since Television was already being demonstrated, you might imagine doctors diagnosing patients over the radio waves https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/telemedicine-predicted-in-1925-124140942/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/telemedicine-predicte... using Vidicon tubes that made the house calls for them, along with a Teledactyl that transmitted haptic information to allow doctors to feel the patients; moreover, you could watch theatrical performances from far away. Maybe you'd predict that in 20 years abstract art would be even more influential than it was in 1925, and that the US might institute some kind of social security scheme, and perhaps many more cities would have subways, and maybe more utilities would be publicly owned rather than operated for profit. Given the growth of Communist movements in the 1920s, you might predict they would expand further. Maybe you'd predict that future musical instruments would be electric. Some of that sort of happened, though mostly later (the electric guitar dates from 1932). But think about what you'd be missing: atomic energy (the Cockcroft–Walton generator wouldn't split the lithium atom until 1932(?)). Manchukuo and the rest of World War II. Alcoholics Anonymous. Mechanical refrigerators. Widespread washing machines and consequently women's liberation. The Little Prince. The jake walk. The Long March and Communist China. Looney Tunes. Airlines. Mass nonviolent civil disobedience. Independent India. The end of the British Empire. Comic books (outside Japan). Neoprene and nylon. The end of dirigibles. Vaginoplasty. The Hoover Dam and the Tennessee Valley Authority. Bugs Bunny. Computers and the theory of computable functions, and the death of Hilbert's decidability program. Universal censorship of mass-market films in the US under the Hays Code. Liquid-fueled rockets and ballistic and cruise missiles. The discovery of the Lascaux cave paintings. The discovery that the universe was less than 20 billion years old. The Moonies. The Great Depression. Perón. Merchandising agreements for children's characters such as Pooh. Radar. Antibiotics. Nineteen Eighty-Four. The end of the gold standard after 2500 years. Pluto. Maybe even talkies — you might have predicted in 1925 that talkies would become a mass phenomenon, but it might have been unimaginable that they would entirely displace silent film. Maybe you would have predicted one or two of these. But nobody imagined very many of them. So, what are the major developments you're missing over the next 20 years, which will change the world into which AI-powered hand dryers could potentially be born?
- marcosdumay 7y agoA brain the size of the universe and it's there, negotiating voltages with some savage hardware! I sure hope it likes a 10kV surge!
- crmrc114 7y agoThis is awesome! The media loves to say your pocketwatch is more powerful than X form $date. This is a fun technical rundown. I think at some point we have to start talking about how far from optimized we are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MenuetOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MenuetOS comes to mind when talking about what can be done in fasm. Are we ever going to get compilers to the point where we can squash things down to that size and efficiency? Is this yet another thing that AI can promise to solve someday?
- TazeTSchnitzel 7y agoIf it can be done efficiently in asm then it can be done in C, C++, perhaps even Rust. But there are sacrifices to be made: unmaintainable “clever” code without clean abstractions.
- vardump 7y agoThere are architectures that are just fundamentally C-hostile. Perhaps the most famous one is 6502. No efficient way to implement stack based parameter passing, generic pointer arithmetic, and lots of other bits and pieces. You can still use C on 6502, it's just not very fast. I guess you could define another language that mostly looks like C, but built around particular CPU architecture quirks.
- wwweston 7y agoWhat are some languages (other than its own instructions) that 6502 is friendly to?
- pvg 7y agoBASIC, arguably. People often say C is 'high level assembly' but in some ways BASIC is closer with the absence of block structure, scopes, etc. Control flow in a BASIC (basic BASIC, not fancy newer BASIC) program ends up looking a lot like that in an assembly one.
- phillipseamore 7y agoReading this was a lot of fun. Great effort!
- cnst 7y agoThis just made me realise that these chargers are probably not running on Free Software. Is it possible to update their firmware? I.e., is there an equivalent of an "update firmware" button anywhere? If so, Richard Stallman would not approve of using these non-free chargers. We should not even mention them, lest anyone would think it's acceptable to use them for anything.
- pinewurst 7y agoNeither do pacemakers. God forbid RMS ever needs an arrhythmia corrected...
- cnst 7y agoBut is updating the firmware a normal function of pacemakers? He makes a distinction on the update-firmware level — if the microwave has no such functionality, then he does not consider it a computer. Look for "microwave" at http://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html http://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html: > As for microwave ovens and other appliances, if updating software is not a normal part of use of the device, then it is not a computer. In that case, I think the user need not take cognizance of whether the device contains a processor and software, or is built some other way. However, if it has an "update firmware" button, that means installing different software is a normal part of use, so it is a computer.
- tinus_hn 7y agoNeither do AEDs which are becoming increasingly connected to the internet. What could possibly go wrong?
- duxup 7y agoI admit I didn't understand much of that but enjoyed reading it none the less. I wonder about the hardware selected for say a charger, is it maybe just that the power (CPU, memory) are just a factor of that being the most cost effective choice and the power (cpu, memory) are far more than a USB charger needs?
- cnst 7y agoI'd guess at one point you simply can't buy anything cheaper than 10MHz? I'm updating my laptop; it'd probably be fully sufficient to have just 16GB DDR4 (I have just 4GB right now, and it ain't that bad), but I can get a 32GB stick for only like 110 USD, so, I might as well go for 32GB to max out the slot and not have to worry about it later on. If the price for 32GB sticks was more like $500, I'd probably not bother (although it'd arguably still be a good investment in our profession here, it's just a little more hard to justify when you know the price will come down relatively soon, and you don't quite need that much RAM in the immediate future anyways).
- duxup 7y agoThat's kinda what I'm assuming. As a chip maker one chip that covers like X use cases might be more powerful than a lot of them need, but it covers all those use cases.
- Palomides 7y agothe cheapest MCU I'm aware of, Padauk PMS150C, $0.03, runs up to 8MHz. Spending a few cents more can get you a lot more speed and features, of course.
- vardump 7y agoI guess – if you don't mind halving your memory bandwidth. Most laptops have two memory channels, so if both are not populated with same size memory module, at least part of the memory range will provide only 50% bandwidth. For memory bandwidth sensitive tasks it can halve performance, although I guess for most workloads the effect is way less, perhaps just 15-20% slowdown.
- dreamlayers 7y agoI find it a bit a bit scary that a microcontroller controls charger voltage. There might be a risk of power glitches or bugs causing output voltages which destroy devices.
- afraca 7y agoI remember there being a guy who reviewed a lot of usb-c cables for compliance (NathanK) having a video on how non-compliant cables can wreck devices: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjeZB12985c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjeZB12985c Maybe that's an example of what you mean?
- Hamuko 7y agoAnd then there's the Nintendo Switch, a black abyss of USB compliance. https://switchchargers.com/safety/ https://switchchargers.com/safety/
- jaclaz 7y agoThe spreadsheet by NathanK is here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vnpEXfo2HCGADdd9G2x9dMDWqENiY2kgBJUu29f_TX8/pubhtml https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vnpEXfo2HCGADdd9G2x9...
- skavi 7y agoSome definitely can. There’s a Google Sheet out there listing many different chargers and their levels of compliance. I only remember that Apple did pretty well.
- hellerfv2 7y agoAuthor here. Thankfully device-side microchips that interface with USB chargers come with overvoltage protection. For example: http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/tps65983b.pdf http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/tps65983b.pdf Devices which charge from wall chargers have to undergo testing for power glitches to obtain FCC certification. I forget the name of the test. Somebody else will know what I'm talking about!
- jedberg 7y agoAnd despite the fact that a wall charger has more compute power than the Saturn V, we can't actually go to the moon today. We've actually lost the ability to go. No one understands how the engines on the Saturn V work anymore. It would take years to tear them apart and analyze them, and most of the original engineers are dead. And the guidance systems would have to be built back up from scratch. Kind of sad if you think about it.
- dennnis 7y agoSpaceX
- pbhjpbhj 7y agoI've long imagined that the situation was not so much can't, as that USA/NASA/people have become more risk averse. It was OK that the people strapped to the top of a Saturn V might die when y'all were fighting to "beat the commies", but to put people on the moon, again, ...? Interestingly, China germinated plants on the moon this year, but that news seems to have been buried in the UK. So getting a payload to the moon, guidance systems and such, isn't the problem.
- ghaff 7y ago>No one understands how the engines on the Saturn V work anymore. That's not really true [1]. Although the project is dead AFAIK a fair bit of work went into reviving the F-1 engine in the early 2010s. >And the guidance systems would have to be built back up from scratch. As with many things, you can't easily replicate complex old artifacts because you don't even have the tools to make the tools to make the tools... No, we couldn't build an Apollo Guidance Computer today. I doubt you could easily get things like rope core memory or just about any of the components. But you wouldn't want to anyway. (The guidance computer would probably be the least of your challenges; this is a pretty well-understood technology and the company that made it is even still around.) [1] https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3724/1 https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3724/1
- segfaultbuserr 7y ago> I doubt you could easily get things like rope core memory or just about any of the components. "Any of the components" is an exaggeration. For example, bipolar transistors are still here, here's the schematics [0] of the switched-mode power supply in the AGC - still perfectly understandable, rebuilding it can a fun weekend project. Also, discrete NOR gates are still around, although the underlying technology is different. > As with many things, you can't easily replicate complex old artifacts because you don't even have the tools to make the tools to make the tools... No, we couldn't build an Apollo Guidance Computer today. I think there's a difference between a 1:1 faithful replication and a replication based on the same architecture and/or principle of operation. While it's difficult to build a 1:1 faithful replication, rebuilding a new one based on the same architecture in general is much easier. So when the original commenter said, "no one understands how the engines on the Saturn V work anymore", I think the point to be made is whether the ideas from the Space Age, e.g. whether the Saturn V architecture has survived, it is not necessarily meant that rebuilding it makes sense - it probably does not. > The guidance computer would probably be the least of your challenges +1. [0] https://www.righto.com/2019/08/reliable-after-50-years-apollo-guidance.html https://www.righto.com/2019/08/reliable-after-50-years-apoll...
- perl4ever 7y agoI note that the Google charger has much lower specs than the others. This is what I would expect from them. I worked for a company that was excited about getting them as a customer for our data processing services. We thought (at least I assume management had high hopes) "wow, Google, they must have tons of data and they will pay us tons of money to deal with it". Nope, they optimized and filtered it to the point where they weren't sending us even 1% of what other customers were. Since they were being charged based on volume.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 7y agoGiven your comment is the top comment, could you clarify if there was any point behind your seemingly irrelevant anecdote other than performing a drive-by dump on Google? Edit: it looks like the user was writing in good faith. I am sorry for over-reacting.
- tinus_hn 7y agoDoesn’t seem like a disparagement, Google comes off as more efficient than expected.
- perl4ever 7y agoTo me, building a charger with a CPU that couldn't make it to the moon is a sign of old-fashioned quality.
- goatsi 7y agoWhy do you see that comment as dumping on Google? I see it as complementing them for taking the time to optimize the hardware rather than just throwing a larger chip at it.
- perl4ever 7y agoObviously Google has a lot of really smart engineers internally, but they still outsource stuff. If you're working in a field that involves data processing, and you are always thinking "this is basically just search, I wonder how Google would do it and why they don't" and then one day you get Google as a customer it realigns your thinking. But then Google turns out to be different from other customers - even when they rely on outside expertise, they seem unusually efficient at it. I think it's interesting not just if you're interested in Google, but to contemplate what the limitations of talent and intelligence are, and how they can be utilized in unexpected ways. And what synergies exist between the people at the very top of a field and those who aren't.
- avianes 7y agoIt would be interesting to also compare the power consumption of the embedded ARM processor in USB-C chargers with the power consumption of AGC (Apollo 11 guidance computer).
- ryanmercer 7y agoWow. I'm a vintage computer enthusiast, specifically Atari, and my beloved Atari 800xl computers only have a 1.79MHz clock speed. I'll never cease to be amazed by technology. I was born in 1985 and our first computer in the house (aside from an Atari 260 and NES) was a machine in 1995 although my computer usage began in 1990 with Apple II variants. My first portable (Game Boy aside) ran Windows CE around 1998ish and my first remotely 'smart' phone was a Treo 650 about 14 years ago. I still get plenty of value out of 8-bit Atari computers yet the USB charger sitting on my desk I'll discard without a thought if it breaks and it has a clock speed 5.5x that of my beloved Atari 800xl computers but the 800xl did come with 64k of memory from the factory so at least there is that, ha. Just looking at how far the technology has come from 1979 (800xl release date) to 2002 is mind boggling. Had you described an Android or iOS phone to me in 1995 I'd have asked "are you writing a science fiction novel?" and now I have 5 of them I use on a daily basis (multiple accounts on a freemium game) and 2 that I carry on my person. It's crazy and wonderful and terrifying and even a little unbelievable.
- ryanmercer 7y ago*to 2020 is mind boggling.
- microtherion 7y agoSure, you could fly to the moon with 4 USB-C chargers. But how would you charge your phone en route?
- jniedrauer 7y ago5 USB-C chargers
- inetknght 7y agoI hear solar panels can give a pretty solid amount of power.
- dokument 7y agootg
- 7952 7y agoHaven't you watched Apollo 13? You would end up needing to power the spacecraft from the phone.
- rawoke083600 7y agoAsking the important questions
- gok 7y agoYeah modern microcontrollers are probably less efficiently used than they could be, but the AGC essentially crashed twice during the lunar landing because it didn't have enough compute available.
- qubex 7y agoThat’s not entirely true. It suffered from a priority inversion.
- dfox 7y agoIt suffered from simple CPU overload, in order to have priority inversion you need to have preemptive multitasking and synchronization primitives. The scheduler on AGC was essentially cooperative. Side note: that is partly what the 90's term “Network Operating System” is about. Both Cisco and Novell managed to market the hell out of the fact that both IOS and Netware are not real multitasking OSes but essentially giant event driven state machines (nice related buzzword: “run-to-completion scheduler”), which they managed to market as being a good thing.
- oldandcold 7y agoIt didn't crash. It behaved as designed. Too much work to do, and the scheduler had to deal with priority problems.
- garaetjjte 7y agoIt ran out of memory for allocating new tasks that were stacking on top of each other, and triggered BAILOUT restart. Navigation continued because it was restart protected by loading state checkpoint from dedicated memory area.
- dave_blob 7y agoThe real fun with the AGC on landing happened on Apollo 14, with a flipped bit in the abort landing flag. Percussive maintenance temporarily flipped the bit back, giving enough time for ground control to develop a hack. Didn't they just ignore the warnings on Apollo 11? And I think it was non synced timing references rather than strictly resource availability that got them on 11
- goodguy1234 7y agoI cannot wait, the day my charger comes with cuda cores or tensor core and my on charger AI modulates my power.
- gowld 7y ago> Program Storage Space Solar System
- ngcc_hk 7y agoWorking a bit now on fpga I wonder whether many even light switch using fpga can be computer for open source coverage.
- ngcc_hk 7y agoIs agc more a microcontroller than a computer. Do they have programmer with idea of circuit (paralkel, device control etc) than “computing”
- Andrew_nenakhov 7y agoWhenever one of my developers tells me that my phone is too slow when their app lags on my Android 4.1 phone, I tell them the specs of Apollo 11 computer and scold them for being unable to deliver a smoothly scrolling list of messages on a freaking supercomputer in my palm.
- thombat 7y agoBut do you also give them a free hand to implement the entire stack below to meet that goal, along with the budgeting advice "waste anything but time"?
- Andrew_nenakhov 7y agoThat is overkill, and in the end they manage to deliver an acceptable results. You see, the problem of app developers, especially in big companies, is that they are given a top-notch smartphones, so they naturally target such hardware as a benchmark for performance, which moves every year. That's why a 2016 Moto Z play smartphone ran smoothly in 2016, but works really slow in 2020 - because all the regular apps (Gmail, Chrome, FB, etc) were updated with newer flagship smartphones in mind. "New build works really fast on my new Pixel 4", the Gmail developer thinks, "ship in to production!"
- masklinn 7y agoHave you considered maybe giving them test phones with the configurations they're supposed to support instead of "scolding" them like misbehaving children because they're apparently working with the phones they have but supposed to magically support phones they don't?
- Andrew_nenakhov 7y agoYes, I had. They all have easy unrestricted access to a variety of 'old' (of the oldest supported OS versions) phones lying on a special shelf in our office.
- 7y ago
- aasasd 7y agoForget AGC: Cypress CYPD4225's clock rate is higher than that of Playstation 1 (48 MHz vs 33). However, I don't see graphics specs here so there's room for growth.
- NegativeLatency 7y agoMight be hard to compare since the PS1 had a custom cpu arch designed specifically for 3D graphics. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_technical_specifications https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_technical_specif...
- masklinn 7y agoClock rate means not very much across architectures, especially when specialised architecture is involved.
- knolax 7y ago> The CYPD4225 is definitely not rated for space. I have no idea if it would work in space. There lays the rub. Even today computers rated for space are relatively underpowered compared to consumer hardware. Comparing the microcontrollers used in USB-C wall warts to the AGC is like saying your car has a higher top speed than a tank. You wouldn't be wrong but you'd also be purposely ignoring some key differences in design goals.
- markshiz 7y agoYes, and the firmware for the USB-C wasn't sewn by hand into the plug (core rope memory). They did this for reliability purposes. It's amazing the craftsmanship that went into much of that rocket by people of all walks of life. http://www.righto.com/2019/07/software-woven-into-wire-core-rope-and.html http://www.righto.com/2019/07/software-woven-into-wire-core-... Here's another great article on the hand-welds on the F1. In only a short amount of time we've outsourced so much of these production tasks to other software/machines. But it's really amazing to contemplate and appreciate what a work of human hands Apollo was. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/f-1-moon-rocket https://www.wired.co.uk/article/f-1-moon-rocket It's hard for me to grasp it, but I can't help but think it beautiful when I meditate on all the _people_ involved in the moon landing, each person playing a small part in a very complex symphony.
- sizzzzlerz 7y agoThere is a scene in From Here to the Moon that takes place after the deaths of the Apollo 1 crew. Frank Borman is testifying before a congressional panel and, in talking about Ed White, he said "At the plant, Ed saw a group of men off to the side so he went over to talk to them, which never happens. It turned out, they were the men who made the tools that build the spacecraft that will take us to the moon". It wasn't just the scientists, engineers, and technicians. Everyone who had a role in the program felt a sense of responsibility and pride in what they did to take these astronauts to the moon and bring them back. It was an amazing time, considering all that was happening at the same time. I feel very fortunate to have been able to witness the whole thing as a kid.
- jballer 7y agoLook up the "Moon Machines" documentary series - it's great storytelling with amazing B-roll. The GNC episode has stuff about the core rope, and the "first stage" episode had the story of the surfers who worked on the tanks.
- wbl 7y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zotaRLROtw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zotaRLROtw "Many stones can form an arch, singly none, singly none". This is one the first songs I learned to perform, along with Somebody Will.
- kazinator 7y agoBut, on its way to the Moon, how would that Cortex M0 fare against cosmic radiation? One bad bit stops the show. The smaller are your transistors, the more they are susceptible to impact from a particle.
- Dylan16807 7y agoThat particular chip, probably badly. But you can buy a rad-hardened M0 with similar specs: https://www.voragotech.com/products/va10820 https://www.voragotech.com/products/va10820 The price is under a thousand dollars, too. NASA's also working on a hardened A53 at ~800MHz, and you can get hardened POWER chips at similar frequencies.
- sansnomme 7y agoOne of the most important things that is left out of most computing narratives is that the early space programs had a tremendous amount of stuff pre-computed, i.e. cached and memoized through the hard work of mathematicians and physicists back on Earth. It is not like these days we don't have to run those numbers, just that our computers taken over most of what used to be done by hand. Noting the amount of human computing manpower taken in conjunction with the guidance system would give a much clearer picture.
- rawoke083600 7y agoInteresting... I wonder what part of those pre-computed numbers is actually now safer because instead of relying on dynamic inputs from sensors(which we have seen, can break, iceover , installed the wrong way around etc)
- xp84 7y agoI'd like to also see an article examining these computing power attributes on the piece of garbage embedded computer on the front of the gas pumps where the lag between registering every keypress is like 800ms, and every screen redraw takes about 2000ms. It takes me an extra 60 seconds to get gas now thanks to how slow these things are, and it is nearly universal despite whether they appear to be 20 year old or new devices. > Car Wash Y/N? (wait) > Loyalty (wait) > Fuel Rewards (wait) > Alt ID (wait) > 0005550000 (wait for the numbers to appear on screen. I bet they run Java.
- JustSomeNobody 7y ago> I bet they run Java Probably Electron apps.
- rasz 7y agoprobably a remote session to node.js app
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jballer 7y agoMaybe California mandates the delay to discourage gas consumption...
- fulafel 7y agoThis could actually be a good mechanism, it disincentivises people of (nearly) all incomes than flat taxes.
- kraig911 7y agoI think they run slower the hotter or colder it is outside.
- kumarvvr 7y agoBut why? It's not like running at 20 MHz is going to produce an exponential amount of heat in the processor. I mean, an ESP32 module runs at about 160 MHz, and using it with a capacitive touch screen almost as smooth as in a mobile.
- overgard 7y agoThis is brilliant and hilarious, but, as a person that cares about this I honestly have no idea what to do. Fighting software waste feels like getting in a fistfight with the ocean or something. I could write everything in C or assembly, I don't even think that notion is crazy, but my client's want javascript. Not that it's even javascripts fault, or any particular languages fault, I just don't know how you convince anyone that maaayybee we could actually take advantage of the hardware in front of us instead of just adding extra waste every 18 months.
- dave_blob 7y agoAs we're in a closed energy loop we're going to have to address this, sooner rather than later. Every starry eyed AI/ML piece has me thinking, yes but where's the power going to come from? And where's the power on top to encrypt all this? And quantum computing? Super-cooling at scale? Aye right pal. The elegance of the AGC and it's approach to computing could provide a good starting point to a solution out of our mess. to quote from a 2004 paper by Don Eyles, one of the AGC programmers: "When Hal Laning designed the Executive and Waitlist system in the mid 1960's, he made it up from whole cloth with no examples to guide him. The design is still valid today. The allocation of functions among a sensible number of asynchronous processes, under control of a rate- and priority-driven preemptive executive, still represents the state of the art in real-time GN&C computers for spacecraft." https://www.doneyles.com/LM/Tales.html https://www.doneyles.com/LM/Tales.html
- axaxs 7y agoNah. I feel a lot like you, and can't wait for the day optimizations matter again. But realistically, fat chance. It's easier and cheaper to hire 50 code monkeys to throw crap at the wall and make something surprisingly functional than it is to hire a few who know how to wrangle bits NES style. And even as processors max out, it's still cheaper to just throw more CPUs at the problem. There will always be niche markets that demand real understanding and skills, but the general 'coder' market is lost for good.
- 7952 7y agoSoftware bloat is a problem. But I am not sure this is really an example of that. I would guess that they used a relatively powerful microcontroller because it was cheaper and easier than implementation using custom or discrete components. And processors have become so ridiculously cheap that it is cheaper to implement features in software than hardware. As a programmer I think that is really exciting. The trend is to use microprocessors for increasingly trivial things. You use that power to implement a UI, or a light bulb, or charger. That is far less important than driving a spac ship. But isn't that true of most things we develop? I agree that the trend towards browser based apps is not always efficient. But the browser does a surprising amount in the background to even out hardware differences. It helps you take advantage of the hardware (like a powerful GPU) without having to worry about specifics. That was never exactly easy in developing a conventional native app on a traditional OS.
- pkaye 7y agoI seem to remember that are additional computers and a whole group of engineers and scientists on the ground to support the smaller AGS in flight. Kind of like cloud computing.
- urda 7y agoIt's wild to see how far our technology has come, I enjoyed the retrospective offered here.
- janpot 7y agoA row that compares the manufacturing cost per unit would make this table complete
- mianos 7y agoThe ARM M0 thumb software divide takes 45 cycles or less. It is still faster than the AGC in terms of clock cycles.
- guggle 7y agoTIL there are cpus in USB chargers. Ain't it crazy ?
- chironjit 7y agoSuper interesting article!