5 ms·
Ask HN: Could you estimate the total number of clock cycles ever run?
I was recently reading about Graham's Number (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham%27s_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham%27s_number) and was pondering large numbers (as much as one can) and I was thinking: would it be possible to estimate the total/cumulative number of clock cycles run on every single microprocessor ever made? Would it be possible to mathematically describe how that number is changing along a time axis?
- sparker72678 6y agoYes, it would be possible.
- dang 6y ago"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- sparker72678 6y agoIt was worth it.
- katzgrau 6y agoYou might find this useful - Fermi problems: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem You could make a rough model based on educated guesses and perhaps not even be that far off the actual number.
- henryfjordan 6y agoYou could try a Fermi approximation: There are 10 billion people * 100 uC chips / person * 10 years of life / uC chip * 10^13 microseconds / year * 1 clock cycle / microsecond = ~10^26 clock cycles
- ladberg 6y agoAs an FYI, any number that is grounded in counting the occurrences of any event across the entire universe and until the end of time won't even come close to Graham's Number and any other "immense numbers" in math.
- thecupisblue 6y agoEven electron interactions?
- ladberg 6y agoIf you take every particle in the universe, let’s say there are 10^100 of them (probably an overestimate of a few orders of magnitude), then say that each one interacts with every other one once every plank time until the end of the universe, you only get around 10^357 events. Graham’s Number is impossible to write out using a powers of literal numbers, so it’s still not even close.
- qntty 6y agoCertainly possible. Just for fun, let's do some quick math. Imagine that we had 100 billion processes running constantly at 10 GHz since ~1970. This would result in ~10^30 clock ticks (10^9 sec * 10^10 ticks/sec * 10^11 processors). That number is child's play compared to numbers like Graham's number. The exponent of Graham's number is so large that it can't be written down. 30 is pretty easy to write down. For comparison there are about 10^80 atoms in the universe. That's still a tiny number compared to Graham's number.
- vipa123 6y agoPretty neat how those orders of magnitude estimates form a straight... 9, 10, 11
- jagannathtech 6y agoa googol
- rmrfstar 6y agoThe single number answer is going to be utterly dominated by the past 5 years, so it's not too difficult to answer. If you wanted a time-series that shows how this number evolves over time, you would end up with a very interesting history of tech book. Something like Milton Friedman's "A Monetary History of the United States." I would buy it / crowd fund it. If all you really want to know is "number of cycles" you should probably research oscillator manufacturers. If you're actually interested in the "volume of compute" you should start with 10K's for Intel and Xilinx, and fan out to their competitors. Use market capitalization over time as a filter for inclusion in your tally, as you can't research every manufacturer.
- skissane 6y agoIf you think Graham’s number is big, Rayo’s number is a lot bigger - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayo%27s_number https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayo%27s_number Rayo’s number is actually a function R(n) where n=googol. You can define much bigger numbers just by using a bigger n, e.g. googolplex. For something even bigger still, you can iterate the function. Think about Rayo’s function iterated Rayo’s number times.