3 ms·
A Cray X-MP could only do 800 flops. Even a first gen i7 is many orders of magnitude better than that.
by eggsome 6y ago
A Cray X-MP could only do 800 flops.
Even a first gen i7 is many orders of magnitude better than that.
- Retric 6y agoThat’s 800 Megaflops not flops. First an i7 920 is up to 54,000 megaflops vs a cray X-MP at 800 MFlops X minutes on a first gen i7 is ~1.1 hours in terms of pure flops. However, that i7’s architecture has many compromises that tend to make it significantly less efficient. Newer i7’s have significantly more power, but it’s still few minutes > Y hours not days or anything.
- needle0 6y agoThough not many people would've had have access to a Cray X-MP back in its time, and certainly not to use it for compression in creating a hobbyist Apple II demo that's not expected to generate any profit. Again, possible in theory, but impractical in its day and age.
- Retric 6y agoThat’s fair, but if we assume hardware stalls for say 1,000 years you get a different ROI from computer investments. 6 hours on a 30 million dollar supercomputer that lasts for 20 years is ~1,000$ worth of it’s lifespan + electricity costs etc. Over time you can expect various people to have made such investments and historic examples would still be valuable on “modern” hardware.