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If you were to add up all transistors fabricated worldwide, up until <year>, such that total roughly matches the # on this beast, what year would you arrive? He
by RetroTechie 3y ago
If you were to add up all transistors fabricated worldwide, up until <year>, such that total roughly matches the # on this beast, what year would you arrive? Hell, throw in discrete transistors if you want.
How many early supercomputers / workstations etc would that include? How much progress did humanity make using all those early machines (or any transistorized device!) combined?
- itishappy 3y agoRough guess: mid 1980s 4004 from the 1970s used 2300 transistors, so it would have needed to sell billions. Pentium from 1990s had 3M transistors, so it could hit our target by selling a million units. I'm betting (without much research) that the Pentium line alone sold millions, and the industry as a whole could hit those numbers about 5 years earlier.