Technology has come a long way. The first computer, the Electronic Numerical Integrator, weighed about 27 tons and occupied a space of 1800ft squared. Despite it's large size, the Electronic Numerical Integrator was only capable of computing 5,000 addition problems a second and consumed over 150 kWats of power. While this may have been a tremendous accomplishment back in 1946, which was the year the first computer was built, in today's day and age, 5,000 calculations a second is pitiful.
The Smartphones and Tablets that we have today are essentially tiny computers. But unlike the first computer, Smartphones and tablets are able to calculate BILLIONS of calculations a second. This just goes to show how far we have advanced in the realm of technology. We have advanced more as a nation in the past 100 years than we had in the past 1000 years. Technology has been growing exponentially and doesn't seem to want to slow down anytime soon.
The world's fastest computer today is able to calculate 33.86 petaflops a second (1 petaflop is equivalent to 1 quadrillion calculations a second.) I have no idea why we would need to calculate so many calculations at any given moment, but the important thing here is that we can!
The world's fastest computer today is able to calculate 33.86 petaflops a second (1 petaflop is equivalent to 1 quadrillion calculations a second.) I have no idea why we would need to calculate so many calculations at any given moment, but the important thing here is that we can!
Although we may not need to calculate petaflops of calculations at a time, there a tons of practical uses for the power that a computer can output. I'm not sure how many calculations a second it takes for this computer to process my typing, but i can assure you that such a task would not have been able to be processed by the first computer. As a whole we have harnessed the power of computers to create things such as Artificial Intelligence, CGI, Video games, Self-Driving Cars, Robots, and so much more.