Cell Phones and Super Computers There are a lot of articles which refer to the fact the cell phones we carry around today are supercomputers compared to computers in the past. An article which appeared on Wired in 2012 stated our cell phones would be supercomputers in five years. That was six years ago and there are some who say this plateau has been met. The problem with this point of view is they have become supercomputers compared to computers in the past, not in the present. There will always be computers far more powerful than a cell phone which exist at the same time. Things are improving with the phones however and they are becoming not only more powerful, but artificial intelligence is finding its way into them. Most people consider the Cray designed Control Data Corporation CDC 6600 the first supercomputer. It came out in 1964. It gained the title of the world’s fastest computer and held that title until 1969. When it appeared, it was three times faster than the fastest computer available. Cray was a genius. Processors at the time were created to do all tasks. Cray had the main processor in the 6600 only perform math and logic functions and used custom processors for everything else. The machine ran at ten MHz. The Snapdragon processor in smart phones runs at 2.45 GHz. As you can see your little smartphone is running 245 times faster than the first supercomputer. In 1988 the Cray Y-MP supercomputer had a processor speed of 167 MHz. Snapdragon process is almost 15 times faster. When NASA launched the Apollo its processing speed was only a tiny fraction of what a cell phone can do today. Of course, there is more to a supercomputer than just processor speed. A story appeared in 2013 about a man named Alex Ramirez who wanted to build a supercomputer using cell phone processors. He wanted to use them, because they didn’t take much power to run. While the chips were not as powerful as processors used in computers, I think he figured he could use a lot more of them for the same amount of power it would require for computer processing chips. As the chip amounts increase the chips which draw more power get much hotter and the machines also need huge amounts of power to cool them. Sometimes advances can come from the most unlikely places. I remember when the United States stopped Iraq and Saddam Hussein from acquiring hundreds of PlayStations, because it was felt the Iraqi scientists might be able to make a supercomputer from them. In that case I believe they were worried the graphic processors could be cross-purposed into central processing units for a supercomputer. It is hard for us to realize the power we are carrying around with us, since we mostly use our phones for calls, texting and playing games. We have computers in our pockets which are far more powerful than the computers the Atomic Energy Commission and Defense Department used when designing hydrogen bombs and figuring out ways to protect their data. In a mere 75 years or so we have managed to shrink down several large rooms of computer equipment into a pocket size package and make it far more efficient. This is an incredible achievement. I guess one would have to say miniaturization has played a huge part and between this and the advances we have made in electronics and the process used to create computer chips have allowed this to happen. Could it have happened without miniaturization? I don’t believe it could have, because even if more powerful computer chips were created they would have been far to bulky to allow the development of a computer you could fit in your pocket. The development of multipurpose devices has also helped. If we take a cell phone as an example we find we have a phone, camera, a texting device, a GPS and in some cases a projector and sometime these devices can be controlled by our voices and locked by using a fingerprint or eye scan. So as incredible as things look now with our cell phones what is coming next? Experts are predicting our cell phones will disappear in the future. They claim the big tech companies are laying the ground work for this to happen. The companies are working on something called augmented-reality headsets. These project 3D images right into your eye or eyes. The experts are going as far as saying this will replace anything which uses a screen, which means your television has it days numbered also. This headset will replace your entertainment center among other things. This is forecast to happen in the medium term. Looking into the future things will change drastically according to the experts. They believe we will still have to wear something. This is where I disagree with some of them. We may all have implants by then which will project directly in certain parts of our brains. Another thought is an electronic patch which will enable the wearer to do everything we can now do with a cell phone, because the patch will contain special circuits which will beam images directly into the optic nerve and pick up mental commands. Remember this is being worked on today as scientists build connections which work between the human brain and computers. For now, I say enjoy your smart phones they are incredible and when the last ones come out someday, just think about what they will be capable of doing. It could be so far ahead of what we can do today it would blow our minds. |
