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iPhone 13 Pro And interesting comparison between a Cray-1 Computer, and an iPhone 13
- Thread starter transmaster
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It is truly amazing how far technology has come! One problem with the video, though, my iPhone 13 gets about two days on a full charge.. the video stated 20 hours.
Oh I think we probably have. I’m sure the technology we aren’t allowed to see and know about is amazing.
We have -- a more comparable supercomputer would have been the Cray Y-MP from the late 80's. Even then it was more comparable to the A9 or A10 than what's in an iPhone 13 (these things are always inexact). It's pretty good that a performance-at-all-costs supercomputer from the 90s (that ran ~ $100 M in today's dollars) was reduced to fit in one's pocket for <$1000.
I looked over couple of Crays that was installed in Boulder Colorado in the early 1980's. Not sure what was the model number was, they had 2 of them sitting side by side. What flabbergasted me at the time was it had clear windows looking side. It was filled with a clear liquid that I was told was a triple distilled water with biocide/corrosion inhibitors added. This is not used anymore instead they have coolents like 3M Fluorinert Electronic liquid coolant that do the job for a lot longer time.
I agree we technologically peaked around the 2010-2015 and even then were kind of stagnate. We haven't innovated much.
I think this is just from your perspective. Sure it doesn’t look like we have changed much since 2015 but there’s a difference between 9 years and 45 years. Computing definitely isn’t stagnant. Compare a 2015 MacBook Air vs a 2024 Air. For 9 years that’s a big difference.
Also computing isn’t just laptops and smartphones. From the normie perspective the only difference is “videos” download and play faster with higher resolution. Computers are more than just machines to display images that excite us. We’re about to enter the world of AI and it’s going to be scary and wonderful at the same time.
I mean put this into perspective Mac OS is basically 90% of the same experience as 2004 (super ahead of its time) and iOS is largely same experience since 2015. When I was a kid we went from a completely analog based technology to entirely digital. We haven’t had that kind of quantum jump in a long time. The early 90s were radically different than the mid and late 90s. We’re still using 2010 and early 2000 originating technologies.
Might have been the 1A, S/N 3. Moved to Wyoming and on display a couple of years back.
CRI Cray-1A S/N 3 | Computational and Information Systems Lab
Then again, NCAR had a ton of Crays.
NCAR supercomputing history | Computational and Information Systems Lab
Seem to recall that there was/is a Cray on display in the NCAR Boulder lobby as well.
It’s coming with AI. It’s been getting there but you’re just unaware of it. Sure a webpage is a webpage so to you there’s nothing different but the power of computer hardware has significantly increased. How we interact with the hardware is catching up.
I think that’s because Windows and the internet was out to the average consumer
Well the car you drive is based on technology that’s over 100 years old. That doesn’t mean it’s the same thing
Wishful thinking. Ai is not going to modify the GUI but will revolutionize data basing and create plan language searches. Also your analogy of comparing a car from a 100 years ago to today is flawed and an over simplification. Comparing an iPad or iPhone from today to one from 10-12 years ago is largely the same experience just a bit faster and with better battery life.
You were also comparing a Mac from today to a Mac from 2004. Not largely the same experience. Similar in some ways but not even close overall.
You’re confusing a LLM with AI. It’s completely understandable because when you ask about AI most people think ChatGPT. It’s so much more than that and if you’re alive 20 years from now you’ll see it. It’s going to be the next major leap in computing.
Your comparative was unrealistic and mine is more grounded in reality. In a 100 years if you put a 2004 iBook next to a 2024 mba people will identify it as nearly the same thing.
That doesn’t even make sense. I was comparing them based on current time. In 100 years people won’t even know about them.
In a 100 years they’ll be viewed nearly the same just like they do 20 years apart. The technology is basically the same principles. A car of a 100 years ago and today aren’t even comparable. They’re entirely different beasts.
You’re basing this comparison on a mental image of what you think it’s going to be like in 100 years. It’s based on a fantasy. You can only compare them based on what we know now not some future that we have no clue how it’s going to be.
I’ve been working on a project that uses an embedded single board computer. It is a 6-core Arm64 like the Apple silicon SoCs. The good part is that we are using web-technologies for the UI. JavaScript and ReactJS and the single board computer runs a browser based on WebKit and WebKit’s JavaScript engine.
This means I can run the same UI code on the embedded system and on my M3 MacBook Air. I can tell you that the speed difference is remarkable. The embedded system is using Arm cores from 2016 and 2013 (2 CoreTex A72s and 4 CoreTex A53s respectively).
The board is fine for the product but if you had to run these as your personal computer you wouldn’t think that technology has peaked since 2010. It clearly has improved immensely.
What’re the interesting ones? I mean, tech is always improve, and the comparison is about 50 years back.
I grew up in the age of the Walkman if any of you even know what that is, here we are 50 years later able to hear virtually any song ever recorded on the go through our phones.
lol - yeah, being in my eighth decade, I remember being excited on the upgrade to cassettes from 8-track players.
Yes it’s improved but only incrementally. I went from an entirely analog era to a completely digital life from the time I was born to around 10. You just don’t see that kind of progress is what I’m getting to. New technology kept dropping and innovation was high. Tech companies haven’t released a technological leap since the first iPhone.