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This USB-C Charger’s Chip is More Powerful Than the Apollo 11 Flight Computer

posted by Fnord666 on Monday February 17 2020, @04:06AM   Printer-friendly

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for carny:

This USB-C Charger's Chip Is More Powerful Than the Apollo 11 Flight Computer:

As we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the moon landing last year, the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) became a particularly juicy target. The analysis, of course, showed just how much more powerful the chips used in common smartphones are than the computers that got us to the moon. Not too shocking, but amazing nonetheless.

For fun, Forrest Heller, a software engineer at Apple who previously worked on Occipital's Structure 3D scanner, thought he'd cast around for a different comparison. How would far more basic chips, say, the ones in USB-C chargers, compare to the AGC?

Heller took a deep and detailed look and came to a fairly startling conclusion—even these modest chips can easily go toe-to-toe with the computer that got us to the moon.

[...] Now, this isn't to slander the Apollo Guidance Computer [(AGC)]. Not at all. The AGC was amazing.

Without the AGC, no human pilot could have kept the Apollo spacecraft on course to the moon and back. Probably most incredible was how much it did with how little. You might say a USB-C charger is the opposite: Notable for how little it does with how much.

And that's really the point, isn't it?

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday February 17 2020, @05:09AM (5 children)

    by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Monday February 17 2020, @05:09AM (#959034) Journal

    Almost every new computer is more powerful. Your car has a more powerful computer, likely multiple of them. The crappy PineTime [pine64.org] which is orders of magnitude slower than Apple Watch is more powerful than the AGC.

    Next in line could be nanobots. Trillions of individual disposable injectable nanobots, each more powerful than the Apollo Guidance Computer so they can scan things and zap them with lasers.

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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by legont on Monday February 17 2020, @06:14AM

    by legont (4179) on Monday February 17 2020, @06:14AM (#959056)

    Yeah, I can see Chineese made bots in my blood stream reacting to the US sanctions.

    --
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  • (Score: 2) by Mer on Monday February 17 2020, @08:27AM (1 child)

    by Mer (8009) on Monday February 17 2020, @08:27AM (#959074)

    And despite all that text editors still manage to take ages to open.

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    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 19 2020, @04:27AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 19 2020, @04:27AM (#959787)

      > text editors still manage to take ages to open.

      Really? I use microEmacs and it's open instantly. And I'm using an ancient Win7 laptop.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @10:07PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @10:07PM (#959315)

    Trillions of individual disposable injectable nanobots, ... so they can scan things and zap them with lasers.

    Traditionally, those would be sharks.
    But I find trillions of sharks hardly injectable.
    Do you think you can change the zapping mechanism?