Thursday, November 3, 2011

Computing power and cost over time

Here's a cool chart at Popular Science that compares the computing power and prices for various types of devices since the 1930s.  For example,
  • your new smartphone is roughly as fast as a minicomputer or server of 1990, and costs $200 rather than hundred of thousands or millions of dollars.
  • at a cost of $499, your iPad2 is faster than anything that existed prior to 1994.
  • a Dell Latitude PC priced at about $2,000 today is faster than anything made prior to 2002, including a Compaq Wildfire server priced at $1.25 million.