This list compares various amounts of computing power in instructions per second organized by
order of magnitude in
FLOPS.
__TOC__
Deciscale computing (10−1)
* 5×10
−1: Computing power of the average human mental calculation for multiplication using pen and paper
Scale computing (100)
* 1 OP/S: Power of an average human performing calculations using pen and paper
* 1 OP/S: Computing power of
Zuse Z1
* 5 OP/S: World record for addition set
Decascale computing (101)
* 5×10
1: Upper end of serialized human perception computation (light bulbs do not flicker to the human observer)
Hectoscale computing (102)
* 2.2×10
2: Upper end of serialized human throughput. This is roughly expressed by the lower limit of accurate event placement on small scales of time (The swing of a conductor's arm, the reaction time to lights on a drag strip, etc.)
* 2×10
2:
IBM 602 1946 computer.
Kiloscale computing (103)
* 92×10
3:
Intel 4004 First commercially available full function
CPU
A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, and ...
on a chip, released in 1971
* 500×10
3 Colossus computer vacuum tube
A vacuum tube, electron tube, valve (British usage), or tube (North America), is a device that controls electric current flow in a high vacuum between electrodes to which an electric voltage, potential difference has been applied.
The type kn ...
supercomputer 1943
Megascale computing (106)
* 1×10
6: Computing power of the
Motorola 68000
The Motorola 68000 (sometimes shortened to Motorola 68k or m68k and usually pronounced "sixty-eight-thousand") is a 16/32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessor, introduced in 1979 by Motorola Semiconductor Products Sect ...
commercial computer introduced in 1979. This is also the minimum computing power of a Type 0
Kardashev civilization.
* 1.2×10
6:
IBM 7030 "Stretch" transistorized supercomputer 1961
Gigascale computing (109)
* 1×10
9:
ILLIAC IV 1972 supercomputer does first
computational fluid dynamics
Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is a branch of fluid mechanics that uses numerical analysis and data structures to analyze and solve problems that involve fluid flows. Computers are used to perform the calculations required to simulate t ...
problems
* 1.354×10
9:
Intel Pentium III commercial computing 1999
* 147.6×10
9:
Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition commercial computing 2010
Terascale computing (1012)
* 1.34×10
12:
Intel ASCI Red 1997 Supercomputer
* 1.344×10
12 GeForce GTX 480 in 2010 from Nvidia at its peak performance
* 4.64×10
12:
Radeon HD 5970 in 2009 from
AMD (under ATI branding) at its peak performance
* 5.152×10
12:
S2050/S2070 1U GPU Computing System from Nvidia
* 11.3×10
12 :
GeForce GTX 1080 Ti in 2017
* 13.7×10
12:
Radeon RX Vega 64 in 2017
* 15.0×10
12:
Nvidia Titan V in 2017
* 80×10
12:
IBM Watson
IBM Watson is a question-answering computer system capable of answering questions posed in natural language, developed in IBM's DeepQA project by a research team led by principal investigator David Ferrucci. Watson was named after IBM's founder ...
* 170×10
12:
Nvidia DGX-1 The initial Pascal based DGX-1 delivered 170 teraflops of half precision processing.
* 478.2×10
12 IBM
BlueGene/L
Blue Gene is an IBM project aimed at designing supercomputers that can reach operating speeds in the petaFLOPS (PFLOPS) range, with low power consumption.
The project created three generations of supercomputers, Blue Gene/L, Blue Gene/P, ...
2007 Supercomputer
* 960×10
12 Nvidia DGX-1 The Volta-based upgrade increased calculation power of
Nvidia DGX-1 to 960
teraflops.
Petascale computing (1015)
* 1.026×10
15:
IBM Roadrunner 2009 Supercomputer
* 1.32×10
15:
Nvidia GeForce 4000 Series RTX4090 Consumer graphics card, achieves 1.32 petaflops in AI applications, October 2022
* 2×10
15:
Nvidia DGX-2 a 2 Petaflop Machine Learning system (the newer
DGX A100 has 5 Petaflop performance)
*10×10
15 (10
16): Minimum computing power of a Type I Kardashev civilization
* 11.5×10
15:
Google
Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
TPU pod containing 64 second-generation TPUs, May 2017
* 17.17×10
15:
IBM Sequoia's LINPACK performance, June 2013
[ ]
* 20×10
15: Roughly the hardware-equivalent of the human brain according to Kurzweil. Published in his 1999 book: The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence
* 33.86×10
15:
Tianhe-2's LINPACK performance, June 2013
* 36.8×10
15: Estimated computational power required to ''simulate'' a human brain in real time.
* 93.01×10
15:
Sunway TaihuLight
The Sunway TaihuLight ( ''Shénwēi·tàihú zhī guāng'') is a Chinese supercomputer which, , is ranked fourth in the TOP500 list, with a LINPACK benchmark rating of 93 petaflops. The name is translated as ''divine power, the light of Taihu Lak ...
's LINPACK performance, June 2016
[http://top500.org/list/2016/06/ Top500 list, June 2016]
*143.5×10
15:
Summit's LINPACK performance, November 2018
Exascale computing (1018)
* 1×10
18: The U.S. Department of Energy and NSA estimated in 2008 that they would need exascale computing around 2018
* 1×10
18:
Fugaku 2020 supercomputer in single precision mode
* 1.1x10
18:
Frontier 2022 supercomputer
* 1.88×10
18: U.S. Summit achieves a peak throughput of this many operations per second, whilst analysing genomic data using a mixture of numerical precisions.
* 2.43×10
18 Folding@home distributed computing system during
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identified ...
response
Zettascale computing (1021)
* 1×10
21: Accurate global weather estimation on the scale of approximately 2 weeks. Assuming
Moore's law remains applicable, such systems may be feasible around 2035.
A zettascale computer system could generate more single floating point data in one second than was stored by any digital means on Earth in the first quarter of 2011.
Beyond zettascale computing (>1021)
*1.12×10
36: Estimated computational power of a
Matrioshka brain, assuming 1.87×10
26 watt
The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantify the rate of energy transfer. The watt is named after James Wa ...
power produced by solar panels and 6
GFLOPS/watt efficiency.
*4×10
48: Estimated computational power of a Matrioshka brain whose power source is the
Sun, the outermost layer operates at 10
kelvin
The kelvin, symbol K, is the primary unit of temperature in the International System of Units (SI), used alongside its prefixed forms and the degree Celsius. It is named after the Belfast-born and University of Glasgow-based engineer and ph ...
s, and the constituent parts operate at or near the
Landauer limit and draws power at the efficiency of a
Carnot engine
*5×10
58: Estimated power of a
galaxy
A galaxy is a system of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas, dust, dark matter, bound together by gravity. The word is derived from the Greek ' (), literally 'milky', a reference to the Milky Way galaxy that contains the Solar Sys ...
equivalent in luminosity to the
Milky Way
The Milky Way is the galaxy that includes our Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked ey ...
converted into Matrioshka brains.
See also
*
Futures studies
Futures studies, futures research, futurism or futurology is the systematic, interdisciplinary and holistic study of social and technological advancement, and other environmental trends, often for the purpose of exploring how people will l ...
– study of possible, probable, and preferable futures, including making projections of future technological advances
*
History of computing hardware (1960s–present)
*
List of emerging technologies – new fields of technology, typically on the cutting edge. Examples include genetics, robotics, and nanotechnology (GNR).
**
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machine
A machine is a physical system using Power (physics), power to apply Force, forces and control Motion, moveme ...
– computer mental abilities, especially those that previously belonged only to humans, such as
speech recognition
Speech recognition is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and computational linguistics that develops methodologies and technologies that enable the recognition and translation of spoken language into text by computers with the ma ...
,
natural language generation, etc.
***
History of artificial intelligence (AI)
***
Strong AI
Strong artificial intelligence may refer to:
"Strong Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an artificial intelligence that constructs mental abilities, thought processes, and functions that are impersonated from the human brain. It is more of a phil ...
– hypothetical AI as smart as a human.
**
Quantum computing
Quantum computing is a type of computation whose operations can harness the phenomena of quantum mechanics, such as superposition, interference, and entanglement. Devices that perform quantum computations are known as quantum computers. Thou ...
***
Timeline of quantum computing and communication
This is a timeline of quantum computing.
1960s 1968
* Stephen Wiesner invents conjugate coding. (published in ACM SIGACT News 15(1):78–88)
1970s
1970
* James Park articulates the no-cloning theorem.
1973
* Alexander Holevo pu ...
*
Moore's law – observation (not actually a
law) that, over the
history of computing hardware
The history of computing hardware covers the developments from early simple devices to aid calculation to modern day computers. Before the 20th century, most calculations were done by humans.
The first aids to computation were purely mechan ...
, the number of
transistor
upright=1.4, gate (G), body (B), source (S) and drain (D) terminals. The gate is separated from the body by an insulating layer (pink).
A transistor is a semiconductor device used to Electronic amplifier, amplify or electronic switch, switch ...
s on
integrated circuits doubles approximately every two years. The law is named after Intel co-founder
Gordon Moore
Gordon Earle Moore (born January 3, 1929) is an American businessman, engineer, and the co-founder and chairman emeritus of Intel Corporation. He is also the original proponent of Moore's law.
As of March 2021, Moore's net worth is re ...
, who described the trend in his 1965 paper.
*
Supercomputer
**
History of supercomputing
*
Superintelligence
*
Timeline of computing
*
Technological singularity
The technological singularity—or simply the singularity—is a hypothetical future point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unforeseeable changes to human civilization. According to the m ...
– hypothetical point in the future when computer capacity rivals that of a human brain, enabling the development of
strong AI
Strong artificial intelligence may refer to:
"Strong Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an artificial intelligence that constructs mental abilities, thought processes, and functions that are impersonated from the human brain. It is more of a phil ...
— artificial intelligence at least as smart as a human.
** ''
The Singularity Is Near'' – book by
Raymond Kurzweil dealing with the progression and projections of development of computer capabilities, including beyond human levels of performance.
*
TOP500
The TOP500 project ranks and details the 500 most powerful non- distributed computer systems in the world. The project was started in 1993 and publishes an updated list of the supercomputers twice a year. The first of these updates always coinc ...
– list of the 500 most powerful (non-distributed) computer systems in the world
References
External links
Historical and projected growth in supercomputer capacity
{{DEFAULTSORT:Orders Of Magnitude (Computing)
Computing
Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and development of both hardware and software. Computing has scientific, ...
*