ENIAC was introduced 80 years ago: The first programmable, general-purpose electronic digital computer went into operation on December 10, 1945 [1340x1024]
Posted by absatzfan@reddit | vintagecomputing | View on Reddit | 8 comments
![ENIAC was introduced 80 years ago: The first programmable, general-purpose electronic digital computer went into operation on December 10, 1945 [1340x1024]](https://i.redd.it/e5aneged3xwg1.jpeg)
Squeepty@reddit
I wonder what modern device is it equivalent to in terms of processing power?
Healthy_Article_2237@reddit
A remote control maybe? An alarm clock?
TooManyBulborbs@reddit
Probably none. A Commodore Vic-20 from 1980 at 1MHz can run circles around the computing power of the ENIAC, which could do 5,000 additions every second. A 6502 1MHz does 0.175 MIPS.
Squeepty@reddit
Go Vic-20 !!
G-I-T-M-E@reddit
6507 is also about 0.5 MIPS.
The ENIAC did perform 5000 additions (operations) per second. An M2 processor from Apple performs about 11 trillions operations per second. An M4 processor does about 38 trillion.
It’s probably not really possible to actually grasp the difference between those two. It becomes even more impressive when you consider the form factor and the power usage. The M4 processor is a couple of square millimeters big where the ENIAC filled multiple large rooms. It used approximately 160 kW where an M4 used about 40 watts max.
It’s about 8 billion times faster, several orders of magnitude smaller and the ENIAC consumed 4000 times the power.
Cross_22@reddit
"general-purpose" and "electronic" are the keywords that cause the Zuse Z3 to be excluded which was completed 4 years earlier.
retrocrtgaming@reddit
Same with UK's Collossus...
TooManyBulborbs@reddit
The 5 part PBS series from 1992 “The Machine That Changed the World” opens with the sentence “45 years ago there was one computer”
We’re over 30 years past that PBS series…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_That_Changed_the_World_(TV_series)