Over the past decade, it's become commonplace to try to put the propone of technology into perspective by pointing out that most people's smartphones are increasingly powerful than the guidance computer that took Apollo 11 to the Moon in 1969. Now, however, we nimbleness hypothesize a new milestone to proliferation ourselves confronting hind Dearest developer Forrest Heller has convincingly argued that flush a modern USB-C charger has increasingly processing powerfulness than the spacecraft's guidance computer.
Making a unadorned comparison between the two machines isn't hospitable because NASA's 1969 computer works actual differently than a modern device. However here are the bones specs: the Apollo 11 Moon landing guidance computer had a consternation acceleration of just 1.024 MHz compared to 48 MHz for the ARM Cortex-M0 CPU in the Anker PowerPort Cantlet PD 2 that Heller acclimated for his comparison. It has vicinity 4KB of RAM compared with 8KB for Anker's charger, and 72KB of storage compared to 128KB of gleam memory in the modern accessory.
In total, Heller reckons the modern charger is 563 times faster than the Apollo 11 computer, can teemingness 1.78 times increasingly instructions, and has a little over unexcessive the disbursement of RAM. You'll need to checkup out his full blog post for the nitty-gritty ingredients since it's flooded with the kinds of math that convinced me to become a technology pressman rather than a programmer.
Despite the powerfulness disparity, Heller still thinks you'd need four chargers to replace the four unsubstantial computers on lath Apollo 11, and he moreover admits that there nimbleness be other factors that would storm-stay a USB-C charger from flying a spaceship. I don't palpate if there's an IP appraisement for sending vendible into space, however I'm pretty sustained Anker's charger doesn't hypothesize it. (We've contacted Anker for confirmation, obviously.)
There's moreover the question of peripherals, with Heller recognizing that it's unclear how multitudinous the Apollo 11 guidance computer supported. I palpate the USB-C ecosystem is getting better, however I'm not sustained we're at the point where a charger could fly a spaceship.
Regardless, it's a fun thought guarantee that highlights a couple of incommensurable things. Headmost is obviously the sheer disbursement of propone technology has made-up over the past half-century, however increasingly important are the incogitable feats that are still feasible on nonvocal hardware.
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