Quantcast
ZME Science
  • News
  • Environment
  • Health
  • Future
  • Space
  • Features
    Menu
    Natural Sciences
    Health
    History & Humanities
    Space & Astronomy
    Technology
    Culture
    Resources
    Natural Sciences

    Physics

    • Matter and Energy
    • Quantum Mechanics
    • Thermodynamics

    Chemistry

    • Periodic Table
    • Applied Chemistry
    • Materials
    • Physical Chemistry

    Biology

    • Anatomy
    • Biochemistry
    • Ecology
    • Genetics
    • Microbiology
    • Plants and Fungi

    Geology and Paleontology

    • Planet Earth
    • Earth Dynamics
    • Rocks and Minerals
    • Volcanoes
    • Dinosaurs
    • Fossils

    Animals

    • Mammals
    • Birds
    • Fish
    • Reptiles
    • Amphibians
    • Invertebrates
    • Pets
    • Conservation
    • Animals Facts

    Climate and Weather

    • Climate Change
    • Weather and Atmosphere

    Geography

    Mathematics

    Health
    • Drugs
    • Diseases and Conditions
    • Human Body
    • Mind and Brain
    • Food and Nutrition
    • Wellness
    History & Humanities
    • Anthropology
    • Archaeology
    • Economics
    • History
    • People
    • Sociology
    Space & Astronomy
    • The Solar System
    • The Sun
    • The Moon
    • Planets
    • Asteroids, Meteors and Comets
    • Astronomy
    • Astrophysics
    • Cosmology
    • Exoplanets and Alien Life
    • Spaceflight and Exploration
    Technology
    • Computer Science & IT
    • Engineering
    • Inventions
    • Sustainability
    • Renewable Energy
    • Green Living
    Culture
    • Culture and Society
    • Bizarre Stories
    • Lifestyle
    • Art and Music
    • Gaming
    • Books
    • Movies and Shows
    Resources
    • How To
    • Science Careers
    • Metascience
    • Fringe Science
    • Science Experiments
    • School and Study
    • Natural Sciences
    • Health
    • History and Humanities
    • Space & Astronomy
    • Culture
    • Technology
    • Resources
  • Reviews
  • More
    • Agriculture
    • Anthropology
    • Biology
    • Chemistry
    • Electronics
    • Geology
    • History
    • Mathematics
    • Nanotechnology
    • Economics
    • Paleontology
    • Physics
    • Psychology
    • Robotics
  • About Us
    • About
    • The Team
    • Advertise
    • Contribute
    • Privacy Policy
    • Contact
No Result
View All Result
ZME Science

No Result
View All Result
ZME Science

Home → Features → Technology → Computer Science & IT

Your smartphone is millions of times more powerful than the Apollo 11 guidance computers

That's the year man first set foot on the moon. Our computer tech has shot even farther away, though.

Tibi Puiu by Tibi Puiu
May 11, 2023
in Computer Science & IT

Image: NASA engineers operating IBM System/360 Model 75 mainframe computers.
Image: NASA engineers operating IBM System/360 Model 75 mainframe computers.

In 1969, humans set foot on the moon for the very first time. It’s really difficult to imagine the technical challenges of landing on the moon more than five decades ago if you’re not a rocket scientist, but what’s certain is that computers played a fundamental role – even back then.

Despite the fact that NASA computers were pitiful by today’s standards, they were fast enough to guide humans across 356,000 km of space from the Earth to the Moon and return them safely. In fact, during the first Apollo missions, critical safety and propulsion mechanisms in spacecraft were controlled by software for the first time. These developments formed the basis for modern computing.

Apollo Guidance Computer, 0.043MHz clock speed. Image: NASA
Apollo Guidance Computer, 0.043MHz clock speed. Image: NASA

Essential to the lunar missions was a now ancient command module computer designed at MIT called the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC). The computer used an operating system that allowed astronauts to type in nouns and verbs that were translated into instructions for their spaceship. To control the hardware, AGC had built-in machine code instructions using a compiler called  Luminary. Here’s how some of the code for the computer looked like when it was used for Apollo 13 and 14.

While it was handy, AGC wasn’t particularly powerful having 64Kbyte of memory and operating at 0.043MHz. In fact, it was less equipped than a modern toaster!

A pocket calculator or even a USB-C charger has more computing power than the best computers used to send astronauts to the moon

Besides AGC, thousands of flight technicians and computer engineers at the Goddard Space Flight Center employed the IBM System/360 Model 75s mainframe computer in order to make independent computations and maintain communication between Earth and lunar landers.

These computers cost $3.5 million a piece and were the size of a car. Each could perform several hundred thousand addition operations per second, and their total memory capacity was in the megabyte range. Programs were developed for the 75s that monitored the spacecraft’s environmental data and astronauts’ health, which were at the time the most complex software ever developed.

nasa computer
Not bad for a computer that could barely run Mario Bros. Image: NASA

Today, however, even a simple USB stick or WiFi router is more powerful than these mainframes, let alone an iPhone. The iPhone 6 uses an Apple-designed 64 bit Cortex A8 ARM architecture composed of approximately 1.6 billion transistors.  It operates at 1.4 GHZ and can process instructions at a rate of approximately 1.2 instructions every cycle in each of its 2 cores. That’s 3.36 billion instructions per second. Put simply, the iPhone 6’s clock is 32,600 times faster than the best Apollo era computers and could perform instructions 120,000,000 times faster. You wouldn’t be wrong in saying an iPhone could be used to guide 120,000,000 Apollo-era spacecraft to the moon, all at the same time.

Computers are so ubiquitous nowadays that even a pocket calculator has much more processing power, RAM, and memory than the state of the art in computing during the Apollo era. For instance, the TI-84 calculator developed by Texas Instruments in 2004 is 350 times faster than Apollo computers and had 32 times more RAM and 14,500 times more ROM.

Even USB-C chargers are faster than Apollo computers. The Anker PowerPort Atom PD 2 runs at ~48 times the clock speed of the Apollo 11 Guidance Computer with 1.8x the program space.

These sort of comparisons aren’t quite fair, though. It’s like making a side by side comparison between the first airplanes designed by the Wright Brothers and an F-18 fighter. Sure, both could fly but the two are, technologically speaking, worlds apart. After all, the iPhone clearly beats even one of the most famous — and a lot more recent — supercomputer that ever existed: IBM’s 1997 Deep Blue supercomputer which beat Garry Kasparov in a historic chess showdown.

With this in mind, one can only awe at the kind of computer power each of us holds at their finger tips. Nevermind we use them for frivolous matters. Imagine what you’ll be holding in your hand (or inside it) 20 years from now.

Was this helpful?


Thanks for your feedback!

Related posts:
  1. Transplant Organizations issue a guidance statement regarding Zika virus
  2. New York makes face masks mandatory, but US guidance remains erratic
  3. Nano-holograms 1,000 times thinner than the human hair pave way for smartphone-generated holograms
  4. 3D stacked computer chips could make computers 1,000 times faster
  5. Atomic-sandwich material could make computers 100 times more energy efficient
Tags: computernasa

ADVERTISEMENT
  • News
  • Environment
  • Health
  • Future
  • Space
  • Features
  • Reviews
  • More
  • About Us

© 2007-2021 ZME Science - Not exactly rocket science. All Rights Reserved.

No Result
View All Result
  • News
  • Environment
  • Health
  • Future
  • Space
  • Features
    • Natural Sciences
    • Health
    • History and Humanities
    • Space & Astronomy
    • Culture
    • Technology
    • Resources
  • Reviews
  • More
    • Agriculture
    • Anthropology
    • Biology
    • Chemistry
    • Electronics
    • Geology
    • History
    • Mathematics
    • Nanotechnology
    • Economics
    • Paleontology
    • Physics
    • Psychology
    • Robotics
  • About Us
    • About
    • The Team
    • Advertise
    • Contribute
    • Privacy Policy
    • Contact

© 2007-2021 ZME Science - Not exactly rocket science. All Rights Reserved.

Don’t you want to get smarter every day?

YES, sign me up!

Over 35,000 subscribers can’t be wrong. Don’t worry, we never spam. By signing up you agree to our privacy policy.

✕
ZME Science News

FREE
VIEW