Computer performance by orders of magnitude

This list compares various amounts of computing power in instructions per second organized by order of magnitude in FLOPS.

Scientific E notation index: 2 | 3 | 6 | 9 | 12 | 15 | 18 | 21 | 24

Hecto-scale computing (10²)

• 2.2×10² Upper end of serialized human through put. This is roughly expressed by the lower limit of accurate event placement on small scales of time (The swing of a conductors arm, the reaction time to lights on a drag strip etc.)
• 2×10² IBM 602 1946 computer.

Kilo-scale computing (10³)

• 9.2×10⁴ Intel 4004 First commercially available full function CPU on a chip 1971
• 5×10⁵ Colossus computer vacuum tube supercomputer 1943

Mega-scale computing (10⁶)

• 1×10⁶ Motorola 68000 commercial computing 1979
• 1.2×10⁶ IBM 7030 "Stretch" transistorized supercomputer 1961

Giga-scale computing (10⁹)

• 1×10⁹ ILLIAC IV 1972 supercomputer does first computational fluid dynamics problems
• 1.354×10⁹ Intel Pentium III commercial computing 1999
• 147.6×10⁹ Intel Core-i7 980X Extreme Edition commercial computing 2010

Tera-scale computing (10¹²)

• 1.34×10¹² Intel ASCI Red 1997 Supercomputer
• 1.344×10¹² GeForce GTX 480 from NVIDIA at its peak performance
• 4.64×10¹² Radeon HD 5970 from ATI at its peak performance
• 5.152×10¹² S2050/S2070 1U GPU Computing System from NVIDIA
• 80×10¹² IBM Watson

Petascale computing (10¹⁵)

Main article: Petascale computing

• 1.026×10¹⁵ IBM Roadrunner 2009 Supercomputer
• 8.1×10¹⁵ Fastest computer system as of 2012 is the Folding@home distributed computing system
• 20×10¹⁵ IBM Sequoia Circa 2011
• 33.86×10¹⁵ Tianhe-2's Linpack performance, June 2013
• 36.8×10¹⁵ Estimated computational power required to simulate a human brain in real time.

Exascale computing (10¹⁸)

Main article: Exascale computing

• 1×10¹⁸ It is estimated that the need for exascale computing will become pressing around 2018
• 1×10¹⁸ Bitcoin network Hash Rate is expected to reach 1 Exahash per seconds in 2016

Zetta-scale computing (10²¹)

• 1×10²¹ Accurate global weather estimation on the scale of approximately 2 weeks. Assuming Moore's law remains constant, such systems may be feasible around 2030.

A zettascale computer system could generate more single floating point data in one second than was stored by any digital means on Earth in first quarter 2011.

Yotta-scale computing (10²⁴)

• 257.6×10²⁴ Estimated computational power required to simulate 7 billion brains in real time.

See also

• Futures studies – 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 – computer mental abilities, especially those that previously belonged only to humans, such as speech recognition, natural language generation, etc.
    • History of artificial intelligence (AI)
    • Strong AI – hypothetical AI as smart as a human. Such an entity would likely be recursive, that is, capable of improving its own design, which could lead to the rapid development of a superintelligence.
  • Quantum computing
    • Timeline of quantum computing
• Moore's law – observation (not actually a law) that, over the history of computing hardware, the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles approximately every two years. The law is named after Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore, who described the trend in his 1965 paper.
• Supercomputer
  • History of supercomputing
• Superintelligence
• Timeline of computing
• Technological singularity – hypothetical point in the future when computer capacity rivals that of a human brain, enabling the development of strong AI — 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 – list of the 500 most powerful (non-distributed) computer systems in the world

External links

• Historical and projected growth in supercomputer capacity