Addendum 2: Digital cameras versus the Space Shuttle
I make the comment all the time, “Your digital camera has more computing power than the space shuttle! Is that true? Let’s look at the facts:
Space Shuttle: | Camera: |
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Computer: |
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Computer is a hardened derivative of the | Most use an advanced RISC processor, 80 |
IBM 360 mainframe, first introduced in | MHz, with one operation per clock. |
1964. | 80,000,000 operations per second |
480,000 operations per second | Advantage Camera: 166x |
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Memory: |
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700 Kbytes core memory | Internal: 32 Mbytes |
| Card: 128 Mbytes |
| Advantage Camera: 228x |
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Cost: |
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$5 billion development, Minimum | $150 - $600 (2004 dollars) or more |
$113,000 (1964 dollars) each. |
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