Its more powerful than you think especially if you compare to what came before.
Smartphones are synonymous with modern life; we use them for communication, shopping, navigation, and much more. But what if I told you that the slab in your hand could easily, at least in terms of specifications, power an operation to put people on the moon?
Let's attempt to justify that seemingly ludicrous statement by looking back in history and comparing the average specifications of modern smartphones to the famed Apollo 11 guidance system used to put humanity on the moon, with some rough and ready comparisons: CPU: Central Processing Unit, Processes operations, this is the engine of your device. Ram: Random Access Memory, fast memory used to store/retrieve ()read/write) data, this is how your device does loads of things quickly.
Apollo 11 Guidance System
- RAM: 32 Kilobytes (32,768 bits)
- CPU Speed: 0.043 MHz
- Weight: 70 lb (32 kg)
Average smartphones (2019)
- RAM: 6GB RAM (515,396,075,520 bits)
- CPU Speed: Usually Quad or Octa-core at 2.6 GHz
- Weight: Often around 0.330693 lb (0.15 kg or 150g)
The phone in your hand or pocket compared:
- RAM: 1.5 million times more memory
- CPU: 120,000+ times faster, at least
- Weight: 211 times lighter in pounds.
Amazing, right? Your average phone blows the Apollo 11 machine away by a ridiculous margin. However, we largely use our devices for less noble purposes than space travel—mostly arguments, selfies, memes, and cat videos. Imagine what we could do if humanity fully applied itself with our full available computational power.