36 Years of Technical Innovation | Ben Slivka
Here is a technical comparison of the Control Data Corporation mainframe computer I used at the Northwestern University Vogelback Computing Center in 1978 versus my Google Nexus 6 smart phone that I purchased at a T-Mobile store on 12/15/2014.
| 1978 | 2014 | factor | ||||
| CDC 6400 | computer | Nexus 6 | ||||
| 0.0500 | CPU speed (GHz) | 2.7000 | 54 | |||
| 0.0010 | RAM (Gb) | 3.0000 | 3,000 | |||
| 3.0000 | storage (Gb) | 32.0000 | 11 | |||
| 0.0003 | telecom (Mbps) | 60.0000 | 200,000 | |||
| 10,000 | weight (lb) | 0.4 | 25,000 | |||
| $3,000,000 | cost (US$) | $650 | 4,615 | |||
| 39,876,923,076,923,100,000 | ||||||
The product of all the factors of difference is 3.9 x 10^19.
And note that the CDC 6400 didn’t have GPS, Wi-Fi, LTE, a digital still camera (13mp+2mp), a digital video camera (4K), accelerometer, barometer, magnetometer (compass), ambient light sensor, etc.
And the CDC required dramatically more electricity to operate.