Morning everyone,
A twitter user (@kenshirriff) shared this which beautifully illustrates the exponential age.
The ARM1 processor was the first chip of the ARM-family that now powers most non-iPhone mobile phones around the world. It was also really one the first of the commercial RISC chips. RISC stands for “reduced-instruction-set computer.” The RISC design pattern became commonplace in chips over the following 30 years. I first used an Acorn Arm processor in 1987 as an external co-processor to a BBC Model B.
The original ARM1 processor was 7mm wide and used a 5-micrometre process. The M1 is 11mm wide but uses a 5-nanometre process (about 1,000 times more precise).
The transistor density in the M1 is 260,000 times higher than that of the ARM1. Over 35 years this represents a compounded increase in packing density of about 43% or a doubling every two years.
How should we think about this? In essence, the price of computation has collapsed. What was incredibly cheap in 1985 is now hundr…
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