It's over 9000!

[Monroe]

1,000 Trillion to be exact.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/fastest_computer

That's pretty fast. Anyone remember how fast the computer that repaired the ENT Enterprise was? Or how fast some of TOS' computers were? And any wages on how long it'll be before we see one of these guys miniturized for the home market.

[Thorin]

Data could do only do 60 trillion calculations per second, though he had considerably greater hard-disk space, and his head is about 1/100,000 the size of the supercomputer. When making any sort of predictions about the future, people have always underestimated (by quite some distance) our computing power. The amount of increase is exponential, Moore's Law goes into quite some details about it, though that is about the transistor number, which isn't perfectly proportional to computing ability.

[Monroe]

Damn no wonder there were times when Data hesitated. He'd be a comedic relic of a computer by that day and age.

[Mikey]

Yeah, but that computer couldn't screw Denise Crosby.

[Monroe]

Yeah, but that computer couldn't screw Denise Crosby.

It could think of 1,000 Trillion ways to though.

[kostmayer]

It can also run Grand Theft Auto.

[Monroe]

It can also run Grand Theft Auto.

Grand Theft Auto DVI: Cro'nus City.

[stitch626]

So, anyway for me to get ahold of the awesome machine.
I want it.

[Grundig]

I was wondering how a gigaquad in Trek relates to our more conventional measurements. Any clues?

[Thorin]

I was wondering how a gigaquad in Trek relates to our more conventional measurements. Any clues?

Presumably a play on Binary. So either twice as much as normal gigabytes, but more likely a power of what we've got now - either to the 2nd or 4th power of what we've got now. Though those are all guesses, they're reasonably educated and I'd say it's one of those.

[Aaron]

Yeah, but that computer couldn't screw Denise Crosby.

Going by that Ep, if anything got her drunk it could boink her. Too bad Picard didn't send Troi or Crusher to check on her.

[Mikey]

Why... was it sweeps week?

[Monroe]

I was wondering how a gigaquad in Trek relates to our more conventional measurements. Any clues?

Presumably a play on Binary. So either twice as much as normal gigabytes, but more likely a power of what we've got now - either to the 2nd or 4th power of what we've got now. Though those are all guesses, they're reasonably educated and I'd say it's one of those.

Yeah instead of 10^23 Terabyte Computer they'll eventually have to start making new denominations.

[Teaos]

They might stop using bites as the base measurement since it is so small. It would be like counting in atoms when measuring something.

[Monroe]

Yeah that's what I'm thinking. I remember a history program that talked about the very realistic possibility in the next century computers not just equaling human's intelligent but soon surpassing it and not by double or tripple but by billions and trillions times greater than human intelligence. That's mind boggling.