Blown away by modern technology... please explain.

Discussion in 'Bulletin Board' started by Mr Badger, Apr 25, 2019.

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  1. Mr Badger

    Mr Badger Well-Known Member

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    I've just been watching the film Contact on my phone, about 2.5 hours long. I've got another dozen or so 2 to 3 hour long films on the micro sd card.
    Question ... where the hell is this lot stored on such a tiny piece of plastic?
    I imagine there's a very technical answer but my mind doesn't stretch that far but I want to know how it can possibly happen.
    Have a think about it. It's simply mind blowing.
     
    Mr Badger, Apr 25, 2019
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  2. RedStriker

    RedStriker Well-Known Member

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    Great film
     
    RedStriker, Apr 25, 2019
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  3. Old Goat

    Old Goat Well-Known Member

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    Think of it as a miniature TARDIS.
    I'm afraid that's the best I can offer... technology is beyond goats.
     
    Old Goat, Apr 25, 2019
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  4. EdinburghRed

    EdinburghRed Active Member

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    miniaturized memory chips....simples:)
     
    EdinburghRed, Apr 25, 2019
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  5. Red

    RedMonk Well-Known Member

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    What will really blow your mind is look how far tech has come in 30 years. And just think how far it's going to advance in the next 30.
     
    RedMonk, Apr 25, 2019
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  6. Old Goat

    Old Goat Well-Known Member

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    Aye it's a bit scary. I bought my first home computer in 95 and it was about the size of a wheelie bin, with a whopping 538Mb hard drive. I'm chuckling to myself as I'm typing this, cos it just sounds so absurd now :D
     
    Old Goat, Apr 25, 2019
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  7. Mr C

    Mr C Well-Known Member

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    Gramophones still baffle me...:confused:
     
    Mr C, Apr 25, 2019
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  8. Brush

    Brush Well-Known Member

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    When I started in IT at the NCB (1984), the biggest hard drives were only a few Mg, they were about 19"w x 30"d x 10"h and the removable disks were the size of a vinyl LP record. I remember the day when we took delivery of a new computer which had a whole 1Mb of memory....
     
    Brush, Apr 26, 2019
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  9. Bossman

    Bossman Well-Known Member

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    Fax machines still blow my mind
     
    Bossman, Apr 26, 2019
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  10. Can

    Cantley_Tyke Active Member

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    I remember as a teen going from 256mb ram to 512mb, cost a small fortune and my computer went from slow to like brand new.
     
    Cantley_Tyke, Apr 26, 2019
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  11. Mr Badger

    Mr Badger Well-Known Member

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    But... what is one of those and what does it do?
     
    Mr Badger, Apr 26, 2019
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  12. Old Goat

    Old Goat Well-Known Member

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    It remembers stuff... in a really small way.... on a chip-like thingummybob.

    I should probably leave this thread alone.
     
    Old Goat, Apr 26, 2019
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  13. Farnham_Red

    Farnham_Red Administrator Staff Member Admin

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    In the late 1980’s I used to run a mainframe that powered an office of 50 people. It had the financial software used by accounts. The stock control software used by production word processing and in office messaging used by all and simulators used by engineers. It had 16K of ram and 2x180MB disks. The RAM was spread over 4 large 19” circuit boards (2 k each). The hard disk drives were the size of filing cabinet drawers. I still have no idea how so much could be done with so little memory.

    I’m typing this on a phone which has 128Gb of memory and it fits easily in one hand. Amazing what has happened in 30 years.

    To answer the OP it’s down to miniaturisation. The number of transistors that can be created in a silicon chip doubles every 2 years (google Moore’s law if you want detail) due to improvements in manufacturing processes don’t know how you can visualise that though. Just think of it as magic it’s easier
     
    Farnham_Red, Apr 26, 2019
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  14. JamDrop

    JamDrop Well-Known Member

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    You need an ELI5 (Explain Like I’m 5) Reddit thread.
     
    JamDrop, Apr 26, 2019
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  15. jedi one

    jedi one Well-Known Member

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    if you want to blow your mind about tech advances and how fast it happened: 1st powered flight by man;. . . 1st man walks on the moon all in a persons life time
     
    jedi one, Apr 26, 2019
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  16. Tek

    Tekkytyke Well-Known Member

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    First we had valves...vacuum tubes.. then along came the miracle of miniaturisation the transistor ( remember listening to Radio Luxemburg through a single earpiece 'coming and going' late at night under the bedclothes wth my miracle of science 7 transistor!!! Radio. Then came silicon chips which crammed thousand of transistors (now millions) into a small piece of silicon and now they are so complex and miniaturised that they are actually designed by computers since they are far too complex for humans to do so. Given that every computer code boils down to millions of On or Off (0s and 1s) it is mind blowing and makes you wonder how any man could have conceived it. Turing and his co-workers (not to mention his Victorian? predecessor Babbage) were geniuses in the true sense of the word.
     
    Tekkytyke, Apr 26, 2019
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  17. orsenkaht

    orsenkaht Well-Known Member

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    ….and all so we could come on here and argue about brexit, or the merits of Paul Digby!:)
     
    orsenkaht, Apr 26, 2019
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  18. bfc

    bfc1001 Well-Known Member

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    https://igotoffer.com/blog/how-powerful-was-the-apollo-11-computer/amp

    What I find even more amazing is how much was done with such little computing power back in the day where as today we have so much computing power but do very little with it past personal entertainment . Even cold calls are done by computers these days , it's not exactly progress is it .
     
    bfc1001, Apr 26, 2019
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  19. orsenkaht

    orsenkaht Well-Known Member

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    Concorde seemed to have several yards of cockpit space devoted to huge mainframes (I think!). I presume that was analogue gear? I saw an ex-pilot of them say the other day that three standard laptops would do the job now.
     
    orsenkaht, Apr 26, 2019
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  20. Sco

    Scoff Well-Known Member

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    We are hitting the limits of Moores Law by simply shrinking things, which is one of the reasons why chips are now holding multiple cores - can't go much smaller easily, so add more.

    If you really want to worry about things ask why CD/DVD drives only ever got up to about 50x speed - the angular velocity was approaching the speed of sound and it would need Kevlar strengthening to make CDs that could spin faster!!
     
    Scoff, Apr 26, 2019
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