INTRODUCTION: THE IMPORTANCE OF SIGNAL INTEGRITY - Advanced Signal Integrity for High-Speed Digital Design - page 2

Computational capacity of a human brain
100,000,000 MIPS

1.00E + 08 Human

Monkey

1.00E + 05

Pentium 4

Cray 1

Lizard

1.00E + 02

Spider

486DX

386DX

1.00E − 01 Worm

IBM PC
Commodore 64

Univac

Eniac

Apple II

Collosus

1.00E − 04

Monroe
Calculator

1.00E − 07

Hand
Calculation

IBM Tabulator

1.00E − 10

1870 1890 1910 1930 1950 1970 1990 2010 2030 2050
Year

Figure 1-1 Historical computational power and extrapolation into the future. (Adapted
from Moravec [1998].)

number of neurons, he was also able to compare the current state of computer
technology to the estimated computational power of animal brains. These data
points outline a particularly interesting way to examine the history of computa-
tional power while level-setting computer performance against the brainpower of
common animals.
Figure 1-1 plots the computational power for mechanical and electrical com-
puters used over the last 100 years. Some of the more interesting data points are
labeled on the plot, ranging from hand calculation (ca. 1/100,000,000 MIPS) to
the Pentium 4 processor of 2002 (10,000 MIPS), which is only two orders of
magnitude away from the estimated brain power of a monkey (1,000,000 MIPS).
As the plot indicates, computers comparable to the human brain could appear as
early as the 2020s based on the extrapolation of personal computer (PC) perfor-
mance over the last three decades. If the historical data for the entire twentieth
century are used, the time frame is extended to 2050. The predictions get even
more outrageous if we extend the extrapolation to the estimated computational
power of all humans presently on Earth (ca. 6 billion), which would require
6

10 17 MIPS. Such a computer could exist by 2060, as shown in Figure 1-2.
The question is: Can the historical pace of development be sustained? Observa-
tion of the data indicates that the historical trend shows no sign of slowing. In
fact, the rate appears to be increasing.
However, one often encounters articles by knowledgeable people in the com-
puter industry who believe that the trend cannot be sustained and that the decades
of exponential growth must stop. In 1998 it was estimated in such an article that

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