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yCombLinks • yesterday at 1:47 PM • 1 reply • view on HN

Computers are many thousands of times faster and more efficient than they were 50 years ago. Airplanes still fly at the same speeds, and with only marginal safety improvements. Fuel efficiency has doubled however. Overall significantly less changes.


Replies

Leonard_of_Q • yesterday at 2:11 PM

Faster but for the rest basically the same. More megahertz, more megabytes, more transistors per cm2 of silicon, more processors but that's basically it. Von Neumann architecture, processing separated from memory, block/file-based storage, input and output through keyboards and displays.

Yes, this drastically understates the change in computing but the actual technology hasn't changed that much, it just got denser and faster.