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Apollo 11 Guidance Computer vs. USB-C Chargers

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Re: Apollo 11 Guidance Computer vs. USB-C Chargers

#51

Post by kinkrtyavimoodh »

perl4ever wrote: post #13

I note that the Google charger has much lower specs than the others. This is what I would expect from them. I worked for a company that was excited about getting them as a customer for our data processing services. We thought (at least I assume management had high hopes) "wow, Google, they must have tons of data and they will pay us tons of money to deal with it". Nope, they optimized and filtered it to the point whe…

Given your comment is the top comment, could you clarify if there was any point behind your seemingly irrelevant anecdote other than performing a drive-by dump on Google?

Edit: it looks like the user was writing in good faith. I am sorry for over-reacting.

Re: Apollo 11 Guidance Computer vs. USB-C Chargers

#52

Post by garaetjjte »

oldandcold wrote: post #39
gok wrote: post #22

Yeah modern microcontrollers are probably less efficiently used than they could be, but the AGC essentially crashed twice during the lunar landing because it didn't have enough compute available.

It didn't crash. It behaved as designed. Too much work to do, and the scheduler had to deal with priority problems.

It ran out of memory for allocating new tasks that were stacking on top of each other, and triggered BAILOUT restart. Navigation continued because it was restart protected by loading state checkpoint from dedicated memory area.

Re: Apollo 11 Guidance Computer vs. USB-C Chargers

#53

Post by ghaff »

bloopernova wrote: post #50
crmrc114 wrote: post #3

This is awesome! The media loves to say your pocketwatch is more powerful than X form $date. This is a fun technical rundown. I think at some point we have to start talking about how far from optimized we are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MenuetOS comes to mind when talking about what can be done in fasm. Are we ever going to get compilers to the point where we can squash things down to that size and efficiency? Is t…

Speaking of fun technical rundowns, I've idly wondered: - Approximately which year's average desktop PC is equivalent to a current Raspberry Pi? - What year's worldwide computing power is equivalent to a current Raspberry Pi? I'm sure folks can come up with other comparisons to make. I know it's not very useful to the world, but it's fun to think of just how much astonishing compute power we have these days.

For the first question, probably somewhere in the mid-2000s. Maybe early Core microarchitecture.

Re: Apollo 11 Guidance Computer vs. USB-C Chargers

#54

Post by tinus_hn »

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #51
perl4ever wrote: post #13

I note that the Google charger has much lower specs than the others. This is what I would expect from them. I worked for a company that was excited about getting them as a customer for our data processing services. We thought (at least I assume management had high hopes) "wow, Google, they must have tons of data and they will pay us tons of money to deal with it". Nope, they optimized and filtered it to the point whe…

Given your comment is the top comment, could you clarify if there was any point behind your seemingly irrelevant anecdote other than performing a drive-by dump on Google? Edit: it looks like the user was writing in good faith. I am sorry for over-reacting.

Doesn’t seem like a disparagement, Google comes off as more efficient than expected.

Re: Apollo 11 Guidance Computer vs. USB-C Chargers

#55

Post by goatsi »

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #51
perl4ever wrote: post #13

I note that the Google charger has much lower specs than the others. This is what I would expect from them. I worked for a company that was excited about getting them as a customer for our data processing services. We thought (at least I assume management had high hopes) "wow, Google, they must have tons of data and they will pay us tons of money to deal with it". Nope, they optimized and filtered it to the point whe…

Given your comment is the top comment, could you clarify if there was any point behind your seemingly irrelevant anecdote other than performing a drive-by dump on Google? Edit: it looks like the user was writing in good faith. I am sorry for over-reacting.

Why do you see that comment as dumping on Google? I see it as complementing them for taking the time to optimize the hardware rather than just throwing a larger chip at it.

Re: Apollo 11 Guidance Computer vs. USB-C Chargers

#56

Post by tinus_hn »

pinewurst wrote: post #7
cnst wrote: post #5

This just made me realise that these chargers are probably not running on Free Software. Is it possible to update their firmware? I.e., is there an equivalent of an "update firmware" button anywhere? If so, Richard Stallman would not approve of using these non-free chargers. We should not even mention them, lest anyone would think it's acceptable to use them for anything.

Neither do pacemakers. God forbid RMS ever needs an arrhythmia corrected...

Neither do AEDs which are becoming increasingly connected to the internet. What could possibly go wrong?

Re: Apollo 11 Guidance Computer vs. USB-C Chargers

#57

Post by zaat »

perl4ever wrote: post #13

I note that the Google charger has much lower specs than the others. This is what I would expect from them. I worked for a company that was excited about getting them as a customer for our data processing services. We thought (at least I assume management had high hopes) "wow, Google, they must have tons of data and they will pay us tons of money to deal with it". Nope, they optimized and filtered it to the point whe…

One is a phone charger, the second is a power bank, the third is a charger for 2 laptops, the fourth is a spacecraft navigation system.

Now, if you'll calculate clock speed per W you'll see that Google charger easly beats the Huawei and the Anker.

Re: Apollo 11 Guidance Computer vs. USB-C Chargers

#58

Post by dave_blob »

gok wrote: post #22

Yeah modern microcontrollers are probably less efficiently used than they could be, but the AGC essentially crashed twice during the lunar landing because it didn't have enough compute available.

The real fun with the AGC on landing happened on Apollo 14, with a flipped bit in the abort landing flag. Percussive maintenance temporarily flipped the bit back, giving enough time for ground control to develop a hack. Didn't they just ignore the warnings on Apollo 11? And I think it was non synced timing references rather than strictly resource availability that got them on 11

Re: Apollo 11 Guidance Computer vs. USB-C Chargers

#59

Post by vardump »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #29
crmrc114 wrote: post #3

This is awesome! The media loves to say your pocketwatch is more powerful than X form $date. This is a fun technical rundown. I think at some point we have to start talking about how far from optimized we are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MenuetOS comes to mind when talking about what can be done in fasm. Are we ever going to get compilers to the point where we can squash things down to that size and efficiency? Is t…

If it can be done efficiently in asm then it can be done in C, C++, perhaps even Rust. But there are sacrifices to be made: unmaintainable “clever” code without clean abstractions.

There are architectures that are just fundamentally C-hostile. Perhaps the most famous one is 6502. No efficient way to implement stack based parameter passing, generic pointer arithmetic, and lots of other bits and pieces.

You can still use C on 6502, it's just not very fast.

I guess you could define another language that mostly looks like C, but built around particular CPU architecture quirks.

Re: Apollo 11 Guidance Computer vs. USB-C Chargers

#60

Post by J5892 »

bloopernova wrote: post #50
crmrc114 wrote: post #3

This is awesome! The media loves to say your pocketwatch is more powerful than X form $date. This is a fun technical rundown. I think at some point we have to start talking about how far from optimized we are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MenuetOS comes to mind when talking about what can be done in fasm. Are we ever going to get compilers to the point where we can squash things down to that size and efficiency? Is t…

Speaking of fun technical rundowns, I've idly wondered: - Approximately which year's average desktop PC is equivalent to a current Raspberry Pi? - What year's worldwide computing power is equivalent to a current Raspberry Pi? I'm sure folks can come up with other comparisons to make. I know it's not very useful to the world, but it's fun to think of just how much astonishing compute power we have these days.

- How many Apollo 11 guidance computers would you need to run Doom?
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