Re: old power, Short Vectors Versus Long Vectors

According to Thomas Koenig  <tkoenig@netcologne.de>:

It wouldn't surprise
me to discover the energy consumption of just the servers in
Amazon Web Services datacenters exceeds the 1950s total, and
that's only AWS (reportedly more than 1.4 million servers).

>
https://smithsonianeducation.org/scitech/carbons/1960.html states
that, in 1954, there were 15 computers in the US.  That seems low
(did they only count IBM 701 machines?), but it reportedly went up to
17000 in 1964.

Wikipedia lists 18 UNIVACs shipped by 1954 so that's certainly low.
With the 702, the ERA machines and the one-offs like JOHNNIAC I'd
guess the number was more like 50, but soon increased with multiple
IBM 704 and 650 machines starting in 1954.

Even if you put the number of computers at 100 for the mid-1950s, at
100 kW each, you only get 10 MW of power when they ran (wich they often
didn't; due to maintenance, these early computers seem to have been
day shift only).

The 650s at leat ran all night. Alan Perlis told me some amusing
stories of tripping in the dark over sleeping grad student wives who
were holding their husbands' place in line for the 650 in the middle
of the night. They soon made the scheduling more humane.


--
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John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
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