Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (4570 mails)

[Darryl Gregorash <raven@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 11/20/2005 10:51 AM, Tasana Computers wrote:
>> <snip>
>1GB in computer memory is = to 1,073,741,824 so there for
>4x1,073,741,824 = 4,294,967,296
>1GB does not =1,000,000,000 as some think when applied to computer
>memory. 
Only because we failed to shoot the very first person who said it in public.

Now, I have a couple of very serious questions for you: you allege
K=1024, M=1048576 and G=1073741824 when it comes to computers.

Question 1: is a teraflop 2^40 flops, 10^12 flops, or one million times
2^20 flops? I really want to know, because I just read about a Linux
cluster that IBM built very recently, that is capable of 176 teraflops;
they say it is the fastest of its kind in the world, nearly by a factor
of 2, and I really want to know just how fast "fast" is.

Question 2: The inverse of "giga" is "nano", and I have heard of new
transistors having a 2 nm (nanometer) boundary at the P-N interface
layer. Would that be 2 times 10^-9 meters, or would it be 2^-29 meters?
Getting this question right is critical, because it has a direct bearing
on your answer to question 1.

Oh, what the heck, I'll give you the bonus question now. My CPU is
(nominally) rated at 400 MHz. Is that 400*10^6 Hz, or is it 100*2^22 Hz?