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On Mon, 2005-11-21 at 08:12 -0600, Darryl Gregorash wrote:
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?
You have taken a quantum leap beyond my little understanding. In preparing for my test base 2 and base 16 and the above were the hardest for me to grasp. I still have so trouble with it. it is something I will need to spend time on one of these days. The figures involved with computers are like those with space, iAU is an awesome amount a light year and light speeds are hard to explain. and it took a long time for my mind to absorb that. in time I will grasp all the above. I could Google it but it would not be my answers.