Apollo 11 Vs iPhone

Fifty years on from the Apollo moon landing, computing power continues to leap ahead exponentially. According to Graham Kendall’s estimates, today’s iPhones are approximately 120 million times faster in terms of raw processing power compared to Apollo guidance computers used during that era.

The iPhone features a processor comprised of 1.6 billion transistors that is capable of processing 3.36 billion instructions per second – 120 million more than what was possible on Apollo computer! Furthermore, its memory capacity has reached up to 512GB ROM!

Size

Size-wise, the difference is astounding. The Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) was an enormous component weighing 70 pounds and taking up nearly an entire cubic space within its respective Apollo spacecraft. Conversely, modern iPhones now weigh just 5 ounces and can fit easily in your pocket – testament to how far technology has come since then!

As well as being considerably smaller, modern smartphones boast far more memory than the Apollo 11 computer (AGC). While AGC had only 32,768 bits of RAM (34,359,738,368 bits), modern iPhones can have up to 4GB (34,359,738,368 bits). Furthermore, modern iPhones may contain as much as 512GB ROM space – seven million times more than what AGC could manage!

Even more impressively, modern iPhone processors are much faster than those found in AGCs; its processor ran at only 0.043 MHz while new iPhones boast speeds of 2490 MHz – more than 100,000 times faster!. Your phone could help us land on the moon 50 years later!

Weight

As the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11’s moon mission nears, publications are exploring how far technology has advanced over the decades. Their results illustrate just how far computers and smartphones have come since then.

Modern smartphones are much faster than the Apollo 11 computer. While Apollo’s computer only had 72KB of read-only memory (ROM), iPhone’s currently offer up 512GB ROM space and can store millions of times more information than what Apollo had available to it.

Speed differences become even more stark when comparing smartphone processing power with that of Apollo 11 computer, which ran at just 0.043 MHz while recent iPhone processors estimated at running 2490 MHz – over 100,000 times greater processing power! This makes your smartphone an invaluable addition to your pocket!

From 70 pounds for the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) to 5 ounces in today’s smartphones is testament to how far computing has come. The AGC was constructed of materials like aluminum and comprised thousands of integrated circuits – these components made it both robust and reliable, but contributed significantly to its massive size and weight.

Modern smartphones are increasingly small and built using lightweight yet resilient materials like titanium and glass, which helps lower weight while simultaneously decreasing power consumption – two factors critical when sending spacecraft into orbit. A significant decrease in weight means additional scientific tools or crew members can be carried on board the craft.

Power

Apple software developer Forrest Heller estimates that the CPU in a USB-C charger currently powering your phone is 563 times faster than Apollo 11 Guidance Computer (AGC).

Speed alone isn’t enough; while AGC was designed for simple tasks, smartphones now perform complex calculations on multiple cores for applications like Augmented Reality and Machine Learning that would take an eternity for AGC to process even if its processing power were unlimited.

To make an accurate comparison, memory should also be taken into account. The AGC had just 72KB of read-only memory while modern iPhones can hold 4 gigabytes – that’s over one million times more storage than the computer that sent astronauts to the moon!

Processing power for the AGC was measured at 0.043 MHz; on the other hand, iPhone’s A15 chip runs at 3.23 GHz – 120 million times faster than the computer that helped us land on the moon!

The AGC also had one significant advantage that modern smartphones do not: it was virtually crashproof. Utilizing a hierarchical structure for computer control and energy distribution, similar to that used on board Apollo spacecraft, modern smartphones typically utilize an operating system which constantly monitors hardware and allocates energy accordingly; making it less likely for crashes like AGC had on an important mission such as mankind’s space exploration mission.

Memory

While a modern smartphone might make the computer that sent astronauts to the moon seem primitive in comparison, it’s worth remembering its mission wasn’t easy: 300,000 technicians took eight years and cost $25 billion, with Armstrong and Aldrin’s lives resting on few lines of pioneering code.

Code was implemented into the system using something called rope memory, which employed copper wires wrapped around magnetic cores to represent ones and zeroes. After printing on punch cards and visually inspecting for mistakes, these wires were wove together into what essentially became read-only hardware – capable of withstanding radiation’s harsh environment in space. This form of memory proved very durable.

At its time, the Apollo Guidance Computer only had 72KB of ROM and 128KB of RAM. By comparison, modern iPhones can contain up to 4GB of RAM, or 34,359,738,368 bits – that’s over one million times what AGC had! Plus it offers seven times more storage capacity.

The AGC had an extremely modest processor running at only 0.043 MHz; by contrast, the latest iPhone can reach speeds up to 2,490 MHz; that represents 100,000 times greater processing power according to science publication ZME Science.

Equipping Apollo 11 with modern technologies would have significantly increased its efficiency, allowing it to complete tasks that took AGC minutes in mere seconds and more easily adapt to unexpected changes and challenges during its mission.

Code

When discussing Apollo 11 versus iPhone, it can be challenging to compare a smartphone to the complex computer system that sent Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on their journey to the moon. The Apollo computer was specifically built for spaceflight with features like radiation-hardened components and vacuum operations capability.

Programming of this computer was truly astounding, comprising 145,000 lines written in AGC4 assembler language and carefully designed to fulfill numerous functions including trajectory calculations and engine burns with limited resources. Even its storage system used copper wires woven together in lengths that passed around magnetic cores representing binary ones and zeros for read-only storage purposes – an ingenious idea called rope memory!

Modern smartphones possess far greater processing power than the Apollo computers used on the lunar mission and can handle many functions they weren’t designed to manage; but that doesn’t make modern devices more powerful; rather they simply serve different purposes and operate at larger scales.

ZME Science notes that while AGC processor ran at just 0.043 MHz, while an iPhone operates with 2,490 MHz; that difference of over 100,000 times may seem staggering but shouldn’t be taken to be all that astounding when considering that the AGC was designed specifically to perform highly-specialized tasks and was thus highly optimized. Modern smartphones feature multicore processors capable of processing hundreds of billions of instructions every second.