A brief exploration how far computing has come by comparing a Cray 1 supercomputer with an iPhone 6

In the left corner, we have iPhone 6

  • 2014, 1GB RAM, 115 GFLOPS, 0.129 kgs, 0.5W under heavy usage, $749

In the right corner, we have Cray-1

  • 1975, 64-bit, 1MB RAM, 0.080 GFLOPS, 4990 kgs, 115KW power, $8,000.000

1 iPhone 6, when comparing GFLOPS is roughly equivalent to

  • 1437 Cray-1 supercomputers
  • consuming 165MW of power
  • in Arizona, that would power about 20,320 homes
  • costing $11,496,000,000 (not accounting for inflation)
  • weighing 7,170,630 kgs
  • that is over 55 million iPhone 6s