The Compactness of Electronics

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Back in the time when computers had just been invented, people fantasized in science-fiction movies about computers in the future (or what is now the present). What they never would have guessed was that computers would be MUCH more compact today. Take for example- iPods. When they first came out, they were about the size of a deck of cards. They are white and now hold 20, 40, or 60 gigabytes, more than many computers. They were designed to hold music downloaded from iTunes on your computer.
Then iPod mini came out, about the size of a business card. They hold 4 gigabytes and come in five colors: gold, silver, pink, blue, and green. Then they came out with iPod Photo, holding not only music on its 40 or 60 gigabyte capacity, but also photos from iPhoto.
Now they have recently came out with iPod Shuffle, which is the size of a pack of gum. It holds 0.5 or 1 gigabyte.

To add to all this, the Mini mac will come out in America on January 22.
It's actually a miniature computer that is supposed to function like a regular one.

I can't believe computers are getting so small! Why do you think that is? I can see how it's useful, but....

It's all mindblowing.
I grew up along with personal computers and have gone from a couple megahertz Atari computer with 64k memory and tape drive to couple gigahertz Pentium / Athlon computers with a gigabyte of memory and multiple hard drives. That's in a period of about 25 years.

The embedded processors that I program for device control have faster processors than my old Atari and only cost a couple of bucks. My Palm and Pocket PC's have several hundred MHz processors. It all makes me glad to be alive during these times. It's all very exciting!

It's pretty interesting...

There are 1 Gig memory sticks the size of a pack of gum now...

Copper circuits smaller than a speck of dust make computers much more compact than before.

For those of you who are old enough Dick Tracey had a wrist radio, the size of a wristwatch. Fiction has become fact.

ruveyn

JohnnyCarcinogen gets the prize for reviving a 4.5 yo thread. It's so old it can wipe its own ass.

not necessarily, there's a CRT vs LCD, etc thread below from 2004...

I seem to remember the original ENIAC in the 40s was about as powerful as a 80s calculator. It was originally used to calculate range tables, and was so ancient it's bugs were actual insects...

Though of course we're reaching the limits of compactness. Current MOSFET gate technology has them around 10-20nm using Hafnium, while your average atom's ~0.3nm. There's work being done using nano LEDs with visual logic paths and quantum processors, but we're still rapidly approaching our limits (damn it).

You can buy a calculator for a buck at Walgreen's and it will have at least 3 times the computing capacity of the computer that took the Apollo missions to the moon. The cellphone in your pocket has exponentially more power than the computers that took up an entire room 35 years ago.

What I find funny was how on the original Inspector Gadget cartoon show, as an example of "crazy, unrealistic technology", Penny had a "computer book". It was neat to see it in the show, thinking that such a thing could never possibly exist, and yet, I'm essentially typing on one right now. Really, the only difference between her "computer book" and my "notebook" is that it's not held like a book.

If there isn't a real limit there's going to be a practial limit - anything much smaller than a cell phone would be difficult to use and very easy to get lost.

In 1956, someone thought outside the box -->link