For Sale: SONY PS3 Hardy Used. $55 million
In 1992, the United States signed the SALT Treaty. The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks.
The treaty would both limit nuclear weapons and begin a scale-back on those that existed.
To comply with the treaty, the US government would have to track old weapons and also design new ones, but keep in compliance with the terms of the agreement. In order to do this, the government launched a program called ASCI, for Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative.
To make all the complex calculations necessary, the Department of Defense commissioned the construction of the most sophisticated computer in the world – RED. RED would be unlike anything that had ever existed before. The most powerful supercomputer the world had ever seen – able to process 1.8 teraflops. A teraflop is a trillion calculations per second. Astonishing.
Completed in 1996, RED would remain the fastest and most powerful supercomputer ever, at least until 2000.
RED was not cheap. It cost more than $55 million.
It was the size of a tennis court.
It required as much power as 800 homes.
But it worked amazingly well.
On Friday, I got my hands on RED for a video we are producing about computing power.
It wasn’t the original RED.
It was a supercomputer that was just as powerful.
Just as fast.
It was a SONY PS3.
Of course, it costs a bit less.
And you only have to plug it into the wall.
And it is a bit smaller.
Other than that, pretty much the same.
Until the 19th Century, most people on earth thought that the world was ‘steady-state’. That is, that it never changed. That it had been created by God 6,000 years ago and would remain the same, at least until the Second Coming. Unchanged and unchangeable.
Today, most people (there are still exceptions, of course), understand that the earth is a lot older, and that it is changing all the time.
Yet when it comes to technology, people still tend to think of the world, or at least the world of video (for example) as static – that is, that it too will need change.
If Moore’s Law holds true (and it’s been pretty good since 1967), then we can guess that the computing power of iPhones, (for example) will, in 20 years, look at lame as the computing power of RED. That we will have vastly more power in the phones (or whatever they are) – faster, cheaper, easier to use and far far more powerful.
That’s why the ongoing discussion about whether iPhone video is ‘professional’ or not is a moot point.
It is probably just good enough right now.
But I can tell you with 99.99% certainty that the quality is going to get better.
A lot better.
And a lot cheaper.
And a lot easier to use.
and a lot more powerful.
This is inevitable.
If I were to tell you with 99.99% certainty that I know for sure what the next Powerball Lottery number is going to be, would you run down to the corner store and buy a ticket?
I bet you would.
Well, I don’t know the next Powerball Number, but I do know what is going to happen to video in the next decade.
If you’re in the business or contemplating getting into the business.
Place your bets.
It’s really a no-lose proposition.
copyright 2015 Michael Rosenblum
