Sunday, May 27, 2007

My Toothbrush is more Powerful than my First Computer

Reading an article in the latest Wired magazine about microprocessors in the home, I was astonished to see that even my electric toothbrush has a chip which is capable of processing 10 Million Instructions Per Second (MIPS). Sure, that oomph is probably only telling a motor what to do and managing the power around the rechargeable battery, but then you can still drive a Lamborghini at 30 mph if you want to.

This prompted me to find out how my first computer compared- the ZX81. The processor was a Zilog Z80 with, according to Lud's Linux Corner, just 0.58 MIPS.

So, my toothbrush has nearly 20 times more processing power than my first computer... discuss!