Pace of technological innovation

Good source of various measures of the rate of change of technology
Was Moore’s Law Inevitable?

End of November Random Links

A good site to find out what the rest of the networking industry is doing for operational best practices:

IP Best Current Operation Practices

Interesting piece on 21st century computer architecture from the  Computing Community Consortium (CCC). Direct pdf link to the white paper:

21st Century Computer Architecture 

The Tree of Life for Computers

Computer Chronology: 50-Year Micro List, 1938-1988 referencing ELECTRONIC COMPUTERS WITHIN THE ORDNANCE CORPS has this excellent image of a Tree of Life for computers:

53Kb of Memory

Science historian George Dyson, has a typically insightful piece on the fundamental nature of the internet.  Titled "A Universe of Self-replicating code," he draws parallels between the Big Bang birth of of the universe and the birth of the internet.
Definitely a worthy ready, but the quote that sticks in my mind:

One number that's interesting, and easy to remember, was in the year 1953, there were 53 kilobytes of high-speed memory on planet earth.

In George Dyson's book Turing's Cathedral, the fact is repeated with a reference:

In March of 1953, there were 53 kilobytes of high-speed random access memory on planet Earth.

The reference points to  a book by the US Office of Naval Research: A Survey of Automatic Digital Computers.


update:
After trying to find an online version of A Survey of Automatic Digital Computers, I came across this blog entry (by the author of Geek Atlas) which refutes the claim.

From Difference Engine to Analytical Engine

Charles Babage is considered among the founders of computer science.  In his life time, he designed and partially built a Difference Engine.  The Difference Engine was designed to be a mechanical calculator for solving polynomials using the method of finite differences.  Due to financials and other problems, this project was never completed in Babbage's lifetime (it was, however, built, two in fact, in recent years; one is one display at the Computer History Museum in San Jose.

Modern build of the Difference Engine

The New York Times is reporting that a project is underway to build Babbage's Analytical Engine.  The Analytical Engine was supposed to be a general purpose, programmable computer.   Unlike the Difference Engine, plans for this machine are not complete.  That, however, didn't stop Ada Lovelace from 'programming' this computer, winning her the title of world's first computer programmer.

Plan for part of the Analytical Engine

partial mock-up of Analytical Engine

Moore's Law: From this to that with an ENIAC

The ENIAC is considered the first general purpose, programmable, Turing-complete computer.  It was, quite literally, the size of a room:

For the machine's 50th anniversary, folks at the University of Pennsylvania implemented the entire machine on a single chip:

This chip is on display at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA.

Comparing storage price, weight, and size over the years

Comparisons like these never cease to amaze me

Original post via SC-TECH