A Quadrillion Mainframes on Your Lap(spectrum.ieee.org)
spectrum.ieee.org
A Quadrillion Mainframes on Your Lap
https://spectrum.ieee.org/ibm-mainframe
18 comments
Is this SIMH?
Yes, the stack is
Moto G Power (2021)
Android
Termux
SimH
VAX780
OpenVMS 7.2
The final question is rhetorical sounding, but honestly: if someone took an M3 Mac pro back in time... a single top speed workstation, back to 1961, and top minds could only use it's power (not iterate on it) how much ahead would a government be? Using it at a mainframe?
That's a fun question to ponder. Now, if you brought the Mac Pro back to Bell Labs and plonked it in front of Kernighan and Ritchie, they'd do amazing things.
Isn't this a bit like Marty McFly showing Chuck Berry Johnny B. Goode though?
"It completes an infinite loop in 42 seconds!"
I'd take you mean a M3 MacBook Pro laptop, because M3 Mac Pro is not available yet... which year are you from, exactly?
So, assuming I am scientist from 1961 that just have given clearance by CIA to examine an unusual object that looks like a typewriter with a flat screen. Assuming non-destructive tests first, you can observe the following from just its unpowered state. Quite a lot can be inferred from the exterior of the object.
It is apparently manufactured with the knowledge of Earth's technology, as it has what looks a power supply that can be plugged into the standard Type A socket with 110V, 60Hz. All markings and marking and labels are in English.
- Power supply and cables are clearly recognized as such, input and output voltages and amperage are dead giveaway. Oh, a magnetic latch to connect power cable, neat!
- "Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China." Those words do not make any sense, you ask your CIA guide about them but they seem to be as lost as you are.
- QWERTY keyboard indicates it is some sort of the typewriter, some symbols like ⌘ are a bit mysterious, but otherwise the purpose of that part is clear enough.
- There is also rectangular depression below the keyboard, covered with something that seems like glass. You don't understand the purpose of this part though.
- Careful examination reveals a 3.5mm audio jack, so 1960s headphones can be also connected without problem, is this some sort of the portable radio?
- Most of the chassis looks like polished aluminium, shaving a bit of exterior and running it through a mass-spectrometer proves that it is indeed, a common aluminium alloy.
- The display is the most puzzling piece of equipment. It suggests a function of a TV screen but without the usual bulk of the CRT equipment.
Next stage requires some trial and error.
- You find a button that makes the display light up and animate. The screen is now covered with variety of large glyphs on the bottom, a row of text labels and smaller glyphs on the top and an image of what looks like a ..female robot? (cyborg?) covering rest of the screen.
- You learn than unplugging the cable and plugging it back changes one of the glyph's appearance in the top left part of the screen.
- You learn that touching and moving your finger on the rectangle below the key board moves a small arrow-like glyph on the screen.
You write down all of the observations into the paper notebook provided by you by the spooks (no, you can't take it home, it is classified TOP SECRET for a reason!). Exhausted, you come back home, only to look forward to your next day with a mysterious object.
...a few months later.
You now understand that this is a sort of multi-function electronic appliance that combines the functions of a type-writer, an automatic clock and a calendar, an electronic library, an audio player, TV combined with VCR and few other things that you can't quite understand. A small number of music pieces you can recognize, but most of it is unfamiliar to you. There is an apparently a documentary movie that you can watch on it, called "Apollo 11", about the successful Moon landing by US that happened 8 years into the future. And a number of what looks like books on the variety of subjects, mostly science and engineering, with some of the information clearly outside of what was known in 1960. And what exactly is "C++ programming language" ?
And the most disturbing thing is the clock and calendar part. For some reason it is set to February 17th, 2024...
TL;DR: The content of laptop would have a lot bigger impact in 1960s then the laptop itself. It would take several months of experimentation to use the MacBook on a user level, but several years before you can learn how to write programs on it.
So, assuming I am scientist from 1961 that just have given clearance by CIA to examine an unusual object that looks like a typewriter with a flat screen. Assuming non-destructive tests first, you can observe the following from just its unpowered state. Quite a lot can be inferred from the exterior of the object.
It is apparently manufactured with the knowledge of Earth's technology, as it has what looks a power supply that can be plugged into the standard Type A socket with 110V, 60Hz. All markings and marking and labels are in English.
- Power supply and cables are clearly recognized as such, input and output voltages and amperage are dead giveaway. Oh, a magnetic latch to connect power cable, neat!
- "Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China." Those words do not make any sense, you ask your CIA guide about them but they seem to be as lost as you are.
- QWERTY keyboard indicates it is some sort of the typewriter, some symbols like ⌘ are a bit mysterious, but otherwise the purpose of that part is clear enough.
- There is also rectangular depression below the keyboard, covered with something that seems like glass. You don't understand the purpose of this part though.
- Careful examination reveals a 3.5mm audio jack, so 1960s headphones can be also connected without problem, is this some sort of the portable radio?
- Most of the chassis looks like polished aluminium, shaving a bit of exterior and running it through a mass-spectrometer proves that it is indeed, a common aluminium alloy.
- The display is the most puzzling piece of equipment. It suggests a function of a TV screen but without the usual bulk of the CRT equipment.
Next stage requires some trial and error.
- You find a button that makes the display light up and animate. The screen is now covered with variety of large glyphs on the bottom, a row of text labels and smaller glyphs on the top and an image of what looks like a ..female robot? (cyborg?) covering rest of the screen.
- You learn than unplugging the cable and plugging it back changes one of the glyph's appearance in the top left part of the screen.
- You learn that touching and moving your finger on the rectangle below the key board moves a small arrow-like glyph on the screen.
You write down all of the observations into the paper notebook provided by you by the spooks (no, you can't take it home, it is classified TOP SECRET for a reason!). Exhausted, you come back home, only to look forward to your next day with a mysterious object.
...a few months later.
You now understand that this is a sort of multi-function electronic appliance that combines the functions of a type-writer, an automatic clock and a calendar, an electronic library, an audio player, TV combined with VCR and few other things that you can't quite understand. A small number of music pieces you can recognize, but most of it is unfamiliar to you. There is an apparently a documentary movie that you can watch on it, called "Apollo 11", about the successful Moon landing by US that happened 8 years into the future. And a number of what looks like books on the variety of subjects, mostly science and engineering, with some of the information clearly outside of what was known in 1960. And what exactly is "C++ programming language" ?
And the most disturbing thing is the clock and calendar part. For some reason it is set to February 17th, 2024...
TL;DR: The content of laptop would have a lot bigger impact in 1960s then the laptop itself. It would take several months of experimentation to use the MacBook on a user level, but several years before you can learn how to write programs on it.
Without wifi or USB its usability is crippled. There’s only so much you can do with a machine with only one person at the keyboard.
Even charging the machine would be a problem.
Just the things they’d learn by trying to recreate either wifi or USB would probably accelerate their industry and economy.
Even charging the machine would be a problem.
Just the things they’d learn by trying to recreate either wifi or USB would probably accelerate their industry and economy.
In my hypothetical I'd assume a 2020s era monitor/keyboard/mouse.
Quite far I'd imagine. We'd get it hooked up to teletypes pretty quickly, even if we had to do it by acoustic coupling because nobody could figure out USB. I mean, if you are going back in time, take a USB GPIO board and a power supply FFS! Then start building your nuclear weapon simulators on that. Probably aerodynamics simulators? Quite possibly broken the enemies encryption?
It might be seen as a instrument of imbalance so powerful that it would get proactively destroyed along with the person carrying it (because of the implied associated knowledge). The consequences of it falling into the wrong hands would be to high. Don't do it. Or instead, to be safe, just bring a Ryzen box running Gentoo.
The 1980s chip Doc Brown made on the hood of a car in Back to the Future 2 was about 6 square feet, modern chip would need to be the size of the Pentagon.
how the hell do they get to a quadrillion? even multiplying the two factors of 100,000 that are mentioned with no regard for coherence doesn't get you that high
> A Quadrillion Mainframes on Your Lap
A 100 cars in your car's engine.
Some people just like to show off. /s
The reality is that, today, only 1% of those "Mainframes on your lap" are actually doing something useful for you. The rest is bloating and spying.
A 100 cars in your car's engine.
Some people just like to show off. /s
The reality is that, today, only 1% of those "Mainframes on your lap" are actually doing something useful for you. The rest is bloating and spying.
It feels somewhat wrong that we have so much and do so little with it.
Now I just need a good open source VT-100 emulator that runs on Windows.