Ask HN: How many iPhones match the total USSR computing power in 1970? 1985? - brandelune
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dalke
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDC_7600](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDC_7600)
could handle 10-36 MFLOPS in 1970, which is about an iPhone 4.

The Elbrus 2, which was the first Soviet supercomputer, didn't come until
1977. Earlier systems, like the BESM, were mainframes - designed more for data
handling than compute power. It looks like 355 BESM-6:s were made, ending in
1987. There were also Minsk mainframes.

There were also clones of US hardware, like the ES EVM clone of the IBM 360
(production didn't start until 1972), and PDP-11/VAX clones. Those were after
1970.

I'll use 50 BESM-6:s as my shot-in-the-dark estimate. Those seemed to be 1
megaflop (see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BESM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BESM) ), so
the USSR could probably do about 50 MFLOPS in 1970.

Or no more than three iPhones.

For 1985 it's much harder to even guess. Is it even reasonable to include the
aggregate sum of the microcomputers of that era? Not if you want to simulate
an H-bomb. Only you can answer that.

~~~
meric
>> Is it even reasonable to include the aggregate sum of the microcomputers of
that era? Not if you want to simulate an H-bomb

I think so. Since no one's going to be simulating an H-bomb on an iPhone
anyway. If we are going to argue maybe there are soldiers trapped in a
nuclear-proof bunker with a nuclear bomb and before they launch it they want
to simulate it, and all they have is an iPhone, we can argue the same case for
a microcomputer.

~~~
dalke
I was being a bit facetious. My underlying point was that the network overhead
on a microcomputer likely overwhelms a "Beowulf cluster" (to use a 1990s term)
of them, so 10,000 microcomputers in practice won't be anywhere near 10,000x
the performance of a single microcomputer.

What then is the goal of estimating the aggregate raw MFLOPs for the USSR?

As a side point, Apple doesn't allow a compiler or language interpreter on
their iPhone, so unless they either had the app beforehand, or access to a
development machine, they won't be able to anything with it. While if they had
an Apple ][ they could start right away in Apple BASIC on the ROM.

