
Ask HN: Could you estimate the total number of clock cycles ever run? - jonathanzufi
I was recently reading about Graham&#x27;s Number (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Graham%27s_number" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Graham%27s_number</a>) and was pondering large numbers (as much as one can) and I was thinking: would it be possible to estimate the total&#x2F;cumulative number of clock cycles run on every single microprocessor ever made? Would it be possible to mathematically describe how that number is changing along a time axis?
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qntty
Certainly possible. Just for fun, let's do some quick math. Imagine that we
had 100 billion processes running constantly at 10 GHz since ~1970. This would
result in ~10^30 clock ticks (10^9 sec * 10^10 ticks/sec * 10^11 processors).

That number is child's play compared to numbers like Graham's number. The
exponent of Graham's number is so large that it can't be written down. 30 is
pretty easy to write down. For comparison there are about 10^80 atoms in the
universe. That's still a tiny number compared to Graham's number.

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vipa123
Pretty neat how those orders of magnitude estimates form a straight... 9, 10,
11

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ladberg
As an FYI, any number that is grounded in counting the occurrences of any
event across the entire universe and until the end of time won't even come
close to Graham's Number and any other "immense numbers" in math.

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thecupisblue
Even electron interactions?

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ladberg
If you take every particle in the universe, let’s say there are 10^100 of them
(probably an overestimate of a few orders of magnitude), then say that each
one interacts with every other one once every plank time until the end of the
universe, you only get around 10^357 events.

Graham’s Number is impossible to write out using a powers of literal numbers,
so it’s still not even close.

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henryfjordan
You could try a Fermi approximation:

There are 10 billion people * 100 uC chips / person * 10 years of life / uC
chip * 10^13 microseconds / year * 1 clock cycle / microsecond = ~10^26 clock
cycles

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rmrfstar
The single number answer is going to be utterly dominated by the past 5 years,
so it's not too difficult to answer.

If you wanted a time-series that shows how this number evolves over time, you
would end up with a _very_ interesting history of tech book. Something like
Milton Friedman's "A Monetary History of the United States."

I would buy it / crowd fund it.

If all you really want to know is "number of cycles" you should probably
research oscillator manufacturers.

If you're actually interested in the "volume of compute" you should start with
10K's for Intel and Xilinx, and fan out to their competitors. Use market
capitalization over time as a filter for inclusion in your tally, as you can't
research _every_ manufacturer.

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skissane
If you think Graham’s number is big, Rayo’s number is a lot bigger -
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayo%27s_number](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayo%27s_number)

Rayo’s number is actually a function R(n) where n=googol. You can define much
bigger numbers just by using a bigger n, e.g. googolplex. For something even
bigger still, you can iterate the function. Think about Rayo’s function
iterated Rayo’s number times.

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katzgrau
You might find this useful - Fermi problems:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem)

You could make a rough model based on educated guesses and perhaps not even be
that far off the actual number.

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sparker72678
Yes, it would be possible.

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dang
" _Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone
says, not a weaker one that 's easier to criticize. Assume good faith._"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
sparker72678
It was worth it.

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jagannathtech
a googol

