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From: RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com>
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: how much computers can do in one second
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2017 14:43:20 +0300
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http://computers-are-fast.github.io/

Interesting website: they provide sample code and you have to guess how
many iterations a computer can complete in a second.  Example:

#include <stdlib.h>

// Number to guess: How many iterations of
// this loop can we go through in a second?

int main(int argc, char **argv) {
    int NUMBER, i, s;
    NUMBER = atoi(argv[1]);

    for (s = i = 0; i < NUMBER; ++i) {
        s += 1;
    }

    return 0;
}

I underestimated all of them.  There's some good, related discussion on
HackerNews at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13960183.  This stood
out in particular:

	
realo 19 hours ago [-]

Yes, modern computers are fast. How fast?

The speed of light is about 300,000 km/s. That translates to roughly 1
ns per foot (yeah, I mix up my units... I'm Canadian...)

THUS, a computer with a clock speed of 2 GHz will be able to execute, on
a single core/thread, about 4 (four !) single-clock instructions between
the moment photons leave your screen, and the moment they arrive into
your eye 2 feet (roughly) later.

_That_ should give you an idea of how fast modern computers really are.

And I _still_ wait quite a bit when starting up Microsoft Word.