What was the computing power of apollo 11

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Email required. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Notice and European users agree to the data transfer policy. Loading comments To control the hardware, AGC had built-in machine code instructions using a compiler called Luminary. In fact, it was less equipped than a modern toaster! Each could perform several hundred thousand addition operations per second, and their total memory capacity was in the megabyte range.

It operates at 1. Join the ZME newsletter for amazing science news, features, and exclusive scoops. More than 40, subscribers can't be wrong. Computers are so ubiquitous nowadays that even a pocket calculator has much more processing power, RAM, and memory than the state of the art in computing during the Apollo era. Sure, both could fly but the two are, technologically speaking, worlds apart.

With this in mind, one can only awe at the kind of computer power each of us holds at their finger tips. The Apollo Guidance Computer in the command module had two main jobs. First, it computed the necessary course to the moon, calibrated by astronomical measurements that the astronauts made in flight, with a sextant not unlike that used by oceanic navigators.

The computer would precisely measure those angles and recalculate its position. Second, it controlled the many physical components of the spacecraft.

The AGC could communicate with different devices within the spacecraft—an enormously complicated task. This is really capable. Building it dominated the project at first—the lab heavily underestimated the complexity of the software-engineering task.

For years afterward, deep into the s, programmers were still using punch cards to code. There had to be an interface. Multiple operations had to run at the same time. Read: The watch that went to the moon. The system they built was remarkably advanced.

It allowed them to run five to seven virtual machines simultaneously in two kilobytes of memory. It was a long way from point-and-click simplicity. Perhaps the most brilliant software-engineering feat was the software designed by J.