Apple’s iPhone 5s has over 1 Billion transistors in it. They fit on ICs (Integrated Circuits) commonly known as microchips. Ultra-sleek and weighing less than four ounces, this device has become one of the iconic images of the 21st century.
The AGC (Apollo Guidance Computer) was the on-board computer for the Apollo 11 space mission in 1969 that guided and landed our astronauts on the Moon, then ferried them safely back to Earth. Designed by MIT and built by Raytheon, the AGC was cutting edge technology for its time, and fundamental to the evolution of the integrated circuit.
Technology has seen rapid advancements in medicine, metallurgy, aeronautics and atomic sciences, – but nowhere do you see developments with geometric growth rates as you do in the fields of electronics and telecommunications.
Moore’s Law – a paper written in 1965, predicted that the number of transistors that can fit onto an integrated circuit will double every two years. History has shown this to be true. This in turn has allowed for exponential increases in electronic performance while at the same time dramatically shrinking these devices to where they fit neatly into a shirt pocket.
Steve Jobs and his engineering teams were keenly aware of Moore’s Law as it was a powerful prognosticating and marketing tool.
Compare and Contrast: the iPhone 5s has a processing speed 1,300 times faster, 250,000 times more memory (storage) and is 284 times lighter than the AGC. At very minimum, this represents a 400,000 fold increase in the performance-per-pound capabilities in communication & computing technologies.
So how was the AGC, a superb state-of-the-art technology, able to perform so admirably on this epic voyage with only 64k of memory?
Every byte was programmed with job-specific functions and zero redundancy built into it. Then too, it was tied to an acre-sized facility full of IBM mainframes cranking out trajectory tables and other general systems data … and, they had Mission Control. As Tom Hanks said with regard to one of their 47 problems in the movie, Apollo 13, “We’ve got half the PhD’s on the planet working on it.” Legions of our best and brightest working with the Right Stuff, all infused with a ‘Failure is not an option’ attitude … definitely one of America’s finest hours.
Brute Processing Power and Functionality: There’s no contest, the iPhone 5s is an amazing piece of space age techware – a souped-up Ferrari next to the AGC’s practicality of a Ford.
While not a computer per se, the iPhone is equal parts iPod & iPad, (so access to internet, movies & music) a camera (photos & video), it has an internal clock, calendar, GPS, a compass, a mirror, a level, a flashlight, an alarm, an address book, oh and yes … a mobile phone.
The AGC was one of the first computers based on integrated circuits and it really paved the way for the revolution that has taken place in electronic performance the past 4-5 decades and made iPhones possible.
Both were Phenomenal Design and Engineering Feats. The one facilitated our lift- off from our mother planet and shot us to the moon and back. The other keeps our global citizenry interconnected. Bravo to the men and women involved with both projects!