CSIRAC's vital statistics

When you look at the chart below, you might think that CSIRAC was a pretty slow machine, but you must compare it to what was available to the scientists of the time.

Scientists of the 1940's would employ one or more computers (generally a woman operating a mechanical adding machine), or manually perform complex computations by hand, to complete their research. Calculations could be performed at about the rate of one operation per second.

CSIRAC, although slow by today's standards, was faster than anything else available at the time at 1000 operations per second.

**Comparing CSIRAC to today's computers**
	CSIRAC - 1949	Desktop PC - 1996	Laptop PC - 2000
Speed	.001Mhz	> 100Mhz	> 500MHz
Word size	20 bit	32 bit	64 bit
RAM	768 words	>8,388,608 bytes	536,870,912 bytes
Disk capacity	2048 words	>1,048,576,000 bytes	19,327,352,832 bytes
Power consuption	30,000 watts	250 watts	10 watts
Weight	7,000 Kg	25 Kg	2.6 Kg

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Created:	Thu Apr  6 18:47:45 EST 2000
Last update:	Fri Apr 21 00:57:06 EST 2000
Maintainer:	David Hornsby djh@cs.mu.oz.au
Authorised by:	David Hornsby djh@cs.mu.oz.au