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Who would win: the world's fastest computer circa 1976, or a $35 single-board computer from 2012? //
"In 1978, the Cray-1 supercomputer cost $7 million, weighed 10,500 pounds and had a 115 kilowatt power supply. It was, by far, the fastest computer in the world," Longbottom writes of the device, designed as the flagship product of Seymour Cray's high-performance computing company. "The Raspberry Pi costs around $70 (CPU board, case, power supply, SD Card), weighs a few ounces, uses a five watt power supply and is more than 4.5 times faster than the Cray 1." //
The same benchmark tests show even bigger gains for newer devices in the Raspberry Pi family, as you'd expect: the Raspberry Pi 400, the newest device in Longbottom's performance table, showed a performance gain of up to 95.5 times the Cray-1's results — in a device which fits on the palm of your hand, rather than becoming a very expensive piece of uncomfortable office furniture.