| The speed of a computer is usually measured by the number of basic operations, such as additions, that can be performed in one second. The fastest computers available in the early 1940s could perform about five operations per second. |
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 | The fastest today can perform about a trillion. Buyers of personal computers know that a machine that seems fast today will seem slow in a year or two. | |
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| I know, for at least three decades, the increase in processor speeds was exponential. Computers became twice as fast every couple of years. These increases were one consequence of Moores Law . | |
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| Did you know that since 2001, processor speed has not followed Moores Law; in fact, processors have hardly grown faster at all. But that doesnt mean that computers wont continue to get faster. | |
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| Yeah, new chip designs include multiple processors on the same chip so the work can be split up and performed in parallel. Such design innovations promise to achieve the same effect as continued increases in raw processor speed. And the same technology improvements that make computers faster also make them cheaper. | |
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| Tasks that today seem to require uniquely human skills are the subject of research projects in corporate or academic laboratories. |
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| The rapid increase in processing power means that inventions move out of labs and into consumer goods very quickly. Robot vacuum cleaners and selfparking vehicles were possible in theory a decade ago, but now they have become economically feasible. | |
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| Face recognition and voice recognition are poised to bring us new inventions, such as telephones that know who is calling and surveillance cameras that dont need humans to watch them. | |
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