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Polaroid Cameras I User Manual

Page 23

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Addendum 2: Digital cameras versus the Space Shuttle


I make the comment all the time, “Your digital camera has more computing
power than the space shuttle! Is that true? Let’s look at the facts:


Space Shuttle:

Camera:

Computer:


Computer is a hardened derivative of the
IBM 360 mainframe, first introduced in
1964.
480,000 operations per second



Most use an advanced RISC processor, 80
MHz, with one operation per clock.
80,000,000 operations per second

Advantage Camera: 166x

Memory:


700 Kbytes core memory



Internal: 32 Mbytes
Card: 128 Mbytes

Advantage Camera: 228x

Cost:


$5 billion development, Minimum
$113,000 (1964 dollars) each.



$150 - $600 (2004 dollars) or more