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How Many Computers Does the World Need? (ft.com) 103

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: It is almost a decade since Rick Rashid, then head of research at Microsoft, posed that question and ventured his own answer: no more than a few, at least to handle the vast majority of the planet's digital workload. Back then, he thought, it was possible to discern the emergence of a small group of companies that would run those computers. The give-away was that a fifth of all the servers sold in the world were already being purchased by a clutch of US tech groups that included Amazon, Google and Microsoft.

[...] Of course, "how many" is a trick question when it comes to the distributed computing systems being built by today's tech giants. There are many nodes to these octopus-like systems, each with its own silicon brain and information-processing capabilities. But they are connected to a greater whole. One sign of just how far their tentacles are starting to reach came this week with Google's announcement that it has designed an AI chip to run in smartphones and other devices. Google's TPUs -- processors that are optimised to both train deep-learning algorithms and then apply them to make inferences from new data -- are already a key part of its data centre infrastructure. The new low-power version of the TPU can make inferences in "edge" devices, far from the computing core, and will be an important element in making sense of the world's data.

[...] The rise of the global computers raises many questions, but two stand out: will they comprise a truly competitive market, or come to look like the more Balkanised "platform" markets in the consumer world? And what will it mean for so much computing power to be concentrated in a handful of private companies? The good news is that the cloud landscape is shaping up to be a competitive one, at least if competition can be said to truly exist between oligarchs.
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How Many Computers Does the World Need? More

How Many Computers Does the World Need?

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  • 640 (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Thursday July 26, 2018 @05:13PM (#57015386) Journal

    oughtta be enough for anyone.

    • 42 computers is The Answer...

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Yep, 640 did it for me. Wife left after 50 though.

    • Is that 640 computers or 640 cpus? Threads? Per person or per home (+office?) I am probably close to 640 CPUs already, and I expect I will find a use for more if I could find a space for them. (not all of them are running at any one time - and remember a lot of Android phones have 8 cores).

      If you consider PDP11 equivalent power, then that is probably close to 640k*.

      Remember when Bill Gates said 640k should be enough for anyone, he could probably not afford 64k.

      * Anyone know how many Cray 1 equivalents a

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Tablizer ( 95088 )

        A little virus-induced DNA/RNA may make every animal cell Turing Complete. The count would go through the roof and perhaps explain the Fermi Paradox.

  • Article is paywalled... (Score:3)

    by b0s0z0ku ( 752509 ) on Thursday July 26, 2018 @05:16PM (#57015400)

    Article is paywalled.

    Also, define "need." We could go back to the client (dumb terminal)/server centralized model of computing, but even the "dumb terminals" are computers in this day and age.

    And not everyone wants to hand their private data over to a megalith like Microsoft, Google, or Amazon, so there's a place for computing devices that don't HAVE to act as terminals.

    I mean, you could always take Uber, be recorded, tracked, and advertised to. But sometimes, you just need to drive that red Barchetta on a winding mountain road.

    • Article is stupid... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Okian Warrior ( 537106 ) on Thursday July 26, 2018 @05:43PM (#57015566) Homepage Journal

      Article is paywalled.

      Also, define "need." We could go back to the client (dumb terminal)/server centralized model of computing, but even the "dumb terminals" are computers in this day and age.

      And not everyone wants to hand their private data over to a megalith like Microsoft, Google, or Amazon, so there's a place for computing devices that don't HAVE to act as terminals.

      I mean, you could always take Uber, be recorded, tracked, and advertised to. But sometimes, you just need to drive that red Barchetta on a winding mountain road.

      Also, the summary implies the article is stupid.

      If, and I mean if, this is the sort of question to ask, it would ask how much computing does the world need. Computers run the gamut of speed from slow to fast, and capabilities from microcontroller to high-end server.

      Not to mention the capabilities of a display adapter used for rendering or as a general-purpose parallel computing device.

      From the viewpoint of information theory, all computers are equivalent in the sense that they can be shown equivalent to a universal turing machine, so the question isn't even definable in the mathematical sense, but we could assign an arbitrary measure and time scale to make it meaningful to humans.

      For example, "millions of 8-bit additions per second" sounds like a reasonable low-level measurement (compare to "mm", for instance).

      Then one could ask "how much computing does the world need".

      And now we need to define "need". Just about every electronic device you can purchase today has an embedded microcontroller with a fixed program. Clocks and watches have little computers inside them.

      All cars need computers to manage their inner workings, and most of the world doesn't own a car but would like to. The average car has about 30 [thedrivingmachine.com] computers.

      Has that been included in the calculations?

      Computer time used to be metered. To take a course in college you were allocated a (generous for the application) number of CPU minutes to do your homework (both computer and non-computer classes). To do a study you were allocated a number of CPU minutes to use for the calculations.

      Today, compute time is so cheap we don't to meter it - we meter the amount of electricity that is used, or the annoyance of keeping the hardware running.

      How much computing would people use if they had access to an unlimited supply?

      We don't really know, because we're still on the leading edge of the bell curve. We yet to saturate even one person's use of computing - we still don't have ubiquitous AI in self-driving cars and factories.

      Article is stupid. It's impossible to answer the question today, and they're even asking the wrong questions.

      • yes, of course. but its painfully obvious what he and people-like-him want/'need'. and that is 'absolute control over every living soul', so they make: TPM DRM Cloud XBOX Scarlett Software-as-a-service and other similar crap.

    • Article is paywalled.

      Also, define "need." We could go back to the client (dumb terminal)/server centralized model of computing, but even the "dumb terminals" are computers in this day and age.

      Indeed, the whole notion behind the question is silly. As many as it takes? What a pointless question. Especially considering what a moving target any answer is going to be, due to near infinite factors.

      But sometimes, you just need to drive that red Barchetta on a winding mountain road.

      Just watch out for gleaming alloy air-cars that are two lanes wide..

  • Five (Score:5, Informative)

    by Trogre ( 513942 ) on Thursday July 26, 2018 @05:20PM (#57015424) Homepage

    That is all.

  • ...define "need".

  • So when you include all the embedded processors in everything from your electric screwdriver, throw-away tune playing birthday card, remote controls, IoT toys, all the ones in your car(s), routers, phones, PCs and all the rest, I'd reckon on a few hundred per person.

    Maybe double or treble that for all the industrial devices, server farms, infrastructure. And all the stuff we take for granted.

    So in total, probably a few TRILLION is a good guess.

    • The essence of this is spot-on. I'd guess the actual number mentioned is probably being lowballed.

      The whole thing lacks specificity, though ... not only is "what qualifies as a computer" vague, there's current and future need, replacement computers, obsolete computers ... and that's before we even get to the "need".

      Before cell phones, we didn't "need" any. Before tablets, we didn't "need" any. It has to be out there before we realize we "need" it. So maybe the real answer is: "I dunno ... how many y

  • Too Easy (Score:3)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Thursday July 26, 2018 @05:33PM (#57015494) Homepage Journal
    F...Forty-two?
  • If there was some freak incident that knocked out every computer on the planet and prevented us from building more, there would be widespread chaos, yes -- but our civilization would recover from that and manage to thrive again regardless.

    In many ways we've become too dependent on computers in one form or another, and spend way too much time paying attention to them instead of everything else. In many ways, we'd be better off if there were fewer of them than there are right now. Just eliminating smartpho

    • If there was some freak incident that knocked out every computer on the planet and prevented us from building more, there would be widespread chaos, yes -- but our civilization would recover from that and manage to thrive again regardless.

      Oh, really?

      For a start, every piece of farm machinery would stop working. Going to get hungry by and by.

      And then there's the fact that pretty much every piece of machinery in every factory would stop working. So we're not building any new equipment for a while.

      Trains,

      • Well, clearly and objectively you'd be one of the ones running around like a chicken with your head cut off, waving your arms in abject panic, being part of the problem instead of part of the solution. Meanwhile, people who can keep their heads and who know how to do things would be working to alleviate the situation -- assuming that is people like, apparently, you, weren't getting in the way. :-)

  • "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."

    –– Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943

    • Re:Thomas Watson says five (Score:5, Informative)

      by bws111 ( 1216812 ) on Thursday July 26, 2018 @06:34PM (#57015842)

      Does that make any sense to you at all? Why would he spend the resources of his company if he thought the market was that small?

      Actually this came from a story he told. Before there were commercial computers, he had his engineers design one on paper. They then took the design to 20 potential customers to judge interest. The actual quote was 'I was hoping to get 5 orders, we got 18.'

      Hoping for 5 orders out of potential 20, for a machine that doesn't exist, is far different than thinking there will only ever be a market for 5 computers.

      • Does that make any sense to you at all? Why would he spend the resources of his company if he thought the market was that small?

        Actually this came from a story he told. Before there were commercial computers, he had his engineers design one on paper. They then took the design to 20 potential customers to judge interest. The actual quote was 'I was hoping to get 5 orders, we got 18.'

        Hoping for 5 orders out of potential 20, for a machine that doesn't exist, is far different than thinking there will only ever be a market for 5 computers.

        Not only that, but how could he have said that only a decade ago? A decade ago I had more than five computers. That's not even getting cute and counting CPUs in phones, devices etc. Totally dumb premise of a story.

        • Not only that, but how could he have said that only a decade ago? A decade ago I had more than five computers. That's not even getting cute and counting CPUs in phones, devices etc. Totally dumb premise of a story.

          If by "a decade ago" you mean 65 years ago, then yes, he (is alleged to have) said it a decade ago.

  • The answer is always.....

    Just one more than I currently have.

    So, if you apply the same logic to the rest of the world, we need at least one more for each of us.

    Joking aside.. How many? I don't know, but you will be able to tell you are approaching the right number when folks stop buying and manufacturers stop building them. Which basically says, more than we have now and are likely to have built any time soon.

  • How about 20? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by darthsilun ( 3993753 ) on Thursday July 26, 2018 @05:40PM (#57015550)
    Three computers for Elven-kings under the sky.
    Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone.
    Nine for mortal men doomed to die.
    One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
    In the Land of Mordor where the shadows lie.
    One computer to rule them all, one computer to find them
    One computer to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them.
    In the Land of Mordor where the shadows lie.
    • I really wish I had mod points for you today. Well done!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Who knew the one ring was really a vSphere client.

      Explains the BOFH maniacal laugh.

  • Time share, ... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by PPH ( 736903 )

    ... the cloud. One giant mainframe buried in a mountain somewhere. Whatever they want to call it, the big boys seem to think that it will all devolve into a centralized service that they will manage.

    In the 1990's, they said that Bill Gates didn't 'get' the Internet. And it sounds like most of the minions of the big companies still don't. I have a server in my basement and symmetrical fiber bandwidth to my house. I'll handle my own e-mail and host my own cat videos.

  • Half a dozen is enough ...

    ... if there were a half dozen large computers in this country, hidden away in research laboratories, this would take care of all requirements we had throughout the country." -- Howard Aiken, 1952.

  • It will be what it will be and whether we understand it or not is irrelevant to the course of technology in the world today.

  • That depends greatly on hoew yoy define computer, do wy coung evry gps reciever engein cpntroll unit etc, etc or are we only desktops/laptops/tablers/servers ie whet 99% of non slashdot readers think of as computers, and yes I could have pickrd way more exampels in the first category beadicly any embeded system you can think of.

    • Damit I must learn to read all other comments before replaying with thibng that have allready been said, sorry about that pleas diireaguard as imy comment ads nothing of value

  • The correct answer, of course, is the same as the answer to "how many guns do you need?"

    "As many as I can afford," which really translates to "as many as my wife will let me get away with."

  • there is a one computer, one person, and one dog. the person's job is to feed the dog. the dog's job is ensure the person never, ever touches the computer.

  • 0, 1, or infinity (Score:3)

    by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Thursday July 26, 2018 @06:35PM (#57015850) Homepage Journal

    Software developers already know the answer: Zero, one, or infinity [wikipedia.org]

    0: we probably don't strictly "need" computers.
    1: we could have one big one that we all time slice. Our current political and economic system wouldn't tolerate single ownership of all computing. (sorry Google!)
    infinity: really this means (k * N). it's the current model we're following, factor k is probably a small integer. N is number of human beings currently alive.

    • As a software developer, I know that infinity is not a number, is it simply a form of NaN compatible with greater than/less than operators.

      • I usually use INT_MAX and INT_MIN as positive and negative infinity with integers. Unfortunately C doesn't offer any conventions for saturation arithmetic [wikipedia.org] and only defines modular arithmetic for unsigned values (and leaves signed overflow/underflow to be undefined).

        And the wonderful DEC64 [dec64.com] format lacks any infinity representation and only goes so far as to produce NaN.

        • decNumber as defined by the Unicode standard, IEEE 754, and ANSI C all include Infinity and -Infinity when working with decimal floats.

          The reason you don't have infinity as a discrete type of NaN is that you're using binary arithmetic. You can't even touch numbers that have to do with money using that shit.

          This is why banks are still using COBOL; it only supports decimal arithmetic, so clever sorts can't screw up the rounding as easily.

          GCC can handle some of it directly, but for full support I recommend usi

          • decNumber as defined by the Unicode standard, IEEE 754, and ANSI C all include Infinity and -Infinity when working with decimal floats.

            IEEE 745 decimal is not the same as the previously mentioned DEC64. It's important to remember that IEEE decimals have a really terrible representation and implementation is painful and bug prone.

            Special sentinel values that propagate in a well defined way are important in safety designs (and I assume in financial math too). Throwing exceptions, faults, interrupts, and signals is also important. And you can sort out the serious programs from the not serious ones by how they initialize signal handlers.

            Java s

            • You don't need to "pull in all of ICU," or even download it. That's just daft. I understand you aren't interested in the details of what I was saying, you just wanted to regurgitate information about what choices you made and what related crumbs of knowledge you have, but still; no need to make up fake reasons why didn't use something you probably didn't even evaluate.

              You seem to have some vague concept that there might be bugs in implementations that are decades old and very very stable. Odd, that.

              • You seem to have some vague concept that there might be bugs in implementations that are decades old and very very stable. Odd, that.

                Unfortunately, I pay per line of code to a third party to do safety audits. My requirements and constraints are different than yours, so you should be less surprised that we came to different decisions.

  • ipv4 vs ipv6 (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    1 computer per body cell should do it...

  • Each of us should carry no less than 5 computers at all times, like a sensible person.

  • ... permanently. The reason "platforms" like steam exist is because the outrage at videogame theft couldn't reach these companies. Consumers don't have any power anymore now that products can be held hostage on servers on the other side of the internet. Companies are re-engineering the internet to obey them and turn it into a dumb network for consumers.

    The same way gabe newell half life when he inserted DRM into it, DRM would have been removed if we had portal tech and could storm his offices way back in

  • The world -needs- zero computers. We were doing just fine before the first one was invented, so we don't really need them.

    But how many computers does the world want? Now that's a question. I've literally lost count of how many I interact with on a daily basis. I mean, I could count the obvious ones: my desktop PC, my server PC, my smartphone. But then there's the less obvious ones.. My microwave has a computer in it, so does my clock-radio, and my stereo amplifier. My car has numerous computers in it

  • IOUT (Score:3)

    by WillAffleckUW ( 858324 ) on Thursday July 26, 2018 @08:02PM (#57016366) Homepage Journal

    The Internet Of Useless Things says we need even more things to be computers.

    Like a hammer.
    Or a screwdriver.
    Or a glass for drinking with.

    If it's not a computer, it's useless.

    (brought to you by The Council To Make You Install Our Silicon Overlords Everywhere And Become Serfs)

    • What good is a hand adze without blinkenlights and an activity tracker?!

      Next you'll tell me my shoelaces don't need to warn me when they become untied!

  • I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.
          - Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by santiago ( 42242 )

      I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.

            - Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943

      He was almost right, but he left off the words "per person" at the end.

  • There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer.

  • Designed by Deep Thought to calculate the ultimate question.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

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