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How small is the

tiniest computer?

A miniscule computer less than the size

of a grain of rice can read temperatures,
take pictures, and record pressure

readings. It is small enough to
be injected into the body
or to detect pockets

of oil in rock.

FAST FACTS
Computers are getting smaller each year. Moore’s Law, invented by Gordon Moore,
In 1993, to do 143 GFLOPS (143 billion a founder of Intel, suggests that computers
calculations a second) you needed a computer double in perfomance every two years. In fact,
5 ft (1.5 m) tall and 25 ft (8 m) long. In 2013 the average speed of the 500 fastest computers
just four laptops exceed this performance. in the world more than doubled every two years
during the decade 2002–2012.
Computing speed (GFLOPS) 70,000
80,000
60,000
50,000
40,000
30,000
10,000
Intel Paragon 4 Intel i5 laptop 20,000
supercomputer, 1993 processors, 2013 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012
143 GFLOPS 45 GFLOPS each Year

US_158_159_309600_ICBT_Tiniest_computer.indd 158 15/01/2018 15:27