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Reaching the moon more than than 50 years agone took all the technological might the Us could muster. The communication and navigation systems aboard the Apollo 11 capsule were cutting edge for the time, simply today even the simplest devices are more powerful. Apple tree programmer Forrest Heller has posted an analysis of several USB Type-C chargers, demonstrating they all accept more processing ability than the Apollo 11 guidance computer.

In the belatedly 1960s, even simple computers filled unabridged rooms. That, of course, would not do on a mission to the moon and back. Withal, the calculations necessary for the mission were likewise complex for the astronauts to do by hand. NASA and Raytheon collaborated to build the Apollo Guidance Computer, which was 1 of the starting time computers to use integrated circuits. The outcome was a device just a few anxiety tall that could mountain within the Apollo Command Module control console.

The Apollo eleven computer had a whopping ane.024MHz clock speed, allowing information technology to perform almost 40,000 arithmetic functions per 2d. That'due south all it took to fly to the moon and back. Today, nosotros use much more powerful processors in everything — fifty-fifty in the charging cake for your telephone. Heller looked at three different USB-C wall adapters: the Google 18W Pixel charger, Huawei'south 40W SuperCharge plug, and the Anker PowerPort Atom PD 2. He found all iii were considerably more powerful than the computer that got us to the moon.

The Apollo Guidance Figurer and keypad.

The current USB Power Commitment (USB-PD) standard is a huge spring over older charging methods. Today'due south devices can accept as much as 100W of power over USB-PD, but devices need to negotiate the correct charging charge per unit. That's why adapters like the ones Heller tested demand integrated microcontrollers — they're substantially tiny computers.

The Google charger is just intended for phones that accuse at a few speeds, so it has the most small-scale hardware. Its Weltrend WT6630P controller maxes out at 10MHz, which is still almost x times faster than the Apollo computer. Huawei's SuperCharge adapter is twice equally fast with its Richtek RT7205 scrap at 22.7MHz. Finally, the Anker PowerPort has a Cypress CYPD4225 MCU with an ARM Cortex M0 CPU clocked at 48MHz. That's almost 47 times faster than the Apollo Guidance Computer.

Even today, computers designed for space missions are much less powerful than their terrestrial counterparts. The designers accept to ensure these systems are hardened against radiations and vibration that could destroy a "regular" computer. At that place's also the trouble of powering the computer. It's better to accept a reckoner that does just what you need instead of wasting ability on something faster. All the same, it's wild to remember well-nigh your phone charger besting the Apollo figurer in raw speed.

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