At That Time [the 1960s], Bell Laboratories Scientists Projected That Computer Speeds As High As 30 Million Floating-point Calculations Per Second (megaflops) Would Be Needed For The Army's Ballistic Missile Defense System.

At That Time [the 1960s], Bell Laboratories Scientists Projected That Computer Speeds As High As 30 Million Floating-point Calculations Per Second (megaflops) Would Be Needed For The Army's Ballistic Missile Defense System.

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...At that time [the 1960s], Bell Laboratories scientists projected that
computer speeds as high as 30 million floating-point calculations per
second (megaflops) would be needed for the Army's ballistic missile
defense system. Many computer experts -- including a National Academy
of Sciences panel -- said achieving such speeds, even using multiple
processors, was impossible. Today, new generation supercomputers operate
at billions of operations per second (gigaflops).
-- Aviation Week & Space Technology, May 9, 1988, Washington Roundup, pg 13

Related:

machoflops /mach'oh-flops/ n. [pun on `megaflops'
a coinage for `millions of FLoating-point Operations Per Second'] Refers to artificially inflated performance figures often quoted by computer manufacturers....
machoflops: /mach'oh-flops/ [pun on `megaflops', a coinage for `millions of FLoating-point Operations Per Second'] n.
Refers to artificially inflated performance figures often quoted by computer manufacturers....
This computer hardware has the following rating
Multics /muhl'tiks/ n. [from "MULTiplexed Information and Computing Service"] An early time-sharing operating system co-designed by a consortium including MIT
GE, and Bell Laboratories as a successor to CTSS....
Multics:: /muhl'tiks/ n. [from "MULTiplexed Information and Computing Service"] An early (late 1960s) timesharing operating system co-designed by a consortium including MIT
GE, and Bell Laboratories. Multics was very innovative for its time --- among other things, it introduced the idea of treating all devices uniformly as special files....
The computer is the only thing that can make 1,000,000 errors per second.
The speed of time is one second per second.
If the automobile had followed the same development as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $
100, get a million miles per per gallon, and explode once a year killing everyone inside....