Tech improvements are becoming so dramatic that charts are basically pointless

[ad_1] Nathaniel Bullard Fifteen years ago, Japan’s Earth Simulator was the most powerful supercomputer on Earth. It had more than 5,000 processors. It consumed 6,400 kilowatts of electricity. It cost nearly US$400 million to build. Two weeks ago, a computer engineer built a “deep learning box,” using off-the-shelf processors and components, that handily exceeds the Earth…