How
fast is your TI-XX calculator?
One FLOPS is one Floating Point Operation per Second.
(Some
people read “flops” as the plural of a “flop” and say, “Fifty flops per second,”
instead of 50 FLOPS.)
To
estimate the speed of your calculator, create the following program:
PROGRAM
FAST
0→X
While
1
X+1→X
X-1 This is a floating point
operation.
End
Run
it for precisely 10 or 20 minutes.
Then
press ON, ENTER, and X ENTER.
Divide
the answer by the number of seconds that you ran the program.
My
TI-84 Plus was timed at 91 FLOPS.
If
you think your calculator is fast, read on.
Present
day supercomputers reach a speed of 500 tera-flops,
where (approximately):
| Kilo | = | 103 | = | 1,000 |
| Mega | = | 106 | = | 1,000,000 |
| Giga | = | 109 | = | 1,000,000,000 |
| Tera | = | 1012 | = | 1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion) |