It is wild to think about, but the mobile devices we carry in our pockets and hold in the palms of our hands today are orders of magnitude more powerful than some of the original computers — comparatively, we’re walking around with supercomputers. Those first computers were actually about the size of a room, in some cases stretching feet, from floor to ceiling. We’ve clearly come a very long way with miniaturization through the invention of small components like transistors and microprocessors. But even so, it makes you wonder — just how much more powerful is the average smartphone?
How does an ’80s supercomputer, one of the most powerful and capable computers at the time, compare to today’s average iPhone? Adobe once covered the comparison, but at the time looked at the iPhone 12. However, it makes more sense to consider the iPhone 17 nowadays, since it’s the latest in Apple’s smartphone lineup.
The Cray-2 was purportedly the fastest and most powerful computer ever built as of 1985, capable of processing at 1.9 gigaflops, or 1.9 billion floating point operations per second (FLOPS). Based on analysis done by NanoReview, the iPhone 17 is estimated to process at about 2,073 gigaflops, or 2 trillion FLOPS (2,073,600,000,000 to be exact). That’s over 109,000 times more powerful than the ’80s supercomputer. Even more surprising is that Cray-2 weighed over 5,500 pounds, while the iPhone 17 weighs 6.24 ounces — over 14,000 times lighter. What’s more, several smartphones more powerful than the iPhone 17 are already on the market.
How does the Cray-2 supercomputer compare to today’s phones?
We can do a lot with our phones today, especially the iPhone 17. We can take pictures, write notes, call or message friends and family, browse the internet from anywhere, handle banking tasks, play games — you name it. That’s far and away more than an ’80s supercomputer could do, because those were initially designed for a specific purpose. They certainly weren’t multi-functional Swiss Army Knives like the phones we have now.
The Cray-2 was primarily used by NASA to simulate aircraft flight at the Langley Research Center. Another model was used by the U.S. Departments of Defense and Energy for research on nuclear weapons and oceanography tasks. The raw compute power was basically used for mathematical equations and simulations, consuming 150 to 200 kilowatts of electricity. On the other hand, the iPhone 17, 17 Pro, and 17 Pro Max all use 40 watts of power for fast charging. There are 1,000 watts in a kilowatt, to provide a better frame of reference for the power required to run the Cray-2. So, not only were those supercomputers less powerful in terms of computing power, but they also consumed much more energy — a ridiculously large amount more.
Of course, modern supercomputers aren’t for general-purpose use either. They’re busy figuring out when all life on Earth might end and pushing the limits of quantum computing, an entirely new venture for computers. Scientists have actually achieved teleportation with quantum supercomputers. Something like the Cray-2 could never emulate these feats but it did pave the way for them.
