Your USB Charger Is More Powerful Than The Apollo 11 Guidance Computer

It’s not shocking to think that our smartphones are more powerful than computers in the past, but a recent finding may be much more surprising. According to Forrest Heller, a developer from Apple, a modern USB charger can have even more processing power than the Apollo 11’s guidance computer that took it to the Moon in 1969.

If this conclusion is not specific enough for you, let’s simplify the two objects to their core.

In his blog post, the developer listed all the basic specifications and compared the processing power of some battery chargers including the Huawei 40W SuperCharge, the Google Pixel 14W, and the AnkerPowerPort Atom PD 2 with that of the guidance computer NASA developed half a century ago.

The guidance computer of the Apollo 11 featured a clock speed of 1.024 MHz while the AnkeRPowerPort Atom PD 2 clocks at 48 MHz. The 50-year-old computer has about 4KB RAM and 72KB storage while the Anker charger has 8KB RAM and 128KB flash memory. That makes the Anker charger able to store 1.78 times as many instructions and have twice the RAM as the Apollo 11 guidance computer.

All in all, Heller concluded that the modern charger works 563 times faster than the guidance computer of the Apollo 11.

So, does it mean your charger can take you to the Moon? Unfortunately, that’s highly impossible, because the task takes much more than just the processing power.

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