always more

translated with Goggle traduction 1642: barely born, computers are at the service of power

Blaise Pascal is 19 years old. He gives the world’s first calculating machine to his father, who presides over the Cour des Aides in Rouen. As soon as it is invented, the ancestor of calculators helps determine the amount of taxes. Among these, there is a tax that will outlive all others: the tobacco tax, created by Cardinal Richelieu in 1629. It seems that the foundations of our contemporary world are laid for the long term.

1860 Babbage’s Machine

Initially, mechanical computing was a kind of sport. We see that human strength was required in the 1850s to do a little calculating.

1945 Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer (ENIAC)

With electricity, we went faster, but it was much more complex and larger. The fragility of the ENIAC’s many vacuum tubes posed a problem. But in 1945, it became the first fully electronic computer. Three more years later, it became the first computer capable of reading and then executing a “program.”

in 1955

Computing speeds had increased, as had complexity and power consumption. Vacuum tubes, used in large numbers, generated a lot of heat. Cooling was starting to become a problem.

1980s - The Triumph of Integrated Circuits

Microchips helped with fuel efficiency and also led to a sharp drop in both prices and power consumption. This made it possible to fit a considerable number of them onto this monochrome graphics card for the IBM PC.

graphics card from 2023

The number of circuits for Artificial Intelligence (AI) is so large that the heat generation requires three fans. As you can see, they are much larger than the electronics. Unexpectedly, the problem has shifted to the 1920s. It’s no longer “how to calculate” but “how to cool.”

2007 the “small” smartphone

250 grams in the pocket. In the countryside, it’s heavier: the little marvel needs hectares of warehouses, tons of concrete, copper, and steel to house, power, and, above all, cool thousands of computers day and night.

Val de Reuil (27) data centers Normandy 1 (2012) Normandy 2 (2022).

Original photo: La Dépêche-Louviers

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