[[email protected]]

I want to build a computer entirely out of tubes, and be able to
download and store the entire internet on it. How many tubes do I need?

[John Byrns]

In article ,
wrote:

I want to build a computer entirely out of tubes, and be able to
download and store the entire internet on it. How many tubes do I need?

Your question needs more definition, what do you mean by "entirely out of
tubes"? Are passive components like resistors and capacitors allowed or
disallowed? Must all storage be built from tubes, or can magnetic devices like
ferrite cores, magnetic tape, and disks be used for data storage functions?

Are there other requirements that your computer must meet, like speed of access
to the information?

If all data storage must be built from tubes that function will dominate the
tube count and it should be relatively easy to calculate the number of tubes
needed based on the size of the "entire internet" that is to be stored.

There are at least three very interesting design challenges that would be
presented by the design of your computer, but I will leave a discussion of those
challenges until after you have clarified your actual requirements.

Does anyone know the size of the "entire internet" and the rate at which it is
growing?

--
Regards,

John Byrns

Surf my web pages at, http://fmamradios.com/

[patrick-turner]

On Friday, 1 February 2013 08:27:43 UTC+11, wrote:
I want to build a computer entirely out of tubes, and be able to download and store the entire internet on it. How many tubes do I need?


What a brilliantly difficult question you ask!. Let us assume you want to use a vacuum tube to to do what each transistor does in any present day computer. But you wish to store all existing info and tubes are not required for storage, so let us assume you only need to use tubes to access the stored data and to put all data known to man onto hard drives etc. So, let us assume you'd need the computing power found at say 20 of the largest data centres in the world, and they might contain gillions of billions of transistors. It doesn't take long to work out that all available space on this planet would have to be devoted to your project. It would take about 1,500 years to build.
There wouldn't be room to grow a McDonald's hamburger, and no room for any more potato chip factories where recycled garbage is now used to make chips for deep frying to keep you fat and unhealthy. No more room to make milk from re-cycled engine oil for your milkshakes. Forget ice-cream, because in the world you build the temperature will, er, be hot.
I wish you very good luck, and IMHO, you'd need it.

Patrick Turner.

[[email protected]]

On Thursday, January 31, 2013 4:27:43 PM UTC-5, wrote:
I want to build a computer entirely out of tubes, and be able to

download and store the entire internet on it. How many tubes do I need?

Thousands of them will be required for such a difficult task. And your electric bill will bankrupt any private individual in a very short time...

[Frank[_11_]]

Il 01/02/2013 16.23, François Yves Le Gal ha scritto:
On Thu, 31 Jan 2013 15:27:43 -0600, wrote:

I want to build a computer entirely out of tubes, and be able to
download and store the entire internet on it. How many tubes do I need?

42.

What was the question?



I agree. 42 is "the" answer.

Frank

[[email protected]]

You need 282,000 plus the square of the number of tubes in an ENIGMA
machine.

On Thu, 31 Jan 2013 15:27:43 -0600, wrote:

I want to build a computer entirely out of tubes, and be able to
download and store the entire internet on it. How many tubes do I need?

[Don Pearce[_3_]]

On Sat, 09 Feb 2013 13:50:59 -0500, wrote:

You need 282,000 plus the square of the number of tubes in an ENIGMA
machine.

No tubes in an Enigma machine, so just the 282,000?

d

[Andre Jute[_2_]]

On Saturday, February 9, 2013 7:04:38 PM UTC, Don Pearce wrote:
On Sat, 09 Feb 2013 13:50:59 -0500, wrote:



You need 282,000 plus the square of the number of tubes in an ENIGMA

machine.



No tubes in an Enigma machine, so just the 282,000?



d

He may mean COLOSSUS.

[Don Pearce[_3_]]

On Sun, 10 Feb 2013 09:42:18 -0800 (PST), Andre Jute
wrote:

On Saturday, February 9, 2013 7:04:38 PM UTC, Don Pearce wrote:
On Sat, 09 Feb 2013 13:50:59 -0500, wrote:



You need 282,000 plus the square of the number of tubes in an ENIGMA

machine.



No tubes in an Enigma machine, so just the 282,000?



d

He may mean COLOSSUS.

Tommy Flowers didn't put any tubes in that either. All English, so
they were definitely valves.

d

[patrick-turner]

On Monday, 11 February 2013 05:51:12 UTC+11, Don Pearce wrote:
On Sun, 10 Feb 2013 09:42:18 -0800 (PST), Andre Jute wrote: On Saturday, February 9, 2013 7:04:38 PM UTC, Don Pearce wrote: On Sat, 09 Feb 2013 13:50:59 -0500, wrote: You need 282,000 plus the square of the number of tubes in an ENIGMA machine. No tubes in an Enigma machine, so just the 282,000? d He may mean COLOSSUS. Tommy Flowers didn't put any tubes in that either. All English, so they were definitely valves. d

Asking how many tubes to build a computer to do all that can be done on a computer is like asking how many flowers do you need to celebrate one's death if you are infinitely important, where importance is measured in terms of how many flowers one gets brought by those still living at your funeral. Well, I'm hoping nobody will waste time & money on my funeral, and so I should leave my body to medical science, and, I get one chance for some ******* to say, with scalpel in hand, gleam in eye, "Hey Joe, here's a real nice lookin corpse..." All scientific, so there were definately no flowers.

But I made a nice discrete transistor op-amp last week, and used it to make
a square wave gene which gave me 9.4Vpk-pk, 100 to 460kHz waves, with rise time of 0.158uS, ie, 59V/uS. Then I read where there are a large number of op-amps around capable of up to around 6,000V/uS. But I can't buy any of these hi-falooting op-amps locally, so I just used what's accumulated in my junk boxes, 2n2222 and BC327 and BC337....

I guess this was easier than using tubes, valves, or even flowers.

Patrick Turner.

[John L Stewart]

Originally Posted by

I want to build a computer entirely out of tubes, and be able to
download and store the entire internet on it. How many tubes do I need?

A rather good Analogue Computer could be built with a hundred os so twin triodes.

[Peter Wieck]

On Thursday, January 31, 2013 4:27:43 PM UTC-5, wrote:
I want to build a computer entirely out of tubes, and be able to

download and store the entire internet on it. How many tubes do I need?

Eniac, the first "practical" digital computer used only tubes as 'switches'.. Something on the order of 17,468 vacuum tubes, 7,200 crystal diodes, 1,500 relays, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors and around 5 million hand-soldered joints went into the machine. Parts of it still exist at Penn. Its memory was the functional equivalent of about 2300 bits (1.3KB), although there is no actual functional comparison of Core Memory to Flip-Flop memory. It could store (up to) ten (10) signed (+/-) ten-digit numbers, full stop.

It had less computing and/or memory capacity than the Commodore VIC 20. Which had five (5) KB of ram, of which 1.5KB was system memory. Power consumption for the ENIAC was about 160KW/H.

Extrapolating Wildly: If the internet memory capacity is 58 petabytes (each petabyte being 1,000 terabytes) the memory capacity requirement would be quite large - but TUBES did not store the actual data, only processed it. So, you would have to consider the number of tubes to make a reasonable processing time, and the number of tubes, capacitors and flip-flop devices (analog relays) to store the data. Then the power to run it all.

Comes to 10 to the 15KB. 10 to the 42 bytes.

Raw numbers only, and definitely comparing apples (flip-flop) to oranges (core), and all approximations:

Keeping in mind that a typical memory chip has something over (the equivalent of) 40,000,000 discrete components on it, with CPU chips having much, much more, the number of vacuum tubes will be in the several billions. But, for practical purposes, if only one billion tubes are used ENIAC style, that would require, with supporting infrastructure, about 10 MW/H of power, about the equivalent of the entire output of two (2) standard nuclear plants.

2,830,000,000,000 hand-soldered joints (again, assuming ENIAC-style). Assume 10,000 assemblers making 180 joints per hour. That math will be astounding. Not to mention floor-space required, cooling considerations, access, and so on and so forth.

So, the short answer:

More tubes than have been produced world-wide since 1910.
Something far over 2 square miles of footprint. ENIAC was only 1,800 s.f., but remember, access, heat and memory issues using relays.

Interesting exercise in silliness.

Peter Wieck
Melrose Park, PA (and Penn grad).