Intel's 486 CPU turns 15

This article talks about the 15 year period from April 1989 to April 2004. In April 1989, the 33MHz Intel 486 was introduced. I checked Intel's website and their current high-end offering is a 3.4 Ghz Pentium 4.

So, what's the "rate of acceleration" from 33 MHz to 3.4 GHz in 15 years? I'll do the math for you. That's a factor of 103 increase. That comes out to a factor of 1.36 per year, or 36% increase per year. That's a doubling time of 2.24 years. (Close enough to 2.25 to round, I'd say.)

Now, this calculation looks only at clock speed, and neglects the fact that the new chips are "hyperthreading", and all the other cpu pipeline improvements that have been made. So the actual difference in performance between the 33 Mhz 486 and today's Pentium 4 is much more that 103x. Exactly how much, I don't know.

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