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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from how Stuff Works dot com

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Speaker 1: where smart Happens. Hi, I'm Marshall Brain with today's question,

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Speaker 1: what is the fastest computer in the world. To put

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Speaker 1: things in perspective, Let's start with the computer sitting on

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Speaker 1: your desk, the computer you use on a day to

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Speaker 1: day basis to browse the internet, handle email, create documents,

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Speaker 1: and so on. Most people have some kind of Intel

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Speaker 1: or am D processor. A computer likeness can execute approximately

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Speaker 1: two billion instructions per second. Your in particular machine might

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Speaker 1: be twice that fast or half that fast, but that's

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Speaker 1: the ballpart. The fastest computer in the world is much

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Speaker 1: faster than that, and it's sitting right on top of

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Speaker 1: your shoulders. The human brain is an amazing computing device

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Speaker 1: and the fastest processor available. Right now, let me give

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Speaker 1: you an example. Your desktop computer is just starting to

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Speaker 1: get to the point where it can understand speech and

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Speaker 1: take dictation, translating spoken words into written words. It can

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Speaker 1: only understand one speaker well, and that speaker has to

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Speaker 1: train it for about twenty minutes, and the dictation software

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Speaker 1: will still make a lot of mistakes. So two billion

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Speaker 1: instructions per second can barely handle dictation, right now. Your brain,

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Speaker 1: on the other hand, can understand any number of speakers.

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Speaker 1: It needs no training and will make zero mistakes. It

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Speaker 1: may even be able to understand multiple languages, and the

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Speaker 1: speech processing portion of your brain is just one small

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Speaker 1: part of the whole package. Your brain can also process

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Speaker 1: complex visual images, control your entire body, understand conceptual problems,

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Speaker 1: and create new ideas. Your brain is made up of

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Speaker 1: about one trillion cells, with a hundred trillion connections between

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Speaker 1: those cells. We might take a rough estimate and say

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Speaker 1: it's handling ten quadrillion instructions per second, but it really is.

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Speaker 1: It's hard to say. In the Top five hundred list,

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Speaker 1: which ranks supercomputers by speed, the top supercomputer right now

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Speaker 1: can handle five dred or so trillion operations per second.

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Speaker 1: It's about one as powerful as the human brain. Another

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Speaker 1: supercomputer called md Grape three, built by the Japanese company Reikin,

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Speaker 1: has a theoretical maximum speed of one pedal flop or

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Speaker 1: one quadrillion operations per second, but that computer can't run

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Speaker 1: the official ranking software, so it's hard to compare it

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Speaker 1: with the other supercomputers. Even so, it's still not as

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Speaker 1: fast as your brain. Do you have any ideas or

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Speaker 1: suggestions for this podcast. If so, please send me an

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Speaker 1: email at podcast at how stuff works dot com. For

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Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics, go to

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Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com