On 9 Nov 2007 08:38:45 -0800, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Chase, John) wrote: >> I can't remember the whole thing, but I believe that Grace >> Hopper used to use different rope lengths to show how long, >> or short various measurements of time were: a nano second vs. >> a full second.
I used to have one of her nanoseconds (it was an electrical wire, and while I may still have it, it's not particularly noticeable). >Hmmm..... A nanosecond is one billionth of a second, so the "long" rope >would have to be a billion times longer that the "short" one. Given >that the SI definition of a metre is approximately one ten-millionth >the distance from a pole to the equator along a meridian, if the "short" >rope was only one millimetre long, the "long" one would have to be a >thousand kilometres long. That would make a pretty big "pile" of >rope......... But it is relevant in this thread to note that there can be considerable overhead in the process of tying various nanosecond ropes together. An instruction that's twice as slow as another instruction is only twice as slow if we don't count the time taken to load that instruction. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
