15

As stated in the title, what kind/type of CPU and how much processing power does he have?

Einer
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plocks
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    A pair of ARM processors, one mounted on each side of his torso *DRUM STING* – Paul D. Waite May 07 '14 at 11:52
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    There we have it, our acceptable answer ;-) – plocks May 07 '14 at 11:57
  • Funny fact: I would thought, that this question would have been raised before on scifi.stackexchange. So I checked if it's a duplicate. But it seems: It is not! Baffling! – Einer May 07 '14 at 12:12
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    I’m surprised no-one’s asked if he runs on Linux either (see http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/33444/was-lcars-derived-from-an-open-source-codebase and http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/55044/does-batman-use-linux). If he did, I hope they made sure he was patched against the Heartbleed bug. That could be ugly. – Paul D. Waite May 07 '14 at 12:24
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    @PaulD.Waite More specifically he runs on Android: http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lx2qorlhSa1r5a6weo1_400.jpg – Xantec May 07 '14 at 13:34
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    @Xantec I am obliged to link the question – Izkata May 07 '14 at 22:50

1 Answers1

23

As we learn in TNG "Measure of a Man" he has a positronic brain with 800 Quadrillion bit storage capacity and a computational speeds of 60 trillion operations per second.

Einer
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  • Does it have something to do with quantum computers? – plocks May 07 '14 at 11:50
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    No, positrons are antimatter - the counterpart of electrons. As far as I know the concept is "borrowed" from Isaac Asimov, but never explained as to why positrons are better than electrons. – Einer May 07 '14 at 11:52
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    It's so that he can (drum roll, maestro) think positively! (Applause, thrown garbage.) –  May 07 '14 at 11:57
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    Yes, the "positronic brain" originated in Asimov's robot stories. Wikipedia claims: "When Asimov wrote his first robot stories in 1939 and 1940, the positron was a newly discovered particle and so the buzz word positronic — coined by analogy with electronic — added a contemporary gloss of popular science to the concept." – Royal Canadian Bandit May 07 '14 at 13:19
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    @RoyalCanadianBandit "gloss of popular science" seems fitting! All you need is a darn complicated insulation on every conductor to prevent matter-antimatter-reaction and all you get is an particle that behaves just like an electron. Only it's positively charged. Great. It's like paining a Ferrari in light blue. – Einer May 07 '14 at 13:27
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    Ironically, 800 quadrillion bits is "only" about 100 petabytes and 60 trillion operations per second is a measly 60 teraflops. A modern graphics card does 2 teraflops alone, and 5TB hard drives are already commercially available. I should hope real 24th century hardware would be vastly superior to Data's. Now we just need to work out the AI problem, but we still have 350 years. – Thomas May 07 '14 at 14:54
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    By the sixth season episode The Quality of Life it is likely Data is capable of a good deal more than 60 trillion operations per second: FARALLON: Is it true that your computational speed is limited only by the physical separation of your positronic links? DATA: Actually, that is no longer the case. I have recently converted my interlink sequencer to asynchronous operation, which removed the performance constraint. – Xantec May 07 '14 at 14:59
  • @Xantec Is it "the performance constraint" or "that performance constraint"? To remove performance constraints all together would make him very... performant. If itsjust the 60 trillion barrier is broken, he now could now be capable of doing 60 trillion and one operations per second. That's a huge difference! – Einer May 07 '14 at 15:04
  • According to the closed captions on the episode the transcript is correct. – Xantec May 07 '14 at 15:07
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    @Xantec It's not like Data to confuse "the" and "that". So we can assume he can do now just any number of ops/s? – Einer May 07 '14 at 15:11
  • That was how I always took it, although if that were true we should never see him pause to calculate anything, at least after that point in time. However, Memory-Alpha doesn't mention that upgrade on his page under Specifications (which may just be an oversight). – Xantec May 07 '14 at 15:25
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    I think it'd break the laws of thermodynamics (as we know them) if he could perform computations at unlimited speed. I think he must've meant "the performance constraint [you spoke of]" (or it was a plain old case of "writers and/or actors making a stupid mistake"). – Tim S. May 07 '14 at 15:53
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    @Thomas, solving "the AI problem" sounds like a problem in and of itself; the threat of a paperclipper could become very real. Hell, one of the founders of MIRI wrote that the first and only effective horror story he'd read was a fanfiction about a paperclipper which was designed to satisfy human values through friendship (and ponies). Not poke the human pleasure center: actually satisfy values. And it was terrifying. – Brian S May 07 '14 at 15:57
  • @TimS. Except that Data isn't one to leave someone with an incorrect assumption. Farallon clearly questions if that is Data's only limit, which Data says is no longer a limit. He does not include ", and I'm limited by X, Y and Z." – Xantec May 07 '14 at 17:15
  • @Thomas That implies that an "operation" is the same. One of Data's operations much be orders of magnitude more complicated than a present-day operation. – corsiKa May 07 '14 at 17:31
  • @TimS. that's okay; the USS Enterprise-D itself very severely violates the standard model of physics (and thermodynamics, and anything else you want to cite based on actual, known, observationally-supported physics in 2014) just by its propulsion systems. Even if "warp" just means increasing fractions of the speed of light, the fact that the ship can accelerate to warp 9 and decelerate from high warp to only a few km/s relative to nearby astronomical bodies in seconds should tear the ship and the crew apart. Instead they don't even feel a bump. It's impossible. But it's sci-fi. – allquixotic May 07 '14 at 17:34
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    @allquixotic You're forgetting the Inertial Dampers. – corsiKa May 07 '14 at 17:35
  • @allquixotic corsiKa is right: Usually Star Trek creates an explanation when they blatantly violate the laws of physics - take the Inertial Dampners, the Heisenberg compensator, the structural integrity field, ... Here there is no explanation. I tent to agree with TimS: It was a stupid mistake. Non the less - now it's canonical. That kinda sucks! – Einer May 07 '14 at 17:44
  • @Einer why does the creation of a magical McGuffin make things more acceptable than leaving out the McGuffin? I mean, sure, they could've admitted that Data has finite computation capacity, or they could've created a McGuffin for explaining why his capacity is infinite (or at least uncountably greater than it was before), but as they say on MST3K, "repeat to yourself it's just a show, I should really just relax." – allquixotic May 07 '14 at 18:33
  • @allquixotic It's not just a McGuffin. I want explanations. If, for plot reasons, somebody needs to stay in danger, you can't just beam him out. But you'll need an explanation. "There is too much interference" will do. But just "Sorry, Sir, I cant" wont. I wanna know why things are the way they are. And if that means to hear "Sorry Sir, but there is a McGuffin" I'm fine with that. Without it it's just an screenwriter laying down his arms and saying "Sorry, screwed up!" – Einer May 07 '14 at 19:57
  • Surely "I have recently converted my interlink sequencer to asynchronous operation" is the McGuffin? You are asking how the McGuffin works which defeats the whole point of the McGuffin! – Chris May 07 '14 at 21:43
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    Or to translate - he teched the tech with the tech, which let the plot happen. :) – Allen Gould May 07 '14 at 22:06
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    The positronic brain in the Star Trek universe may have simply been named after the Asimov one in honor of Asimov, in-universe. Just sayin'. – Mark Rogers May 08 '14 at 02:52
  • @allquixotic "the fact that the ship can accelerate to warp 9 and decelerate from high warp to only a few km/s relative to nearby astronomical bodies in seconds should tear the ship and the crew apart" No, it doesn't. See the Wikipedia article on the Alcubierre drive for more details, but the gist is that the ship never physically accelerates to the speed of light and beyond. Instead, the ship sits stationary in a bubble of space-time (the warp bubble) and space is contracted and expanded around it to facilitate faster than light travel. – Tom Lint Nov 02 '20 at 12:14