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Admiral Grace Hopper Explains the Nanosecond

funbury · 163.1K views · 2012-03-01 · 2:04

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Overview

Admiral Grace Hopper holds up a length of wire to show how far light travels in a nanosecond, about 11.8 inches. She explains how she made the idea concrete to people who could not picture a billionth of a second.

On Hacker News

HN uses it to illustrate physical latency limits and why performance and distance matter in computing.

Recommended by 5 HN people across 5 months · HN mentions 2020–2025

Topics

History of computingComputer architecture & CPUsTech pioneers & interviews
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grace hoppernanosecondlatencyspeed of lightperformance

What people said

dmoreno · 2023-01 · Strong recommendation

My favorite is more a small presentation than an image: Admiral Grace Hoper Explains a Nanosecond. [VIDEO] For me it changed my mind on wasting time on less efficient algorithms.

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throw0101a · 2021-12 · Recommendation

> Light is slow, not exactly 1 foot per nanosecond but it's a reasonable mnemonic. "Admiral Grace Hopper Explains the Nanosecond" is a good illustration of this (segment is only 2m): * [VIDEO] * [LINK] Full lecture: * [LINK]

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klyrs · 2021-06 · Recommendation

Speaking as somebody who never stopped optimizing like its the 90s: there's definitely a learning curve, but when microbenchmarking becomes a reflex, you learn your language in depth and the burden drops quickly. It only seems esoteric to you because the industry has collectively decided that Grace Hopper is an old codger who doesn't need to be listened to. [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by funbury, played through YouTube.

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