- Mag World uses RAM as a proxy to measure computing power across orders of magnitude, from mag 2 (128 bytes) to mag 10+ (16+ GB).
- Moore's Law drove exponential growth in transistor density, but the pace has slowed; personal experience shows a 10x improvement every 5–7 years.
- First computers varied by generation: mag 3 (TRS-80, 4KB RAM), mag 4 (Apple IIe), mag 5–6 (IBM 386, 2MB RAM), and mag 7–8 (Windows 95, WoW-era PCs).
- Higher mag levels enabled richer media: mag 4 for chiptunes and simple graphics, mag 6 for CD-quality audio and Doom, mag 9 for streaming video.
- Modern AI (e.g., Claude) uses neural networks with billions to trillions of parameters (mag 10–12), running on commodity hardware scaled in data centers (mag 15–17).
- Small, specialized software (e.g., Chuck Moore's Forth) can be drastically more efficient than bloated general-purpose code like Microsoft Word.
- Supercomputers today are about mag 3–4 more powerful than home PCs, using clusters of commodity hardware.