![Forty years or so of progress -[ HMM ]- | by Carbon Arc](http://live.staticflickr.com/4393/36458654014_4d887e6d06.jpg)
Forty years or so of progress -[ HMM ]-
A miniature vacuum tube (valve), popularized in the 1950s, next to the circuit board from a USB switch, an example of surface-mount technology using sophisticated integrated circuits, technologies introduced in the 1980s and continually refined since.
Each chip contains one million or more microscopic transistors, a small number of each roughly functionally comparable to what one tube did. Imagine replicating the function of this circuit using tubes, and you'll end up with something taking up a convention center's worth of space, consuming an astounding amount of power to run and cool, and basically being a reliability nightmare compared to what modern microelectronics can achieve nowadays.
Forty years or so of progress -[ HMM ]-
A miniature vacuum tube (valve), popularized in the 1950s, next to the circuit board from a USB switch, an example of surface-mount technology using sophisticated integrated circuits, technologies introduced in the 1980s and continually refined since.
Each chip contains one million or more microscopic transistors, a small number of each roughly functionally comparable to what one tube did. Imagine replicating the function of this circuit using tubes, and you'll end up with something taking up a convention center's worth of space, consuming an astounding amount of power to run and cool, and basically being a reliability nightmare compared to what modern microelectronics can achieve nowadays.