Question

Roughly how many floating-point operations can a supercomputer perform in a human lifetime?

a) 1 × 10²5 operations
b) 1 × 10²3 operations
c) 1 × 10²4 operations
d) 1 × 10²2 operations

Answer 1

A supercomputer can perform approximately 2.555 * 10^26 floating-point operations in a human lifetime.

Step-by-step explanation:

The number of floating-point operations a supercomputer can perform in a human lifetime can be calculated based on the number of operations it can perform in a day. According to the given information, a supercomputer can perform 10^22 floating-point operations in 1 day. To estimate the number of operations in a human lifetime, we can assume an average human lifetime of 70 years.

There are approximately 365 days in a year, so the number of days in a human lifetime is approximately 70 years * 365 days/year = 25550 days. Therefore, the number of floating-point operations a supercomputer can perform in a human lifetime is approximately 10^22 operations/day * 25550 days = 2.555 * 10^26 operations.

Therefore, the correct answer is (b) 1 × 10²³ operations, which is the closest option to the estimated number.