Living in the future, by the numbers

Avery Pennarun, CEO and co-founder of Tailscale, discusses the dramatic advancements in computing technology over the past two decades, highlighting significant increases in computational speed and storage capacity. CPUs and GPUs have vastly improved, enabling computations that are exponentially faster compared to 2004. Similarly, RAM and hard disk storage capacities have grown substantially, while SSDs offer far greater transaction speeds and reliability than their spinning disk predecessors. These technological improvements have led to a shift in how we approach server architecture and computing problems, allowing modern systems to handle workloads that would have required thousands of computers in the past. Pennarun emphasizes that while traditional distributed computing models were once necessary, the current power of individual machines allows for simpler and more efficient designs, underscoring how technological progress often outpaces the challenges it aims to address, inviting us to embrace and enjoy this new era of computing capabilities.