Head to head

Compare any two computers

Pick two machines from 50 years of computing, or pit one against the phone in your pocket. Every number comes from the atlas catalogue.

Acorn · 1981

BBC Micro Model B

Made for the BBC Computer Literacy Project and found in almost every British school.

CPUMOS 6502 @ 2 MHz
Memory32 KB
StorageCassette, 5.25" floppy
Launch price£335
In the atlasBe the first to add it
VS

Raspberry Pi Foundation · 2012

Raspberry Pi (Model B)

A $35 computer made to get kids coding again.

CPUARM11 (Broadcom BCM2835) @ 700 MHz
Memory256 MB
StorageSD card
Launch price$35 ≈ $50 today
In the atlasBe the first to add it

The verdict

The Raspberry Pi (Model B) has 8,192× the memory of the BBC Micro Model B and a clock 350× faster.

They are 31 years apart. Doubling every two years (Moore's law) would predict about 46,341×; the memory actually grew slower than that. Across the whole catalogue memory doubled every 1.9 years.

Memory32 KB vs 256 MB
Clock speed2 MHz vs 700 MHz

Bars use a logarithmic scale so both machines stay visible.

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