How did 4 KB of RAM send someone to the moon, but 4 GB is not enough to play a medium-demanding game?

Jack Meng



How did 4 KB of RAM send someone to the moon, but 4 GB is not enough to play a medium-demanding game?

Originally Answered: How did 4kb of RAM sent someone to the moon but 4Gb is not enough to play a medium demanding game?


How did 4kb of RAM sent someone to the moon but 4Gb is not enough to play a medium demanding game?

Great question!



This was the computer that landed man on the moon:





This is the computer that we need to run some graphical game





So first we have to know what the Apollo Guidance Computer with only 4KB of onboard RAM. Remember it was still back in the 60s~70s. You shouldn’t expect megabytes of RAM. Computers were still not a consumer product that anyone can own.





You see Apollo Guidance Computer’s main purposes were to give control of the spacecraft for a smooth and controlled launch and landing.



However, it didn’t need to produce some ultra 4K graphics. It didn’t need to do much computing except for the crew to control the spacecraft.



Modern Computers, like the one you mentioned need like 4gb, is because games are much more than landing a space rocket. And at the time, even MB of ram was an insane amount.



Even if the world at that time had access to like MB or possibly Gigabytes of RAM, it wouldn't be needed. The reason they chose 4KB is that that’s all they need. Going overboard would mean greater performance, but remember the ram on the Apollo Guidance Computer were all hand threaded…



Modern Games need some 4gb to run because it is all about telling some thousands of pixels what to do, what to do how a game should behave.



The ram was all enough for the moon landing, going over to 4.5KB would be costly and time-consuming (remember the space race), and would mean an excess of ram. Modern Gaming isn’t about controlling a rocket, it’s about displaying something on a screen.



~JM