Interesting that instrutions per meter concept.
Meanwhile http://home.kyodo.co.jp/modules/fstStory/index.php?storyid=456615
Russia deploys ballistic missile interceptors to counter N. Korea threat
MOSCOW, Aug. 26 KYODO
Russia has deployed S-400 air defense missile complexes, capable of intercepting ballistic missiles, in the Russian Far East to counter the threat posed by North Korea's missile tests, the country's top general said Wednesday.
Which once agains shows how the Western Media is in the other side.
True enough. Look at Java code. Dog-slow, inefficient. 1980s assembler would run a lot faster.
But computers have plenty of horsepower now so who cares, Java works.
Just to be wholly accurate, the measure I speak of is the change in seperation, so it is actually the number of instructions/sec divided by the change in the magnitude of the vector distance between A and B per second. Hopefully I got that right in words... It's almost easier to write the equation than to spell it out, but this blog interface doesn't do math :-)
These defences may get a noncomputer "test" very soon.
Although, sadly, even the best missile test can not defend against such things as a nuke in a truck (or a ship) in or near a major city.
One problem with measuring instructions per meter is that it assumes you're using a conventional general purpose CPU. I'd imagine it would make sense to build targeting systems for laser missile defense using ASICs to do specialised jobs very quickly, in much the same way as we use specialised ASICs to do the graphics for computer games.
But I get your point. Moore's law means we can build more complex and faster ASICs, too.
Heh. I was involved in the testing of an early version of a BMD kill vehicle. I'd go to work, process successful test data, then come home and see some boob from the Union of Really Concerned Physicists and Dental Hygienists on the television explaining how such a thing could never be made to work. So we should cut the funding. It was science, he said.
On second thought, I suppose he was right. If you cut the funding it can never be made to work.