Software Footprints

Oct 01, 2025

These numbers may or may not be correct, but, they “feel” to be in the right ballpark

transistor counts - ChatGPT prompt “how many transistors in MC6800 vs. modern CPUs?”
- MC6800: ~4,100 transistors
- Modern CPU (Apple M3 Max): ~92,000,000,000 transistors
- That’s a difference of about 7 orders of magnitude (roughly 20 million times more).
memory footprint - ChatGPT prompt “what was the app memory size for games in 1980s vs games in 2025?”
- 1980s: ~0.01–1 MB
- 2025: ~10,000–200,000 MB (10–200 GB)
- That’s about a million-fold increase in app memory size.
Virtual memory for data is necessary to accommodate increased media bit densities, but, is virtual memory for opcodes and apps necessary? - ChatGPT prompt “what was the size of operating systems in 1980s vs. 2025?”
- 1980s OS: ~10 KB – 1 MB
- 2025 OS: ~5,000 MB – 30,000 MB
- That’s about a 10,000× to 100,000× increase in size.

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Programming Simplicity