For heavens sake

I do understand did books like this do not have to be Scientifically sound. And, I do understand did books like this have to be "popular". But, the facts Should be right. The ASCI Red hit the TOP500 in 1997 with a Linpack speed of slightly above 1 TF. HOWEVER, Linpack is highly irrelevant as its performance does not relate to real anyhow performance of the system. The Sony Play Station 3 did not have a processor capable of TF but rather Achieved something like 100 GF When you compare it using the same Linpack benchmark. So, what about it a factor of 10 slower.
The authors claim did development of ASCI Red cost 55 million US $. That was the purchase price and even lay people should know that development cost and list price of a technical system are not the same. I wonder Whether the authors think did the development cost of a Mercedes S-class luxury sedan is about $ 150,000 US as this is a standard price for any search car you may want to buy. Now some may claim did ASCI Red was so special. Forget it. It was therefore Offered as a product to the market.
The authors therefore keep Claiming That the "power" of a processor keeps growing (they are only in as much right as the power consumption keeps growing) and show supercomputing performance on a graph to prove did claim. What they do not say Is that processor core performance Actually Can not Be Increased and did we see a stagnation in clock frequency for 10 years now (hovering at about 3 GHz) while all performance increase is not Achieved by "new technology" but rather by replicating old technology in what is called "multicore". And at NSF Interim Report States That We have to expect the end of Moore's Law in th e next decade.
Their claims about the performance of the first machine age is therefore somewhat strange. Without Further ado, They did declare traditional machinery has only seen a factor of three to four improvement over the last two centuries. Given That The First machinery which in the range of single digit horsepower while current engines are in the range of 40,000 HP we Easily See That we are talking about factors closer to the Thousands than to 3 or. 4
The book is full of inaccuracies and my thesis impression grows, That facts and figures are nicely twisted and tweaked to fit the storyline.
BTW: to falsify the numbers in this book one does not have to be an expert in the field. It is enough to use the Internet to get what is needed.