What makes you think it's a made up number? Just because it's been featured in a movie doesn't mean the number can't be grounded in the reality of the era. Yes, there's exaggerations but big buget movies usually hire technical consultants to aid writers, prop builders and art directors with setting scenes that look realistic and don't just pull radom numbers out of thin air which could be embarrassing mistakes for tech-savvy movie goers.
60 TFLOPS is the equivalent of 10.000x PS2s of processing power, the most powerful console at the time, or 2x NEC Earth Simulator, the most powerful supercomputer at the time, which seems about right for what would be a virus taking over all the compute power of the DoD.
So definitely the writers consulted with some people who knew something about computers to get a figure grounded in reality at the time and not just pulled a random number out of thin air, especially that at the time even average joes were hearing about FLOPS as a measure of compute power, being advertised in PC and gaming console specs, so naturally they had to come up with a number that seemed very impresive but was also believable.
It's a fictional prediction of the future. Even people trying to predict the future get it wrong. People being wrong isn't mind blowing.
Yes, there's exaggerations but big buget movies usually hire technical consultants to aid writers,
Is that what happened here?
prop builders and art directors with setting scenes that look realistic
That has nothing to do with the script
don't just pull radom numbers out of thin air
Yes they do
60 TFLOPS is the equivalent of 10.000x PS2s of processing power
60 TFLOPS was also about where the biggest super computer already was at 2003, so this was silly even using the present. That's fine, but it isn't "mind boggling" to base it on fiction.
Why not say that in 20 years the biggest super computer in the world is now where a home graphics card is? That's actually mind boggling. No need to live your life based off of the fiction of someone else.
which seems about right for what would be a virus taking over all the compute power of the DoD.
Why does that "seem about right". Again, this is fiction vs reality. That is a science fiction scenario that should make no sense to anyone experienced with computers. Why would a virus need a super computer?
So definitely the writers consulted with some people
No you've move from 'technical consultants exist' to 'definitely the writers consulted people'. What are you basing this on?
so naturally they had to come up with a number that seemed very impresive but was also believable.
Which part in the made up number is mind blowing again?
Reality is 'mind blowing' enough, there is no need to mix reality and fiction.
