BBC Focus Magazine

[the roguester]

I was looking at a new usb data stick that has an amazing 256GB of memory and i thought WOW. The reason for this is a average movie file such as AVI or VLC is about 700MB. This means i could fit 365 movie files on a single usb memory stick "which to me is a damn lot" but then i started thinking about "MOORE'S LAW" Which stated that every two year's a chips capacity will double ,so i went on Wikipedia just to make sure i was right, when i noticed a "SECOND MOORE'S LAW" that stated in fact chip capacity will improve by 50% every year now due to technical advancement. So not to bore you i worked out that by 2015 there will be a usb memory stick with a whopping 8,112TB which would be capable of holding 11,680 movies...neat eh ?

[M Paul Lloyd]

I'm guessing that it will suffer some sort of interface conflict at some point?
Only so much a usb can cope with surely?

[Nails]

Sounds good to me.

I just hope i can plug it in and use some of it as cheap RAM....

[M Paul Lloyd]

I suspect it would work best as a back-up memory to the hard drive rather than actual working memory like RAM, but I could be wrong.

It does rather open up the interesting possibility of transforming an older and less able computer into something quite dramatic simply by plugging a tiny device into a USB socket.
Which I am sure someone will want to cash in on sooner or later.

[Nails]

This could revolutionise storage though, 8,112 TB of flash memory in a netbook or ipad?

Could mean the death of memory storage as we know it.

* maybe I shouldn't by that 1TB external drive after all..... *

[The Beige Avenger]

I got a 1 TB external...

it's ace.

[MrIsaksson]

yes that would be cool, not sure how you get to 8,112 TB though.

When I calculate it I got to a max of 3 TB, depending how which start month and end month you choose in 2010 and 2015?

[Shadowwolf]

So not to bore you i worked out that by 2015 there will be a usb memory stick with a whopping 8,112TB which would be capable of holding 11,680 movies...neat eh ?

Alas by then media tech will be so advanced that your 8,112 TB stick will hold only two movies, three if at a lesser quality. Memory storage is way beyond what it was ten years ago but the gubbins has advanced in step to take advantage of the extra room, resulting in less storage gain than may initially appear.

[...]

more, more, more, i want more...

[M Paul Lloyd]

As do we all @@, as do we all.

As for me I have a half terabyte external hard drive and find it invaluable..... but if it should fail... well that would be extremely tragic, so it also gets backed up on various 8Gb Usb thingy's and a multitude of CD's and DVD's and pretty much anything else going, even, in some cases, just printing it off as a 'hard copy' and sticking in on the ever growing pile of paper at the back of the garage.

My eldest keeps promising to hire me a skip!!!

For all its promise of a better way of storing data I now find I have more data 'stored' than I ever did. Lol.

[Jamie]

8 petabytes ? Jeez.

Examples of the use of "petabyte" to describe data sizes in different fields are:

* History: According to Kevin Kelly in The New York Times, "the entire [written] works of humankind, from the beginning of recorded history, in all languages" would amount to 50 petabytes of data.[1]

* Computer hardware: Teradata Database 12 has a capacity of 50 petabytes of compressed data.[2][3]

* Internet: Google processes about 20 petabytes of data per day.[4]

* Telecoms: AT&T has about 16 petabytes of data transferred through their networks each day.[5]

* Physics: The 4 experiments in the Large Hadron Collider will produce about 15 petabytes of data per year, which will be distributed over the LHC Computing Grid.[6]

* P2P networks: As of October 2009, Isohunt has about 9.76 petabytes of files contained in torrents indexed globally.[7]

* Archives: The Internet Archive contains about 2 petabytes of data, and is growing at the rate of about 20 terabytes per month as of February, 2010.[8][9]

* Games: World of Warcraft utilizes 1.3 petabytes of storage to maintain its game.[10]

* Film: The 2009 movie Avatar is reported to have taken over 1 petabyte of local storage at Weta Digital for the rendering of the 3D CGI effects.[11][12]

[M Paul Lloyd]

8 Petabytes............. Hmmmm, that would possibly constitute a small moon?

[EzBloke]

I did a similar calculation on the address bandwidths of increasing bit-value processors and look what happened; we got to 64 bit processors and stopped. Granted, they're getting teenier and tinier but they're still not the 512-, 256- or even the 128-bit core's that I calculated. By hand. In my head (sans calculator). On three A4 pieces of paper. Double sided. When I was seventeen.

8 petabyte storage is lovely, just think how long it will take to f-disk that beauty...?
And to have it on a data key!
Just imagine how much of our national id-card personal information can fit onto one data-key and be left on one bus?! Wonderful!

Ez

[Jamie]

From Wiki:

128-bit processors could become prevalent when 16 exabytes of addressable memory is no longer enough (128-bit processors would allow memory addressing for 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 bytes (~340.3 undecillion bytes or 281,474,976,710,656 yottabytes ). However, physical limits make such large amounts of memory currently impossible, given that amount greatly exceeds the total data stored on Earth today.

[M Paul Lloyd]

Beware of Wiki references I say.

[Jamie]

Normally I'd agree but this is something you can work out for yourself. In theory, processors can only address an amount of memory relevant to the amount of addresses it can store in it's register. There are ways round this (Physical Address Extension (PAE) for example), but the calculation they've used is done like this:

16-bit processor

2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2 = 65536

Binary register = 1111111111111111

32-bit

2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2 = 4294967296

Binary register = 11111111111111111111111111111111

64-bit

2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2 = 3.4028236692093846346337460743177e+38 (my calculator ran out of digits!)

Binary register = 1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111

[M Paul Lloyd]

I like "something you can work out for yourself" .

[tommy_turrell]

Interesting (but I am not sure that you are right, I make it 1944GB using your method), I was doing some similar calculations recently so your post caught my eye.

They are many problems that are impossible to solve using the current storage methods.

For example say you wanted to store every number between 0 and 9,223,372,036,854,775,807. Assuming that you used a signed 64 bit data type to store every number you would require 536,870,912 Terabytes or 524,288 petabytes or 512 exabytes!

The thing that struck me as amazing is that is seemed such a simple task.

I am interested in doing this because I want to calculate and store every single possible combination of 64 counters on 64 squares (OK its a bit more complicated than that!).

Unfortunately I worked out Kryder's Law predicts that I will be waiting 29 years for a 536,870,912 Terabyte drive (assuming that a 2 TB drive is the maximum that a average consumer could afford today).

However my bigger problem is that I worked out that using my current computers processor (which is able to count to 1,464,859,241 in 1 second) it would take roughly 199 years to store every number from between 0 and 9,223,372,036,854,775,807! Fortunately by the time I have a hard drive in 29 years Moores Law will mean that a processor will be capable of storing every number from between 0 and 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 in around 54 hours!

[Jamie]

Well spotted that man. Welcome to the perils of posting after a few beers! I was trying to indicate the amount you could address with 128 bits, but typed the 64 bit version with the 128 bit count. Consider myself shamed! It should have read:

64-bit

2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2 = 18446744073709551616

Binary register = 1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111

128 bit

2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2 = 3.4028236692093846346337460743177e+38 (my calculator ran out of digits!)

Binary register = 11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111

It really goes to show the power of exponential numbers. Your problem reminds me of the "Wheat and Chessboard Problem":

"If a chessboard were to have wheat placed upon each square such that one grain were placed on the first square, two on the second, four on the third and so on, doubling the number of grains on each subsequent square, how many grains of wheat would be on the chessboard at the finish?"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat_and_ ... rd_problem

[M Paul Lloyd]

Ah-so the ancient fable of man credited with inventing game of chess, you soon run out of wheat don't you.