Posted on 07/25/2022 8:28:51 PM PDT by bitt
What is a zettabyte, what is exascale supercomputing, and what could be achieved with that massive amount of computing and storage resources--by entities that the public doesn't even know about?
In this post, I’m going to introduce you to some fresh ideas about massive-scale data centers and supercomputing—like the ones used by certain three-letter agencies—and speculate about a possible use case for that enormous scale of storage and computing.
Do I know for certain what they use these massive computing resources for? No, I don’t.
What I’m going to discuss is (hopefully) just a thought exercise—one that I’ll use to teach you some important concepts—and then I’ll get to you to think about this question: are we all OK with governments around the world amassing an enormous scale of computing and storage capability without us even knowing the slightest thing about what they are using it for? Whatever that ends up being?
Why should we passively accept this?
Along the way, I’ll teach you a little bit about gigabytes and even bigger numbers; teach you a little bit about how modern data backup works; and then tie these threads together into the main topic.
Grab some coffee to wake up your brain, you’ll need it by the end.
I always start these posts with a little bit of background to set the scene and add some context. So here we go.
I wrote about modern supercomputing in a recent substack post. In the early 1990’s, I worked with a team on satellite imaging systems for a defense contractor (TRW Space and Defense) and then later at a supercomputing startup in Pasadena.
While I was at TRW, my team worked on developing the world’s first nearly real-time “Internet-based” delivery of earth-facing high resolution full color satellite photographs for NASA (the precursor to what you now see on Google Earth.)
As part of that project, we had to build a 1 gigabyte memory subsystem to store the satellite images temporarily.
At that time, a 1 gigabyte memory didn’t exist; the module we designed and built was the size of a suitcase, and it took a team of about a dozen Caltech whiz kids the better part of a year to design, test and build.
...MORE..
While large, it does not seem out of reach for us.
My current environment thinks nothing of GB storage, TB is the norm, and we have a few PB filesystems.
Exactly.
(The author is also a big fan of unnecessary parentheticals)
“TB is the norm, and we have a few PB filesystems.”
For what it’s worth, the largest available hard disk is 20 TB and the largest solid state storage medium is 16 TB.
A petabyte is 1000 TB which would be 50 20 TB drives.
I’ve wondered how many bits can be put on a square inch of hard drive, and also per square inch of chip.
No telling how many square feet of chips we have on this earth now.
Lol, yep. My neighbor kept saying that. And for awhile he didn’t need more- then things changed.
I remember downloading loads of game demos on 56k dialup, (they took forever, and one had tk,hope the connection to dialup wasnt lost after a few hours of downloading), and thye were long demos too. Could fit on a cd drive. Then we needed cd’s to store the game -then needed dvd’s beczuse cds didnt have enougn room.
btt
After the invention of the printing press in 1450 or so—the amount of information in the world doubled every 100 years. The time period for that doubling began to shrink in the 1900’s. By 1945, that doubling of information was down to every 25 years.
Now the amount of information world wide — is doubling about every 18-24 months.
What happens when the doubling goes down to once a year or once every six months or less.
I remember when Seagate released a 20 megabyte hard drive
so that all of the folks that owned 1983 vintage IBM PC/XT computers
could updgrade their 10 MB drive machines to 20 MB - WOW!
Note that Windows versions slow down the more computing power you have. Add SSD more RAM memory, faster CPU. It don’t matter. Windows detects this and slow down..... : )
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