300TB hard drive to arrive by 2010 ~ Seagate...

Inquirer ^ | Wednesday 03 January 2007, 08:12 | Nick Farrell:

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Ah....photos:

In his left is a 24-inch platter from IBM's RAMAC

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Bill Healy, executive vice president at Hitachi, holds up a platter from a 1-inch microdrive in his right hand. In his left is a 24-inch platter from IBM's RAMAC (Random Access Method of Accounting and Control), which came out 50 years ago.

A 1-inch 8GB platter holds more than 80,000 times as much data as a single 24-inch RAMAC platter. An 8GB 1-inch drive holds 1,600 times as much data as RAMAC.

[Dog Gone]

Good lordy!

The first computer I bought had a 40mb hard drive, and that was an expensive upgrade!

[blam]

"The first computer I bought had a 40mb hard drive, and that was an expensive upgrade!"

Yeah, and, I remember the celebration we had when we made the first functioning 512 chip. (thats, five hundred and twelve bits)

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Meanwhile the processor boys are hard at work.....A bechmark test of an OCTAL Intel processor setup:

High Speed Octa-Core : Intel’s Xeon X5355 Processors

**************************AN EXCERPT *********************************

Author : Chris Connolly

Date : 1/5/2007

Just a few weeks back, we took our first look at Intel's quad-core Xeon processor, codenamed "Cloverton", here at GamePC.

****************************

Intel's "Cloverton" Xeon quad-core processors are architecturally identical to Intel's Core 2 Extreme quad-core chips on the desktop, but with one major benefit, the ability to run in multi-processor configurations. Thus, this new line of Xeon processors can easily be tossed into dual-processor motherboards to support a total of eight processor cores (two processors, four cores per processor), while running with run of the mill tower cases and power supplies. We're talking super-computer level processing power here, for a fraction of the cost and headache, and our initial benchmarks looked quite good.

***************************************************

At the time of our first report, Intel had only started shipments of their low-end quad-core Xeon processors, running at 1.6 GHz (Xeon E5310) and 1.8 GHz (E5320). Even with these fairly low clock speeds, these new quad-core processors could outperform the fastest dual-core Xeon processors at 3.0 GHz, but only in applications which could make use of all eight cores available. The majority of real-world applications on the market, however, struggle to make use of all of the cores available to it, showing performance levels not on par with what one would expect from systems with this much computing power under the hood.

Now in early 2007, Intel has now begun full-scale shipments of their entire line of quad-core Xeon processors, including their high-end 2.33 GHz and 2.66 GHz models. As many of you are no doubt aware, the 2.66 GHz quad-core Xeon (dubbed X5355) has the same features and clock speeds of Intel's top of the line desktop chip, the Core 2 Extreme QX6700. The Xeon X5355 model, however, costs about 25% more but supports multi-processing. Now we can see how a pair of 2.66 GHz quad-core chips can perform in today's high-end workstation application. We've also done some revisions for our octa-core testing suite in order to more efficiently utilize all of this computing power. Let's get started, shall we?

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Man....that goes back aways....

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

So...how many bits in the Intel Quad chip above....?

[blam]

"So...how many bits in the Intel Quad chip above....?"

I don't know...haven't even seen a wafer since 1994. That's a very nerve-wracking business, lots of heart-attacks and nervous break-downs. Anthropology/archaeology is more my speed these days, lol.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Just came acoss this....

AMD's Brisbane Core - the Transition to 65 nm
And the cache latency

[jalisco555]

I hate to admit it, but I remember when an 80mb hard drive was big, big news..

I remember getting a 10 Meg hard drive card and popping it into a slot on my PC clone. Man did I think I was cool.

[blam]

One of my old drinking buddies Robert Widlar didn't get out soon enough.

"Robert Widlar is considered the creator of the IC operational amplifier, which made millions for National. This photo was taken around 1977, judging by the LM10 circuit design at which he's looking. Widlar died on February 27, 1991. He was 53.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

He's looking at that circuit layout like it's a work of art....which it is....

[blam]

"He's looking at that circuit layout like it's a work of art....which it is...."

That's ruby studnite...they used xacto knives to cut out the design and then used optics to step-down the images onto 'masks' which were used to project the image onto wafers...that's just one layer of a chip which may have 18 or more layers. It's all done by computers today and the images electronically transferred to 'steppers' or electron beam machines.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I was out at the end point....installing computers in customer sites....but it is all very fascinating....and the technology seems to be speeding up....

[skinkinthegrass]

..I'll take two, Please...

[skinkinthegrass]

Windows '10 will take 120Tb just for a basic install...

LOL :)....and you won't even own it then...MS shall insist on renting, for a annual fee.

[dirtboy]

I still remember, about 1990 or so, when I first heard the term "gigabyte" and thought to myself, "damn, that's a big-assed hard drive".

Heck, I started out working with 10 meg hard drives the size of a shoebox. You could run a small business from one of those. Now you can blow a few gigs in just a few minutes of downloading video.

[Redcloak]

Of course there is no guarantee that anyone will be using Blu-Ray or the PS3 by 2010.

Those wishing to learn more about Blu-Ray or the PS3 can visit the Museum of Technology in New New Hampshire.

[FreedomPoster]

It has pretty well driven technological innovation for VCRs, DVDs, and the Internet, among other things I'm probably not thinking of.

Robotics is the next frontier there, and can't come a moment too soon, given all the aborted females in the societies of China and India, and the resulting male-female population imbalance.

[blam]

All because a junior engineer, Jack Kilby , didn't have enough seniority to take a summer vacation.

Kilby's invention initiated a $230 billion a year industry and a Nobel Prize in physics.